Energized, inspired, and motivated. These were the words used by attendees of Targetprocess’ first-ever customer conference. 40 companies were represented as Targetprocess customers, partners, and work management experts gathered in Berlin, Germany on May 16 - 18, 2018.
This unique event was “Powered by You”, and shared what our customers wanted to see most:
- Discussions on the future of Agile portfolio management
- Work management best practices
- Hands-on product tutorials and workshops
- One-on-one time with peers and Targetprocess team members
It was jam-packed with learning and inspiration, from thought-provoking messages on the future of work management to tactical, hands-on training for customization and reporting in Targetprocess.
Keeping Up With Agile
In recent years, the need to shift from team level visibility to portfolio transparency has risen across organizations. Companies of all sizes are demanding clear reporting that rolls up to business level epics with clear views into cost, timing, and results.
Michael Dubakov, co-founder of Targetprocess, shared that project and program managers, devops, and heads of IT are more sophisticated in terms of knowledge, abilities, and expectations. Companies are outgrowing their team level tools and stacking them on top of one another to support change and growth. They need a holistic solution. Michael shared his vision for a comprehensive work management platform. It enables end-to-end business agility including support of variability and change, enables integrations and builds in the ability to scale. You can view his presentation here.
Inspiring IT and Non-IT Teams Alike
It’s no surprise that Agile practices and methods have spread through organizations, resulting in many non-IT use cases. These examples were some of the most well-received at the conference.
For example, Agora Roermond and the Fieldlabs Qeske team in the Netherlands have changed the way students learn by bringing Agile practices and tools into non-traditional schools. Guido van Dijk (education researcher) and his team developed an innovative way for students to control their own curriculum and be autonomous learners. Students use Targetprocess and Agile methods to visualize their learning.
While the current focus on technical and IT use cases is certainly not going anywhere, these non-IT uses demonstrate that end-to-end business agility is quickly taking hold. It’s clear that marketing, operations, and other departments can transform their practices to deliver more business value and increase customer happiness.
Connecting with Like-Minded People
The importance of bringing people together was not lost on our team or conference attendees.
“We, both our team and customers have a lot of successes and challenges to share with each other. Organizing face-to-face experiences and virtual get-togethers on a regular basis helps us brainstorm and better guide our collective organizations.” - Kate Makarevich, Product Specialist at Targetprocess
“I am so excited to learn from everyone at the conference. Making connections with peers who are ‘in my shoes’ at their own organizations gives me confidence that I have the ability to continue to drive change. And, it’s easy to justify attending when I can knock out technical questions with a Targetprocess expert in person.” - Conference Attendee
Nothing beats face-to-face interactions
Wrap Up
You can see more conference activities captured in our photo album on Facebook. Feel free to let us know if you have any questions about the event, and don't forget to subscribe to our blog for more details on Agile, work management practices, and our future planned events!
Today, it’s good to be Targetprocess. After 14 years of stable, natural growth, we are excited to dive into acceleration mode with $5M Series A financing led by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Zubr Capital. Read the announcement.
“The goal of taking on this funding is to get bigger. We see the opportunity right now because more companies understand the value of agile to provide faster response and quicker delivery… It’s the perfect time because Agile is moving beyond IT into other parts of the organization, shares Andrey Mihailenko, co-founder, in this TechCrunch article.
What does it mean for you?
Overall, we remain the same Targetprocess that our 51,000 users across 80 countries know and love. Through thoughtful growth, we will continue to deliver the best platform for visualizing work across the enterprise. And with additional capital, we will further invest in our development teams to provide new features even faster, and enable customers to make better, more informed decisions.
With planned growth of our sales, marketing and customer support teams, you can expect that we will maintain our live, 24/7 customer support channels and provide even more great resources and opportunities to connect with your peers, Agile experts and our team. Our R&D teams will expand to ensure that you remain on the cutting-edge of project management.
Learn more with the following resources, or email us with your questions. We look forward to what’s to come!
As a relatively small company, one of our greatest assets is the personal relationship we can cultivate with users. We know many of you by name (don’t panic), we get to read every single piece of feedback you send, and a few of us have even had the chance to visit your offices and see how you work.
To reciprocate this, we’d like to shine a light onto who we are by occasionally sharing team retrospectives, process investigations, and personal interviews. Many of you have probably already chatted with our first victim candidate: Sergey Gnedin, head of support.
Targetprocess Support: Behind the curtains
Hi, Sergey. When did you get started at Targetprocess?
About seven years ago, I was working in QA at an enterprise company. At the time, Targetprocess was just getting started, and they needed someone in support with a technical background, who could reproduce bugs and work on more complex issues. After all, they were providing support for people with QA experience. I had no idea who they were until this dude contacted me about the job. I visited in 2010 and was really impressed. It was a small team, everyone was nice, everything was informal, and decisions were made quickly. I liked the setting, so I quit my enterprise job and came here.
What do you do at Targetprocess?
Well, I’m the head of Customer Support, so most of the time I’m talking to users. We don't have any tiers or levels of support, so you can usually find me in our live chat answering questions and helping out (or making things even more confusing).
Historically, I’m the only official ‘manager’ in the company, because we technically don’t have managers, but I signed on before this trend got started. Our support team works well and no one’s asked for change, so no need to fix what’s not broken. Everyone does a great job, so there’s no need to micromanage or control anything.
We’ve always had some form of strategic board to help steer the company and decide where to go with our products. We value the feedback and opinion of our customers, so I’ve always been a member of these groups as a representative for the users — who I talk to every day.
I was also the Product Owner for our Service Desk for some time, but stepped back from this role a while after its release. I gathered requirements, talked to customers, let them know what we were doing and how we were doing it. Sometimes, a customer would ask for something, I would go to the team, and it would only be 20 minutes from request to production. We can’t do that with Targetprocess, but Service Desk was a nice cozy product. It was a lot of fun.
What was it like trying split time between all these different hats?
It was absolutely difficult to split time between so many work roles. The nature of support work itself is very asynchronous - there can be spikes, loads, quiet hours. Sometimes, there would be a dozen conversations, some with internal teams, some with chats, a phone call coming in, plus high level support contracts with VIP customers. Obviously, any chat from a customer must be quickly prioritized over anything else. Context switching is tough but also intense and fun.
Our support team is spread across four countries and three timezones. What’s it like working with remote teams?
I honestly do prefer co-located teams, as it’s faster to discuss things and brainstorm. But we have group calls, and we all know each other quite well, so overall it’s not really a problem. We have an awesome remote team. One of our guys just moved to South America, which will help improve our hours for the U.S. west coast.
What do you do with your free time?
I spend a lot of time with family. I have a son who’s 4, and very active. He takes up most of my time when he’s not asleep. I also enjoy some sports, gaming, books.
Bonus round:
Coffee, tea after that. ☕ ☕
Favorite travel destination?
The Witcher series - the third was my favorite. 🔮
Happy belated New Year to all of our users, friends, and family. If you missed our holiday video, make sure to check it out at targetprocess.com/you-rock/ 🎸
