• How can you help your business operate and execute more efficiently?
• What if you could give your business more flexibility to innovate and experiment?
• Why would you want to ensure that the tech built for one business can be leveraged by another?

In the article “Building Flexible Technology To Enable An Entrepreneurial Culture” Cimpress CTO Maarten Wensveen shares thoughts on how a modular approach to technology is turning entrepreneurial dreams into realities. Check out Maarten’s article on Forbes.

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In the article “Differentiating Technology Dreams From Business Realities” Cimpress CTO Maarten Wensveen shares lessons learned and advice to consider when deciding which new technologies are right for your business. Check out Maarten’s article on Forbes.

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We believe Agile has real applications beyond creating software. At the end of the day, it is just a set of values and principles – it can apply to our lives as any other value, principle or belief.

Can Agile create better ways of living?

Agile is about creating better ways of living – which sounds great but where to start? Organizations like Vistaprint have entire teams dedicated to Agility, so what can I do as an individual?

Woody Zuill, an Agile expert and key proponent of Mob Programming and #NoEstimates, says, “If you only adopt one practice, let it be Retrospectives. Any other practices you need will follow along shortly.”

So, if we are to assume he’s right and that Retrospectives are the starting point, what exactly are they? And how do we go about applying them? Retrospectives are all about reflecting on past and current behaviors and then seeking opportunities to improve.

There’s nothing mystical about it and you don’t need a special facilitator (or Post-it notes) to do it. All you need is a few minutes to reflect and a commitment to improve.

Retrospectives at the dinner table

Interested in understanding more about how Agile can be applied to our daily lives, we spoke to Daryl Paraguya, Senior Technology Manager, Vistaprint. Interestingly, his family runs weekly Retrospectives over Sunday dinner. “Each family member says something they are grateful for about another family member. Then we talk about what we liked about the last week and what we didn’t.”

Once they reflect on the week, Daryl’s family decides on an action they’ll take to improve. “Sometimes they’re fun and sometimes they’re serious. We’ve made some big changes to bedtime routines, how we allocate chores, and other very tactical things that affect our day to day lives. We probably wouldn’t work the same without these. I’m happy that we do it. It’s changed how we live and how we treat each other.”

Retrospective actions become even more powerful when they’ve been visualized. And, in Daryl’s family, they write down their action each week and put it on a magnet board in the kitchen to remind them all of their commitment.

You might be surprised by what you learn

For Daryl, Retrospectives gave him a new perspective and an opportunity to learn more about his family. “Oftentimes my kids are really thoughtful about their gratitude. They take it very seriously and I love that. Without Retrospectives, I might never have appreciated that my kids have this really mature level of introspection and empathy because we don’t normally talk like that.”

Using retrospectives at home is just one way you can bring Agile into your everyday life. Remember, Agile is about creating better ways of living. Make a commitment to yourself and give retrospectives a try!

Contributed by David Reichert & Melissa Rockman, Agile Coaches in Vistaprint 

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Andres March is a lead software engineer that works at our Waltham office in Massachusetts, USA.

Andres graduated from the University of Maryland at College Park.  His first job introduced him to data warehousing fundamentals that he still uses to this day.

During this first job experience he was also introduced to a group of founders that would move him to San Francisco as the first employee of a new startup.  It was there, he believes, where he became a well-rounded engineer.  He would later on work at Sony and after at Qualcomm, where he developed his interest in web application architecture and scalability.

Nowadays he works on the B2B Core group as part of the Commerce Team within Cimpress Technology.  They are responsible for many of the services that are at the center of order intake and processing.

Some of the interesting challenges Andres and his team have worked on include delivering notifications to merchants in a reliable, scalable manner, implementing CQRS to enable asynchronous search indexing, and adding authentication and authorization into our services in a transparent way.

When asked for one of his favorite memories from his time in Cimpress Technology, Andres talked about the time when he and other co-workers got together and played beach volleyball at a Cimpress Technology summer party last year, an event we held at Kimball Farms to unwind and spend time together outside of the office.

