A year at smartive

Wow, what a year! We have grown, celebrated, taken time for ourselves, learned a lot and implemented great projects with great people. Time to look back and review the highlights.

January

We are starting the new year from home: working from home is still mandatory. Nevertheless, we are going full throttle and starting the new year with a record-breaking productivity rate!

Jennifer starts as an interaction designer with us, Migros employees launch their first campaigns with the new Migros Digital Campaign Factoryour Online platform for ZWEI Wealth goes live with the first 400 customers and our Peter becomes a dad! 🥰

february

Two years ago, we went back to the home office after a day's skiing. This year it's the other way around: finally back to the office, finally back to après-ski. 🥳

Josh is taking a baby break and will therefore miss the trip to Arosa. Instead, we already have Mike in our luggage (in addition to Appenzeller schnapps), who will be joining smartive in March.

The Migros Supply Chain App is awarded "Top Supplier Retail 2022", Matthias completes his internship and we hold/hear SMARTalks to React Aria, experiences from the ZWEI Wealth Project and the Footprint calculator from Céline's bachelor thesis.

March

We give a little thought to our office: Focus rooms? Flexdesks? Can the coffee grinder be a little quieter? 🤔 Also our Wage formula we are adjusting and introducing the allowance for children.

With Frontify the integrated development team meets for the first Team Week and realizes that it is difficult to estimate body sizes via Google Meet.

At the Best of Swiss Web Migros' Community Value Loop (together with us) wins silver in the "Innovation" category. 🥈

And yes, we haven't forgotten Mike in Arosa. He starts as a software engineer.

April

Everything is new May April: Hoi Jan, hoi Lorenz, hoi Flexdesks! 👋

We are happy about the new additions to the team and are simply covering up our problem of too few workstations by eliminating fixed workstations and introducing flex desks.

Our favorite city guide leads us through Zurich's old town and tells us interesting things about the Romans, the Hirschengraben, Christoph Froschauer and Zurich's city saints - it is not known how much of this has stuck after the smartive General Assembly. 🍻

Céline moves from internship to permanent position, Marco goes on paternity leave and Damian takes a 6-month sabbatical.

And we do good: we donate CHF 6,000 to the Swiss Red Cross for support in Ukraine and buy 40 m² of solar cells from the City of Zurich's electricity company.

May

Open fire! Not only for Rammstein at Letzigrund, but also for our projects. 🔥

With a Speedboat we use the MVP for the first platform for family care Franz & Vroni um, Learnfox starts the first test with a school class and the Customer portal from coas will soon be ready for alpha release.

Raphi, Josh's younger brother, who joins us as a software engineer, causes some confusion. The two not only look the same, they also sound the same. Huh?

In a workshop with our in-house linguist Kim, we learn how to write more beautifully. But it obviously didn't help that much, did it? 🙊 Anyway, onwards in the text to the next month!

June

Summer is here! And it's really kicking off. With positive corona results, positive sunburn results and a positive smartive feeling.

Migros goes to the cloud. We spend the hot days shifting numerous applications to the Google Cloud platform.

Migipedia is also on fire: the translations with DeepL have tripled the ratings and questions/answers in the community.

We cool off with wakeboarding and pedaling on Lake Zurich. 💦

Meanwhile in Eastern Switzerland: Lorenz holds a SMARTalk on WebRTC from the depths of Thurgau, Josh talks about E2E testing with Playwright at Webnesday St. Gallen and the last pull requests of the month are opened from the queue in front of the Open Air St. Gallen.

July

With the start of his internship, Marco increases both the average height and the Marco percentage at smartive. Welcome Marco! 👋

The top 5 widgets of the Migros Digital Campaign Factory are live. Migros employees throughout Switzerland are clicking together personalized, playful campaigns in various languages. In addition, the Migros online store is now displaying product ratings from Migipedia displayed. Really nice! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Frontify-team hikes through the Alpstein during the second Team Week and tests the locations for their remote work compatibility. The Sprint Change at the Berggasthaus Bollenwees unfortunately fails due to the lack of cell phone reception.

The new telephone boxes in our office are almost as idyllic as the Appenzellerland - the perfect retreat for video calls and other forms of virtual exchange.

