Inside our Digital Studio: Culture, Team, and Processes

A behind-the-scenes at Coletiv

Today we will be taking you inside our digital studio just as if you were joining the team on your first day! We will show you around our office space, introduce our team, explain about our work culture and, last but not least, our processes.

You are likely feeling a bit nervous but worry not. We are usually friendly people! 😂

Now open the door and explore. 🚪

Office

When stepping into our office, you will probably find around 2-3 team members in the working space. 🧑🏻‍💻👩🏻‍💻

Since the pandemic started, the office is usually empty, but it is always a place you can go to if you want to focus and go outside for a little bit.

Right beside the working space, you will notice a reddish/orange sofa, a beautiful yet unused floor lamp, and a mini library with dozens of books. 📚

That’s the lounge area where we usually read, chill and watch something on TV. 🍿

On your left, you will see our cozy kitchen and meeting rooms. There, you will likely find André talking to a customer. We should not bother him, for now. 😂

In the kitchen, you have cookies, tea, coffee, milk, and cereals for when the hunger kicks in.

You are free to eat whatever you like. 🍪 ☕️

We have two meeting rooms if you need that extra privacy and silence. And our office has two bathrooms, one near the working space and one near the kitchen.

And that is it! Make yourself at home. 😎

We are currently in Boavista, Porto, which is a great area. We love it! 😉

You can find restaurants, shops, cafés, bars, bus stations, and the metro just a few meters away from our office. Since it is your first day, we will probably take you out for lunch to a nearby Picanha place 🥩 or a different restaurant if you do not eat meat. Cheers. 🍷

Team

Time to meet our team! Our digital studio is a combination of curious people. Some of us even come from very different fields, like biology and psychology. We are a mixture of T-shaped people who love to learn new things every day and are willing to help Coletiv grow. 🚀

We will value your expertise, but there are some other qualities that we look for: curiosity, respect, honesty, and humility. 🙌

Curiosity to try new things and learn. Respectful communication with others. Honesty and ability to provide constructive feedback. Humbleness to acknowledge when we are wrong or need help.

That is Coletiv! ❤️

We have a flat hierarchy with distributed company responsibilities. So if you want to help out in a new role, you are more than welcome. 💪

We have around 15 members so far, but we are counting on growing very soon. 85% of our team are developers, 10% are designers, and the remaining 5%, are up to marketing and business development.

But, even though we have many developers, they do not just code. 🛠

Our team has different DRIs (directly responsible individuals) that lead all areas of Coletiv.

Some examples:

👉 António is a frontend developer but helps us find and hire talent;

👉 Bernardes is a backend developer but organizes our team-building events;

👉 Daniel is a full-stack developer but specializes in project management;

👉 Marinho is a backend developer but is responsible for internal activities like Open Hour and Investment Time;

As we keep growing in terms of projects, we will probably need individuals for each area. But, for now, everyone is happy to give a hand. 🙌

Our team is never satisfied and is eager to learn more every day. New technologies. New ways to solve things. New ways to collaborate. You name it.

You can also leave your contribution at any time. 😉

Culture

We believe in friendship and collaboration, and this reflects in our culture. We encourage everyone to learn and grow while sharing our accomplishments. 🥇 Our self-organized attitude allows us to aim higher and to keep improving Coletiv as a whole.

Over the years, we have been organizing different activities to encourage our creativity and willingness to learn. Especially in remote times, it is essential to keep that spark alive.

So we have some unique activities that make part of our culture today:

• Investment Time 💻
• Open hour ⏳
• Giddy Hour & Day 🐐

👉 Every Friday afternoon, our team can invest time to learn a new skill, technology, or tool. A time where we work for Coletiv itself and do not do any client work. Investment time allows our team to stay motivated, get out of that project life, and keep learning.

👉 The Open Hour is a time to share our knowledge and experiences with the team. It happens once a week, and we usually pick a subject according to our investment times. But we can talk about anything: development, design, marketing, politics, etc.

👉 Giddy is a tool that we built in-house to get feedback from the team and check on how everyone is doing. Since our team is between projects, it becomes difficult to identify issues and track happiness.

On Giddy Hours we talk about the votes on each project. On Giddy Day, we all reflect on Coletiv itself.

But not everything is about work! 🤩

Our friendship culture requires some awesome team-building activities and, of course, a yearly retreat. During summer we usually go to the countryside to take advantage of nature and fully relax as a team. 🏞 You can count on extreme sports, food, and lots of beer. 🍻

Processes

We are control freaks regarding internal processes. 😌 We have one for everything, even for this blog!

Having well-defined processes is essential to our way of working, as it allows us to deliver the best quality of service possible, no matter the timeframe. Everyone in our team contributes to their area and helps define processes from onboarding and design to development.

We use Notion to keep everything organized, so if you need information, it is there.

Since our founding, we have been working to improve how we manage our projects and create quality products from scratch.

Here are some of our most solid processes so far:

Hiring 🧳 → After selecting resumes, we start with an informal talk via phone to get to know the person and explain the company to check if there’s a fit. As the second step, we send a challenge either for developers or designers. After reviewing the challenge, we book a technical interview to understand the level of expertise based on the challenge and ask some questions.

Last but not least, we group up to give feedback on each candidate. For us, it makes sense that those who’ll work closely with the new member make the final decision.

Onboarding 🙋🏻‍♂️ → When a new person starts at Coletiv, we have a dedicated onboarding checklist in Notion. It includes resources to read, courses, and small tasks to complete. The new member gets feedback and guidance from the selected mentor or the team throughout the process.

Product strategy 🎯 → Before starting a project, we sit down with our customers to research the market, identify problems, brainstorm solutions, validate them, and plan the execution. Our continuous interaction with the client is what brings the best results.

Product design 📱 → We start with low-fi wireframes to outline the product’s flow and information hierarchy. Then we work to define the visual direction. After that, we assemble and design all screens for desktop or any responsive version. We address every interaction, every illustration, and every icon. In the end, we deliver a complete design system.

Product development 🛠 → First, we get together with the stakeholders to understand the product. Then we define the right technology stack for the project. Our developers follow a strict Git workflow process, on which new code will only be eligible for production once it gets past a series of automatic and manual tests, as well as peer-reviews (aka code reviews).

Project management 🕵️‍♂️ → We usually have a dedicated manager for each project who is responsible for organizing the task board, estimating tasks, planning development sprints for the team, and making sure everything is up and running, within deadlines.

We work hard to stand out in this area, and we are always trying to improve our processes. 💪 Who knows what comes next!

Last words ✍️

As our team grows and we welcome different people, our mindset will evolve. And the way we work will change.

We always count on each one of our team members to keep bringing their uniqueness and knowledge to Coletiv so we can grow together.

We hope you liked to learn about our studio and we hope to see you in our upcoming articles. 😁 Let us know, in the comments, if there is a particular part that you enjoyed.