Cf Staff Writes Episode 5

Written by Woena Agordah

In your average tech environment, to attain the qualification of “Software Engineer” is no easy feat. It requires hard work, dedication, and most of all passion. A software Engineer does not only program but applies mathematical analysis and the principles of computer science in order to design and develop software.

All this responsibility sounds really complicated, but for a learned and well-trained software engineer, it’s all just a walk in the park. In this Episode of CFstaffwrites, we had an engaging discussion with our Chief Technical Officer who is a software engineer as well, he goes by the name Peter Yefi.

READ ALSO: CF Staff Writes Episode 4

Detailing his career journey as well as his personal life and how they all merge to fit into the culture of complete Farmer. These were some of his responses

How long have you been working at complete Farmer?

A little over a year

Can you tell me an interesting fact about yourself?

I like to travel but I don’t like flying in aeroplanes.

If you were attending a meet and greet how would you explain your role at Complete Farmer?

I am in charge of all the digital platforms at Complete Farmer and also responsible for making critical decisions on the technologies we deploy in providing quality products to our end-users.

Software Engineer sounds complicated. What is it and how did you get into it?

Software engineering is more than coding. You need to cater for three main dimensions: Product, Process and Resources and having the necessary metrics for measuring them.

I happened to enrol at KNUST as a B.Sc. Computer Science student and that’s where I developed an interest in Software Engineering. This further led me to pursue my masters degree in MSIT (with a concentration in Software Engineering and Data Science) at Carnegie Mellon University.

What has been your favourite product you’ve developed at Complete Farmer?

The DigiFarmer platform

What’s a typical day in the life of the CTO at Complete Farmer like?

A typical day involves the following:

• Coordinating the efforts of the development team by acting as the scrum master for sprints.
• Reviewing code and making sure the same is deployed on staging and production environments.
• Getting my hands dirty by writing some useful code (normally for third party integrations).
• Coming up with conceptual models for various functionalities before they are implemented.
• Organising and attending stakeholders meetings (for various products).
• Resolving issues on DevOps pipelines and deployment environments.
• Attending management meetings (whenever necessary).
• Advising and making critical decisions on technologies of interest.

What’s your number one tip for building a product that works and users love?

Understand the needs of your personas (including other stakeholders) and involving them in the development process

Complete Farmer end to end business model has meant developing different products for different user segments, how have you and your team managed to handle it all?

Well, we are still in the process of finishing up with the implementation of most of these platforms and are constantly updating launched ones. We employ an agile methodology to enable us to ship functionalities in bits. This enables us to release features deemed necessary by our users incrementally and iteratively.

Which of your team’s achievements are you most proud of?

Apart from launching our DF platform and an improved version of our website, we’ve grown together as a team and that has increased our level of coordination as well as our velocity. We have managed to create an environment where everyone feels that their contribution matter in achieving a common goal.

What do you do at your leisure or when you’re not working?

Spend time with my family and friends, play the keyboard and read.

READ ALSO: Other Ways to Contribute to Food Security Other Than Farming.

Inspiring, right? A young man who discovered his passion at an early stage and pursued his ambitions undeterred until he finally achieved his goals. Peter’s story goes a long way to serve as a source of motivation for all the upcoming programmers he has mentored as well as people who thought their goals were unattainable. His ability to brilliantly combine work and life and attain optimum results has played a major part in his commendable accomplishments as part of the Complete Farmer brand and brought us much closer to our mission of creating a world that eats better by working together.