March 18, 2022

Life as an Agile Product Delivery Lead – Jan van Thillo

What are some of the things you’ve been working on this past year?

Working together with lead partners on creating the next generation of our edition-reading applications.

In other words, we bundled forces with three publishers to co-develop a platform of shared features and functionalities. My first focus was on working together with DuMont, one of the largest German publishing groups, to co-create the features most-important to them, namely a way for readers to comfortable read article per article and supporting the functionality of having these articles being read out loud to the readers.

Something memorable that struck me during this time is the indisputable benefit of putting different publishers from across Europe together and how that combined knowledge and expertise translated into benefits for each party.

What parts of the job have been rewarding for you?

Numbers and feedback from readers.

On the one hand, there is seeing the team’s efforts being reflected in data. We are continuously striving to improve the quality of the apps that we are delivering, which impacts things like the crash-free rate of the apps and the performance of downloads. Having numerical evidence of that progress and visually seeing it improve in our various dashboards and graphs is tremendously rewarding.

On the other hand, there is the human side of the story which for me comes to life when reading the app reviews. Although I consider myself a numbers-guy, I’ll admit there is almost no better way to start your morning than to read an appreciative message from a long-time reader.

What has been challenging during your first year at Twipe?

Continuously delivering excellence and peace-of-mind for customers.

Now, that being said, I think we do an outstanding job of realising that. The reason it is challenging is because there is way more to it than one would assume at first sight. For example, for testing to support peace-of-mind, it has to not only take place on different operating systems, but potentially also on different OS versions, screen sizes, client installations, and app languages. Of course, this only one piece of a large puzzle that includes many more things, including daily monitoring, structured code reviews, client validation, and so on.

What’s your favourite thing about being a Twipee?

The people.

I know this is the most cliché answer possible, but there is something about a 5-stage hiring process and a ‘Trust in Talent’ company value that ensures that you can count on every single Twipee. As the company as a whole is working on products that require a constant and solid cooperation between different teams, this strength of Twipe proves to be invaluable.

If you want to join me in the product team, why not take a look at our latest openings?


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