The monthly "smarties & beer" takes us to Schaffhausen this month. Weidling fahren, hoo joo, so casual! 🛶

august

Tough. Toe. Dieci. Ten. TEN! That's how many years we've been around. We're celebrating! With a street food festival, a concert by Dino Brandão and 200 amazing guests. ❤️

Love is also celebrated away from our anniversary party: Benj gets married, Christoph gets married, Raphi gets married and Lorenz becomes a dad!

Further releases: Learnfox goes live, on Migipedia the TIPP-KICK® Mania exchange market will be launched and our beloved, in-house smarties.app will also receive a major update.

Of course we are also involved in the Front Conference at the start. Our support as a sponsor is a matter of honor.

September

It stays quiet in the office as we travel to Toggenburg for our annual Code Retreat! 🥳 Over the course of three days, we focus on topics that are close to our hearts and enjoy time together outside the office.

Shortly afterwards, a small detachment boards the train and visits the Awwwards Conference in Amsterdam. In Switzerland, too, it's all about bags: we are introducing Brown Bag Sessions, where each guest brings their own food bag to listen to a talk at the lunch table. 🥡

Lightning decision jam, advice process and consensus decision. We will explain what this is all about at our "Ready for Anything in your Organization" lab at the Digital Festival Zurich.

In the Migros project, we are currently working on Web Components. What are the advantages and disadvantages of offering components shared across different sites as web components in future? We are happy to be on board for the evaluation and possible implementation.

Thanks to Moreno, we are now swinging kettlebells every two weeks at lunchtime in the D.Factory's functional training program. Not your cup of tea? We also regularly go jogging, play badminton or (not literally, Jan!) hurtle down the Höckler trail on our mountain bikes.

october

We live an open feedback culture because it creates space for innovation and creativity. In a workshop, we learn why feedback fails, how feedback works in self-organized teams and what Marshall B. Rosenberg's "four Bs" are all about.

With Frontify has reached a major milestone: the first completely revised styleguide blocks have been rolled out to all customer instances and the Migros Digital Campaign Factory the adoption rate increases. More and more enthusiastic users are taking part in the campaigns: photo competitions, memory games, surveys ... participation through our widgets has reached the million mark! 🚀

Benj becomes a dad and takes a 2-month baby break, Peter celebrates his wedding, Christoph holds a SMARTalk on ODIC and Marco on his internship, Josh repeats his talk "E2E testing with Playwright" at Web Zurich and is represented by Robert at his UI design talk at Webnesday in St. Gallen.

november

We become lecturers and lead the CAS "Frontend Engineering Advanced" at the OST in Rapperswil. Because it's technically exciting and thematically very topical, we build a Twitter clone with the participants.

The IT market is crying out for a shortage of skilled workers. We need young talent! On Future Day, we build robots with our young guests and introduce them to everyday life in the world of software.

Zubi has not yet had enough: following the successful relaunch of its web store, the Appenzell sports store wants even more UX expertise from us.

With Migipedia the "Evaluate shopping" campaign is launched and we support Migros as a consulting and implementation partner in setting up their new design system.

We distribute our annual donations democratically to ProNaturathe Association incontro and to Ocean care.

Thilo tells us something about the Google Cloud Platform, then we go up the walls. The evening in the bouldering hall was fun! We quickly forgot that our shoes hurt and that our fingers are more used to computer keyboards than rough climbing holds. 🧗‍♀️

December

Christmas dinner! In St. Gallen? Bratwurst fondue without mustard? You'll soon find out why we celebrate our second most notorious festival in Eastern Switzerland.

In addition to raclette, mulled wine and ping-pong tournaments, we took part in the third Frontify Team Week was also dedicated to various focus topics. What could an alternative block migration strategy look like? What does domain-driven design mean? How can the marketplace be optimized? We have found answers. 🧀🏓

Oh, merry Christmas: Although we wish you a Merry Christmas in the traditional way, we do let it be known that we are computer heads. Literally.

The Migros Digital Campaign Factory is also celebrating Christmas and the Advent calendars are sprouting up like fir trees. There are almost 2 million entries in the Famigros calendar alone! Fortunately, we do plenty of load testing. 😇

We give each other presents like wild animals in front of the virtual fireplace: mini-golf drinking games, dye for campfires and socks with Céline's face on them. Over mulled wine and chestnuts, we reflect on a great year and look forward to what 2023 will bring. 💫