Improving our collaboration

In this presentation from the 2022 Typefi User Conference, Marie Gollentz, Typefi Project Manager, explains how this will work, how it will impact you, and the benefits it will bring.

Transcript | Presenter

Transcript

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00:00	Intro
00:38	Company growth
01:33	Solutions consultants
02:10	Typefi teams
04:00	Your strategic goals
04:58	Helping you Do More
06:38	Project management
08:06	Better project visibility
09:15	Faster project delivery
10:23	Continued improvement

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Intro (00:00)

MARIE: Okay, so I’d like to think, the best for the end, *laugh*, of course.

So before we head off to the mezzanine for another well deserved, well, not another, today it will be the first, a well deserved cocktail. As Jason just mentioned, I would like to give you a quick overview of the new project management approach we started implementing at Typefi with this idea that we want to improve our collaboration.

Company growth (00:38)

So we’ve grown as a company.

In the last 10 years, the number of our customers has increased by 38%. And in that same period of time, we grew as a team as well, from 21 people to 48 today.

Most of you already know us well, but I still had a couple of questions earlier this morning. So we are indeed in the US, in Europe, in Australia, in South Africa, and our very big team is in Sri Lanka.

That means that we work across five continents, and apparently we speak over 14 languages between us.

Solutions consultants (01:33)

So on a regular basis, you work with your solutions consultants, here today, Damian and Kevin.

Most of you, I believe, work with Dilum as well. And maybe some of you have worked with Jamie and Eric, who are based in the US.

And your consultant is probably, with your BDM, missing Stephen for most of you, they’re probably your main points of contact at Typefi.

Typefi teams (02:10)

But really for each Typefi project, we bring together a wider team of experts according to the scope of your project.

You can see here our Sri Lankan team. I’m answering, or I’m echoing another comment I heard this morning. Not a lot of women in that Typefi team today. Nope. *laugh*

But as I mentioned this morning, we have many of them in Sri Lanka. Engineers, the head of the country is a woman too, so there’s quite a lot of them. And they work on your projects.

So I don’t need to introduce you to our bureau of scripting affairs, that’s Peter at the end, Vlad’s there too.

Most of your workflows I think include XSLT. And this is developed by our XSLT team.

And sometimes our Writer, Designer and Server teams are also involved in your project. And sometimes we even need to add Guy or Caleb to the mix because we want to push what we can do with our products.

So to collaborate effectively on these demanding projects, we really needed to improve how we work to make sure we can better help you.

Your strategic goals (04:00)

So this is you. It’s great to see so many of you today. It’s a pleasure to finally see you again. It’s a pleasure to meet new faces for the first time.

And whether we started collaborating with you recently, or have been for over a decade, really the idea is that we want to partner with you on the long term, and we always want to better align with your goals.

And over the years we’ve been working on projects more and more sophisticated as you improve your products, you create new ones. And as these goals evolve and after a day with you today, we have some pretty exciting projects with you coming up.

Helping you Do More (04:58)

We’ve talked about improving the quality and usability of your product. We’ve talked about implementing new tools.

A lot around MathML and MathTools here, the experts at the back.

It might be new customizations. I’ve heard there are things about tables not behaving, images not showing the right way. We’re going to help you with that.

And then whether you want to reach a wider audience or you want to enter a new market, we’re also here to help you with new products.

I’ve heard EPUB, HTML, maybe other formats like Red Line, or preview outputs. You might want to add new languages. You might want to make your content accessible. And we are here to help you do that.

We’re also here obviously to make sure you keep up to date with the latest technology and formats. That can be InDesign, that can be the XML format you are working with.

And we also talked a bit about collaborating and how you do that internally. And we want to help you to better collaborate and to make sure you can scale internally as well.

Project management (06:38)

So how are we improving internally to better work with this growing team and deliver these innovative solutions? And how does this benefit you?

So I’ve worked as a solutions consultant with many of you, actually looking, yeah. And I’m now very, very excited to help you as Typefi’s Project Manager.

That means that for any new project you undertake with Typefi, I will now work alongside the team who works with you to deliver your solution.

So you can see here on the screen our new Typefi Project Guide. We’ve consolidated each stage of our Typefi project. And you’ll find in this guide the details on how we manage our project, who you will work with, and what is included in these different phases.

And really, again, the idea here is to make sure that you know what to expect and what is required from you at each stage.

Better project visibility (08:06)

And following up on this idea, we want to connect with you at every stage to provide you with better project visibility and transparency.

We really want to make sure you have a clear idea of the project stages so you can plan your time better and you can manage your resources better.

So at the beginning of the project, we will now share with you a project plan and a timeline that looks like this, or better once Lukas and Kate had have worked their magic on it.

This timeline is based on the scope and the different phases of your implementation. And for each work order, we will give you an indication of, first the development time, and then the user acceptance testing period. So again, you know, when you need to schedule time to test and confirm that we’ve done a good job.

Faster project delivery (09:15)

And to deliver our solution faster, we are also improving our processes internally. This is a part that you might not see that much, but you can see here an example of a work order schedule where we define our time development cycles for our consultants and engineers.

We’re using sprints for that as part of this approach. We organise sprint reviews to track progress and address blockers just to make sure the project is progressing. And then we want to report that progress to you.

So to give you a clear idea of the status of the project, we will organise regular meetings with you to report on the project to discuss any issues we found, ask questions where we need your feedback, and agree on next steps.

Continued improvement (10:23)

And I’m going to conclude using words from other team members because we really do share these values across the team.

The first ones are from Jason. You’ll find them at the very beginning of that Typefi guide. “Your success is our success.” And Kate added, “like you, we are constantly learning and evolving the way we work so that we can do more for you.”

And with this new approach to project management, we want to improve this experience working with Typefi. And this is obviously a work in progress. So we started a few months back. We want your feedback to make it better.

Some of you, we’ll be ready when you’re ready, to start working with you and go further.

If you have any questions or comments, you can share them now or over cocktail up there.

Anything? No. Well, thank you.