Wunderdog Blog

Outstanding customer experience: Wunderdog’s beacon in 2023’s stormy weather

Wunderdog — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 22:00:00 GMT

In the ever-evolving landscape of technology consulting and especially amid the global economic challenges presented by 2023, client satisfaction becomes even more critical. Wunderdog has collected Customer Insights bi-annually for the past five years. Now it’s again time for our yearly review - what did we succeed in last year, and where could we do better?

How a Fortune 500 company created an impact with our web audit

Wunderdog — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 21:00:00 GMT

In today’s digital landscape, people expect seamless and efficient interactions, whether it’s paying bills, doing online shopping, or reading an article. Therefore, it has become increasingly important for companies to create swift web experiences across all industries.

A Fortune 500 company reached out to Wunderdog to conduct a thorough web audit of their German website hoping to learn more about its performance. With over 130 top-tier brands to their name, this prominent vendor relies heavily on their website to engage customers and generate sales.

Our technical audit revealed issues that were severely impacting their website's overall performance, such as low SEO scores and long loading times that caused them to lose business. In this blog post, we'll share key insights from this audit that can help you transform your online presence.

Returning from Maternity Leave: A Developer’s Point of View

Paula Sazonov Senior Software Developer — Thu, 11 May 2023 21:00:00 GMT

Transitioning back to work after a leave of absence can be daunting for any employee, especially for software developers, who work in a fast-paced and constantly evolving industry. In this blog post, our developer Paula Sazonov shares her experience of returning from maternity leave, and how she navigated the challenges of adjusting to new technologies and routines while finding a new work-life balance.

Getting back on track after maternity leave

I feel fortunate to live in a country that offers relatively long parental leaves, providing valuable time to bond with your newborn when they need you most. But while you treasure and prioritize the time with your infant, it is common to feel at least some sense of nervousness about returning to work after maternity leave. This sentiment is not exclusive to mothers, as any person who has taken a leave of absence may feel the same way.

As a software developer, I cherish my job, so even though the end of my time with the little guy was bittersweet, I was looking forward to returning to work. However, I must admit that returning to code after a prolonged period of absence felt overwhelming. Programming can be thought of as a craft that takes time to master, and like any craft, practice makes perfect. The pressure for staying on top of the latest technologies is present even in the normal flow of work, let alone being away from it for a longer time. So, keeping up with it is essential to stay sharp.

To help ease my transition, I decided to study and earn a cloud practitioner certificate, which gave me a much-needed confidence boost. But despite my efforts to prepare, returning to work after maternity leave was not without its challenges. As a woman in a male-dominated field, and with developers changing jobs frequently, there were few precedents to follow for returning to work. This is why thoughtful processes to support developers returning from extended absences matter, particularly for women, who are still underrepresented in the industry.

4 Tips for Returning to Work After a Leave of Absence

In hindsight, I have compiled some pointers that may be helpful for someone in a similar situation.

1. Allow yourself time to adjust and don't be too hard on yourself.
Coming back to work after a prolonged break can be challenging, but it's a natural learning curve. I was fortunate to work for a company that values its employees, and looking back, I realize that being overly critical of myself was unnecessary and counterproductive.

2. Take initiative and control of your circumstances.
Don't rely solely on precedents, as what worked for others may not work for you. To avoid being misunderstood, speak up about what you need. Though self-reflection may be difficult in the moment, identify ways of working and learning that would benefit you, and share them with your team. When I opened up about feeling under pressure (mostly due to schedules), my team was understanding, which greatly helped. Improvements are difficult if you feel you’re drowning.

3. Talk, talk, talk.
Don't hesitate to speak up if you're feeling overwhelmed. Seeking an outside perspective can provide invaluable support. In my case, occupational health services were a tremendous help, and many of the tips I'm sharing here are the result of having someone to bounce ideas off of. Don't hesitate to find a sparring partner who can offer insight and guidance.

