RTL Technology Large-scale, cross-media app development

Building on previous successes

RTL+’s video-on-demand offering, which was formerly known as TVNOW, was previously overhauled in collaboration with inovex. Building on this successful collaboration, RTL Technology decided to bring in inovex as its IT partner during the strategic further development of its streaming service into RTL+.

The existing video app was subsequently completely redesigned. inovex also collaborated with RTL Technology to develop an app which combines TV, video and music streaming, podcasts, audiobooks and magazines into a single solution.

Agile software development on a large scale

As the collaboration project progressed, its scale also increased. There are currently more than 400 people working on the cross-media, highly scalable, all-inclusive solution which, at peak times, serves up content to millions of users simultaneously.

In order to implement a project of this scale using agile methods, RTL Technology based the development on the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), with as many as 260 developers working in more than 20 teams. These teams were divided between six Agile Release Trains (ARTs), each of which was responsible for a different sector (video, music, podcasts and audiobooks, etc.). Each ART remained autonomous and maintained responsibility for all the areas pertaining to its product − from the player to desktop, iOS, and Android compatibility, right through to marketing. The structure of the various teams within the ARTs enabled them to resolve all their technical issues internally.

Over a period of eight weeks, the ARTs developed new increments, which were then synchronized. The teams then defined their goals for the next increment and planned their activities. Individual increment goals were then defined within each ART.

This working method has enabled RTL Technology and inovex to successfully continue their agile collaboration and allowed them to continue developing the solution’s functionality as the project scale has increased.

Top-shelf software solution

With the first iteration of its RTL+ video-on-demand streaming offering, RTL Technology pursued the “You build it, you run it” DevOps strategy, a corporate culture which focuses on the effective collaboration of development and operations in order to rapidly implement stable, high-quality software. In order to transform RTL+ into a crossmedia application that brings together video, music, podcasts, audio books and magazines, the next DevOps evolutionary step was taken and a Kubernetes-based internal developer platform was created. This can sustainably reduce the cognitive load on the development teams and improve the stability and security of the applications through paved paths.

inovex is providing support for RTL Technology in multiple IT areas within the project, from agile and application development for web, iOS, and Android to the creation of a Kubernetes infrastructure, right through to using data analytics in user experience and advertising.

inovex’s collaboration with RTL Technology is a perfect example of a successful IT project implementation. As RTL Technology ’s vision has evolved, so, too, have the project requirements. The focus is no longer purely on innovation. Instead, it has expanded to include the top-shelf implementation of a state-of-the-art multimedia offering which will, in future, enable an intelligent data strategy.

In order to achieve this goal, RTL Technology and inovex are collaborating in cross-functional, cross-company teams.