The Secret Source: The culture, skills, and process for making great digital products

By Aurimas Adomavicius

A product-centric organization is nimble with its response to customer needs, market opportunities, or competitor advancements. The processes and strategies discussed in this book enable cross-functional Agile teams to not only build great software at record speeds, but also figure out what should be built.

This book covers the entire lifecycle of product development at Devbridge. It details how we successfully build digital products on a foundation of healthy metrics, delivery process, and technical maturity. The approach laid out in this book provides a holistic understanding of what enables Devbridge teams to ship mission-critical, user-centric software 4x faster than the industry average.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781735084329

Book preview

methodology

1

WHY

WE

EXIST

Our journey

It was 2008. Products in the software world were generally mediocre and rarely intuitive to nonexperts. Onboarding a new user to Oracle apps, for example, required a rigorous training program. Consumer websites were slightly better off as they had begun to develop rich experiences, migrating away from being basic information portals. The release of the first iPhone, however, brought about a paradigm shift in software design–demand for user experience and interface design skyrocketed. Despite the raging financial crisis, it was actually a good year to start a technology business.

Five founders started Devbridge in a basement of an old, rundown two-story office building in Bensenville, Illinois. The partially obstructed hopper windows offered no view. Our neighbor’s seedy, underground dentist’s operation serviced anyone courageous enough to sit in the cracked and yellowing chair and brave its pedal-operated drill.

We were an odd group. Martin came with a bachelor’s degree in finance and had previously worked at a fluorescent lamp recycler, a large typography company, and a pizzeria franchise. Tomas, a self-taught engineer, worked as a developer at a boating association. Marius was our network and hardware guy, having previously worked at a small tech consultancy. Gediminas, Marius’s older brother, lived in Lithuania and worked for a major automotive oil distributor and also wrote code on nights and weekends. I was the only member of the group with a formal computer science degree under my belt, but I had no hands-on training. My previous employers were a life insurance company and a cable manufacturer–not exactly a great stepping stone for a career in software development.

< The basement in Bensenville

One weekend, we had an unexpected stroke of luck. Our basement office flooded during heavy rains, submerging much of our hardware in the process. The landlord, after Martin loudly threatened to sue him for not having backup pumps, moved us to the second floor with legit windows and a view, even if it was only a bleak suburban landscape. We were moving up in the world!

This era and environment produced some of our fondest memories. To get things off the ground, we all took major risks: quitting stable jobs, taking pay cuts. Not easy things to do, especially if you have a newborn at home, as Tomas did. The stakes were high. And yet we were sitting in an office we rented, from money we made, building things our way for our clients. Websites that were better. Websites that were not mediocre.

We spent many fourteen-hour days together without feeling fatigued, surrounded by the predictable clicking of keys interrupted only by the Jura capresso machine producing another shot of java. That now-iconic espresso machine cost us more than all the office furniture combined. Back then, the office was outfitted with pieces scavenged from our friends or garage sales.

< Tomas enjoying the upgraded workspace

< Martin standing in the flooded office

< Marius and the Jura capresso machine

We were perfectly aligned with our intent and our values. We pursued the American dream. We were creating a company that rejected mediocrity, pursued mastery, and was transparent with its clients and employees. These were values that were absent in our previous endeavors at various large corporations where we were cogs, and the companies were too large to care about the process, the work, and the people.

Our first clients were companies and people who had employed us before we started Devbridge. A recycling company had us build e-commerce websites that sold recycling boxes and tracked recycled elements for corporate property managers such as CBRE. A small yet demanding pizzeria franchise built multiple tools for back-office process automation. The original manufacturer of lava lamps needed a website to showcase their products. Now that I think of it, there’s still evidence of this work in our office! The Colossus, a four-foot lava lamp that weighs over one-hundred pounds, rests in the corner of our lunchroom. Unlike the Colossus, these early projects were tiny in comparison to the work we do today. Our tradition of Friday team lunches also started in Bensenville. There was never a debate about where to order food from.

Nathan’s Noodles in Elmhurst was the de facto standard, serving two dishes that we fell in love with: drunken noodles and panang curry. We would specify the spiciness level upon ordering the food–it went up to seven–and would sweat profusely each Friday for two continuous years. The level of heat applied to the dish was always the subject to compete over while sucking down delicious noodles and extinguishing the esophageal fire with cold soda. Rounds of intense chess matches followed lunch, often spinning out of control and requiring us to stay extra late so we could finish the work for the day.

Martin has said that an office move is one of the most positively disruptive events–routines change, environment changes, the new office feels like a fresh page in the book. In 2010 we had outgrown our space in Bensenville not only in terms of space but also credibility–how or why clients mustered the courage to pay a group of immigrant kids real money puzzles me to this day. We collectively agreed that clients and money were in Chicago proper, and after scouting Martin was ready to show us the options available. After a few site visits we settled on a renovated loft above a triathlon gym in Ukrainian Village, packed a single moving truck with our worldly possessions, and left Bensenville without looking back.

