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Case Study | Torstar Corporation
Scaling Mobile Innovation with On-Demand Expertise
Empowering Torstar Corporation’s in-house team with specialized mobile talent to accelerate delivery without the overhead of full-time hiring.
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As one of Canada’s most prominent media and publishing powerhouses, Torstar Corporation has a storied legacy of delivering trusted journalism and engaging content across print and digital channels. However, the rapid shift toward mobile-first consumption—and the growing expectation for seamless, real-time user experiences—demanded a strategic evolution of their mobile development capabilities.
Rather than allocating months to recruitment, onboarding, and training, Torstar made the decisive choice to partner with Zazz for Staff Augmentation, enabling them to scale their mobile engineering function with speed, precision, and minimal operational risk.
Zazz delivered a turnkey solution: a team of senior mobile developers who not only possessed deep technical skills but also had the maturity to integrate effortlessly with existing agile squads, product teams, and enterprise IT environments. Our developers embedded directly into Torstar’s workflows, driving delivery without disrupting internal velocity.
This engagement wasn’t just about staffing—it was strategic alignment, rapid acceleration, and future-proofing mobile innovation. Zazz became a trusted extension of Torstar’s technology team, providing the flexibility and capability needed to meet aggressive delivery timelines, keep pace with digital competitors, and maintain the high-quality standards expected of a national media leader.
The result – A cost-effective, low-friction solution to enterprise-scale development needs—empowering Torstar to innovate faster, engage audiences more effectively, and respond to market demands with confidence.
The Engineering Impact
Flexible talent, enterprise-grade impact—without the cost of growing headcount.
40% faster product delivery cycles
With mobile experts embedded directly into agile teams
0% ramp-up delay
Thanks to experienced developers ready to contribute from day one
100% flexibility in team scaling
Enabling Torstar to adjust resources based on project needs
The Challenge
As a legacy media conglomerate navigating the digital age, Torstar Corporation faced a multifaceted challenge—scaling mobile development at the enterprise level without compromising stability, compliance, or internal team coherence.
While their internal product and engineering teams were deeply embedded in strategic initiatives—including personalized content delivery, real-time news updates, subscription services, and ad-tech integrations—the mounting pressure to accelerate mobile roadmap execution exposed critical bottlenecks:
- Inability to Rapidly Scale Engineering Capacity: With mobile user engagement metrics rising sharply, Torstar needed to push new features—such as content curation engines, dynamic push notifications, and in-app monetization strategies—into production at a much faster pace. However, traditional hiring pipelines couldn’t keep up. Recruiting high-caliber mobile engineers with experience in Swift, Kotlin, Flutter, and CI/CD toolchains meant months of sourcing, interviewing, and onboarding.
- Risk of Developer Burnout and Technical Debt: Existing internal teams were already stretched thin, balancing product innovation with ongoing technical maintenance, security patches, and legacy platform dependencies. Relying solely on in-house resources risked burnout and a degradation of code quality. Worse, it could introduce architectural debt that might compromise long-term scalability and maintainability of the mobile codebase.
- Need for Immediate Integration into Enterprise Workflows: Torstar’s infrastructure included complex systems for content management, analytics, and identity/authentication—all governed by strict internal policies, data governance frameworks, and industry regulations. Any additional resources brought into the organization had to integrate seamlessly into secure GitOps pipelines, adhere to Sprint-based Agile cadences, and comply with data privacy protocols such as PIPEDA and GDPR equivalents in Canada.
- Zero Downtime Tolerance for Production Releases: As a media organization delivering breaking news to a large national audience, Torstar could not afford downtime or regressions in app performance. Their mobile applications had to remain highly available, low-latency, and fault-tolerant—even during periods of peak traffic or rapid release cycles. Any external developers joining the effort had to operate at this level of operational maturity from day one.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration at Scale: Mobile development at Torstar wasn’t siloed—it was interwoven with editorial, marketing, DevOps, legal, and analytics teams. The augmented team had to operate not just as coders, but as strategic contributors capable of navigating cross-departmental dependencies, translating product requirements into scalable code, and communicating with stakeholders across technical and non-technical roles.
This intense technical and operational environment required a partner that could go far beyond staff supplementation. It required a strategic engineering partner with battle-tested developers, a deep understanding of enterprise mobile architecture, and the ability to deliver at scale without disrupting the existing velocity of delivery.
Zazz rose to the occasion with precision, discipline, and enterprise-grade execution.
The Objective
- Augment Torstar’s in-house development team with mobile specialists
- Accelerate product delivery timelines without sacrificing quality
- Eliminate delays associated with hiring and onboarding full-time staff
- Maintain agility and flexibility in resource allocation
- Ensure seamless collaboration across distributed teams
The Solution
To meet the scale, velocity, and quality required by Torstar’s ambitious mobile roadmap, Zazz deployed a targeted Staff Augmentation solution—not as a simple vendor, but as a strategic engineering partner embedded directly within the client’s technical ecosystem.
