Composable transformation in 5 months: FREE NOW's Damir Dimitrovici

Jasmin: Like many things in life, composable transformation is often driven by urgency. Our guest today transformed FREE NOW from monolith to headless in just five months. Because he started in January and the summer travel season was coming up soon. Today, Damir shares why he decided to take the brand composable from his very first day on a job and how it has helped the European mobility company be more prepared for the future.
I'm your host, Jasmin Guthmann and please enjoy this episode with Damir Dimitrovici, Senior Website Manager at FREE NOW.
Damir: Hi, I'm Damir [00:01:00] Dimitrovici. I'm a Senior Website Manager at Free Now. Day to day, I look and manage the main website at FREE NOW.

About FreeNow and its Services
Damir: FREE NOW is a multi-mobility company. We look at ourselves as Europe's number one multi-mobility company, offering a wide range of mobility services all within the one app.
Definitely out like our USB is that we're in Europe and we offer the most, or as many mobility options as possible. We also really care about the cities that we're in and how people move around the city, I think that's our core focus. So from that perspective, I think there definitely is an advantage there where we understand the local markets, the needs and where people are today and where they want to be tomorrow. We've got our foot on the ground, we know what's going on in each of the markets that we are established in, and that is a very important thing when it comes to legal regulations, which of course affects the ride hailing industry quite a bit.
And, you know, obviously from how people move around from [00:02:00] transportation infrastructure point of view to also like considerations of the environment.

The Need for Transformation at FreeNow
Jasmin: And which is probably why you really need to be ahead of the curve, Things are constantly changing. You really have to be at the pulse of what your customers want, anticipate what they will need in the future to really stay ahead of the game, right? That means that you need to be at the forefront that has implications for your tech stack for the back end that you operate on. And you just led a remarkable transformation at FREE NOW.
Tell me a bit more about that. What were the main drivers for your transformation?
Damir: We basically operate in nine different markets with six different languages and we also recently introduced, like English dialects for all the languages. We've started on a monolithic system, quite a old and outdated system about 10 years old with a lot of legacy code in it.
And we went through a transformation from a brand perspective. So we updated our brand. [00:03:00] And then we saw it as an opportunity to look at the website and start fresh as such. So when I joined in January this year, I hit the ground running and trying to say, okay, we've got an existing website and we've got a new brand. How do we apply that to a new website? So there was a lot of things to consider from a technical point of view, but I think. We look at the FREE NOW website as the home of the FREE NOW brand, so it really had to kind of, as an output, resonate with the local users.
Jasmin: You just started at FREE NOW in January. Looking at the calendar, that is basically yesterday, so not a whole lot of time has passed since you started, which means you had to make a lot of important decisions very quickly.
Challenges and Decisions in the Transformation Process
Jasmin: How did you go about that? What were the most important decisions and how did you make it happen?
Damir: So if we start from the very beginning, because it was a kind of monolithic system with 10 years worth of content. And in those 10 years there would have been a lot [00:04:00] of custom requests. We were in a situation basically with that system was very limiting.
It was actually, we were outdated, like two core versions of that CMS that we had before, and to actually update to just do the latest version, we found that it would be, it would have been quite expensive anyway to do with a new brand, a new system that needs to meet the new brand outcome. Which means serving the end user.
So we really needed a modern solution, whether we stayed with the current system and chose to, you know, let's, let's invest and spend money to update it, try fix all the tech debt over those 10 years. Or we move away to something new. So pretty much when I started, that was one of the first key decisions that had to be made.
And then, yeah, looked at the option, of course, of sticking with the current system. But I think for me coming from a technology background and looking at where CMS these days are heading, like headless CMS, like MACH, composable kind of principles that just don't apply to these old outdated systems.[00:05:00]
So that was one decision we made and then it was pretty much, yeah, just get the ground running. And then we knew we wanted to get the new website up and running by summer.
That's like when everyone's moving around Europe, so we wanted to get a website up and running then.