< Aurimas and the humble beginnings of team lunch

< Colossus in the entry way

Since day one we aspired to have recurring revenue sources outside the services business. One such property was SearchFreeFonts.com, a typography website that used optimized landing pages to drive traffic to affiliate partners who then licensed commercial typefaces. In these early days of search engine optimization we were able to generate enough in commissions and cover one of our salaries through this passive channel. This same mind-set led to the creation of BisonOffice.com–a dropship e-commerce website. We would facilitate the sale of office supply products and a third party would take care of the rest: inventory, warehousing, packing, and shipping. The BisonOffice.com website was created by Tomas in a good week and, with surprise and delight, we were watching the first orders start to trickle in. We sold both BisonOffice.com and SearchFreeFonts.com several years later, but that’s a story for a different day.

We quickly realized that BisonOffice.com had potential and that our little group of outlaws had neither the focus nor the e-commerce chops to pull this off on our own. We partnered with a gentleman in Lithuania who had successfully developed and led one of the largest Lithuanian e-commerce portals. He would oversee the reseller strategy, customer support, and roadmap of the platform. In addition to leadership, BisonOffice.com would also need software engineers. It made sense to hire them from the same part of the world we found the new leader.

In 2011 Marius moved back to his hometown, Kaunas, and together with Gediminas opened the first Lithuanian office. While hiring engineers for BisonOffice.com, Martin met Viktoras Gurgzdys. Reluctant by the prospect of working for an e-commerce company, Viktoras rejected the job offer but continued his dialogue with Martin. Shortly after Viktoras joined, Paulius Maciulis, and a few others came on and established an engineering practice that to this day flourishes with hundreds of the best engineers in the country, and perhaps the world.

< Martin at work

< The view from the first Kaunas office

< Aurimas and Viktoras in 2008

< Paulius working in the Kaunas office

< Tomas and Gediminas in 2009

I could wallow in nostalgia for pages, but I’m telling you this story because I want to make a point: It’s easy to stay aligned when you’re fighting for your survival, and there’s only a handful of you in a room. It’s harder to execute when the team is hundreds strong, spread across offices, operating within multiple disciplines and industry verticals. I’ve written this book to help us all stay true to our origin. This book documents our unique way of thinking and our delivery process that enables us to exceed the expectations of our clients.

Thank you, team, for helping me with content and perspective and for your passion in the disciplines you represent. Good luck on the journey to make great things and seek mastery!

The team matters

I am obviously biased, but I feel in my bones that we’ve built something special. For us, the people on the journey matter. They are the lifeline behind our values. Values are more than just words; they are embedded in our community. Sure, we’ve experienced rapid growth, but on a more personal level, this is the place, and these are the people I want to spend my time with, doing what I love–good work. Consider for a moment the environment you need to be in to do your best work; consider the people that will push you to be better. For us all to be successful and happy, we should share an understanding of what Devbridge is and what you can expect working here. Here’s how I hope you see Devbridge as you share this journey with us:

< Kickoff 2020

•A place to do great work. Be it a meaningful project for a client, or helping kids learn to code through our Sourcery Academy, or anything in between–if you’re not doing good work, why do it at all?

•A place where you can take ownership. We recruit people who are determined to create their own destinies. Ownership as a concept means that each outcome is the result of our own decisions and actions. This applies to the work we do and our professional growth. The unique balance of leadership, autonomy, and empowerment is why our company continues to be successful at scale.

•A place to surround yourself with other great people. The most successful practitioners want to be surrounded by individuals who are leaders in their disciplines and who are . . . well, just kind and fun people to work with. Do you need praise for the work you do, or would you benefit from someone inspiring you to level up?

•A place to solve real problems. We seek complexity and challenge–which for us is fun. Difficulty helps us be the best versions of ourselves while solving real-world challenges that improve the day-to-day experience of our clients and their customers.

Our values matter

I like to think of Devbridge values as a compass. Do your short- and long-term actions align with our values? If they do, then you’re likely to succeed at Devbridge, and the products you build here will have a meaningful impact on the world.

While we appreciate the art of a good party (sometimes to a fault–one of our values is having fun), we also continually march against mediocrity. It’s not an easy or pleasant trek, but the view from that summit is fantastic. Although we’re a close and friendly group, we also have the edge that is necessary to bear the burden of a tough engagement. Ask any team that has worked on one of our Canadian bank projects, and they’ll tell you–it’s brutal at times, but they are stronger and more competent professionals as a result.