4. Take it easy.
Remember the saying: 'How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.' You’ll get back into it.

Returning to work after a long parental leave can seem daunting, but it doesn't have to be. With the right support from a company that values its employees' well-being, access to occupational health services, and encouraging colleagues who help you regain your confidence, anyone can make a successful comeback.

Workplace support is crucial

Returning to work after a long parental leave can be daunting, but it doesn't have to be. With the right support from a company that values its employees' well-being, access to occupational health services, and encouraging colleagues who help you regain your confidence, anyone can make a successful comeback. Remember to take things one step at a time, communicate your needs, and be proactive in your approach. By doing so, you can not only overcome the challenges of returning to work but also set yourself up for a successful and fulfilling career. So, keep calm and code on!

Wunderdog prioritizes family conciliation by offering flexible work arrangements and supportive policies. Become part of our inclusive teams!

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Flexibility first: How our hybrid delivery model boosts your business

Wunderdog — Mon, 06 Mar 2023 22:00:00 GMT

In a rapidly changing tech world, companies are looking for resilient solutions with flexible pricing options. At Wunderdog, we firmly believe that flexibility is the key to success in today's ever-changing business landscape.

Wunderdog’s hybrid delivery model combines talented and proactive developers with competitive international pricing choices. This ensures the right cultural and technical fit for each market and customer.

As an international software consultancy with Finnish roots and offices in Helsinki, Berlin, and Málaga, we combine future-proof digital ways of working with top talent throughout Europe for dynamic results.

What our customers get when they do business with us

Wunderdog — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 22:00:00 GMT

2022 was an excellent year for Wunderdog: we opened a successful tech hub in Málaga, settled our hybrid delivery model in 3 different countries, and, for the third consecutive year, we reached the highest customer satisfaction reviews. Last year we fulfilled the expectations of 97% of our customers and exceeded them by 52% of the cases. What lies behind our numbers? Read more to find out.

Why You Should Hire a Dedicated Scrum Master

Ido Schacham Senior software developer — Thu, 06 Oct 2022 21:00:00 GMT

There are plenty of debates about whether Scrum Master should be a full-time role. Have you met any dedicated Scrum Master out in the wild? Or have you encountered more double agents, e.g., product owners that are also Scrum Masters? Or organizations that are, in fact, practicing ScrumBut?

These double agents may send out calendar invites and facilitate retros and dailies just fine. But is that all Scrum Masters are supposed to do? Or is there something missing by not having dedicated Scrum Masters?

The Scrum Masters' responsibilities

From a practical perspective, Scrum Masters have various responsibilities, including but not limited to:

Educating the team and organization about Scrum—both theory and practice—so that everyone is on the same page.
Helping the team become self-managed, be more effective, and solve any problems that impede them.
Supporting the product owner to create clear backlog items, practice refinements, or coordinate with stakeholders.
Facilitating Scrum events, at least in the beginning, and making sure that they are helping the team to improve and produce value.

What Do Scrum Masters Actually Do?

However, from a higher perspective, Scrum Masters do much more than that:

Scrum Masters are servants to the Scrum process, the team, and essentially the whole organization, stakeholders, and clients.
Scrum Masters are attentive observers who can spot problems, figure out their impact, and find the right solutions for the right people at the right time.
Scrum Masters are teachers who educate about Scrum and various practices to aid the team and organization.
Scrum Masters are coaches who help people to learn and enable growth.

Ultimately, the Scrum Masters’ true purpose is to self-destruct, to get the team to be completely self-managed and the process to run so smoothly that the Scrum Masters aren’t needed at all. Of course, in the real world of ever-changing environments, this rarely happens, but that’s the ideal.

A dedicated Scrum Master can help increase an entire team’s productivity, bring up morale, and produce a product that has more value to your clients.

Can Scrum Masters Have Other Roles?

