To explain how the teams collaborate with our customers in practice, we spoke with Project Managers Henrique Della Mea Rossi and Patrícia Fischer Barbosa. In the article below, we share with you how our collaborative and remote culture positively impacts the creation of applications, platforms, and enterprise software.  

From North to South 

Just like our customers, our collaborators are also spread around the world. It is through this combination of languages, cultures, and knowledge that we create transformative digital solutions together. In the market for 25 years, SoftDesign unites strategy and technology in digital products aimed at achieving business objectives. 

Over time, we realized that the responsibility of our squads remains the same, regardless of their geographic location. So, when we serve customers from Brazil or the United States, for example, we prove that remote work is already consolidated in our culture. 

For the Project Manager, Henrique Della Mea Rossi, our people are very communicative and are always available to assist customers. “We seek to deliver and communicate what is needed with great transparency. We have a great relationship with the corporates we work for. After all, it’s not because we’re not together in person that things don’t happen. On the contrary, each team member is in a different city, and we see this as a competitive advantage for the business”.    

This advantage is easily identified in the development of digital solutions, since we see the market globally. “We work with customers that have domestic and international strategies, and that is why we cannot adopt a vision that contemplates only one region. The diversity of people on the team allows us to see the world in a broader way. This mix is very positive for the product, as users can also be physically anywhere. This needs to be considered, especially when scaling”, highlights Rossi.  

High-Performance Remote-First Squads 

To save business and drive innovation, our remote-first squads are made up of high-performance professionals: Product Managers, Designers, Developers, Testers and Agilists. With the knowledge of each of these specialists, each solution gets closer to achieving competitive advantage.   

However, for remote-first squads to act, some tools are essential. According to SoftDesign’s Project Manager, all meetings are held online, through the Teams platform. In addition, without Miro and Jira, for example, it would be impossible to hold retrospective meetings, alignment conversations, create roadmaps, share ideas and hypotheses. For this reason, we increasingly seek to structure these tools to give visibility to the team and the IT Managers and Directors of partner corporates.  

When a startup, scale-up or corporate hires SoftDesign, it doesn’t just hire people, but its knowledge, skills and market experience. For Rossi, we bring strategic technology to the customer, capable of supporting decision-making. “We create software to make people’s daily lives easier, and we believe that our working method delivers value. The result is more satisfying products, built to meet real needs, which reduce waste and positively impact their users and, consequently, our customers”.  

For remote corporates, territorial and cultural barriers are challenges that can be turned into opportunities. “There is a lot of dialogue in this relationship, and this is fundamental for any project, whether domestic or international. We instill confidence in the customer, who understands that remote-first squads are highly engaged,” emphasizes Rossi.  

From Brazil to the World  

Remote-first squads also impact the cost of operation. As meetings take place online, travel is no longer necessary. Therefore, the customer does not need to invest time and budget in displacements and continues to have full access to the team’s professionals and the development status of the digital solutions.   

To bring realities closer together and promote a Culture of Collaboration, we have established workflows that guarantee our partners a comfortable and integrated relationship. An example of this is one of the projects we are currently developing with an American company, which has a time difference of two hours less than Brazil. This type of situation is not a problem, since with flexibility it is possible to organize and adapt the team’s schedule.  

The Project Manager, Patrícia Fischer Barbosa, points out that this is possible because our mindset and work methodology is agile. “We did notice a cultural difference with international customers, mainly in the way of thinking. However, our technical quality allows us to pass on the necessary confidence to overcome possible barriers. After all, we are specialists, and we know how to compose agile remote-first squads according to the needs of each project”.    

For Patrícia, SoftDesign’s internationalization was a natural process, which accompanied the growth of the technology area in recent years. “We have technical and behavioral quality, in addition to excellent communication. We are effective and we try to do what will really meet the needs of the customer and their business, through data. Our team is not an executor, it is strategic”.  

Quality and Engagement

Trust and transparency are the basis of our professional relationships. SoftDesign has a level of maturity, experience and innovation that allows us to serve corporates of different types and sizes. Our quality is related to the corporate culture, which encourages the education and personal and professional development of each employee.   

As a result, we have a team of focused, responsible, committed and high-performance professionals. According to Patrícia, we deliver even more as a remote company, because this model adds value to our people’s lives. “What matters is the result of the product, not the hours of development. The goal of an agile team is to see the product being used. This is what makes us satisfied, this is our DNA”.  