For me, these values go above and beyond our work. I apply them as a behavioral framework for everything I do–and that’s what makes them so sticky and powerful. These values drive great business outcomes and, in large part, are why our clients grow to trust us over time and treasure the culture we’ve built.

While the values as they are written today are the result of an exercise with the team, the underlying behavior is as old as Devbridge itself. They’re based on our understanding of what is just and fair to the client and to our peers. It’s what running a good business means to us. These values are ingrained not just in our behavior but also in our goals, our communication style, and where we invest our energy.

Make great things

Build products that are fast, effortless to use, and aesthetically pleasing. Make things meaningful and worthy of your time.

You spend the majority of your week at work, so you should be proud of the things you produce there. In other words, we all want the products we release to matter. What constitutes being good varies from one engagement to another. As a team of professionals, we should evaluate whether following criteria are being met:

•The product creates economic and/or utility value for the customer.

•The product performs in terms of sheer speed and responsiveness.

•The product is intuitive and does not require training.

•The product scales to adapt to the changing needs of the business.

We often debate what makes a product great. Our portfolio spans B2B and B2C applications–some small and elegant, others gigantic with multiple fire-breathing heads. In some instances, we have creative freedom; in others, we are focused on a very specific material outcome. Greatness depends on the individual, but it also should be viewed in the context of the organization.

Seek mastery

Reject mediocrity. Pursue perfection, depth of knowledge, and effectiveness. Prepare for this journey to take a lifetime.

One of the reasons we founded Devbridge was our frustration with the corporate world. Systems, applications, and websites created at the time (and often to this day) were poorly designed, slow to respond, and gave little consideration to the user. Seeking mastery has two sides.

•Individual growth: Learning and growth should be continuous throughout our lifetimes, and we should have a keen yet hungry mind. Perfection is not the goal, but the pursuit of perfection is.

•Evolution of the industry: Ours is a relatively young industry that has been changing and growing at a dramatic speed. A good example is the historic adoption of new technologies. Telephones took thirty-nine years to achieve market maturity, the personal computer fourteen, smartphones only two and a half! The emergence of new platforms, capabilities, and methodologies changes what we do, and we need to retool and relearn.

Embrace transparency

Be authentic, be yourself. Be transparent with your intentions, your successes, and your failures. Do honest work.

Here’s the thing about transparency–no one else in our industry is practicing it. From agencies to consulting companies to product shops, everyone tries to obfuscate and black box their inner workings to hide their mistakes.

From the day we started Devbridge, we’ve run the company as an open book–from internal communication about financial metrics to communication with our clients about the progress of their engagements. Good or bad news, it gets equal airtime. The invoices we send have every single time entry logged, showing ALL the work that was performed in the sprint.

This level of transparency is critical to building trust, and in our line of work, that is worth more than the rates we charge. Trust guarantees us the capacity to try things, fail, and try again. If the client trusts us, then our discussions are more open, our contracts are more flexible, and our relationships blossom. Here are a few ways we embody transparency:

•The Devbridge.TV application openly showcases our goals, utilization, actual revenue, clients, projects, etc.

•We use sprint reports to communicate actual project status with the client.

•Our State of the Union meeting with the client reports on the failures and successes of the relationship.

•We use PowerUp to show our clients daily details of our activity, time entries, etc.

•We facilitate an annual company retrospective where we openly collect ideas, comments, and feedback on what works well, what needs to improve, and what we need to introduce.

•We facilitate an open forum in each office every month where colleagues can submit anonymous feedback and ideas that can be addressed without having to wait for the annual company retro.

•We have an open-door policy where employees are invited to schedule one-on-one time with anyone on the leadership team.

We’re not perfect. We’re in an industry where, globally, males outnumber females and diversity is generally lacking. In business, communication about inclusion and diversity often takes a backseat to revenue goals. We recognize there’s plenty of work to do in our industry and at our company. We’re committed to making strides and getting better.

Take ownership

Don’t be afraid to speak up and stand for what you think is true. Success depends on all of us working collectively to make great things.

Ownership means going above and beyond what would usually be expected from you. Even though we work as a team, each individual carries immense influence–from how we anticipate challenges to how we react to and resolve them.

One common scenario we deal with is the involvement of a third party in anything that we ship. Sometimes we might rely on a contractor to provide APIs, other times it could be an internal team working on a module we depend on. There are times when our success depends on someone slower and less engaged than we are. How can you anticipate their failure and preemptively work to lower the risk–or even better, make them successful? In many projects, the answer is to supplement a client’s team with our own people. That’s taking ownership beyond our own delivery.

If you see a behavior you don’t approve of, say something. Leaders don’t need a title to inspire people or set an example. If you see a fellow teammate leave a dirty cup in the sink, call them out on it and then show them how to work that sponge.

Deliver results

Activity without