Zayed: C2C Marketplace in Saudi Arabia

It was decided that the first product version would be created on the iOS platform since most target customers use iOS devices. As well, the app would have a native look and feel for the Saudi Arabian market.

Our team finalized the product vision during the solution-creation phase, and conducted a few in-depth workshops and consultations. We provided the following deliverables to support this vision on the Zayed project, which served as a great starting point for the subsequent Discovery phase:

The Discovery stage in the Zayed project lasted around one month, where regular meetings with the clients (Abdullah, Majed, and Nasser) were held. After that, our designer demonstrated the app screens based on the functionality created by our business analyst, who explained all the transitions and flow among app screens.

All of the edits and comments from the clients were taken into account. The project manager guided the whole project and also created a working space for the Zayed project in the Confluence tool

Our UX/UI designer created a user-centered design layout, navigation, and interface that was adapted to the target audience and to local user behavior on the Saudi Arabia market.

During the Discovery stage, our software architect planned the project’s architecture. The project architecture was planned based on a standard monolith structure, where each layer is responsible for separate actions.

The architecture uses the views defined in the "4+1" model representing use-case/ scenarios view, logical view, development view, process, and physical views:

The decision was made to stick with the basic architecture so that it serves a good basis for the starting project, saves money, and releases version one to the market quickly. In terms of future scalability, the project was planned to utilize Docker technology that allows for the separation of different architecture modules like, for example, databases and the addition of more powers. In this case, it is possible to increase the power exactly where the system needs an increase.

Suitable solution architecture is identified and designed with an idea of future scalability. The project architecture is planned so that any additional modules could be integrated with minimum effort.

According to functionality specifications, designs, and proposed architecture, a test plan was created by our QA engineer. The QA engineer participated in collecting the project requirements and performed the following important activities:

The Development phase of the Zayed project lasted around half a year. The Development stage utilized agile methodology, Scrum, and the process was divided into two-week sprints. During this period, the team had regular meetings and syncs with the clients.

The Development phase of the Zayed project lasted around half a year. The Development stage utilized agile methodology, Scrum, and the process was divided into two-week sprints. During this period, the team had regular meetings and syncs with the clients.

The first project demo included the work of 4 sprints and Abdullah, Majed, and Nasser were given an environment in which they could check and click, as well as follow the checklist also provided by the team.

During the development phase, the PM played a vital role in organizing the process. The PM guided the development team, planned the next sprint with the developers, and communicated with the clients. On a regular basis, the PM sent the clients reports listing the project timelines, budget aspects, etc.

During the development phase, we strictly follow industry-standard engineering practices, including but not limited to:

In addition, we keep source code in a privately hosted secured repository powered by GitLab: https://git.mlsdev.com

All in all, the development phase was completed very smoothly and with almost no changes. This result, in many respects, is due to our clients, who trusted us, our opinion, and expertise, and did not interfere during the development process. Our work with the clients and their attitude and approach was ideal in all possible ways.

We must admit that such an attitude and mutual trust is the cornerstone to any project that intends to reach an expected outcome. This is precisely how successful projects are created without missed deadlines and wasted budgets - when the client trusts the team and understands that any changes often entail an unpredictable increase in terms of money and time.

One of the main challenges was choosing a payment platform that would fully satisfy the project needs for providing secure payments in the Saudi Arabia territory.

There were a few payment systems that could work and cover Zayed’s project needs. At first, our team looked at a few options for online payments that seemed to be the best match for the project’s needs. Ultimately, it was decided to add the Apple payment gateway service to ensure that the Zayed application would not deal with hidden risks in terms of functionality in case of other services and would not be rejected from the App Store.

The subscription functionality was the most complex in the project development process. Since its documentation was written by Apple representatives and is very generic, our developers needed to try a few ways and test multiple hypotheses to encode this functionality correctly into the system.

Since the product targeted the Saudi Arabia market, the core challenge was to match the market specifics inside the app, including the Arabic language, currency, content, and other UI elements.