The Agile Mindset at Sensidev

We’re a team of hard-working software engineers, who have embraced remote work, contractor collaboration, and not having a common schedule. These three aspects combined may not present themselves as a recipe for success in the eyes of many, but we do have a common ground that keeps this company evolving and successfully communicating. And that is — an agile mindset.

Let’s have a look at what this implies and how it can benefit the unfolding of any development team:

What is an agile mindset?

Although we still live in times highly dominated by the traditional hierarchy at work, alternative ways prove themselves more successful and show that there’s no need for the frequently used “I’m the boss, and you have to do what I say.” to have efficient teams.

And one alternative way is the Agile Methodology. Since its appearance in 2001, the Agile Methodology has brought remarkable results in software development environments. Challenging bureaucratic and traditional ways of working, this technique of putting things into perspective has equipped teams with the flexibility and freedom of decision they need to prosper.

Now, if it were to define an agile mindset, this would refer to the set of attitudes that support an agile environment. From open collaboration to constant improvement and learning cycles, or the most important adaptability to change, these are the core pillars of an agile mindset.

How can this mindset benefit software teams?

To have a complete overview of this mindset and impact on teams, we can take each of its foundational features:

Constantly Adapting to Change

At the core of agile stands flexibility and constantly adapting to the team. In software development this translates into being open to new features added along the way, reanalyzing the products, rechecking with clients and the team, and furthermore keeping an open mind that the projects will need to readapt from its initial plan, to meet its best form.

Open Collaboration

An agile way of working is also versatile and it can be applied to each team differently. This implies that for a fruitful collaboration, your team can use certain platforms, different from what you’ve been used to.

The key to an open collaboration is represented by a proper choice of tools and each team member’s understanding of tasks and the importance of working with their other peers to successfully complete them.

Improvement Cycle

Repeat after us: there is always room for improvement. With this in mind, we should keep our processes adjustable and leave room for improvement. As the manifesto states — welcome changing requirements, even late in development.

Focus on Delivering Value

Delivering value to the customer represents an everyday task when adopting an agile mindset. Our best approach to this is dividing our work into sprints and identifying the best-added value to each one of them.

Autonomous as a Way of Being

When you have ownership over your work, the sense of reward is substantially bigger. Being autonomous and becoming fully responsible for your parts of the project is what it takes to become a part of agile environments.

Always Learning

Part of becoming autonomous and adaptable to change is to keep a constant pace of learning. Agile team members should be encouraged to embrace new skills and even fail, in order to progress.

And Lastly — Respect

This one should be by default in any existing team out there, but when it comes to agile, the level of respect is of high importance. Because of the flexibility and non-hierarchical team structure, all team members should entrust each other for the collaboration to successfully take place.

The agile mindset in action at Sensidev

Constantly Adapting to Change

Change is usually hard for people, but at Sensidev, we embrace it — not just with projects and clients, but with ourselves as well.

We are constantly seeking ways to improve, and therefore, change comes naturally to us. The relationship with our devs is based on constant feedback, because we find it the best way to advance. Here, every voice is equally important and we include all the voices in developing a work environment that is accepted and enjoyed by everyone.

Open Collaboration

Because we encourage remote work, we have collaborators from different locations (one of our colleagues is taking a year and a half world tour while working), so finding ways to efficiently communicate and work together is very important to us.

We use holy Slack for internal communication, and we have monthly meetings to keep everyone up to date with everything that is happening.

Because work is not everything, we also have monthly social nights, which help us consolidate our relationships (that’s why we are not a company, but a big group of friends that are working together).

On top of that, we also have monthly Tech Talks, where we share different topics with the entire team and this also enables us to learn from each other and grow together.

Improvement Cycle

Although we don’t have Sensidev retrospectives (✍️note to add retrospectives), we are constantly aiming to improve, as a company and as individuals. For a sensidev, improvement is mandatory! We have an internal rule that if a collaborator doesn’t deserve a raise, then it’s not a good fit for us because it means that no improvement has occurred. We support everyone to become a better version of themselves in every way they can, and we are only looking for people who always explore ways to improve.

Focus on Delivering Value

At Sensidev, we are not just coding, we are delivering value: to our collaborators, to our devs, to the world. We are carefully selecting our clients, and we try to work on projects that have a positive impact on the world, probably that’s why we mostly work in medical areas.

We also have our baby — Sensix , who is trying to make the world a better place by helping people create healthy and energy-efficient workplaces, buildings, homes.

Also, we are very critical of the code of our devs, having a constant focus on clean code, best practices, and attention to detail.

Autonomous as a Way of Being

We don’t have any managers. We are a flat organization, where everyone is equal, and some people have additional responsibilities :). We find that this is the best way for everyone to become responsible, but also to get them involved. When you’re directly involved in creating your work environment, you usually give more than 100%.

We are always here to provide help, but we never tell anyone how to do their job.

Always Learning

Technology is changing and evolving at a very fast pace. The only way to try and keep up is by learning and being up to date with the latest technologies. We encourage everyone to constantly learn, but we have also managed to create a community where everyone shares knowledge.