We have been building software for 15 years

The cultural point of view:

Relevance, one of our core values, is a measure, a degree to which something is useful to the context or result. To create relevance, we need trust, we need to prioritise relevance higher than short term gains. And, we need engagement, because relevance requires proactivity.

Building trust through making the right decisions
Business model of the typical software development company is built around selling as much consultancy hours as possible. But what about the impact and value of this consultancy? Is it proportional? What if there will be more value if we conduct a research and find an existing solution that can solve the very same business problem? Yes, most probably it will mean that we won’t be writing any code, thus won’t be charging any consultancy hours. But it will also mean that our customer can get much faster to the market, and start making profit faster, instead of spending on consultancy.

Engagement is an integral part of our recruitment methodology
Hiring the wrong person is time consuming and expensive. We don’t believe that we are an ideal company that will be a fit for everyone. We have a certain set of expectations and particular way of working and communicating that might not work for all. That’s why we are transparent in our hiring process, so the candidate have a chance to validate if we are a good fit for her.

When choosing clients and partners we must support the same values
Without focus and engagement from stakeholders, the project is doomed to fail. And same as with hirings, our company might not be an ideal choice for all customers, we are human after all. That’s why we always try to start a new initiative or a project from the pre-project, or Launchpad. This process have a practical value and deliverables, mostly within the research and big picture identification. It is also a chance to do a test run on our future collaboration, to validate whether our values are compatible, whether we enjoy working together and speaking the same language. It is perfectly fine if one side or another decides to stop collaboration after the pre-project. No matter what – the project has moved forward, but more important – we did a reality check, and saved both parties from spending too much on the collaboration that doesn’t seems to be working.

The methodology perspective:

Design Thinking: puts the needs of the end user at the forefront.

Advantages:

• End user and subject matter expert define requirements
• Top of the knowledge funnel
• Everything is possible

Disadvantages:

• Does not focus on cost or schedule
• Can set expectations incorrectly

Agile: puts rapid delivery of functionality and updates first.
Advantages:

• True rapid deployment of functionality and fixes
• Responsiveness

Disadvantages:

• Can result in MVP being ‘too minimal’

Business Architecture: puts business needs and constraints first.
Advantages:

• Better understanding of real boundaries
• Forces financial analysis

Disadvantages:

• Internally focused
• Limits thinking

A project in a nutshell:

Click to download an overview of the different steps in a development project.

Some will say it’s Agile development methodologies. Some will say it’s design thinking, and some will say that strict business architecture is a key to success.

Each of the methodologies has their advantages and disadvantages, so we are not treating a particular methodology as the ‘silver bullet’. Instead we are building cross-functional teams sufficient enough in the methodologies specified to be able to use the advantages of one in order to cover the disadvantages of another.

While design thinking and agile development methodologies competence were acquired during the process of building digital products for Innocode’s clients and partners, business architecture competence was built when Innocode started building their own digital products in 2015.

The technological point of view:

World has changed in these 15 years, we adopted new programming languages, new frameworks and tools to deliver beautiful features even faster. But each new version of the programming language felt like an incremental improvement, a set of trade offs, not really helping our goal – build, deliver and validate new concepts much faster than before.

So we are adding something new to our toolbelt – Low code and No code development. Want to learn more about it? Read here!