We believe the customer’s success is our success too. For that, we invest in the creation of multidisciplinary remote-first squads, which combine essential skills for good software development. They are:

• Product Strategy: creation of a prioritization strategy focused on enhancing the value delivered, meeting business objectives and achieving established goals.  
• Technology: construction of solutions with the work of specialists in Programming, Architecture, Infrastructure and Cloud.   
• Design: creation of user-centered digital solutions that guarantee the best usability. We are specialists in User Experience (UX), User Interface and User Research.    
• Agility: we develop transparent and adaptive work processes, which result in sprints with frequent deliveries. 

Our work model also allows the expansion of teams according to your business needs, including new skills that include knowledge in Product Marketing, Architecture and Cloud, for example.   

Now that you know that remote-first squads are the best option to boost your digital product, get in touch with us by filling out the form below! We will put a high-performance team together, focused on delivering results.

O post How Remote-First Squads Create Digital Products  apareceu primeiro em SoftDesign.

In the world of technology, agility has become synonymous with results. With the consolidation of the Agile Methodology, it was noticed that taking this mentality to other areas such as Human Resources and Marketing, for example, was vital for the strategic alignment and planning of organizations. With that in mind, we share in this content concepts and benefits of Business Agility.   

In the article below, in addition to addressing the importance of Business Agility, we will also show you how SoftDesign’s Agile Consulting  diagnoses obstacles, removing impediments and boosting your company’s growth. Do you want to know how we can insert agility into your organization’s routine? Fill out the form below and talk to our experts right now. 

What is Business Agility?  

It’s not a method, nor a framework. However, with each passing year it becomes more popular and necessary for corporates that intend to survive and prosper in the future. According to the Business Agility Institute, “Business Agility is a set of organizational capabilities, behaviors, and ways of working that affords your business the freedom, flexibility, and resilience to achieve its purpose”. 

Through this purpose, Business Agility gained prominence among leaders and subordinates, and was also described as a modus operandi aimed at delivering value to the market. Therefore, it can be understood as a company’s ability to adapt to changes and respond flexibly to customer and user demands.   

In the podcast Os Agilitas, the CEO of Surya Digital – Business Agility Getting Real, Luiz C. Parzianello, stressed that to put this agile mentality into practice, you need to think with the head of the owner. “Business Agility is about accelerating business growth and positively impacting all stakeholders. But for that to happen, we need strategic leaders who act with visionary leadership”.  

Therefore, we can say that through Business Agility your company becomes:  

• Adaptive: becoming increasingly prepared to deal with changes in society and the market in which it operates.   
• Flexible: understanding that consumption habits, consumer behaviors and demands always change.   
• Agile: facing the fact that every business needs to respect the time-to-market and that quality delivery is the minimum expected, and no longer a competitive differential.  

Business Agility in practice  

The decentralization of information is essential to exercise Business Agility. Imagine a century-old company, which has a large structure and several departments. As in any organization, its board has a consolidated strategic plan. However, some areas act more strategically than others, and this ends up creating bottlenecks and bureaucracies that limit Business Agility.   

Over the years, what was noticed in practice was that the technology started to have a very efficient delivery capacity. However, there were barriers external to the IT sector. This became even clearer when the product teams, for example, reached high performance and delivery started to be made on time.   

Faced with this reality, an important question began to gain prominence: How can we achieve results and improve end-to-end delivery? For SoftDesign’s Agilist, Raphael Rodrigues, the answer is simple: all employees must observe the market, not just decision makers. “Corporates need to be more flexible and aligned. That’s the only way we can cross the borders of the board and bring knowledge to the entire organizational structure”.   

This means that there is no point in promoting Digital Transformation in isolation. It was precisely to solve this problem that Business Agility came up. “We don’t have control over many things. So, in some cases, the best we can do is seek adaptation. It’s this kind of thinking that helps shape the company. Remember that agility is flexible and aims at executing feasible strategies”, highlights Rodrigues. 

Diagnosing problems, finding solutions

With the Agile Methodology consolidated, we started to observe the problems of our customers in a broad way, analyzing not only their IT sector. The proof of this is that the first step in the diagnostic process is precisely to understand the scenario in its entirety, and not just what the client understands as their most latent pain.   

