The Quest for an Agile Company: Eight Years tangly llc

In the past, we rented dedicated office desks in a coworking space. The place was nice. The location was ideal for all collaborators. The people were friendly.

The coffee machine was reasonably good. During Summer, we could take a swim in the nearby lake. You only need to take a five-minute walk to reach the beach.

We found out we were often at customer locations and had few opportunities to discuss company business in the coworking space. The other attendees were working in different industries. We had seldom common interests, and regularly we helped them solve their computer problems.

Honestly, I prefer to develop software at home. The displays have higher resolution and quality.

Video calls are more relaxed at home and less expensive in time. No commute time is necessary.

So the coworking approach did not have a lot of advantages for us. We decided to stop renting the office space after one year. We do not see the purpose of having a rented office. The office will most often be empty. Internal meetings are seldom held in an office space. We prefer to meet in a nice coffee shop or at a cool location.

Team communication is performed asynchronously using our company chat and synchronously using video calls. Slack is a wonderful platform for this purpose.

You can work at customer site, at home, and at coworking spaces. The decision is based on the project needs and your preferences.

This flexibility requires high-quality notebooks. As a developer, I need a fast machine with a high-quality display. I also like to have my own keyboard and mouse when I connect to external displays. A programmer is more efficient with a US English keyboard and an ergonomic mouse.

When working at home, you should have a desk with adjustable height and a good chair.

As a digital nomad, I have my whole office in one traveling bag ^[1].

All our company processes are digital and described in our company documentation.

The tangly blog exists since the inception of the company. We steadily published at least one article every month. The main themes are agile approaches, technical fluency, Java stack, and coaching experience.

Lately we wrote about our experiences as lecturers at technical universities and workshop facilitators.

We had the privilege to work on more than twenty product developments since the inception of the company.

The experiences and insights gained through the interactions with our customers often provided the material for articles.

The blog is a showcase hinting the capabilities, experiences, and interests of our collaborators.

Interested parties read articles and can decide if our ideas match the needs and expectations they have. The ideas expressed are cornerstones of our company culture and capabilities.

We are very satisfied with the technological stack used to create and maintain the company documentation site and blog [7] [8] [9].

The Docsy template had a major version upgrade last year. The migration was painless und performed in less than an hour.

The community is supportive and professional.

We are a small agile and Java boutique.

We love coaching, mentoring, and training. We are engineers and software craftsmen. We love developing digital products and writing software.

We are pragmatic and agile.

All collaborators identify with these values and apply them in our daily work.

More subtle ethical values are discussed in company meetings or during coffee breaks. I am fascinated that we have a strong common understanding of ethical values.

It is fun to work at tangly.