Theoretically, a Scrum Master can also be a developer on the team, a project manager, or even your local barista. Yet, this presents quite a few challenges.

1. Multiple Identity Disorder

Having multiple roles comes with a risk. Let’s say the Scrum Master is also the product owner. What happens when they get swamped with product owner tasks and an impending deadline? Obviously, they will focus on being the product owner, possibly neglecting their Scrum Master duties. Even if they somehow manage to multitask, too much context-switching requires lots of energy and could eventually lead to exhaustion. Not a good idea.

2. Conflict of Interest

Everyone has interests. The special thing about Scrum Masters is their focus on others, and making sure that everyone is prospering. However, what about Scrum Masters that have to do other roles? They will probably have personal interests that may leak into their role as a Scrum Master. The result is a conflict of interest, which could hurt their trust in the rest of the team and impede the development process.

3. Lack of Neutrality

Part of the power of being a Scrum Master is being the objective third party that’s uninvolved in company politics and personal conflicts, though aware of them, a kind of Switzerland if you may. Nonetheless, if your Scrum Master also has another role, then you can kiss The Swiss Alps goodbye. They will most certainly be involved in politics and interpersonal conflicts, thus resulting in biases and a lack of neutrality.

Hiring a Dedicated Scrum Master

It’s understandable why companies are reluctant to hire dedicated Scrum Masters. Recruiting another role can be a burden and increasing the headcount means increased personnel costs. One may well ask: why hire one when the product owner can do it 'for free'? Or why hire a product owner when one of the developers can do it 'for free'?

Beyond that, the real question is not how much Scrum Masters cost, but how cost-effective they are. A dedicated Scrum Master can help increase an entire team’s productivity, bring up morale, and produce a product that has more value to your clients. Thus, the value generated may go well beyond the cost of their salary.

Of course, you won’t know until you try. The good news is that you can try it before you buy it! Instead of making a big commitment to hiring a full-time Scrum Master, you can hire one part-time, whether it’s a freelancer or a consultant. Rome wasn’t built in one sprint. In the spirit of Scrum, be empirical, take some measurements, and check whether a dedicated Scrum Master can bring value to your team, organization, and clients. One thing’s for sure: there’s much more to it than mastering the art of Google Calendar.

Do you need a dedicated Scrum Master to do things right? Our Scrum Masters are here to help.

4 Signs You Are Practicing ScrumBut

Ido Schacham Senior software developer — Wed, 27 Jul 2022 21:00:00 GMT

Everyone is doing Scrum. Or are they? If you’re just practicing sprints and dailies and have no idea why, then you might have a good old case of the ScrumButs. Here are 4 symptoms to recognize the malaise, and how you could get back on the road to being healthy and Agile.

Many years ago, when I was still freelancing, a customer asked me to be a part of his Scrum project. I wasn’t familiar with it yet. Suddenly, I was participating in morning standups, reporting out what I had done yesterday, what I would do today, and if I had any blockers. My name was on the board with other stories in the to-do column. We had sprints, dailies, and occasional planning and retros. Everything was facilitated by the team leader.

My next customers also practiced what they called Scrum. After taking part in a handful of projects, I started wondering: What is Scrum, actually? What’s the point of all these rituals, sprints, and dailies? Why does everybody do it somewhat differently, but they all call it the same?

Are you practicing Scrum or ScrumBut?

These questions led me to take a Certified Scrum Master course. Apparently, everything I knew was wrong. What I have been practicing all these years wasn’t Scrum—it was ScrumBut (from scrum.org):

A ScrumBut has a particular syntax:
(ScrumBut)(Reason)(Workaround)

Here are some ScrumBut Examples:

"(We use Scrum, but) (having a Daily Scrum every day is too much overhead,) (so we only have one per week.)"

"(We use Scrum, but) (Retrospectives are a waste of time,) (so we don't do them.)"

"(We use Scrum, but) (we can't build a piece of functionality in a month,) (so our Sprints are 6 weeks long.)"