With that in mind, at Agile Consulting we talk about the organization’s entire workflow, from where ideas come up to actual delivery. “As we started to understand how the organization works, we started to exercise visibility and transparency practices to identify bottlenecks and pain”, explains Rodrigues.  

Throughout this process, we realized that sometimes people are so immersed in their problems that they cannot think holistically. For this, we work with improvement practices, and facilitate conversations between collaborators and senior management, always in search of value and significant changes.    

SoftDesign’s Agile Consulting service is led by an Agilist. Generally, when we address technology issues, and software engineering problems begin to arise, the participation of a Programmer becomes necessary, who suggests less costly practices that accelerate the delivery process.    

In other cases, we connect Designers to the client to show that we need to apply interviews to really understand the users of an application, for example. Recently, with the evolution of Product Marketing, we have also started to look at sales strategies and the positioning of corporates in their communication channels, which resulted in a specific consulting in this area. 

This is only possible because at SoftDesign we have a variety of professionals and skills, which allow us to see problems in a multidisciplinary way. In addition, we have been in business for 25 years, creating transformative digital solutions. 

Our way of consulting

As we have several profiles of collaborating people, we seek support in this knowledge to promote occasional collaborations throughout consulting. Depending on the problem identified, this participation can become a workforce, with greater dedication and more attention and intention from the customer.   

After the diagnosis, we present options to reduce the identified pain. So, we started a journey together with the company, showing through training how certain tasks and activities can be done quickly, with continuous feedback.   

We believe that it is not possible to manage changes in just one month, so we understand that three months is the ideal period to carry out this type of consulting. “We have a lot of respect for the client’s culture and investment. We bring our team and skills to solve problems, pains and impediments. We promote meetings with our specialists, and encourage critical thinking”, emphasizes the SoftDesign Agilist.

Accelerate the evolution of your business! 

If you’re a manager and looking for innovation, but can’t put the strategy into practice, or if you’re part of the organization’s decision-making team and find limitations to evolve projects, Agile Consulting is the solution to your problems.   

With the help of our team of specialists, we started the change process with lean management models and methods such as Lean Change Management (LCM) and  Kanban. From our delivery, we give more capacity to your company, which now has other challenges than operational ones.    

For Raphael Rodrigues, the company that undergoes Agile Consulting develops a better delivery capacity and strategic alignment. “Every company has knowledge management, and we effectively increase the knowledge an organization has. That is, it now has more earning potential, since people are more qualified. That’s a competitive advantage. Every company that wants to survive needs Business Agility“.  

Now that you know what the benefits of Business Agility are, and why it boosts your organization, contact us to put new strategies into practice!

O post Why Does Your Company Need Business Agility? apareceu primeiro em SoftDesign.

The software has a set of requirements that are divided into Functional (FRs) and Non-Functional (NFRs). This classification makes it easier to understand them, as we will see below. 

Do you need help defining your Software Requirements? Fill in the form so we can help you.

Functional Requirements

Functional requirements concern the functions and information that the software must have, that is, its behavior: how it must react to specific inputs, how it will behave in certain situations, and even establish what the system must not do. 

For example, an application for a financial institution must be able to carry out transactions, payment slips, and make investments. These are three digital product requirements that allow users to perform such functions. 

Functional Software Requirements can still be classified according to their level: the most common differentiation is in relation to business requirements, user requirements, and technical requirements. 

Non-Functional Requirements

Non-Functional Requirements can refer to the criteria that qualify the functional requirements: they are related to specific qualities and restrictions that the software must meet, that is, they do not refer to functionalities themselves, but are part of the product’s scope. 

Non-Functional Software Requirements are sometimes called quality attributes, which means that they are a structured and categorized definition of what is needed to express that a product has quality, according to its specific context. 

Like Functional Requirements, they are subdivided into product requirements such as reliability, efficiency, portability, usability, performance, and space; organizational requirements such as delivery, implementation, and standards; and external requirements such as interoperability, ethical, security, privacy, and legislative requirements. 

We can exemplify by citing compliance with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), which is a very common NFR nowadays. Another example is stating that software needs to be cross-platform, operating on Android and iOS. Yet another is when we define that a solution needs to use encryption because it handles sensitive user data. 

