We narrow our focus but widen our context

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We often work within massive organisations. To be able to make a difference, we avoid getting spread too thin ( “The Law of Raspberry Jam”, Jerry Weinberg). So we value being focused on an achievable and narrow goal that will deliver concrete value, as early as possible.

But at the same time, we work within complicated ecosystems. It is easy to think we are improving something locally when the overall effect on the organisation is negligible or sometimes even counterproductive. In order to avoid this, we frame what we do in the wider organisation context.

To bring success for our customers, we need to work small, but think big.

Back to Values

How we do this:

  • We keep the software we build as simple as possible, from the code we write to the technologies / libraries we recommend. However, an uncompromising pursuit of simplicity can risk the wider context being overlooked. The simplest thing that could possibly work for you or your team might not be the simplest approach for the rest of your team or the other teams you work with. We strive for simplicity, but always consider how our choices will impact the simplicity of the overall system.

  • Software delivers little to no value unless it is deployed and running in production, with real users using it. We therefore need to understand how the production environments work, what monitoring is in place and how our software is deployed to production. By understanding the existing processes for monitoring and maintaining software in production, we can ensure that we deliver value to our customers and avoid problems at what is traditionally the most stressful time of a project.

  • Modern enterprise or government software requires trade-offs between many sets of needs, goals, principles, objectives, and constraints – often represented by many individual specialists (in research, content, accessibility, security, sustainability, operability, affordability, etc).

    For example, it’s no use being driven by user – or citizen – needs, if they don’t meet organisation – or department – goals (and the other way around).

    We seek to balance these needs by always looking at the bigger picture, to reach great outcomes for our customers. By doing so, we bring organisations, and their users, together.

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We like talented people, whoever they happen to be. Experience tells us that there are no barriers to who has talent and ability, whatever your gender, race, sexuality, your level of physical ability or stage of life. So, if you have what we need, for any of the roles below, we want to hear from you.

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