Culture
Jan 02, 2019
How Credera’s Open Technology Solutions Practice Stays Sharp & Connected
Credera’s Open Technology Solutions (OTS) practice is our largest team and focuses on building custom software solutions and integrations for our clients leveraging open source technologies. Technologies that the OTS practice frequently works with include the Spring Framework, AngularJS, React, Elastic Search, Redis, Spark, Kafka, AWS and Azure. Programming languages they frequently use include Java, Python, Scala and Ruby.
Over the years our OTS practice has developed several internal professional development programs, special interest groups, and culture building opportunities. All of these programs are optional activities intended to help employees grow in some way and/or develop deeper relationships with co-workers. Part of the reason they have been so successful is because most of the groups and events were created and led organically by employees to fill a specific need.
Below you will find a brief overview of the OTS professional development programs, special interest groups, and culture building activities.
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Professional development programs include:
Program
Description
Frequency
Lunch-n-Learn
Once a month presentation on topics that are relevant to technology solutions or currently trending, both soft skills and technical topics are covered
1x per month
Project X-Ray
The main aim of this program is to give everyone an insight into delivery on active clients, including specific technologies that we are leveraging. The objective is twofold: A) professional development: learn from what other teams are doing on their projects and B) business development: better understand what we can do / have done so we can communicate at a deeper level with potential clients
1x per month
Architect School
The aim of this program is to groom Consultants and Senior Consultants for the Architect tier through a series of workshops, books and online training material
8-week sessions, 2x per year
Public Speaking Club
This program aims to improve public speaking skills through toastmaster-like exercises
1x per month
Speak Easy
Monthly presentations on topics related to effective communication and client relationship management, each meeting includes a teaching portion and an activity/discussion
1x per month
Book Club
The main objective of the club is to encourage reading for professional and social development, the group alternates between a technical and non-fiction book every 2 months
1x per month
Professional Certifications
Formal certification path for AWS and Salesforce with incentive bonuses
N/A
Professional Development Plan
This plan is set up by level and focus area with a separate level called out for 1st year campus hires, all courses are pre-approved for employees to expense
N/A
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Special interest groups include:
Group
Description / Charter
Commerce / MarTech
Share collective knowledge, discuss trends, and ultimately form a point of view on a topic that is relevant to the Marketing Technology and Commerce space
Mobile & IoT
Drive professional development in the mobile and IoT space through hands-on proof of concepts and hackathons
Enterprise Architecture
Drive Credera’s point of view on successfully executing enterprise level software projects
Front-End Development
Evaluate new frameworks and practices that are relevant to creating a great user experience and help individuals deepen their skill set in this area
Integrations & APIs
Keep up to date with the latest frameworks and patterns for developing APIs, including best practices as they relate to security, logging, reliability, governance, monitoring, performance, etc.
DevOps
Help grow Credera’s focus area in the DevOps space, including developing specific service offerings
Cloud
Maintain current knowledge of offerings, best practices, and real-world use cases for major public and private clouds
AR/VR
Focus on how to integrate AR/VR experiences with client engagements to drive more meaningful customer interactions
Big Data & Search
Focus on topics like time series databases, distributed data processing, high performance data streaming, or leveraging data and machine learning to create sophisticated solutions
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Culture building events and programs include:
Program
Description
Birthday Celebrations
Monthly networking event with cake and champagne to celebrate those who have birthdays that month
Board Game Nights
Monthly evening networking event over board games, video games, beer and pizza
Practice Retreats
Quarterly networking events for the entire OTS practice – past events have been at places like Painting with a Twist, Cidercade, and playing games like Broomball
Newsletter
A monthly newsletter that showcases the OTS practice culture and communicates important practice events, news and, typically, a few jokes
These programs are only the tip of the iceberg – Credera’s OTS practice leader, Vik Jain, encourages his team to think of new ways to grow and learn from one another.
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