Summary of Boldare 2021 mission
At the end of every year, there’s a time to summarize and reflect on what we’ve learned and achieved in the previous 12 months. Where were we at the beginning of the year and where are we now? Did we manage to adapt to these (still) challenging times?
Table of contents
I must admit, this year was special on multiple levels. That includes:
- staying in a hybrid working model
- improving remote practices
- putting an emphasis on company growth, both in terms of more people and multiple new services
- building an online presence in a completely new way.
We are excited to share our accomplishments with you. Here’s a list of the most significant highlights of the year 2021.
Internal changes to deliver better services
Let’s start with probably one of the most important changes at Boldare.
As you may know, while we are working on digital products, we define their specific stage of development. It could be Prototype, Minimum Viable Product, Product-Market Fit, or Scaling, or Full Cycle Product Development. where we go through each and every stage to deliver the best possible result.
For the past few years, we have learned what is needed in each of these stages and which roles should be included when working on them. We’ve always focused on delivering the best possible services but this year we wanted to restructure ourselves. This way, whatever we present to the outside world applies to our internal teams as well.
What does that mean exactly? We created circles dedicated to each product development stage and defined the skills needed. Then, we talked with every Product Designer, Developer and Scrum Master, and defined where their skill sets fit best and which phase would be the best for them. As a result, we were able to build unique teams of people who could satisfy our clients’ diverse business needs and problems.
Now, whenever a client comes to us with an idea for a digital product, we analyze what development stage they are in and then match them with the best team - a group of people whose skills match that stage and will lead them smoothly through the development process.
New services to meet our clients’ needs
As well as changing internally, we also took a closer look at our clients’ needs and what was missing from our offer.
We want to be a real partner. That is why we always try to address any problems that arise during the product development process. We carefully observe what our clients struggle with. We talk to them and try to figure out how we can support them - even if it is not software development-related.
This year we managed to define seven different services that meet our clients’ needs. One of them was the CTO as a service. “Our advantage over the typical CTO role is that we approach the problem from the perspective of three domains, not just one. We take the product, technology, and process into consideration when developing a solution—changing the whole system, not just one small cog,” explains Piotr Majchrzak, Boldare’s Co-Founder.
Another is the inclusion of the Product Strategist role within development teams. Thanks to that, each team has a dedicated person that can focus on strategic goals. It’s up to the Product Strategist to check if the assumptions of the product are still valid, while gathering market responses. The role itself has a broad overview and often recommends changes that lead the whole team and product toward success.
But that’s not all we came up with this year. We created additional support in the recruitment process, different workshops on request and workshops in between product development phases. We are also supporting companies with agile transformation.
There is even more to come in 2022, as we strive to deliver the best possible services and adapt to our clients and their businesses needs.
New clients and new business problems to solve
Clients reach out to us with different business problems and needs. And every time we are able to help them in achieving their goals and they are happy with our services, it’s a blast.
This year, we have welcomed 16 new clients on board, and we were able to start working on the best possible digital solutions for their businesses. Each case is different and requires an individual approach, especially since our clients come from all over the world and from different industries. For every new client we start a dedicated discovery process to find out what would be the best for them. This individual approach and customized solutions are appreciated by our clients, as you can see from their feedback:
“The team delivered many quick solutions from the start, helping us see and feel an immediate difference. They provided a holistic technological strategy with the context necessary for our team to make swift, educated decisions, which accelerated our international expansion efforts.”
- Kunal Chopra, CEO of Kaspien (USA)
“Boldare’s can-do attitude and ability to produce quality solutions further ensure a successful engagement.”
- CTO of Musement Tui Group
Growing Boldare’s crew
This year, we have focused on growth. To deliver best-fit solutions and meet all our clients’ needs, we decided to expand our Boldare team. New skills and new roles were required, including Product Strategists, people dedicated to each product development phase, and a few business and operational roles. However, we also needed to hire more people experienced in the popular technologies, such as scrum masters and product designers.