"(We use Scrum, but) (sometimes our managers give us special tasks,) (so we don't always have time to meet our definition of done.)"

In short, ScrumBut is a derivative version of Scrum. People pick their Scrum practices of choice and ignore the rest of the framework. If you suspect something smells fishy in your Scrum, here are four signs to help you identify that you are practicing ScrumBut.

1. Daily Standups Are Status Meetings

The real purpose of the Daily Standup in Scrum is to encourage communication, solve issues quickly, and help the Scrum Team focus. It should be used to check the team’s progress towards the Sprint Goal and make adjustments for the coming workday. For example: getting help on technical issues, refining backlog items, scheduling separate meetings, or whatever is deemed necessary to help meet the Sprint Goal. One sure thing is these should not be status meetings.

What does your daily standup look like? If none of this is happening, sorry, it sounds like you’ve got a ScrumBut in your hands.

2. The Scrum Team Isn’t Self-Managed

In Scrum, the team is supposed to be self-managed. When the team makes their own decisions, it lets them make progress more quickly, increases their sense of meaning, and raises team morale. Of course, in the real world, there may be various stakeholders that have time constraints and request certain deadlines. The Scrum Team should be in close contact with them and take everything into account, yet have the authority to make the final call.

Why is this relevant? Most organizations claiming to practice Scrum are usually hierarchical. Scrum Teams often end up being managed by someone above the command chain, e.g., the team manager, the CTO, or even the CEO, who ends up calling the shots while forcing the team to follow. A lack of self-management in the team is a definite sign of ScrumBut.

3. Missing Sprint Goals

Each Sprint should have a goal. The goal gives the team something to focus on, while also being transparent about it. At the end of the sprint, the team examines whether it reached the goal, added some value, and shows this progress to the stakeholders. If the team misses the Sprint Goal, it can investigate why and improve for the next Sprint.

Is your team using sprints, though without any goals? Or maybe you are defining goals, yet they are arbitrary and don’t add any real value to your users? As Master Yoda would say: ScrumBut it is.

4. Vague Scrum Master

If you really want to practice Scrum, you need a dedicated Scrum Master. The Scrum Master is basically a servant—of the process, the team, the product owner, and even the whole organization. The Scrum Master supports healthy and open communication, helps solve conflicts, increases the team’s effectiveness, and much more. In other words, a Scrum Master’s true purpose is to get the Scrum Team working so smoothly that no Scrum Master is needed at all. As this rarely happens, you need a proper Scrum Master.

ScrumBut practitioners don’t have a dedicated Scrum Master. Plain and simple. Is your Scrum Master also the product owner or project manager? Do they only tend to facilitate events, send calendar invites, and not much else? Then it’s more likely a ScrumBut Master.

Oh no, I’m Practicing ScrumBut! What Should I Do?

First of all, don’t panic! You're not alone. Luckily, the first step to solving a problem is recognizing there is one. Now that you have, you may choose to educate yourself by reading the Scrum Guide and checking out articles, videos, and books about Scrum. You might even do some training, like taking a Certified Scrum Master course, or consider hiring a Scrum Master.

It may be difficult to bring up the topic of ScrumBut in your team and organization. You should probably do it slowly, highlighting pitfalls of your current ScrumBut practice while clearly showing how everyone could benefit from proper Scrum practice. Whatever you do, I hope you’ll be well on your way to a successful Scrum, no ifs or buts.

Do you need a dedicated Scrum Master to do things right? Our Scrum Masters are here to help.

How to manage redirects in Gatsby automatically

Ido Schacham Senior software developer — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 21:00:00 GMT

Gatsby is a Frontend framework that generates static pages. When the paths of your pages are changed, Gatsby will generate a page for the new path by default and remove the old one. How can you, as a developer, manage redirects in Gatsby automatically to avoid this problem?

