Always one
step ahead
Even Microsoft has occasionally been struggling to keep up with Maritech’s Innovation Lab. “It is an exceptional and highly competent team”, says Bjørnar Kvalsnes, Product and Technology Director at Maritech.
High ambitions
The Innovation Lab is the core of Maritech, developing our cloud solutions and our technological strategy.
“On some support questions Microsoft has not been able to help us, because they say they simply have not thought as far ahead as we have done,” Bjørnar smiles. “The expertise this team has, and the teamwork they put in, is completely unique.”
Since the Innovation Lab was established in 2018, Maritech has worked steadfastly to forge together a winning team.
“We built a team with seniors with long experience mixed with new employees. They have started from scratch, created a framework, and together fostered the entire Innovation Lab,” says Hildegunn Trondsen, Manager Development Team at Maritech.
The team functions like a football team where everyone has different roles.
“None of us knows everything, we all have different areas of expertise. As a team we are really strong. Common to all of us is that we are eager to find new solutions and do things in new ways. Everyone is very interested in creating tools that make it easy for others to work and that are easy for others to develop further,” says Leif Sverre Reistad, Developer at the Innovation Lab.
Hildegunn confirms that the team spirit is strong, both professionally and on the human level.
“When we welcome summer substitutes and apprentices, everyone is open and willing to share. That is exactly what our methodology is about, and also two of our core values as a company; to help each other and innovate together. Onboarding of new people is seamless because we have a defined framework and a specific way of working,” says Trondsen.
Design Thinking + Scrum
The team at the Innovation Lab works according to Design Thinking and Scrum methodology. Design Thinking is often referred to as design-driven innovation and is a human- and value-oriented methodology for innovation and development. It connects an analytical approach with intuition and creativity, and research shows that this way of thinking and working can bring great benefits.
“At Maritech, we have used Design Thinking since 2019,” says Hildegunn. ” Then we participated in the Innovation Norway program Omstillingsmotor, where the purpose was a digital competence boost for Norwegian businesses. We joined the program through the competence cluster NCE iKuben – where we are participants – and what we learned has become very important for how we now work with innovation and development throughout Maritech.”
Scrum is a framework for optimizing product development – basically software. It is based on development and deliveries in short iterations, and is based on self-directed, interdisciplinary teams of between 5-9 people. Popularly called two pizza teams; every internal team should be small enough that it can be fed with two pizzas. The development team has the authority to solve the tasks in ways they find most appropriate – within certain limits, with a focus on high quality and continuous learning.
Secure, scalable, user friendly
Maritech is now building all new software in Microsoft Azure, where our solutions are delivered as Software as a Service (SaaS); subscription-based services – in our self-developed cloud platform DigitalSeafood.
“We always choose to use the latest technology and will always be at the forefront – best-of-breed, both in terms of functionality and user-friendliness. Microsoft Azure gives us the opportunities, flexibility and security we need to be at the top of the world and means that customers get the maximum benefit from choosing a cloud solution from us,” says Bjørnar Kvalsnes.
“Through Azure, we can use advanced Microsoft tools in the development of our own software, and we use Microsoft’s infrastructure and expertise to operate and deliver our solutions to customers worldwide. It is easy to scale the number of users and capacity up / down as needed, we can guarantee the uptime – and most importantly, very high security. Every year, Microsoft spends 1 billion dollars on investments in security, it illustrates how much stronger we are with such a solid partner.”
It is not only internally at Maritech that the team is praised. This autumn, an external consulting company conducted an evaluation of the architecture, the department and the methodology. The conclusion was very positive.
“They stated that we are a top tier team, and they were impressed by the work that has been done,” Kvalsnes concludes. “A great recognition of a very talented team and the effort that is put in every single day.”
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