I joined NetBramha around a year back and I can vouch that there were no two days similar. The new and ever expanding team has definitely kept me busy all throughout and also on weekends (And I am not complaining here)!
The amount of energy that the team shares is immense and so is the cross learning.
Culture:
Work-life balance? HuH
So we work and that pretty much becomes our life. But if we love our work then its a life worth living. One thing is for sure that a person becomes a designer only if they love design (Because for sure no ones parents forces them to take up design as a career choice).
Our small little team is our small little family. We mock at each others work as well as appreciate it and guide each one to improve their standards in each new project that they are assigned. We are trying to develop a new mantra of trying atleast one new design each project and growing this way.
We love designing as much as we love eating. We hate a bad font as much as we hate Traffic!
To keep the show running and to meet the ever demanding deadlines we do have certain processes.
Project and time management:
Now once we have the best talent, how do we make sure that we utilise that pool to the best of their strength?
This is where we experience the economics of demand and supply. As always prevalent in the market when the demand is high the supply is low and when the demand is low supply is high.
So each of these situations is to be handled very carefully so that our team doesn’t get demotivated and reach a slumber of slowness or disconnection or in the other case get over worked.
Situation 1:
Many projects and less designers
This situation arises more often than not for our team. Which is a good thing because this means we have great goodwill in the market and people want to work with us.
How to overcome with flying colors:
a. Plan
b. Execute
c. Re-Plan
d. Execute
And the cycle goes on…
Yes, the better the planning the lesser the chances of any slippages in the project life cycle.
We have stand up meetings every Monday to schedule work for the week and then a round up of these activities is done on every Friday.
If there are any changes during the week those are incorporated in our ever dynamic plan and we re-organise our team to work on the tasks that are based on the new priority.
We also have a work roster which each individual designer fills up on their own and are accountable to update it at the end of the day.
The main thing required here is constant communication with all the team members and regular follow ups so that they do not miss any deadlines.
Situation 2:
When we are working on external clients projects, for some reason we always neglect our own portfolio and websites. We also have not marketed our awesome work and hence our CEO had to sit and manually explain everything to all the new prospective clients.
Hence, We have created an internal list of projects that is never ending (Because there are some many UX problems to solve in this world!) for our team to work on everytime there is less external client work.
To follow these you can keep checking our website, as well as our Dribble and Behance accounts for uber cool UI/UX design works as well as case studies.
People management:
We have given each and every designer of ours the authority and liberty to manage themselves and their work, hence the elimination of a managerial role. Of course they have a go to person when they need help on getting things done faster and that’s when we knock the CEO’s door 🙂
Hiring:
We are very strict in hiring and we look at the best in the industry when we want someone to join our team. Since, we take in designers who are really passionate about their work we already make sure that the work will be done; so that is not an issue.
But our biggest challenge is finding the right talent (Which is a problem with all industries I guess). So we are constantly on the look out and whenever we do feel that a person fits into our culture we make it our mission to get them to join us.
There is always a mismatch between the talent we are looking for and the designers who apply to us, and hence the never ending need for new designers. And I pray before going to bed every night that we find an awesome designer the next day to add to our super troupe.
And what hidden talent did I discover here?
For NetBramha’s 7th Anniversary we headed out to a resort to unwind and relax and that is where I discovered that I can play cricket as well as win a match in the last ball of the game for my team! Phew how I did not let my team fall down.
Yes, you never know what you are capable of until you try it!
Looking forward to many more People, Projects and spectacular experiences at NetBramha.
