The Story of Agiledrop: A Company Culture That Benefits Both Employees and Clients
Late last year, we started a series of posts that tell the story of what makes Agiledrop the company that it is today. In the first chapter, we presented our unique workflow, while the second and third chapter dealt with the major challenges that arose from such a workflow and our very efficient solutions to them.
This final chapter of the series will tie things together, diving into our company culture which strongly promotes cooperation and knowledge-sharing. This ensures that our clients always benefit from the collective knowledge and skillsets of the entire Agiledrop team.
Well, let’s get right down to it!
Basing our company culture on cooperation and knowledge-sharing
What makes Agiledrop stand out is our strong culture of support and knowledge-sharing among developers. We make it a priority to integrate new employees into our A-team, make them feel welcome and help them become fully-fledged members of the team as soon as possible. Creating a collaborative and welcoming working environment is the responsibility of every person on the team and something we all participate in.
The onboarding and mentoring of new developers is a prime example of our company culture - but it doesn’t stop there. We promote and encourage knowledge-sharing between all members of the team, no matter their status within the company or the amount of time spent with us.
Our development leads are always available to help developers weather through any obstacles they might encounter - be they considerable or negligible ones. In this way, we are able to find solutions much faster, which results in fewer working hours spent on a specific issue and, in consequence, significantly lower costs for the client.
We also have a Slack workspace dedicated exclusively to obstacles encountered by developers during their work. Every member of the team participates. It’s a place where the real knowledge exchange is allowed to happen. One of the best things to see there is when a newly recruited junior developer who is still dealing with their onboarding project helps out a senior developer with one of their issues - and it happens more often than you’d think!
In short, when working at Agiledrop, you are never given the impression that your lack of knowledge is detrimental to anyone on the team or the company as a whole; rather, it’s an opportunity to learn something new or revisit something already learned.
Balancing the happiness of clients and developers
It’s not always easy to sustain such a well-defined and inclusive company culture. On the one hand, the development leads in the mentor roles must possess an innate pedagogical capacity in addition to extensive technical knowledge and a knack for spotting and solving problems. On the other hand, however, we must take great care to understand the positions of both the developer and client when a problem arises, and not simply look for scapegoats.
In order to catch and resolve issues in the early stages of a project and not after a month, we do weekly reports every Friday. These reports are done in two directions: our resource manager collects feedback from the clients, while the development director checks the issues that were raised by developers, such as not getting enough tasks or sufficient information to fulfill a task.
Issues raised by the clients are not something we punish; instead, we aim to provide constructive feedback to improve on the mistake, not just sanction it. The development director will speak with developers and suggest any improvements to their work. Likewise, the resource manager will notify the client about issues raised by developers so that they can do certain things differently in the future.
Such a system ensures constant smooth communication between everyone involved in the projects, making it easier to find solutions and improvements while also keeping each side satisfied and up-to-date on any new projects and developments.
Boosting morale and keeping the team motivated
We understand that a motivated team is more committed and able to deliver better results. It’s easier for people to give their best and be satisfied with their job when they know that their work makes a difference. The appreciation of their peers and superiors gives them the confidence needed to get through even the most difficult days.
For this reason, we hold weekly meetings every Monday and monthly meetings every first Thursday of the month; these meetings are essentially weekly and monthly reviews where we go through our new and ongoing projects. But, most importantly, they are an opportunity to congratulate people for the good work they’ve been doing, which helps boost the morale of the entire team.
We also frequently organize various educational and sports activities that bring the whole team together, which results in new friendships and another level of knowledge-exchange. Besides our free Drupal courses where we train wannabe Drupal developers (who often go on to become full members of our team!), we also:
- Organize TechTalks, which we call AgileTalks, on developers’ own initiative,
- Attend tech conferences and other Drupal-related events,
- Promote and reward any additional activities of developers, such as the organization of an aforementioned AgileTalk or writing a blog post on a topic of their choosing,
- Organize teambuildings,
- Organize differently-themed common lunches.
Additionally, we also collect feedback through Officevibe surveys, which makes for a better overview of the week-to-week satisfaction of our employees and enables us to constantly improve the way we do things. A pleasant working environment and a good team spirit are key to a strong company culture.
Providing clients with our collective knowledge
Because we base our company culture on collaboration and knowledge-exchange, we are in a unique position where we can offer our clients not just individual, but the collective knowledge of the entire Agiledrop team. By exchanging ideas and sharing resources, we are much more productive and consequently able to provide solutions faster and more efficiently.
If you’ve read the other posts in this series (and we suggest you do!), you’ll notice that the values outlined in this post are intrinsically tied to and realized in all aspects of the work we do. We take the same understanding and inclusive approach with developers and clients alike, and we believe this is what lies at the heart of our success.
We truly operate as a team, having each other’s back and valuing the input of each and every member. As a result, we managed to strike the perfect balance between the wants and needs of our clients and developers. This balance guarantees, on the one hand, that our developers work for a company that helps them grow, on projects they can take pride in; and, on the other, it ensures the satisfaction of our clients and helps establish ourselves as trustworthy partners that never fail to deliver.
This is evidenced by our fast, but stable growth: in just one year, we doubled the size of our team, opening offices in a new location in Maribor, with plans for a third Slovenian office this year. In addition to that, we are now taking on a number of new and exciting projects for a wide range of different international clients, making for a stable market share. You can dive into the numbers a little bit more by reading our review of 2018.
(This is not) a conclusion
Last year, we thought “Wow - 2018 really is our year”. But, seeing how it’s only the middle of March and there are already so many exciting things going on and planned for later in the year, we might have to reevaluate our previous assessment. Perhaps 2019 will be our year; besides all the new teammates and exciting projects, there’s also a major change for us on the horizon (keep following our blog posts to find out more about it!).
Or, maybe, it’s not about the year at all. Maybe we’ve arrived at the point where we’ve finally realized our vision - maybe, if we keep following in the footsteps that we’ve set for ourselves, every year will be our year.
And, hopefully, an insight into how we do things at Agiledrop will help other businesses who are dealing with the same obstacles as we did, giving them proof that, yes, it is possible to start and successfully scale the kind of company you’d be proud working for!
So, this was the story of how we transformed Agiledrop into what it is today - a company one can take pride to work at and work with. We hope this series has given you some ideas on how to kill two birds with one stone by keeping your employees and clients happy. If you’re interested in working with us, give us a shout out!
Other posts in this series:
- Chapter 1: Introduction
- Chapter 2: Our Training Program
- Chapter 3: Cultivating Strong Relationships with Clients
