2020 - The Scandio Year in Review

2020 - a year that will probably remain in our memories for a long time to come. Even if we might want to simply block out as much of it as possible, we should still take a look back and contemplate what happened in this crazy year. Rarely have we had the chance to push ahead with such major changes and try out new things as we did last year. Well, maybe we were even forced so some degree. But let’s start at the beginning.

Scandio goes Lockdown

When the first lockdown was announced at the end of March, it caused one feeling in particular: uncertainty. As a company that places a lot of emphasis on a good office climate and on-site collaboration (we affectionately call it the “Scandio Spirit”), working completely remotely was definitely a challenge. After all, what would remain of our Scandio spirit without company events, spontaneous Kicker tournaments, cooking together and the after work beer on fridays?

But we quickly discovered that our worries were unfounded. Since the use of the necessary tools was already part of our everyday worklife before Corona, we managed the transition to working from home fairly quickly. Kitchen gossip was transferred to video calls and we didn’t have to give up the after-work beer either. Even our Christmas party took place virtually, giving us a sense of closeness despite the physical distance.

Remote, remote, remote

Due to the initial lockdown shock and the uncertainty as to what would happen next, we put our recruiting on hold for the time being. However, we quickly realized that we could continue to plan optimistically and resumes the search for new Scandians after only a 6 week break. Of course, we had to adapt our recruiting process and onboarding to the new circumstances - which resulted in another lot of zoom calls. In the end, we were able to welcome many new interesting people to Scandio during and between the lockdown phases, who were warmly welcomed into the team despite the spatial separation.

Since Scandio has grown steadily in recent years, we intuitively trusted that we would be able to maintain this growth. We owe this confidence first and foremost to our loyal customers and partners, to whom we would like to take this opportunity to say a big “thank you” once again. Because cooperation and mutual help does not end within the team, it’s also enormously important in business relationships, especially in these times! In the past, we were able to strengthen the cooperation with our partners through joint events, and we didn’t want Corona to take that away from us. And as always, the answer was: remote!

If we hadn’t taken up the challenge, we would definitely have missed out on a lot of exciting talks and webinars, because there’s a lot that can be done remotely too! We’ve learned what’s possible with the various meeting tools and how to create varied and interesting remote events. Because let’s face it, attending virtual meetings all day can be really exhausting….

Take a closer look at our event highlights:

• No Cabin Fever
• Team Up Forum 2020
• Atlassian User Group München

Bye bye server, what’s next?

No sooner had we got to grips with remote events, onboarding and the everyday Corona madness than Atlassian dropped the bombshell at the end of the year, announcing the end of the server product line  from February 2021. After we had digested the shock, we primarily took care of our customers and offered our help in purchasing licenses, educated them about the consequences of the announcement and showed them the various options. Without further ado, the Atlassian Community Berlin Brandenburg organized a webinar calles “Leaving Serverland” in order to to deal more intensively with the topic. All possibilities were once again illustrated and questions concerning the topic of Atlassian Cloud were clarified.

Virtual Open Space

At the end of the year, we were faced with the supreme discipline of remote events: a virtual Open Space! A purely virtual solution now had to be found to replace the eager discussions that would usuallly take place in small groups about a wide variety of topics in all the rooms of the office. Especially because of the changes that Corona brought us, there were many current issues to be discussed at Scandio. In addition, such an Open Space is a nice opportunity, especially at the end of the year, to review the year and find new approaches.

Since Scandio now hosts a relatively large team of Scrum Masters, they set out to implement the project and put together a comprehensive agenda within a few weeks. The day of the event showed once again that remote doesn’t have to be boring and that we have learned a lot in the last months in dealing with remote tools and virtual meetings. By the end of the day, we had worked out a lot of things to follow up and implement in the coming weeks. After 8 hours of eager discussion, we ended the evening with a virtual beer (we’ve perfected that by now too).

Back to the future

2020 was instructive. 2020 was exhausting. 2020 was challenging. After all that we’ve learned this year, one question arises: what comes next? Will everything go back to “normal”? And even if not, what can we take away and retain from 2020? It turned out that we have been able to advance development in certain areas through Corona and are on a good path in our approach to self-organized work. Along with this goes the development towards a hybrid company in which the boundaries between working on-site in the office or remotely at home are no longer defined. What is certain is that we miss seeing each other in the office and working together in the field. Scandio will never become a pure remote company, because for us the “Scandio Spirit” arises from the personal encounter. However, we see the benefits that remote work can bring and try to find a good balance. Our goal for 2021 will be to build on what we learned last year. Because we know now: we will find a way!