How we met and exceeded our customers' expectations by 95% in 2021

Wunderdog — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 22:00:00 GMT

January is the month of New Year resolutions and recaps. Our commitment to deliver an optimal customer experience has been one of our key priorities, and this year’s customer satisfaction survey results indicate we have outdone ourselves –again. A toast to all of us for making this happen!

What we did well in 2021

We started collecting customer reviews systematically in 2019 and we closed 2021 with the highest survey participation rate so far. Of all the customers who evaluated our 2021 performance, 95% felt that we were on par with their expectations, exceeding the expectations of 53% of them. When we asked them about our strengths, they remarked our proactivity, our aim to figure out the core of the customer’s issues, and our willingness to holistically improve all areas of work.

Customers also value our ways of working and our human-centered approach that originate in our culture. The cooperation and teamwork spirit of our people were also highlighted, along with their expertise, knowledge, and leadership. In addition to our capability to create a long-lasting business impact and help our customers grow, our people-first approach is considered to be one of our main assets.

95%

of our customers say we met or exceeded their expectations

53%

of customers think we exceeded their expectations

What we will improve in 2022

The cowl does not make the monk, so it wouldn’t be fair if we only shared triumphs. Or, better put, our areas to improve are endemic to our success. Among a widespread “I can’t think of anything”, some customers encouraged us to be more daring to bring difficult topics to the table. Thanks to them, we have started improving our transparency in communication and developing methods estimating accurate budgets and timelines, especially when dealing with project value streams and tight deadlines.

The core of Wunderdog lies in its people, so we’ll keep striving to deliver excellent results while also keeping our people-first culture a priority. We are committed to growing at the forefront of design, software development, and digital transformation by future-proofing IT, and striving for sustainability. Stay tuned for plenty of adventures in 2022.

The benefit of open source contributions

Wunderdog — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 22:00:00 GMT

Open source contributions are a great way to enlarge a developer’s portfolio, learn new skills, or connect to other developers. They are also crucial for accelerating innovation: many technologies wouldn't exist nowadays without the open source movement and its collaboration culture. Aware of that, Wunderdog sponsors open-source contributions through our OSS Program, paying our consultants for investing their time in the OSS community with their own projects.

An open source program for all

We believe open source contributions enable innovation, increase working solutions and, of course, solve many problems. They are also a great way to support our people's independent learning and development. Thus, we've been running our own OSS Program for more than five years.

The program encourages Wunderdog's consultants to contribute into existing projects and to kickstart their own open source (OSS) projects. Every day, we see them making use of cutting-edge technology and tools, broadening their skills and resumes, and deepening their understanding of technologies.

Open source refers to any source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution.

Two sizes fit all: Wunderdog's OSS repositories

Interested in learning more about our OSS projects?

1. Wunderdog's open source platform, a site that aggregates in real-time all the open source projects we have contributed under our OSS program. This is a place where our developers' personal learnings, creations and contributions to the community are shared and stored.

2. Wunderdog's Github repository, a site containing all sorts of projects which might not be related to our open source program. Our developers' open source hours have mostly been used to solve everyday problems through modern technology.

Compensating your time

Naturally, maintaining meaningful open source projects is a time-consuming responsibility. Thus, in exchange for their time, we pay our developers for their OSS contributions outside of working hours or consultant projects. Here are some of the resulting projects:

A ranking system for our office ping-pong matches.
Owning and maintaining an open-source library.
Developing a system to track public transport timings in winter times.
Creating a search tool for albums on Spotify.

In 2020, our doggos spent 839 hours on open source projects. All these hours made a total bonus of 12,585€. Now that 2021 is coming to a close, we are registering even higher rates of participation than in previous years. And we are honest when we say every single hour spent on these projects has undoubtedly been a return of investment for us.

Join our community of problem-solvers

Impressed with our libraries? Join our community of problem-solvers with benefits, and contribute further to OSS with us. Apply to Wunderdog's open positions now!

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