Our Talent Selection team worked hard to fill each position and because of that, we are ending this year with 205 people on board! What is even more exciting, our crew is becoming truly international, as we started to work with people living in Sweden, Germany, Portugal, Czech Republic and Netherlands.
Boldareship Academy - focus on leadership skills
As we work in a holacracy, we don’t have managerial roles in Boldare. We believe that every employee can be a decision-maker and owner of the field they have the most expertise in.
However, we want to help our people and encourage them to make (very often) bold decisions, take risks and lead their teams in the right direction.
That is why our Co-Founders, Anna Zarudzka and Piotr Majchrzak, came up with the Boldareship Academy. It is our internal 5-month leadership program where people can learn about implementing systemic changes, share their struggles and discuss what it actually means to be a good leader in the New Normal.
This year we managed to finalize two Boldareship Academy editions, and this month we launched the third. It’s been a great success, 66 people have taken part in our leadership program so far, but we already know that more editions are coming!
More content means more knowledge sharing
We love to share our know-how, explain our processes and share good news about our clients and their success stories. That is why we put a lot of effort into content creation.
This year, our strategy was to share even more insights and best practices, so our website visitors can easily find answers to all of their questions.
It wouldn’t be possible if we didn’t expand our content creation team. Right now, we have 3 amazing writers on the board, and some reliable external partners that support us on a daily basis. Also, we encouraged many of our company experts to share their technical knowledge and write about new solutions. Thanks to this great team effort, we managed to publish almost 70 articles this year and generate over 70,000 blog posts views. But we are still hungry for more! That is why we promise to come up with even more content in 2022!
…and even more international publicity
We are proud to call ourselves experts in many fields and it’s a pleasure to share our know-how with others. Normally, we do this on our blog, but this year we were asked to share it on external platforms too!
It wouldn’t have been possible without our partners in Germany, USA and Poland, who work closely with international media and recommended us as a valuable source of knowledge. Together, we have written about our best practices and company insights in magazines like Forbes, Business Insider, t3n.de, Golem, GQ, Authority Magazine, and many others.
In 2021 alone, we published articles in German, American and Polish media, and met with many incredible journalists and writers. The relationships are what we appreciate the most. We hope that in the future we’ll be able to nurture those relationships and get noticed on an even wider scale.
Traditional media is not the only way to share our knowledge. Last year, we organised four separate workshops with our specialists talking about their experiences and best practices. Some of those workshops have been recorded and are now available online. So, if you missed our “Agile for your company” seminar, you can find it here.
But life is all about giving
Here, at Boldare, we like to help one another - both inside and outside our organization. That is why this year we got involved with multiple charities and social enterprises. Each one of them has an important mission that we were proud to be a part of. We are not ones to pick favorites, but some of them deserve an honorable mention. One of them is the “Best design week” event - a series of lectures and workshops on the newest trends and technologies in design. It’s a chance for college students to learn more about the real-life application of design solutions. It’s a great way to educate future designers - and we’re very happy to be a part of it!
Moreover, currently, we are cooperating with the “Tech to the rescue” movement. It’s a non-government organization with a simple, yet ambitious goal: to solve the world’s biggest problems. How are they planning to do that? With technology - whether it’s a website monitoring climate change or a medical app for women in Nicaragua. With projects like these you need the best specialists out there - which is where Boldare comes in!
Where will this partnership take us? Only time will tell.
So in the end, was the mission accomplished?
Despite its challenges, 2021 was a good year. We grew as an organization and got noticed by some of the biggest names in the business world. But most of all, we have improved as a business. Long partnerships and positive feedback from our clients are proving one thing - that we are good at what we do. And that gives us the fuel to keep pushing forward.
Are we going to slow down in 2022? Not a chance! We have big plans and even bigger goals to accomplish. 2021 taught us many lessons, now it’s time to use them.
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