Our Approach to Sustainable Development

At Provizio, our commitment to innovation doesn't just stop with our technology. It extends into the very way we work. To address the challenges associated with an ever increasing need to boost workplace productivity, while simultaneously giving employees a fair work/life balance, we needed to take a novel approach to product development that wasn’t bound to traditional rules of project management. So, let’s dive in!

Taking a Step Back

As a startup organisation, it’s easy to fall into the trap of following “the industry standard” when establishing the foundations of a workflow management process. With so many things to build and so little hands to build them, startups often find themselves so entrenched in the engineering process that they fail to see the bigger picture of why.

At Provizio, we understood that in order to supplant industry leading competitors, we needed to focus as much on innovation within our development process as in our products. In this regard, an “if it works for them it can work for us” approach was not going to provide the momentum we needed to ultimately build a product that could entice customers away from the grip of trusted suppliers. Hence, a key approach to continued innovation within Provizio, is the ability for us to regularly step out of the trenches and take a candid look at whether our process and priorities are truly aligned and in service of our overall mission.

The Intersection of Workplace Psychology and Productivity:

In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, where factors like remote work, reduced hour work weeks, flexible working hours and artificial intelligence are hot topics among employees, many companies face the challenge either of holding their ground with tried and true processes, or taking a chance to embrace the unknown in the hopes of coming out on top.

At Provizio, we believe our workforce is the heart of our success and as such, we spend a considerable amount of time in pioneering innovative work practices to boost productivity, creativity, and employee satisfaction to ensure that our heart continues to beat strong and true. These practices, deeply rooted in the principles of workplace psychology, are reshaping how we think about work, collaboration, and productivity.

Agile Development

Agile principles are the bedrock of our project management approach, allowing us to respond swiftly and effectively to the ever-evolving demands of our industry. However, while many organisations get bogged down in agile process documentation, arguing between the pros and cons of the now countless agile frameworks available today, at Provizio we take a different approach.

Our work practices are guided mainly by values outlined in the original Agile Manifesto, whose deliberately vague guidelines left the door open for organisations to customise a workflow approach that worked best for their unique structure, products and workforce. In this respect, we made our own interpretations of the values of the Agile Manifesto and built a framework tailored for our specific needs.

When it comes to agile frameworks, Provizio takes a little inspiration from almost every one.

• SAFe inspired our approach for establishing yearly objectives and long-term goals that could easily be referenced and tracked throughout the development process.
• Scrum inspired our 2-week development increments, with regular touch-points for teams to align on progress and priorities.
• FAST Agile inspired our “collective” engineering structure, where engineers were given maximum autonomy to work in self-structured teams to address the dynamic needs and phases of complex product development.
• Kanban inspired our day to day workflow management system, where everyone can quickly understand the individual tasks and priorities of team members.
• Various Liberating Structures inspired our approach to meetings, where frequent and disruptive meeting schedules were replaced by more infrequent but valuable events, where everyone in the organisation could get a better grasp of our priorities and our progress.

These, and many other frameworks like LeSS, Nexus, The Spotify Model and more, all fed into the development of our current agile process which, like our products, improves and evolves incrementally based on regular feedback.

Overcoming Resistance

A frequent barrier to agile development, often voiced by those exposed to more traditional or waterfall based development styles, is the alleged lack of evidence to support the view that agile will work in their specific industry. Now, while there have been many studies to support that agile values such as individual autonomy and incremental development in the workplace have been linked to higher job satisfaction, improved performance, increased creativity & enhanced product quality, there will always be a sense of skepticism when adopting a new process.

However, the key to overcoming such resistance is to ensure that employees have a sense of choice and initiative. In agile, nothing is fixed and scrutiny is welcome to provide the insights needed to improve and adapt the process to suit every unique case. In giving people an outlet to express their feedback over time, with the knowledge that their feedback is heard and actioned, this often leads to higher levels of intrinsic motivation, which is a key driver in producing higher quality work.

Conclusion

At Provizio, our approach to work mirrors our approach to technology - innovative, agile, and always focused on the human element. By embracing agile principles and granting autonomy to our employees, we're not just building advanced technologies; we're shaping a work culture that is as progressive and cutting-edge as our products.

Together, these practices form the cornerstone of our success, driving us towards our ultimate goal – making roads safer for everyone.