The Transversality of Non-Functional Requirements

For the team building the product, Non-Functional Requirements can be restrictions, standards to follow, or requiring very specific solutions. It is normal, for example, that they need to be resolved at the software architecture level and not in programming because NFRs are “transversal”, that is, they affect all functionalities. 

Once, we developed a product that had a very critical Non-Functional Requirement in relation to availability: the application needed to operate 24×7, for three months, as it was one of the applications used in the operation of a reality show. For this type of requirement, an architectural analysis is needed: you need to identify and remove points of failure, create fallback (plan b), and self-healing solutions. The requirement even affects the hardware and infrastructure, which need to work with high-availability solutions so that maintenance can be carried out without affecting the availability of the software. 

Where Are the Requirements?

Have you noticed that, despite being one of the central concepts in Software Engineering, it is not so common to hear about requirements? This happens because they ended up associated with a waterfall workflow model, which is bureaucratic and predictive. 

It’s not the requirements that are to blame, it’s the professionals: analysts who expected the customer or user to define their requirements and then stick with that list until the delivery. There was no room for learning, feedback, or strategic changes. 

This behavior became meaningless when the technology market evolved towards agile, product-focused approaches. The area sought other tools that would help change the relationship between the team and stakeholders, adopting concepts such as OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), product metrics, business objectives, user stories, BDD (Behavior Driven Development), and acceptance criteria. 

However, that doesn’t mean the “end of requirements’. These tools represent yet another evolution in the way of defining them, as well as other techniques that had previously appeared. Regarding current tools, they have the following advantages: 

● Data-driven and more focused on business impact; 

● User-centered – focused on people; 

● Less verbose, more focused on interaction than documentation; 

● More collaborative, because the work is less centralized in an analyst, as it is more distributed in an interdisciplinary team; 

● More change-friendly, that is, they create a dynamic that better accepts product changes and evolutions. 

Who Defines the Requirements and When?

This depends on the type of process and life cycle adopted; two concepts that also come from Software Engineering. In an older lifecycle, the norm was for requirements to be defined all at the beginning of the project. It was common to use the term “collect” or “elicit”, that is: the idea was that a Systems or Business Analyst would obtain requirements from users. 

Nowadays, in current methods, we start from slightly different assumptions. We understand that for innovative products it is impossible to discover all the requirements at the beginning of the project; that the user needs to provide usage feedback; and that it is the product team’s job to translate that feedback into requirements. 

For this reason, building requirements is a collaborative process. The configuration varies a lot, but we can have a Product Manager (PM) working at the business level, defining the product vision, metrics, and business objectives. The Product Owner (PO), who is in direct contact with the development team, facilitates the process of turning big goals into user stories. Finally, the team participates in this refinement, as it is responsible for defining the technical solution that will meet the proposed needs. 

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Its mission is to influence the team’s work and inspire a mindset of constant improvement, capable of resulting in frequent and valuable deliveries and highly desirable products. However, exerting influence among groups of experienced and qualified professionals is not an easy task. Moreover, to positively impact the behavior of a product team, there are a series of skills and specific characteristics that must support the Agile Coach’s management and leadership model. 

Therefore, in the following article, we will explore some of them. We spoke with Raphael Rodrigues, Agile Coach at SoftDesign, to understand the role of this professional in the development of digital solutions. 

The Evolution of The Agile Coach

The role of the Agile Coach is constantly changing. In the past, its performance was based on frameworks such as Scrum and Kanban, for example, people worked with a greater focus on the functioning of the team, helping everyone to understand the phases and status of development. The objective was to propose evolutionary changes through a process of thinking and improvement, capable of increasing the delivery of value.  

However, with the maturation of the processes, it was realized that limiting the Agile Coach’s performance only to the product team was not enough, because people are part of an organization. It was concluded that this role needed to transcend the Discovery and Delivery process. When Agile Coaches stopped working only on development teams, their collaborations began to help reduce noise within companies. One of the results is the execution of tasks in an agile and less expensive way. However, when we talk about Agility in the business world (Business Agility), this role is more focused on strategy, guiding people to share information through micro-interactions.

Wanna Be Agile?

