Trinidad Wiseman: A top team, not a family
I did several interesting interviews with our CEO and founder, Ander Tenno, and found out why we do things this way and what sets us apart from other companies in the IT sector. In the next few months, we will bring you a series of articles in which Ander talks about the functioning, strategy, and culture of Trinidad Wiseman (TWN) with open cards.
“ Only a people-centered company can create people-centered services.“
We like to say that we build a smart future for people by creating and digitizing people-centered services. Our service design and digital change professionals work with various organisations, using their time and expertise on a wide range of projects and challenges.
People-centeredness has been an essential part of our projects and work culture since the creation of TWN. We always pay close attention to user experience and accessibility in our projects.
When we create something, the goal is to make people's lives better. New technology is a tool in its service, not an end in itself. A similar perception has begun in Europe: for example, the relatively new Industry 5.0 initiative encourages us to look beyond efficiency and productivity towards a sustainable and people-centered industry.
Congratulations to Estonia as a country that provides an opportunity to create fierce visions for the future in the public sector and work with such digital revolutionary projects as proactive event-based services, which are based on the most important life events.
“Growth or profit is not a separate goal, but customer recognition of our work.“
Although we have grown quite rapidly as a company, with over 110 employees and a net turnover of over 8 million euros by the end of 2021, we do not overestimate growth or profit. Growth is not an end in itself, but we see it as a recognition of our work from our customers and an opportunity to offer our employees exciting new challenges.
TWN culture
„TWN is a workplace for smart and independent people.“
3 core values guide us: people-centeredness, autonomy, and professionalism.
People-centered organization means understanding that the TWN is not a structure of identical and substitutable "resource units" but a group of people working together, all of whom are separate personalities.
Therefore, we have a few strict rules and processes. However, we have formulated goals and described expectations for delivering in different cases, with standard solutions, templates, and tips.
It is essential to understand that TWN is not a family regarding professionalism. It is worth watching us rather than a high-level sports team. As a top team, we do everything we can to develop and make the best results, both individually and as a team.
We look forward to diligence, determination, and initiative. If our cooperation does not go well, we will discuss things together and decide what to change. As a rule, this is enough, but it is not excluded that it may be wise to continue elsewhere so as not to waste your career.
Autonomy, i.e., the ability to deliver independently, is valued by all smart and independent people. Everyone can choose the ways and means of working that suit them, resulting in a good result for the client and the company. TWN is not a leadership organization.
The roles of both managers and specialists are necessary, and they are in no way better or worse than each other but simply do different types of work. By emphasizing autonomy, we reduce all forms of coordination, reporting, and micro-management in TWN. We also know that not every mistake requires the introduction of a new rule.
We are proud that we have a very good balance between men and women in our team atypically for the sector: more than 40% of TWN's employees are women.
In addition to basic sports support and spectacle compensation, we take care of the health of our employees, including offering them extensive Confido private health insurance and a comprehensive health check-up package. And not to forget to have fun at work; we regularly organize events within the team and the entire company.
TWN band The Placeholders
Service areas
Internally, we have divided our activities into service design and digital transformation.
Service design
Service design means the process of creating new services or developing existing ones. Let's look at the whole process, not just the digital part. In service design, we analyze how to change the organization's processes and service delivery channels to be efficient for the service provider and ensure a good user experience.
The diversity of our customers makes our work exciting. We carry out service design projects for large private sector companies (Tallink, Elisa, Telia) and public sector organizations (incl. The Ministry of Education and Research, MEAC, SMIT). We also work with start-up companies.
Digital transformation
Many services are supported in one way or another by digital solutions. Digital change, i.e., the introduction of digital solutions or replacing older solutions with new ones, is our second area of activity besides service design, covering more than half of our activities.
Why digital transformation? On the one hand, it provides efficiency; on the other hand, the opportunity to create new services using automatic data processing. Speaking of projects, this includes various information systems and procedural environments, self-services, event services already mentioned, and intranets.
Team-based structure
All our specialists who provide services to our clients belong to teams in service design or digital transformation. As of December 2021, we have 8 teams; each team has 10-15 members.
„Our teams are not separate mini-companies under a large umbrella company, but we have always had a well-worked division of labor model.“
We deal with sales together, and together we choose the most suitable team who will deliver a specific project. We also assemble project teams by involving specialists from several teams, if necessary.
Digital transformation teams consist of necessary professionals such as project managers, developers, designers, analysts, testers. The projects are of different sizes: smaller projects for 3 people and large developments with 10 specialists in the team.
As a rule, Scrum or Kanban is used as a development methodology. However, we are certainly not evangelists of a specific methodology - in the end, it is still only a tool for carrying out the project. We use Atlassian's tools to manage Jira, Confluence, and others.
The service design teams include analysts, UX / UI specialists, front-end developers with a strong UX interest. As a rule, the members of these teams work as part of other project teams - at the client or contributing to our digital change team projects - or do specialized projects such as business analysis, UX analysis, service design.
As a rule, projects in the service design area are somewhat smaller than those in digital transformation. There is usually no separate project manager, but service design specialists are used to managing them themselves.
About the role of a team leader
A project manager is responsible for the success of a particular project; the team leader deals with people and ensures that the people in their team are fully supported and satisfied.
The main tasks of a team leader are to keep the team working and the atmosphere positive. He is also a communicator of the company's culture and values within his team. Team leader helps to remember the goals and why things are done in a certain way. Everyone especially appreciates team events organized within a team :)
Often, the team leader also plays the role of a project manager, but digital transformation teams also have a separate project manager who takes on some things.
Sounds exciting?
If our culture and values speak to you and you feel that working for TWN could be for you, feel free to contact us at careers@twn.ee! We have vacancies in almost every role, from team leaders to developers, analysts, designers, and testers.
We will soon be publishing articles on our hybrid work model and the development paths for TWN professionals.
