The need for unified delivery
THREAD’s purpose is to leverage its clinical research platform to enable studies for everyone, everywhere. The company’s uniquely combined clinical research technology and consulting services help life science organizations to design, operate, and scale next-generation research studies and electronic clinical outcome assessments (eCOA) programs for participants, sites, and study teams.
To deliver that mission at scale, THREAD needed a dedicated development team that matched its ambition—one that could align research rigor with modern software practice.
“When I inherited product and technology, two things were missing: an individual sense of purpose and a collective sense of community,” says Paul, CPO at THREAD.
From scattered efforts to co-located value streams
Before partnering with KMS, THREAD’s delivery model was fragmented, with multi-vendor teams spread across time zones relying on handoffs and inconsistent practices. This created siloed SDLC processes, weak collaboration, and declining product quality. High defect rates consumed 80% of engineering resources, delaying roadmaps and slowing the release of new features critical to research sites and participants.
KMS began by modernizing the Participant Application with an architecture-first approach and deep R&D practices, driving rapid innovation without sacrificing stability or quality. Early customer feedback validated the impact, and the partnership quickly expanded to building THREAD’s three core value streams.
- Clinical Apps: participant and study-facing capabilities.
- Configurator: study administration and configuration capabilities.
- Data & Analytics: operational reporting and analytics capabilities.
KMS continued to containerize all SDLC components – including design, architecture, development, testing, and automation – to these value streams, while building seamless cross-team collaboration that keeps them moving as one product.
“For the fourth release in a row, we’re on time and on value, with customers telling us the platform’s stable and doing what it’s supposed to do. Achieving four consecutive successful releases after years of delivery challenges proved that the new culture, processes, and architecture-first approach were working.
There were a lot of capable individuals before KMS, but not the team culture that can innovate and mature how R&D is done.”
Paul Taylor
Chief Product Officer, THREAD
With the new operating model in place, KMS led the effort to eliminate accumulated technical debt. Rather than treating defects as isolated issues, we approached them as design challenges that demanded prevention as much as correction. Our team introduced an architecture-first approach, performed deep root-cause analysis, and embedded guardrails into the delivery pipeline. This proactive model replaced reactive fixes and transformed the work mix from 80% spent on defect correction to 80% focused on innovation—laying the foundation for long-term product success.
THREAD’s strategic goal is to be the leading platform for decentralized clinical trials. By modernizing the platform and creating predictable, high-performing development teams, KMS provided the necessary pathway for THREAD to launch new features faster, win new studies, build customer trust, and drive significant revenue growth.
“Many organizations choose offshore partners purely for cost savings, but for me, it was about finding a partner with the technical core competencies, maturity, and predictability to deliver. KMS had the right attitude, the right skill set, and a proven approach to building collaborative, high-performing teams.”
Paul Taylor
Chief Product Officer, THREAD
Moving into the future with AI-enabled SDLC
Building forward, KMS is embedding AI-enabled SDLC components to keep THREAD stable today and position it for long-term growth. “KMS started introducing AI for code reviews and reference architectural models. It brings important work earlier in the process, reducing the time before coding begins and keeping us on the edge of the maturity curve.” Paul notes.
As Paul sums it up, “My biggest satisfaction at the end of the day is that KMS always brings unique growth potential. And the stability that you feel almost immediately is standard to the KMS partnership. For companies aiming for enterprise scale but can’t figure out how to take the next maturity step, having that kind of trust and reliability from a partner is key to your success.”
“When your partner makes you want to learn, improve, and get better, you’ve leveraged more than just people to do work.”
Paul Taylor
Chief Product Officer, THREAD