September 6, 2018 started as a regular day at DevFacto, our employees slowly trickled-in and got about their days. Some crafted code, some designed beautiful and meaningful experiences for our clients, others dealt with finance, sales and marketing. That morning the weather was colder than usual in Edmonton, Alberta, the air was more fall-like than summer. We had had almost three weeks of air quality warnings from the fires burning in British Columbia and everyone was looking forward to clearer days or what my good friend Doug calls the 100 days of business: the days between the middle of September and the middle of December.
“It finally happened, you should write about it.” – Fernanda Badano, VP Delivery
September 6, 2018 seemed like a regular day until I received a text message from Fernanda Badano, our VP of Delivery Services, containing this image of our Edmonton office and the words,“It finally happened, you should write about it.” As I rushed between client meetings, the image initially looked just like our regular hallway so I put it aside and kept on with my day. However, a couple hours later it dawned on me: see…if you have been to our office in the past, you know that for the last seven years we had ¾ of the 22nd floor in Scotia Place. The picture from Fernanda showed a new hallway, a hallway that for the first time connected our old space to the rest of the floor. DevFacto now occupied the entire 22nd floor.
This was great news for our team since for the last four months our office has been very cramped as we welcomed 26 new DevFactonians to our company. The picture was also a testament to all the great work our team has accomplished, including years of dedication to our employees and our clients. This picture represented a growth milestone that we had never envisioned 11 years ago when we set out to create a company based on the following principles:
1. Happy Employees = Happy Customers.
2. Build Software that humans love to use.
3. Provide a WOW experience for our customers.
I want to thank everyone who has played a part in our journey, our employees, contractors, clients, advisors and partners. Thank you for being there and helping us through our growing pains.
We are excited to design this new space to match the rest of our award winning office and we will continue to plan our office space needs in Regina, Calgary and Toronto. Eventually, we would like to have our own campus, a place that we can design from the ground-up, that is as unique as the culture that keeps our employees excited to come to work every day.
In the meantime, we continue to focus on growing our Analytics (Business Intelligence) practice, innovate on the Sparrow Modern Workplace, deliver great experiences in our Custom Development practice, service our clients through our Managed Application Services practice, deliver world-class experiences in SharePoint and Office365 – so many things on our plate – we would not have it any other way. Our strategy is set and our team is executing.