WHY DID YOU CHOOSE THIS PROJECT?

What appealed to me most about this project is the fact that they work with microservices combined with the fact that the company is quite young and small. Especially if you compare it to my previous client: ING. Exactly, I am already familiar with the financial sector and Backbase could use my experience well with which the click was soon mutual.

WHAT ARE YOU MOST PROUD OF WITHIN THIS PROJECT?

Together with Rockstar colleague Mark, we were thrown into the deep end almost immediately. Our other backend colleague (our other senior backend teammate) was on vacation right after our introductory week for 3.5 weeks. During this period we familiarized ourselves with the project, revised and expanded the necessary and within 2 months of our start date rolled out the first official release to the first customer of our product that allows European SEPA payments to be made!

What techniques tooling did you use?

On this project, the main tooling are Spring-boot, Apache Camel for integration, and RAML (specification) for defining and documenting the interfaces between the different services. For the front-end, Angular is used.

WHAT DID THE PROJECT DELIVER TO THE TARGET AUDIENCE/USER?

With Payment Order capability – one of the components of Backbase’s “Digital Banking Services” product – banks have an end-to-end out of the box solution that allows them to serve their end users in terms of payment options. Think about doing different types of payments such as a SEPA credit tranfser and many others. The beauty of this end-to-end solution is that it provides an outstanding user experience. For example, end users can save their payments as drafts, or if also taken by the bank, have their payments approved before it is processed. A very useful feature for the wholesale banking industry.

On the one hand, the Payment Order capability is designed so that it can be deployed out of the box with Backbase’s customers. To which we are constantly adding new features and improvements. On the other hand, it is also designed to be very flexible so that it is very easy for banks to boost their digital transformation and they can get started with this solution and adapt it to their needs using “behavior extensions.”

WHAT DID YOU LEARN IN THE PROJECT?

The biggest difference from my previous assignment at ING is that now we are working on a product that is sold to different customers. That requires a different mindset than when working in-house on a service. Besides, it’s a very different company anyway and you can see that immediately in the time to market of our first release.

WHAT MADE TEAM ROCKSTARS IT-WORTHY?

Payments is a bank’s most important and critical product. It is also a very complex feature with all the rules and challenges of being able to make payments internationally. That makes it extra challenging. Being an IT Rockstar gives me the opportunity to strike a perfect balance between quality and quantity, where I have to work closely with many different colleagues within the organization. Because of the critical nature, it is extra important to perform well and as a team we are extra visible within the organization.