Type of Work
What we do best is matching people and work. We have a strong dedication to developing long-term relationships with clients, partners and employees alike. On the inside, we have successfully developed teams of quality developers on varied platforms, who are also reasonable, engaged professionals with a fresh view. On the outside, we aim to grasp the meaning behind the requirements handed to us, rather than just the specification, and then serve a working piece of software within the set frame. Or better.
As we like to describe in short, Melon is a software development company focused on building teams and delivering meaningful solutions.
We are part of Kin+Carta, a dynamic global ecosystem of over 2,000 technologists, strategists, and creatives, giving you access to a wealth of expertise to enhance your digital presence and drive transformation and innovation.
The assignments we excel at are as follows:
End-to-End Development
Melon is experienced with getting involved at all stages of application development – planning, design, implementation, stabilization, release and support. Our clients come from a number of industries like telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, entertainment, FMCG, fintech, manufacturing, digital marketing, etc. This taught our teams to how to handle the inevitable, unforeseen difficulties every project faces. It is exactly the down-to-earth, constructive and proactive attitude of our teams in times of trouble that distinguishes us from most software development outsourcing and nearshoring companies.
Technology Consulting
If just one Melon’s strong point needed to be singled out, it would be our technological diversity. First across web, mobile and desktop, and then across most top development platforms. We’ve worked with digital and software agencies, enterprises, and start-ups on large and small projects. Our teams were included at all possible points of a project: from end-to-end development to fixing a mess in the critical final stages of projects. We've specialized in areas like big data and machine learning, business continuity, e-learning, and devops.
Maintenance and Support
A number of our clients have been with us for several years after the project initial development had finished. Our soundest business comes exactly from these long-term relationships which we aim to develop with every client. Melon’s teams make for a project’s smooth transition into the often underestimated maintenance and support phase. We also have a dedicated team especially for support tasks whether they be for projects developed at Melon or elsewhere.
QA and Testing
From Melon’s early days we recognized the value of having a dedicated, in-house quality assurance team for our application development projects. Our QA process evolved along with all contemporary approaches like unit and automated testing, but the team is also involved with business logic analyses, functional testing, usability analyses, heuristic evaluation, browser compatibility & scalability, and UI automation. The experience accumulated in many years of dealing with QA and testing has now allowed us to offer it as a separate service business line.
Type of Projects
Melon's teams have worked with all popular and practical types of software development methodologies: agile, waterfall, prototyping, incremental, and mixed. Thanks to the amassed knowledge, we are now able to pick, in accordance with our clients and partners, the right developers, teams and approach for all types of projects. However, the project types we have strongest skills at are the following:
Application Development (Web, Mobile, Desktop)
From the start Melon was primarily using Microsoft’s development platform and continues to do so through ASP.NET, SharePoint, Xamarin and others. Also, we have been developing open source coding platforms like Python, Node.js, PHP and Java for which now we house dedicated teams within the company. For front-end, we are consistently strong in contemporary JS frameworks and libraries (React andAngular), along with the classic HTML/JS/CSS. When it comes to mobile development, we have adopted all top platforms eventually narrowing it down to the now relevant native iOS and Android, as well as cross-platform development (ReactNative, Xamarin, Cordova, Ionic, etc.). This open and flexible strategy made us a leading mobile application development company in Bulgaria and North Macedonia. Our expertise across these platforms paired with auxiliary, solid teams for UI/UX, devops and quality assurance can handle just about any type of application development tasks.
Enterprise System and Application Development
We are a technology partner for a growing number of enterprise-level clients. Melon's developers are pushing the solutions forward, adapting them to market needs and emerging technological opportunities. Through Melon’s partnerships, our teams have worked both as dedicated, entirely outsourced development units and hand-in-hand with companies’ in-house resources. The most desired projects are those where we are challenged to dive into the intricacies of a sizeable problem that needs cracking and then to discover and develop a completely fitting, efficient solution to address it.
Product Development
Melon has its history in developing and marketing it’s own products. That's why we are the wise choice as a software development partner for your product to hit the market on time and in a market-ready state. Our teams know the ins and outs of software product development and the important differences between the software service and software product business. Melon has people who are experienced and excited to be involved in the entire product development lifecycle - from design to market launch and support.
UI/UX and Visual Design
At the core of the original merger that formed Melon was the symbiosis between software development and user experience design. Our creative team has become a solid UI/UX and Visual Design department, adept at mobile and web projects alike. Melon designers craft for a user in a context, not for separate specifications from a list. They have sharp senses and infinite curiosity needed to translate users’ necessities – both problems and opportunities – into the right interactions with a certain software product, system or application.
Game and Content Development
We were fortunate enough to have one of the original departments at Melon involved with interactive media from the dawn of this engaging and powerful filed of the digital era. Powered by the design team, content development experts and excellent programmers passionate about rich internet applications, Melon creates engaging experiences for education, advertising and entertainment purposes. Particularly in the area of game development where we have completed several projects.
Engagement Models
We've learned over the past 15 years of growing as a software development company that no two projects are alike. However, our vast experience narrowed the possible approaches to the following 3:
Dedicated (Extended) Team
Melon dedicates a selected team of developers to the project. The client has full management control over tasks and priorities, while we facilitate the process and support the developers involved.
Engaging a dedicated team has become the most popular model for working with our long-term partners for several reasons. It is cost-effective, hassle-free and gives just the right amount of control and input. This goes for both the client and the development team. Melon’s size, experience and expertise in various technological platforms (web and mobile) results in building the best team to match the client and the project. This also gives us the ability to expand existing teams relatively quickly.
Time-and-Materials
The payment is associated to the actual number of hours at specified hourly rates.
This engagement model best guarantees that the price and resulting service will coincide. The client receives regular reports of how every manhour was spent on the project. While this provides a lot of transparency, it can at times be a hassle and a bit more difficult to manage than necessary in exchange for fundamental fairness. Many of our long-term partners prefer the time-and-materials for small-scale and support projects or when the full scope of the project is not well understood. More than for any other model, mutual trust, understanding and acting in good faith are a must.
Fixed Price
The classic model when the vendor and the client agree on the fixed scope, timeline and budget.Our experience shows that most of the fixed price projects at some point become a tug of war with unforeseen, but necessary changes beyond the specifications on one side, and the deadlines, limited budget and ambiguous responsibility behind the changes on the other. Still, Melon’s battle-hardened teams are clever enough to preemptively handle and mitigate the risk for most situations. A lot of our new clients assign us fixed price projects to evaluate our ability and attitude, which we are more than happy to embrace, the result being mutually beneficial long-term partnerships.