Why I Joined Easy Agile

I love researching and have been known to spend countless hours creating spreadsheets and trawling the internet in search of the best travel destinations, places to eat and conscious brands to follow.

So when the Easy Agile Product Manager role was advertised on the Siligong Valley Slack channel my preparation for the interview process began!

I love a list so I thought I’d jot down some of the reasons why Easy Agile appealed to me….. and what its like now I’m part of the team.

A customer led organisation 🚀

First and foremost, I was attracted to Easy Agile’s focus on the customer. 'Be the customer' is one of our values and our mission is to make agile teams work better together. The product portfolio looked like it had been designed with the end-user in mind so I was excited to learn more!

Now that I’ve joined the business, I can see just how much the customer drives everything we do. Everyone (from our co-CEOs to our Engineers and the Marketing team) answers support requests so daily interactions with our customers are the norm.

Customer interviews are conducted regularly and everyone in the team is encouraged to take part. So if you’re a customer who’d be interested in speaking with us please send a request through to support@easyagile.com and we’ll try to get you involved in one of our upcoming user testing sessions.

I love product management because learning from customers is an important part of the role. To see this responsibility shared across the team is fantastic!

People are a priority 👣

My research into Easy Agile made it pretty clear that people and community engagement are a priority. A number of things piqued my interest including a generous training budget, flexible working options, paid volunteer days and Pledge 1%.

But would these initiatives go beyond the website careers page? The answer is a resounding YES!

I have been surprised and delighted so many times throughout the interview and onboarding process. Here’s a few of the things that have made me smile so far:

• During the interview process, I met the whole team at the morning huddle (via Zoom)
• We start every day by sharing something good to get the positive vibes going
• Easy Agile shouts us coffee each morning at a local cafe
• The (remote) onboarding process was well planned and I’ve had the opportunity to improve it for the next person
• Everyone in the team is encouraged to put forward ideas for our next opportunity cycle
• We have Inception Week every 6 weeks so we can experiment with new products, systems and techniques that could be beneficial for our customers and/or our business
• We have half-day Fridays over Summer
• Easy Agile shouted our families to a celebration dinner at the end of the last opportunity cycle (because we couldn’t celebrate as a team due to COVID)
• Our new offices are well-equipped with standing desks, a library, lots of meeting spaces, a shuffle board table, local craft beers in the fridge and sparkling water on tap (pic above: Testing out the new office oven with Friday cupcakes)

Feeling very spoilt and thankful right about now 💛

A local business with a global perspective 🌏

Before this job came up, I'd accepted the fact that a 4 hour commute was just part of my day. I actually enjoyed the focus time on the train but with two young kids it was a (mega) challenge to get out of the house on time.

Now my commute is a 20 minute bike ride and I haven’t had to sacrifice on the type of work I’m doing. Easy Agile is a Platinum vendor on the Atlassian Marketplace with customers all over the world.

With customers in different time zones, I occasionally have a late night or early morning user testing session but its not a problem because I love seeing how customers are using our products and what could be done to make our apps more user friendly. And to be honest, most days I get to work on challenging opportunities and still leave work by 5pm to enjoy some family time.

I’ve had a great start at Easy Agile and I can’t wait to see how this role evolves over time! 💃🏻