Throwback: Scandiweb achievements in the end of ’17

Each month, week and day at Scandiweb there is something worth sharing with others. We have decided to make it a habit to give regular updates to our followers not only on some interesting projects we are working on, but also to share a bit of our internal processes that help us shape who we are.

It’s like our Guinness Record that shows — only together we can achieve amazing things. And each piece of the puzzle we put together leads to great results.

The past year we worked on some really challenging and interesting projects for brands like Lamborgini, Mitsubishi, Madara Cosmetics, JYSK, New York Times, Jaguar Land Rover and many more — this article invites you to look at the end of 2017 more closely.

Success stories

Black Friday

There is something magical about this date. Especially if an increase of more than 40k% in revenue and more than 10k% increase in visits in comparison to an average day is possible. This is how we made it happen:

• UI / UX audit
• Marketing campaign
• Redesign
• Page load speed increase
• Improved mobile support
• Technical improvements
• Infrastructure migration to AWS
• Extensive testing

Want to know more details? Read the full article.

Our blockchain projects turning into a blast

Today Publica.com is in Top 150 most valuable ICOs worldwide… given thousands of ICOs attempted. And given that our sale cap was one of the historically lowest — it shows we are relatively good and people believe we are among a few hundreds BEST so far. Want to know more about Publica.com? Read and watch! P.S. This is not the only blockchain project we are working on, more interesting to come, stay tuned.

More and more clients handing over project management to us

Thanks to these shifts in the project management, we’ve learned a lot and here is our advice for everyone to learn:

• Don’t overcomplicate the requirements.
• Think of the user.
• Know your team, place them first.
• Know the requirements, understand every detail.
• Forget about perfection.
• Think of fast solutions.
• Think of the dependencies.
• Don’t be afraid to say no to the client, but be ready to justify it.
• Be ready to make compromises, say yes sometimes.
• Communicate problems, but also with causes and possible solutions.
• It’s OK to get frustrated.
• It’s not OK to simply complain about it.

  Projects

  Mobile apps being re-started

We were also kicking off projects with the emphasis on developing mobile apps both in Baltics and abroad. Built for Android and iOS users, one particular project was another interesting innovation in transportation industry incorporated into a customer loyalty card solution.

Worker bee gaining paid subscribers

Magebee offers to monitor Magento stores 24/7 and we finally reached our first TWO paid ‘business’ account subscribers! Hurray! Check it out!

More M1 — M2 migrations

Even more of our customers joined our happy client portfolio. A big emphasis was put on providing a high quality and efficient migrations from M1 to M2, put it together with a complete redesign.

Go-lives

Few more successful go-lives, of course. Some feedback from our client:

“I’m very pleased with the go-live, not a single issue after, everyone I talked to said that go-live went really well and they were really happy!”

To receive such a praise, for the project we did a complete redesign and M1 to M2 migration, VR EXPERIENCE on Magento 2 and a use for our Oculus Rift, as well as used dynamic images with — liquidpixels.com.

Internal processes

The Eggsercise

Being a PM means that you should be able to analyse any project, see the logical steps and components, and come up with a feasible solution. Whether it’s building software or building a rocket ship, to a PM, it’s essentially the same thing. In December, 5 groups were asked to build a device that boils eggs after a user wakes up in the morning. Expected outcomes:

• A sketch of what the device looks like
• An explanation of how the device works
• Algorithm of how the programming of the device works
• Explain how the device will connect to the user’s phone

Results:

• Different app functions (alerts, reminders, egg hardness)
• Tool created from scratch vs combining existing tools
• Maintenance of the device, egg limits
• Delicate egg elevator vs dropping vs sliding

  Mentor workshop

Another important process renewal was for our mentoring program. We were redefining what is requested from our mentors and newbies. This includes how does the integration process look like, what do the newbies work on together with mentors and what — independently. We also revised how to do Pair Programming, Code Review etc. Officially we have 4 mentors now: Māris Mols, Edgars Donis, Ričards Rikmanis, Ramona Cunska.

Test evaluation

Another important process was revised — checking test assignments of our potential new colleagues. We formed a team of 5 most experienced devs in Scandiweb to assure high quality feedback for our candidates during interviews, pair programming sessions and when doing our test assignments.

Marketing Hackathon

Last year our Marketing team decided to launch full “business” and do a marketing campaign. Within just 3 hours they launched an online store! Unfortunately, due to several reasons marketing campaign did not work out, but in the end everyone spent a good time together and at 3AM everyone went home.

As in Scandiweb it is important to make mistakes and learn from them, then this was a great exercise for that. 🙂

We travel

It is one of our main values to make sure that our teams have the best knowledge and trainings. Last year all our system administrators went to Las Vegas to get that knowledge they need in AWS Re:Invent conference. A full week of intensive presentations and workshops, and now they are back full with knowledge and new inspiration.

General Meeting

And we finished up the year with a great event all together. First part in airBaltic training centre where each team prepared a short 1 minute pitch of the best highlights of their teams and of course PRESENTS! Afterwards more than 120 passionate guys and girls (also friends and family) came to enjoy a great environment, games and a party. Check out the video: Want to find out more about our work? Check out our website scandiweb.com to see what we can do for your business or send us an email to [email protected] with any questions you have!