The Role of Tech Debt in the Transformation
Jasmin: For one, I do want to revisit the tech debt that you mentioned, because I think we don't talk about that enough. But yeah, of course.
I mean, Europe basically, July and August are your most important month, right? When everybody is vacationing, going to the airport, going places, that's when you needed everything to be spot on and work exactly like you had envisioned it. So with you coming on in January, knowing that you would only have that five months window to source a new vendor on board, train people on how to use the tool. That's a pretty big, hairy, audacious goal. I think it really fits the definition.
The Importance of Composable Architecture
Jasmin: And you mentioned MACH and composable that that was something that was exciting for you personally. Why was that important for you to bring that into the fold?
Because you could have chosen to just stay [00:06:00] on the system that you had and spend time and energy on getting it where you had to take it. But why was composable or MACH important to you?
Damir: Just personally from a technology background, the new technologies excited me, but it wasn't the only reason. Of course, besides there's like technical limitations, the actual user experience on that old system that was limiting us as well from a feature base.
It was also kind of deterring us from improving the user experience. Essentially, we had to translate these brand guidelines into a design system. Just the thought of adding more tech debt onto something and then expecting good outcome from the end user. I think that was just something that I just didn't, sure, maybe we could have done it, but I didn't want to explore that option.
The other reason is I think that the monolithic system is built for a specific purpose. And unfortunately, you have to specifically train people how to use it. So with these more modern systems where we say, okay, we don't want to build it for a specific use case. We want to build in a more like [00:07:00] extensible way or for a variety of use cases.
So the way it's been built from the ground up was thought about in that way. So I also had more confidence of onboarding people as well and new people onboarding new people. Whereas if we stuck with the old system internally, you have to train people. It was just like, oh man, this is a nightmare kind of thing.
So. I think that was important and I mean, from a technology point of view, it does future proof you from the MACH composable way you've got all these things that can basically is nothing's really should be connected like solely connected, right? That's the idea, I think. So in that way, we might not know what we need to say in one year time, a certain feature, but someone's already maybe building it and once it's there, we can plug it in, you know, into our system if we choose to, and then others are innovating.
So something might come up. And again, you know, something's been created. Cool. Let's put it into our system with the monolithic style. I mean, there are like communities, close communities and things like that. And there's plugins, of course, [00:08:00] but I just for those other reasons, I think we definitely lean more towards like yeah, let's move to this newer technology stack and free ourselves up in a way, I felt that way and it's actually proven to be true, especially people coming into the system and using it. People who've never really used a CMS have just logged in and then gone ahead and started creating pages and content on the new website.
The other reason I can think of actually, so the website used to be the only kind of channel that had a CMS. But we wanted to kind of think about how we manage content. And there was already something happening before I even started to say we manage content, you know, for like the CRM channel, for example, how can we better like manage content in the business?
So I think this headless CMS options and with these MACH principles applied to it. It's definitely more modern, multi-channel way of managing content.
Jasmin: I love that FREE NOW is finally free to do, you know, what you please to do. And I love, and let's [00:09:00] talk about that because funny, we're coming full circle on the tech debt because I think another great feature that is not talked about often enough is if you move to a composable architecture, you can actually significantly reduce the tech that you build over time because yes, what you said, you can add components as you go. You can also lose components as you go, which is not possible with a monolithic platform, you buy the whole thing and it stays the same, whether you like it or not, whether you use it or not, which effectively means that you're probably paying for things that you're never going to use.
Whereas when you build specific to your needs. You do just that and that's what you end up paying for. Would you agree?
Damir: Yeah, I agree. And you know, with the more modern headless CMS Saas systems, you relieve yourself a bit of that pressure of tech debt, because it's the company's problem there, right? So I'm sure there's, [00:10:00] for sure tech debt in all software, but I think there's just a super hyper focus there to get a usable product out there and maintain that and have it in as many use cases as possible.
So you kind of take maybe 50 percent of that tech debt responsibility just off your shoulders. There will always be some level of tech debt on your end because we've headless, you know, you still need to maintain the front end, but yeah, I think because it's so closely coupled to the back end that the headless CMS, by APIs, which are maintained and you have to, you know, ahead, like comply to those things.
So in terms of best practices and things like that as well, you can always talk to the provider as well, which we've done. Actually, we had a conversation and go, okay, we had to get a system up and running in five months.Cconnected APIs in this way. Is there a better way to do it now? And yeah, basically had someone to talk to you about that and really connect to and figure out, you know, what's the best way to actually call this API?
And then probably just, I think, minimizes the risk of tech debt in a [00:11:00] way or like alleviates you a bit.
Jasmin: Oh, absolutely and you talked about future-proofing already because nobody knows what functionality you're going to need six months, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months. Whoever claims to know is lying. So you want to be able to pivot.
You can only pivot if whatever you build is built on the principle of API first and cloud-native because otherwise, how would you go about it?
Damir: Yeah, that's correct. So probably the reason these monolithic systems and tech debt build up in the first place is, as you mentioned, Jasmin, that there'll be a requirement or a business rule that existed five years ago, and then you develop that. And then now five years later, something else. The business is evolving and changing, new people come and go. The industry changes as well. So you have to keep up. So with this, like, decoupled way, right? Things serve a certain purpose, which is great, but that also means a lot of flexibility.
And when you have a new business rule, you need to [00:12:00] implement a requirement, or the industry changes, the regulations change. So this is all to do with that, like future-proofing.

