Background: NHL and NFL Sports Mobile App for Kids

I joined the early-stage tech company as the (interim) fractional CTO, tasked with developing digital "kids clubs" for NHL and NFL Sports teams. The company had contracts with two major sports teams and many others in the sales funnel. However, a significant upheaval in the development team and recent business challenges had left the company in a difficult position, with many key developers having left and no development team to build it. One sports team's app was recently completed but there were few trained developers and no plan for tackling the next app  or reusing code between apps to reduce costs and timelines.

Before I joined, the first NHL team kids club prototype and mvp was developed as a native mobile app using traditional languages. The business model included content creation for the kids clubs and custom functionality requested by the NHL and NFL teams. Many content changes required rebuilding the native apps, requiring significant costs and effort. Sports teams often had changes they wanted to make, such as new promotions, player icon/picture changes, roster changes,upcoming game info and stats, messages to their fans , posters etc.. This information had been manually entered into the native apps for many / most content changes.

After assessing the situation over several months, I determined a course of action to fulfill the company's obligations to existing clients while developing a more scalable and reusable architecture. After leading the recruitment of several developers to fulfill the immediate needs, I designed a development system to allow for significantly more reuse of code when generating kids club apps. This project occurred before cross-device development was common so significant experimentation was required. This successful new system provided a way to generate apps using custom software and file structures that organize the content in a way that promotes reuse and easy content generation. This had a significant impact on the potential profitability and scalability of the business.

The newly formed development team was initially concerned whether this new architecture would be possible as it was a departure from the typical “single app” development processes. I promoted the idea that we needed to “produce” apps, not have to “rebuild them” and got the support that was needed to execute on this successful project. With this new system, we automated many time-consuming and error-prone tasks that would have been required if the apps were developed natively, improving the business's margins by reducing development time which improved team satisfaction

The final stage of my role was to recruit a permanent CTO for the company, which I achieved through several months of interviews. I also helped the company figure out how to outsource mini-game development in a way that could be integrated modularly into the native apps generated through our new app development architecture. I worked with several companies in India to develop small, cost-effective mini-games that could be easily swapped or plugged into our apps. I oversaw the development of these games and ensured that it would be a repeatable process.

This project illustrates my talent for rescuing and advancing projects in challenging situations. My work in designing and implementing a scalable app architecture, automating processes, and leading a newly formed development team underscores my skills in strategic vision, hands-on execution, and team development. By transforming the development process and ensuring the delivery of high-quality apps, I showcased my ability to combine innovation with practical leadership, driving successful outcomes and improving business efficiency.