Alex Fernández, CTO since January 2021, is in charge of the Tech team at Hivency. His team is composed of 16 members located in France and Spain. Today, he answers some questions about the tech team, their challenges for this year, and the team’s perspective.
Hivency: Can you briefly describe the tech team to us?
Alex Fernández: The tech team is composed of experts who are responsible for developing and deploying our software systems. The international Tech team has grown by over 50% over the last few months. The tech team is currently classified into three subgroups or squads: two impact teams that build business features, and one platform team for transversal work like security or scalability. Then, we have four horizontal chapters depending on the line of work: front-end developers, back-end developers, quality assurance and DevOps.
Hivency: How do you organise your work in the tech team?
AF: The main goal of the Tech team is to develop our web-based platforms to satisfy the needs of our customers. Our objectives are always aligned with the company strategy, whether to grow the business or to offer a better service.
The team’s main purpose is to have an impact and that is why our squads are called impact teams. To start with, a product manager comes up with various ideas for shiny new features or even brand new products. Based on those ideas, impact team members will help decide the different priorities and will be responsible for:
- Covering and brainstorming all product ideas,
- Providing a rough time estimation of how long they will take,
- Developing any necessary changes to our existing webapps,
- Testing to verify that everything works correctly,
- And finally, releasing the product!
For big new features the brainstorming and production process can take months. Every two weeks improvements and bug fixes are done in order to enhance our platforms and better serve our customers. For hot fixes, we can deploy them in minutes!
Hivency: What are the main values encouraged in the team?
AF: The Tech team implements a DevOps culture, where all employees are encouraged to study and improve our production environment. This culture helps employees monitor and improve the live environment where our customers work.
Cooperation and communication with other teams are vital as well. The Tech team works closely with the Product team in order to reach our goals efficiently. New features are announced by the Marketing team and promptly used by the Customer Hero team, who also give us feedback about possible issues faced by our users. It’s very important for us to be as close to our customers and our community of influencers as possible!
During every step of our work we strive to be fast, agile and proactive in order to be ahead of the competition.
Hivency: What are the main qualities necessary to work in the tech team?
AF: In my opinion there are three basic qualities required to be a great fit:
- Curiosity,
- Involvement at work,
- and a passion for learning.
Everything else can be learned on the job. Unfortunately, at our stage we don’t have the time or resources to train someone from scratch, so we usually require some experience. There are also some common qualities for all Hivency employees that can be summarised as “being someone nice to work with”.
Our goal is to build a team that will work together for many years to come, and where all team members will grow professionally and personally.
Diversity
I encourage hiring candidates based on their competencies and their fit with the team and with Hivency’s values, regardless of their location and background. The Tech team is diverse; team members are based in different cities in Spain and France, and soon Germany and Italy. We are also lucky to have more and more women in the team.
Hivency: Can you develop more about the innovation culture?
AF: When speaking about growth, many aspects are covered; growth of the company, growth of the team, and most importantly the personal growth of each employee.
The Tech team is encouraged to learn new libraries and frameworks, attend conferences, write blog posts, give talks and attend training sessions. Keeping up with the state of the art will help the team and will improve our processes.
Hivency: How do you motivate your team ?
AF: I have to admit, team motivation is key to happy and productive team members. Even though tech team members work in different countries, I always encourage meeting in person from time to time. In addition to that, a lot of team building activities are conducted in the team.
Moreover, I conduct one on one meetings with each team member on a monthly basis to encourage openness and communication.
Every two Fridays we have these Tech Days where tech team members work on a project of their choosing: improve their skills, learn new technologies, whatever they fancy.
But the most important motivation factor is having interesting work to do: carry out fulfilling tasks in a productive environment. We strive to have a spirit of continuous improvement.
Hivency: What are the upcoming challenges of the team?
AF: The biggest challenge in a Tech team is usually to deliver efficiently and with quality. We are learning how to work better together every day.
Hivency is in a process of international expansion, and we have to be there as well: support this impressive growth by scaling our systems and, most importantly, our processes.
And of course, working together remotely is always a challenge, and will be even more in the future as we widen our hiring base to new countries.
Hivency: What growth opportunities are planned for team members?
AF: I work on the professional growth of each member of the Tech team, with the help of HR. On the long term, every employee will have the option of focusing on the technical job or opting to leadership positions. In the latter case, they may have the opportunity to climb up the ladder and grow in the company. Nevertheless, we would also like employees to be able to grow professionally following the expert path, and be well considered as individual contributors. This option is, in my experience, especially attractive for many technical people.
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