Written by the Financial team
From October 7th to 11th, one of the development teams at AIDA, responsible for the financial business, gathered in Gran Canaria.
Truth be told, we had been eagerly anticipating this day for a long time because we had many objectives to meet, all of which were positive. The first and most important was to get to know each other and spend a week that was out of the ordinary. We had other slightly more “formal” objectives, such as tackling the transition of the financial part of SIMA, our product, to the web and gradually transforming from being a team almost exclusively focused on service to becoming a product team.
To achieve these three objectives, we had four master sessions with four amazing colleagues.
Sandra García, in charge of talent at AIDA, put together a fantastic “team building” session where we had the opportunity, through a couple of dynamics, to get to know each other a bit more and to believe in ourselves more as a team. We discovered surprising things about each of us. For example, did you know we have an expert in making churros in Financial? Or a math champion? 😲 And many more like that. The picture is from that session. Thanks, Sandra! Yes, what you see in some hands are Tirma chocolates. If you don’t know what they are or how they taste, you need to visit Gran Canaria. 🏝️
For the next objective (addressing the transition of Financial to the web), we approached it by asking three questions:
- What is the Financial team right now?
- What does Financial want to be in the future?
- And lastly, how will we achieve what we want to become?
We organized three more sessions:
- The first one was guided by the light that illuminates everything in Financial, none other than Manolo Suárez, our consulting specialist in the financial business and many other things! 😜
It’s important to note that the Financial team is a newly formed team, and we couldn’t consider any changes without everyone knowing who we are and what we represent. Manolo, with his unique storytelling style, gave us a presentation of the areas of SIMA that fall under our responsibility as a team. While there wasn’t enough time to delve deeply into all of them, which wasn’t the goal, we believe we all left with a clearer idea of what we are, which is saying a lot.
- The second session was with Borja Navarro, Head of Product at AIDA.
What a privilege! 🤩 He answered the big question: what does it mean to bring SIMA to the web? First, he explained the reasons and motives AIDA has for transitioning SIMA Suite to the web. Then, he gave us “tips” to help prioritize our tasks, as until that day, we didn’t even know where to start. Taking SIMA to the web seemed like a daunting task.
- And lastly, the final question: how do we bring all of this to the web? In this case, we were fortunate to have Emilio Medina, Head of Engineering.
He wrapped up the previous session by presenting a strategy that we believe combines how to bring our products to the web while allowing us to make our own decisions during the process, without veering off the required path.
We’ve returned eager to dive into all this as soon as possible, but we are aware it will not be a bed of roses; however, now that we know all this, we feel more confident. 💪 Thank you to all four of you, truly.
Lastly, but by no means least, is the fact that we worked side by side, live and in person. So much so that we significantly advanced a project we’re currently finishing for the Portuguese market, and who knows, perhaps it had something to do with the new offices at the Autoterminal of the Group, which, by the way, we have now visited. Haven’t you yet? 🤭