$ 483mn Approximate revenue
1989
Year founded
800 +
Approximate number of employees in third party hands . “ I firmly believe that the best software outcomes come from internal teams of permanent and committed people .” The organisation he came into had plenty of capable people in it , but he could see that the team needed strengthening . “ We partnered with The Onset , a leading IT recruitment agency , explained the journey we were on , and asked them to sell our vision to the Sydney market in our search for high quality developers . It was important that the people we chose not only had high technical skills but were a good cultural fit and understood where oOh ! was going .”
The original 10-strong IT team has now grown to 50 , a process completed in just 18 months . “ I am truly fortunate to have a team that is both highly skilled and very passionate about what we do . I firmly believe that a good team comes first and that the good software is an outcome of that .” Forging this team had its challenges , especially early on , he admits . With the core team effectively doubling in size , as much effort had to go into team building as into building software , so a lot of attention was paid to internal and external training . Agile practices such as daily stand-up meetings , retrospectives and fortnightly iteration planning ( IPM ) meetings were followed , not only to drive the project forward but to bond the team .
The esprit de corps of oOh ! is a great mixture of informality , friendship and family feeling with strong structures to support people . “ Brendon Cook and our head of Chief People and Culture Officer Steve Read have put a huge amount of effort into creating and maintaining this culture ,” emphasises McQuarrie , “ so I ’ ve tried to create a technology version of that . It ’ s very important , he adds , for the tech team
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