Having the power to influence others is not necessarily everyone’s gift. With that in mind, Agile Coaches must have specific skills. According to Raphael Rodrigues, resilience is perhaps the main one. “To play this role, it is necessary to be a resilient person, since we do not directly execute the actions, but we influence the team to complete them. In addition, it is necessary to encourage the search for problem-solving through individual and group conversations”.

Horizontal management and leadership are also key characteristics.

“Good Agile Coaches have great communication skills. After all, knowing how to communicate well is essential to guide teams, and this leads us to empathy, something crucial to understand one’s work process. At SoftDesign, we operate with Management 3.0, a movement that renounces command/control to make room for the trust and autonomy of employees”. 

Another important skill is facilitation. Agile Coaches are responsible for facilitating conversations, ceremonies, schedules, and group dynamics. “Our day-to-day is based on processes and people, and these are constantly changing. Our journey is continuous, that is, there is no actual end due to the current business model. Therefore, Agile Coaches must be attentive people and very focused on improving things around them”, highlights Rodrigues.

Influencing Product Teams

In a diverse world, influencing product teams can be quite a challenge. Each company has a culture and a set of people with the most varied characteristics. Therefore, getting the best out of each one involves a lot of strategy and dedication. “In my daily life, I need to be connected to what is happening, to what people are talking about, and, above all, to what they are not communicating. For this, we hold one-on-one (1:1) meetings, and facilitate meetings to generate interactions and create agreements”.

In addition, Agility involves management practices oriented to business objectives. To execute them, it is necessary to give everyone a voice, as this is the only way to develop products that simplify users’ lives. “In interactions, we get in touch with people with the most different levels of maturity, experience, and age group. In the end, what keeps us engaged is the purpose of the work and the challenge of winning something together. When we unite different perspectives and experiences, the result is a plural development process. Without diversity, the ability to solve problems is reduced”, he highlights.

Agile Coaches encourage, guide, and help generate paths and options. In summary, Agile does not oblige us to follow a single direction until the end of the development of a digital product or service, on the contrary, it creates milestones for us to navigate, allowing moments of analysis that allow us to measure whether choices are resulting in desirable results. Therefore, to boost team performance, Agile Coaches seek to create awareness between what the group has committed to deliver, and what is actually being delivered. “We look for results, and we help people to do what needs to be done within the agreed time frame. We reduce conflicts to achieve goals through more fluid processes, clearing obstacles”, emphasizes Raphael.

Agility Is Not Just Speed

When using Agile, companies seek feedback as quickly as possible, respecting the nature of what is being developed. After all, everything has a maturation time. This is complex, as we are unique people, that is, each of us has our own task execution time, based on an individual creative process. 

So the key question is: how do we get the best out of each one without getting lost in the process, and without taking longer than expected? Through ceremonies. In a diverse and knowledge-filled environment, replicating processes can be a great challenge, since getting the best out of the group is something that can be achieved with conversation, rhythm, and follow-up. 

With this in mind, Agile Coaches analyze project boards daily to diagnose stages and possible obstacles. Based on this analysis, they interfere and help improve processes, or even assist in completing activities.

“I help connect people and solve problems. In ceremonies, we make it easy for everyone to put themselves in a state of awareness, so we can influence the team to make good decisions”. 

Ideally, each Agile Coach should work on a maximum of three projects, interacting with 15 to 20 people. That way, the Agile Coach can connect and follow up properly. “Expanding these numbers results in a superficial process, and this impacts the essence of Agility. We are knowledge workers: therefore, when we don’t have time to reflect and create, we are not able to innovate. If the schedule is full and we are just completing tasks, the teams become burdensome. After all, the value of our work lies in the ability to think and be creative”, concludes Rodrigues. 

Let’s accelerate the evolution of your business?

If your team is just completing tasks, then it’s time to wake up and put Agile to work. In addition, if problems and bugs are reducing the rhythm of deliveries, to the point that people are unable to reflect and propose solutions, our Agile Consulting can be an important ally.  

To accelerate the adoption of a culture based on Agile Methods, we work with a customized mentorship according to your needs. During the consulting process, we transfer our knowledge in Scrum, Kanban, and DevOps to your team. The objective is to increase transparency and dialogue between people, to generate more frequent and valuable deliveries. Watch the video below and learn more about this service:

Want to know how we can help you more specifically? Fill out the form below and chat with one of our experts.

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