
A Story Behind Rota Wrangler and Team Awesom3
Generating ideas and turning them into new products can be challenging. When you get it right, you may create something that make people’s lives much easier. The act of ‘getting it right’ however, generally involves solving the right problem with the right people. This is our journey of solving a problem and building a team.
It all started with a Big Bang
One day I was having a chat with my brother when he got a text message from his employer about shift change, something about different start times…his face showed frustration as he was going through his photo trying to figure out which one was the latest and most up to date picture of his rota.
The same week I saw a friend of mine trying to remember who asked him to swap shift and when was it. He had to send a message to pretty much everyone on his team to remind him about it.
Then a week later I went to grab a coffee at my mate’s restaurant, it was Wednesday, I remember as it was only yesterday. He was preparing a rota for his restaurant when I came in. He looked frustrated and stressed, having to look at all the pieces of paper with notes from different members of staff, who could work and who was off…
At this stage, I thought: “I can’t believe there is no app for this. How about we build one!”. I called my friend (who has also been my design mentor) to share my findings and to see if he would be onboard with the idea.
“Talent wins the games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” — MJ23
To make great things, you need great people. Nick has been my design mentor for years and without his input, I would not be a designer I am now. KUDOS!
So there we were, two UXers with THE idea. The initial approach was to use it as a project to help us improve and enhance our UX skills, learn something new along the way, and have a good portfolio piece.
Step one: Research and validation
Before we rushed into any designs or sketches, we wanted to check if anyone else might have had the same great ideas as we did. And unfortunately, we were not the first ones.
But we didn’t stop. If there were already apps that solved the rota and holiday management, how come the business owners or team managers I knew personally, didn’t use it. Costs? Usability? Did they even know such things exist?
We got talking to people to learn more about the problem;
- How were they managing the rotas?
- How did they deal with holidays and days-off?
- What were the biggest pain points?
- …And what, and why did they like in their current solution?
We spoke to some people, took notes, and tried to understand the issues they were having, and how we could fix it. We also did some research on existing products. We needed to see how they work what they do well and what they did not so well.
Equipped with loads of new information, we got to the stage of prioritising the feature set, figuring out the flows, designing personas. All the early requirements and documents which would help us in shaping the project. It was not easy, only two of us taking on a massive challenge of building a quite complicated piece of software while balancing between full-time employment and family life. But we were having loads of fun and learning new things, it was AWESOME. At this stage, we both realised that this could be our future business. Once we help people with a genuine problem, we can make a living out of it. There was one piece missing to complete the Team Awesome — development. We are designers and that project was more ambitious than our skill set as far as the dev work is concerned.
The three amigos
Before Nick and I approached anyone about joining the team, we agreed that the person had to have a similar mindset to ours. Friendship comes before anything and if at any stage during the process we start to have arguments or silly disputes, we stop the project. Friendship trumps it all! And we knew the third person joining the team had to think the same way…so please welcome Stavros!

Step two: Design and build
Now, the three of us, rock’n’roll rebel designers/developers, started planning how we could dominate the world of digital rota management.
Via plenty of on- and off-line workshops we picked the name — Rota Wrangler, we decided on the visuals we were gonna go for, we tested loads of our assumptions, and as you are reading this article we are building (possibly) the best digital solution for any business that needs holiday or rota management, which we are hoping to launch as a test version during the last quarter of 2019.
Step three: Beta launch
Before we launch the BETA product (we are working hard to go live with it, hopefully May/June 2019), we have a Early Access option for all interested parties. You can sign up now, get a chance to with Free Lifetime Subscription and be one of the first to hear when we launch. So joint the fun!
History in the making…
So this is us, Team Awesome, people behind the Rota Wrangler: Stavros (Full-stack engineer), Nick (User Experience and Design specialist), and me Kamil (User Experience and thought provoker).
Hello world, nice to meet you and until the next time…PEACE and long live Rock’n’Roll!.🤘🤘🤘 — TeamAwesom3

