Q&A with Agustin Cortes
According to a January 2021 report by CompTIA, a nonprofit association for the IT industry and workforce, 207,000 core IT positions were posted in December 2020, with about 30 percent of these jobs looking for software and application developers. This was a slight increase from November’s metrics.
As more and more companies begin to recover from a disastrous 2020, efforts are once again being directed toward technology, and bringing in top tech talent to help with their digital transformation efforts.And, once again, companies will continue to fight the tech divide between the expertise needed and the expertise available.
Additionally, on top of finding the right talent, going through the interview process, testing for their skills and capabilities, and everything that goes into the onboarding process takes a lot of time and effort.
At WillDom, we think there’s a better way. We offer a service called Agile Teams, which is centered around co-creating a business solution with our clients based on a three-pronged approach of the product, experience, and technology. Later, we provide a self-organizing scrum team of software developers and engineers hand-picked from our talent pool of nearly 3,000 technologists.To-date, this has been a very attractive service for our clients, with demand for Agile Teams growing by 515% since last year (2020).
We caught up with Agustin Cortes, who leads the implementation of WillDom’s this Framework in different projects focusing on quality, to provide additional details on the Service and answer some of the FAQs that our clients and technologists have been asking.
Q: How would you describe Agile Teams and the benefits customers and teams within WillDom (technologists, product, business) receive?
A: “Agile Teams is a service that leverages co-creation and co-innovation, two of the main pillars at WillDom. It is about crafting a business solution from the ground up, and is a great solution for helping organizations scale up faster, reduce time-to-market, and manage risks.
For each client interested in this approach, we spend time to fully understand their technical needs and business goals so that we can guide them regarding the approach and the team they will need to get it done. We introduce the client to their new team members, which are technologists from our talent pool best suited for the role. The client receives full visibility into the work – receiving constant updates and reports, and can communicate directly with the team members – so Agile Teams is about co-creating value. Value is realized incrementally and by quicker delivery through collaborative working.
“It also provide greater visibility through short releases cycles and numerous benefits to our software developers, engineers, Product teams, Experience teams, and Business teams – such as working directly and consistently with other team members, learning new and different ways of working. It also improves collaboration with internal and external stakeholders.This work also enhances problem solving skills, as a large portion of our clients are utilizing emerging technologies to build their products, so there’s always a little bit of a learning curve for our technologists. Finally, our agile team members are much more ingrained in the process and what is coming out of these efforts. They are able to see firsthand how their contributions are driving their clients business forward.”
Q: The framework of providing technology teams to clients isn’t anything particularly new. What separates Agile Teams from what WillDom’s competitors are doing?
A: “What’s unique about Agile Teams is that we leverage our community of nearly 3,000 of the best technologists to handle the technology needs of our clients, as opposed to providing the talent and the client being responsible for building the solution. These teams come from vastly different backgrounds, and have unique approaches to our three-pronged focus on product, experience and technology. Additionally, we can leverage previous experience and teams that have been working together for years, and invite the client to co-create and take advantage of these synergies – all while managing risk and reducing the time-to-market.
“We pride ourselves on having a relationship with each and every one of our software developers and engineers, meaning that we know what skills and expertise our technologists have to set up a win-win scenario – our technologists get to work on technology that cater to their specific skills and capabilities, and the client receives the best talent for their projects. This also means that we can build teams much faster because we know which members of our community would be best for each opportunity.
“Additionally, our diversity is something we take great pride in, and have branches in several different countries that can be leveraged to bring different perspectives and viewpoints to the table. People approach work and problem solving differently, with so many different elements coming in to play, such as individual experiences and the societal and cultural norms of different regions. With that in mind, we can provide a variety of different techniques and approaches to technology demands, providing our clients with a global approach.”
Q: Can you give us an example of a client utilizing the Agile Teams service and how you provided value to their business, technology, and product needs?
A: “We’re currently working with a client in the fitness industry whose goal is to create a transformative, mobile, outdoor fitness service that provides an exciting, convenient, and boutique exercise experience to their customers and consumers everywhere. Additionally, the client wants to offer fitness professionals a real, rewarding, entrepreneurial career with a clear path to building long-term net worth.
“The client can envision their end-goal, but needs help with the creation and execution of the project. After completely understanding their needs and what they want to accomplish, WillDom hand-picked a multidisciplinary team of its best technologists, business, and product professionals from our vast ecosystem and introduced them to the client. As with most major projects, challenges and issues can come from anywhere, so having a dedicated team that can handle issues outside of just the technology itself is critical for keeping client products and deliverables moving.
“We are currently in the development stage of making their vision a reality, with the client having complete access and visibility on the progress of the project. We are continually exceeding their expectations by using cutting-edge technology that is driving real value and creating a new client experience. We are excited to showcase the results at the end of the project.”
We discussed the topic of fully distributed (agile) teams late last year, and provided key learnings on how companies can lead these teams, in our blog post, “Why You Should Consider Fully Agile Teams.”
To learn more about how your company can benefit from this service, you can visit our Agile Teams page for further details and to connect with a WillDom expert, or visit our LinkedIn for more information about us.