The Benefits of Independence in Tech Decisions
Jasmin: I want to double down on something else you said, because you're not making choices based on a specific use case, which I find utterly intriguing.
So you're putting yourself and your team in the driver's seat to make decisions, you're in charge. If something comes up, you can immediately make a decision about how you want to deal with that. Whereas when you're on a old legacy platform, you're a bit dependent.
You can ask them to change something for you, but whether they are going to or not, it's not under your control. And I think the independence is really a super important component if we're talking about how to future-proof your business.
Damir: Yeah, I agree. So we've set up this like foundation and independence. But there is on top of a layer, we already have a mini roadmap of what's coming up next but yes, beyond that, because we've set up our technology as an independent way, [00:13:00] whatever comes six months, one year, five months later. We already positioned ourselves to be able to adapt and respond.
Jasmin: Which is exactly what future-proofing is about, so love that. If we want to take one look and sort of the rear-view mirror if somebody is trying to do what you've done. To create a digital transformation that size in just five months, which is remarkable. Hats off. You've done a brilliant job. If somebody was trying to do what you've done, what would you tell them to look out for?
Lessons Learned from the Transformation
Jasmin: What do they absolutely have to have in order to be successful?
And what do you wish you had known in January that you didn't?
Damir: For us, it was like I said, getting something up and running as quickly as possible. So already, when you're kind of dealing with software and let's move fast and flexible working in a more traditional way to do project management, for me, wasn't, I could [00:14:00] see that wasn't really an option.
I just said, okay, we need to run in agile way, which I've done throughout my career. So yeah, definitely the decision of how you want to manage the project or the outcome is an important decision. But for us, because, you know, it's software, we wanted to basically have the customer satisfaction as a priority, as well as some flexibility and so running in the agile way is great.
The Importance of Documentation in Project Management
Damir: The downside of that, though, to be honest, was you don't document everything. So I found that this can be a bit of a problem to be honest. So if you're able to, I'll definitely recommend like a BA or a real project, like manager focused on trying to do things more traditionally in a way, but also we need to move with speed, right?
So it's a fine balance there. And then, yeah, like I said, document as much as possible because it's just a matter of. Doing those foundational things like in project management sense that might get you over the [00:15:00] line.
Jasmin: Thank you for sharing. We appreciate the openness because somebody leaves, something happens, if it's not written down, that's how things get lost. And then you have to spend a lot of time and effort regrouping or, you know, doing it again but to your point, you know, it's a fine balance to strike between, you do want to move fast, but hey, life, it's all about balance. So definitely appreciate the openness.

Future Plans for FreeNow
Jasmin: What's next for you and your team at FREE NOW?
Damir: We have a lot of things we want to improve on. So for us next, it's more like better ways to present content on the website to make sure that like the information we have is accurate and the way it's presented to the end user, you know, it's in the most ideal way.
And then I would like to do more like cool things like features, functional things on the website. And we're in a good place to do that. And yeah, just constantly improving the way we do things, the way we work and especially the complexities of how we manage content in the [00:16:00] business. We're already good, but yeah, there's always like, you know, tweaks you can make just to be better.
Jasmin: Oh, I love it. And that's, the growth mindset, right? Yes, it's great, but we can make it better. I can sense the excitement about that so, I'm super excited to see what you and your team are going to be up to and what kind of new learnings you picked up along the way.

Conclusion and Sign-Off
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