The team of the puns and being ready for each other
Parcels and sand, that's what the name PAZA stands for. The team within CAPE Groep that has many PostNL projects in its portfolio. They also work for Komatsu, a company specialized in construction machinery. The team consists of team lead Gijs and consultants Chelsea, Daan, Terence, Davey, Stefan and Jurian. Through an interview we get to know the team and the work of the consultants better.
The system of teams within CAPE
CAPE Groep helps companies with digital transformation. We do this by solving problems with applications and integrations built with low-code Mendix and eMagiz. Together with companies, the consultants come to a solution that is elaborated by the Solution Architect. Terence is one of the architects within CAPE and part of the PAZA team. He determines the frameworks within which CAPE's teams can develop. This is a function that is outside team PAZA and what he picks up for each team. At CAPE, the consultants are also the developers of the application. As a result, there are few intermediate channels and communication can be done without noise. It also poses challenges when the consultants have to explain the solutions to people within companies who do not develop themselves. The team lead guides the team and is therefore involved in all projects. For team PAZA, these are mainly control platforms and operators. Management platforms are platforms where all orders are distributed among the operators who will perform assigned tasks with these orders.
The challenges of team PAZA
'With Mendix an application can be made within a few weeks, but the maintenance of this application is a lot more complicated,' consultants Davey and Jurian tell about the challenges they face on a daily basis. Within CAPE, independent tools have been developed that give the applications a score based on quality, with a maximum score of 5.0. The agreement with the companies is that this score must always be above 4.0. It is possible that an application no longer meets the requirements and must be replaced.
In order to deliver quality work, the consultants are expected to look critically at the problem. Persuasion is an important skill for consultants. Companies sometimes have an idea of how they want to solve a problem. If this is not the right solution, it is the task of the consultants to convince customers of this. To help business consultants develop these important skills, training is provided in the categories people, technology and methodology. In the training courses on the subject of people, attention is paid to personal development. During the technology training courses, consultants are taught Mendix and eMagiz. The methodology training courses focus on working efficiently with the Scrum method. What also contributes to the quality of the work is that the PAZA team has weekly internal meetings in which the projects and their development are discussed. The entire team knows what each other is doing and is therefore ready when problems arise.
Why CAPE Group
When asked why companies choose to work with CAPE, the entire team answers unanimously: the experience in the transport sector and with Mendix. CAPE has been working with Mendix for over 15 years and therefore also understands older applications that need to be adapted, improved or replaced. In addition, there is a lot of room for internal knowledge sharing with the other teams. With Mendix, applications can be built quickly with a short time-to-market. This brings great advantages.
The trainee of team PAZA
Trainee Business Consultant Daan studied computer science, which means he also has experience with high code programming. According to him, the limitations of Mendix are not great and 90% of the applications can be built with it. With high code programming there is more freedom because you can determine the code yourself, but this takes a lot of time and Mendix is well put together. As a result, high code programming is often not necessary at all. The reason Daan chose to work at CAPE is because he likes to talk to customers. The combination of programming and customer contact is not often seen in jobs for programmers, as a Business Consultant he does have this opportunity. At CAPE we don't try to reinvent the wheel but use the applications and knowledge we have gained in the past. The Control Tower was developed on the basis of this knowledge. This is a standard template with which various applications can be built. Thanks to this Control Tower, we no longer have to develop applications from scratch and there is a strong basis that can be adapted to the needs of companies.
What makes team PAZA unique
At the end of the interview, the members of Team PAZA were asked what makes their team unique. The team members say that a lot has happened recently: CAPE has settled in Croatia and is trying to set up a team there, an extra location and team have been set up in Utrecht and many new colleagues have been added in Enschede. Due to these events, team PAZA was completely turned around last year. Due to these changes, the team has not yet been able to build an identity. Nevertheless, a few aspects were mentioned that distinguish team PAZA from the other teams within CAPE. Examples that were mentioned during the interview are the good humor with a lot of puns, the willingness to help each other and that the team is always there for each other when they need each other.
The impact that team PAZA has nationally is huge. They are responsible for the applications that have to deliver packages to the recipient in good order. If one of these applications has problems, packages can no longer be delivered in the Netherlands. That is why teams within CAPE Group must be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If problems do arise with one of the applications, someone within the team will be called to solve the problem, this can also happen at night. Team PAZA is therefore not only the team of 7 helpful team members and the good puns, but they are also responsible for getting your packages on time.
