Empowering Enterprise Engineering: The Rotate° Method for Streamlining In-House Teams

At Rotate°, we see enterprise technology as more of a holistic system. It goes beyond the implementation of advanced systems or architectures to encompass the fundamentals around how companies manage and execute their technology strategies. We’re committed to revitalising engineering practices and have adopted a methodology that tackles this problem head on.

While our collaborative work with clients often begins with project acceleration, it swiftly unveils our true mission: to inject efficiency and foster a superior team culture that delivers meaningful results. As projects progress, we share our engineering best practices and agile ways of working with clients, transferring knowledge and deepening skillset. Our goal is to set them up for future success by leading them to a place where they are no longer completely dependent on a Systems Integrations partner.

The Divide and The Resolution

Many challenges of in-house engineering teams are rooted in a divide between engineering efforts and overarching company goals. This misalignment often leads to developers focusing on personal or departmental objectives, as opposed to the broader vision, resulting in fragmented and inefficient systems. It’s crucial for each team to understand how individual parts of a project relate to company-wide objectives.

Rotate°s approach starts with realigning these teams on shared values, outcomes, objectives and key results at a company-wide level. We work cohesively with product teams who provide the glue between several departments and we ensure that they remain aligned throughout the course of a project lifecycle. In turn, this approach bridges gaps between teams, creating a cohesive, goal-oriented culture from the off.

Value Delivery: A Do or Die

Crucially, Rotate° is hyper-focused on value delivery. It's a non-negotiable aspect of our work—but one that’s often overlooked by internal engineering teams. We observe companies adopting agile in name, but not embracing its foundational principles such as iterative problem-solving and proactive risk management.

Value can take on a number of different forms. At Rotate°, we typically look at key areas such as business, user and financial value. To determine what value can be unlocked in these areas, we evaluate initiatives against risks and then prioritise those from highest to lowest value. Our approach aims to reintroduce core agile tenets, ensuring the methodology is lived and not just labelled.

Cutting Through the Bloat

Functionality bloat is another area in which Rotate° makes an indelible impact. In many enterprises, the spectrum of specialised roles (from DevOps and backend engineers to mobile developers and server administrators) leads to siloed operations and unwieldy, complex system architectures. Over time, different teams and specialists add their own components to a system. This results in an accumulation of unnecessary and redundant features and processes, and a system architecture that is difficult to manage and maintain.

This complexity not only harms efficiency, but also obscures a clear understanding of the system as a whole. Documentation lapses into inconsistency and those working on tasks become detached from the company’s unique selling propositions (USPs).

To prevent functionality bloat and unlock siloed knowledge, Rotate°’s engineering teams include full stack engineers who have visibility of how various systems interact. With this comprehensive understanding, those engineers ensure that every component neatly fits together to create an efficient and effective system overall.

Radical Simplicity and Seasoned Generalists

We embrace a philosophy of radical simplicity and that’s reflected in our team composition; all of our engineers are seasoned generalists with an average of over 10 years’ experience. By leveraging their diverse and cross-functional expertise, this approach not only facilitates a broad understanding of client systems, but also ensures adaptability and a continuous learning ethos. By delegating non-core functions to SaaS platforms as opposed to executing these internally, we streamline operations, markedly reducing the total cost of ownership while enhancing focus on the client’s USPs.

The Result: A Healthier Engineering Culture

These efforts have made for a healthier, more productive engineering culture at Rotate°. Our team, unified in its comprehension of the primary product, can hold each other accountable, elevating standards and fostering a supportive, high-achievement environment. This culture scales effectively by segmenting discrete problem domains yet consistently pushing for simplicity and maintaining velocity in value delivery.

In essence, Rotate° collaborates and transforms client in-house engineering teams from bloated, siloed units into streamlined, goal-aligned powerhouses. Our methodology doesn’t just accelerate projects; it fundamentally enhances how companies approach and execute engineering, ensuring that enterprise brands not only keep pace with but lead in their respective markets.