About us
We enjoy developing new Internet applications which promote the idea that technology is about helping people.
"Helping people to keep their contacts via their business cards"
Our company's mission is to "help people stay in touch by managing business cards". We help people who use the Internet for either professional, recreational or family reasons, people who use e-mail as their main form of communication and the Internet as their work tool. Using the web alone, business cards can be managed visually and the traditional form of contact is translated into the virtual world of the Internet, thus benefiting from all the advantages offered by new technologies. If our customers are happy, we, the project team, as well as our partners, will have achieved our aim of providing an agile Internet tool which improves the way we use business cards.
Our company's ethic is to satisfy both the user and ourselves when it comes to the products and services we develop and put on the Internet. We use agile methodologies in our approach and these can be roughly summed up in the following seven points:
- Management style based on leadership and collaboration.
An organisation which relies on the traditional idea of giving orders to and controlling staff would find it difficult to manage an agile project. The strict hierarchies of the-boss-orders and the-employee-obeys always lead to situations where people limit themselves to doing only what they are required and paid to do and nothing more. In an agile organisation, coaching and collaborative leadership will bring out the best in the team. We do not want a boss who tells people what to do, we want a leader who can motivate. We do not want control, we want collaboration.
- People-based Business Culture
The unique vision of controlling business processes tends to disappear without taking into account the relationship between these processes and the people who carry them out. Success depends on the way people interact with processes and technology. If we want to be an agile company, we have to arrange our business around our people; they are the ones who make it agile and who make it possible to adapt to unexpected situations for which processes have not been written. These people are essential for the survival of a company.
- Tacit management of non-critical knowledge
The knowledge of a company is nearly always to be found inside the heads of its employees and companies usually try to keep every bit of it in the greatest possible detail. This leaves us in the terrible position of having to document our knowledge periodically and naturally, this is not done verbally because it is a formal process and requires full detail. It is precisely this compulsion to document everything which at times stifles creativity. We waste time documenting everything instead of investing our energy in creating and learning something new. It is better to jot down a great idea on a paper napkin than wade your way through reams of empty documents. Obviously, this leaves us in the vulnerable position of depending on our employees but let us not kid ourselves: that is always the way it is. It is the people who have the real knowledge.
- Informal communication.
If we want to build work teams which work together and share their knowledge, we cannot be restricted by stiff, formal, highly bureaucratic methods of communication.
- The end user is fundamental
With traditional methodologies, the user or customer is part of the system requirements analysis phase. With agile methodologies, end users are part of the development team and play a fundamental part in the project. Without them, there is simply no project.
- Organic organisational structure.
We must stop being a bureaucratic, highly formal organisation and become one that is flexible and reflexive, where participation and collaboration are encouraged. Neurons are not arranged in a hierarchy - they form a network. Each person is like a neuron within the "brain" of the organisation.
- Swapping "fixed roles" for "interchangeable roles"
The idea of the industrial revolution was that each person had one specialisation. These days, being able to cross-skill on the same project gives us the chance to develop new points of view and attack the same problems from different angles. The motivation and knowledge of our employees will grow and the business will be more adaptable.