We began by conducting a deep discovery phase to understand Torstar’s current architecture, sprint velocity, release pipelines, and product priorities. This ensured that every resource we deployed was not only technically equipped, but context-aware and integration-ready from day one.
1. Handpicked Mobile Engineers with Enterprise Experience
- We staffed a team of senior mobile developers with proven expertise across native (Swift, Kotlin) and cross-platform (Flutter, React Native) stacks. All team members were carefully vetted for their experience in large-scale B2C mobile ecosystems, familiarity with CI/CD tooling (Bitrise, Fastlane, GitHub Actions), and fluency in Agile methodologies.
- More than just technical skills, we prioritized developers with consultative mindsets—those capable of engaging in product discussions, proactively identifying risks, and contributing to long-term architectural decisions.
2. Seamless Integration into Agile Delivery Pipelines
- Zazz engineers were embedded directly into Torstar’s Scrum teams, adopting the client’s existing rituals—daily stand-ups, sprint planning, retrospectives, backlog grooming, and QA cycles. Our developers operated under Torstar’s version control policies, participated in peer code reviews, and adhered to established development and release standards.
- We maintained sprint predictability and continuity without disrupting internal workflows, ensuring zero ramp-up delays.
3. Aligned with Enterprise DevSecOps and Compliance Protocols
Given the sensitivity of Torstar’s data and the scale of its digital audience, our team was fully aligned with internal DevSecOps policies, including:
- Secure handling of APIs and tokens using encrypted key management practices
- Integration with in-house SSO systems and authentication layers (OAuth 2.0, Firebase Auth)
- Conformance with Canadian data residency regulations and PIPEDA standards
- Test automation coverage for every PR using frameworks like Espresso, XCTest, and Detox
This ensured that every contribution was production-grade, auditable, and future-proof.
4. High-Velocity Delivery with Controlled Scalability
To meet aggressive product deadlines, Zazz maintained a flexible delivery model, allowing for on-demand scaling of development capacity across parallel workstreams. This enabled Torstar to:
- Parallelize feature development (e.g., user onboarding, push notification infrastructure, dynamic content rendering)
- Balance innovation with technical maintenance
- Respond to shifting product priorities without exhausting internal resources
Throughout the engagement, Zazz provided real-time velocity reporting, regular stakeholder syncs, and full project visibility—treating the partnership with the same discipline and transparency expected from internal teams.
Zazz didn’t just augment Torstar’s capacity—we operationalized excellence at scale. By embedding seasoned engineers into Torstar’s agile delivery engine, we helped accelerate product delivery, reduce systemic risk, and maintain the elite standards required by a national media leader in the digital age.
The Impact: Measurable Acceleration, Strategic Agility, and Enterprise-Grade Delivery
Zazz’s Staff Augmentation engagement with Torstar Corporation delivered not only tactical engineering output, but also transformative impact across product velocity, team dynamics, and long-term innovation strategy.
By integrating high-performing mobile engineers directly into Torstar’s development lifecycle, we enabled the organization to scale execution capacity without disrupting internal continuity, governance, or product ownership. The result was a high-trust, high-efficiency operating model that delivered real value from the very first sprint.
- 1. Increased Product Velocity Without Sacrificing Stability
- With augmented resources deployed, Torstar saw a significant reduction in time-to-market for high-priority mobile initiatives. Feature release cycles were shortened by 30–40%, allowing the company to respond faster to market shifts and user feedback—all while maintaining enterprise-level QA rigor and stability.
- 2. Reduced Operational Overhead and Hiring Friction
- By bypassing lengthy recruitment cycles and onboarding processes, Torstar was able to deploy senior-level talent in a matter of days, not months. This translated into immediate cost savings on HR, training, and resource ramp-up—without compromising on the quality or cultural fit of contributors.
- 3. Minimized Burnout, Maximized Focus
- Internal teams were able to reallocate their focus toward high-impact architectural and product design decisions, as Zazz engineers absorbed the execution-heavy development tasks. This rebalancing reduced developer fatigue, protected team morale, and improved long-term retention of in-house talent.
- 4. Full Alignment with Enterprise Governance and Security
- Zazz engineers operated within Torstar’s compliance boundaries, seamlessly adopting secure coding standards, data privacy controls, and release management practices. All contributions were production-ready, code-reviewed, and CI/CD compliant—ensuring zero regression and zero tolerance for risk in a highly regulated media environment.
- 5. A Scalable Engagement Model Built for the Future
- The success of this partnership has positioned Zazz as a trusted engineering extension of Torstar’s product organization, with the flexibility to scale resources up or down based on evolving roadmap needs. This elasticity ensures that Torstar can continue delivering innovation at pace—without the structural burden of long-term staffing commitments.
Torstar didn’t just solve a resourcing problem—they unlocked a more agile, secure, and scalable way of delivering mobile innovation. With Zazz’s enterprise-grade staff augmentation, they now have a proven model for turning market urgency into strategic momentum.
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