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Meet Markus Thurner! Markus is currently a Principal Software Engineer in our Winterthur offices in Switzerland. He graduated with a degree in Media Technology and Design from the University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg, Austria and went on to work at a small company working mainly on image recognition and inventory solutions.

While the company he worked at had some commercial successes mostly in the US, he believes that he “eventually came to the realization that technologists are just bad salesmen”. And after that adventure, he contracted at small companies for the Swiss market, contributing to products in the fields of automated software distribution and web application firewall.

Fast forward to 2010 and after having earned experience building up remote teams, working across Europe and North America, he decided to take the chance to do the same at Cimpress. Markus has been working here for 7 years now, all the way back when it was still called only Vistaprint, and he was only the 2nd software engineer hired to start at the Winterthur office in Switzerland.

Currently Markus works at the Fulfillment Capabilities team, which is dedicated to enable frictionless onboarding and platform participation for Fulfillers, who can connect to the platform by using our software UIs, APIs and services. His team, based in Switzerland, consists of 5 people, and owns the Fulfillment Order Manager API and a related UI on top of it, enabling fulfillers to retrieve orders from Cimpress Mass Customization Platform.

Being part of Cimpress for so long, one of his favorite memories here at Cimpress Technology was seeing the Mass Customization Platform taking shape, and getting new users for our services as well as witnessing how new and old teams are starting to collaborate and perform within Cimpress Technology.

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This year, Cimpress was among an array of other local companies gathered to showcase our business and meet Boston residents. We had the opportunity to display products created in our many manufacturing plants, show off our mass customization platform, and engage with potential new team members on a closer one-to-one level.

Thanks to Cimpress’ version of the popular Price is Right game Plinko, those that visited us had a chance to win one of many branded items – from Puma drawstring bags to sunglasses or hoodies – while simultaneously getting to see just how many brands we have in the Cimpress portfolio.

Thank you to all who came out in support of Boston TechJam. We hope to see you again next year!

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A central point of my presentation was the fact that Cimpress’ success and growth is built on effective collaboration and mutually beneficial partnerships, both of which are fundamental components of our overall business model and strategy. We realized long ago that ‘coopetition’ and the business mindset that goes along with it, is exactly what we need to help us achieve our goals, while simultaneously delivering the support and services that others need to improve and evolve their own businesses.

This idea of partnership is where the mass customization platform we are building becomes so important.

Our platform will provide the infrastructure, technology and software that might not ordinarily be available or financially accessible to our partners. By working together with multiple merchants, suppliers, fulfillers and other stakeholders right across the full spectrum of the industry, we give our brands and partners the opportunity to leverage not only our revolutionary platform, but our global manufacturing footprint and distribution networks. This, in turn, helps them to accelerate the growth of their own businesses, by increasing their product portfolios and providing opportunities to expand into new, previously out-of-reach markets.

This may be an industry that is facing a lot of change, but we believe that it is an industry full of opportunity for decades to come. By embracing coopetition and by partnering, we can improve the way customers are served, and together, we will all benefit.

Will Jacobs
Senior Vice President & Chief Supply Chain Officer

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To illustrate this, Styles shared memories of two product launches:

Clothing

“When the company decided to get into the printed wearable business, there was just a team of two who did the initial work – a person from Marketing and myself in Engineering.  The fact that the company was relying on us to deliver an important new line of products was exciting, and that motivated us to search all over the world for the right equipment.  At an expo in Long Beach, California, we met a small company from Israel that had what we were looking for.  I clearly remember the dinner when we considered our options.  As the sun set over the Pacific Ocean, we enjoyed the relaxing view, but also knew the importance of making the right recommendation.  In less than six months, printed shirts and hats were on the website and a major part of the business.”

Magnets

“Marketing asked for car door magnets.  We didn’t want to purchase all new equipment just for one product, so we evaluated the capability of the equipment already in-house.  Our digital printers were not designed for magnet material and the vender said there was no way magnets could be printed on their machines.  We weren’t going to let that stop us, so on our own, we tested and tweaked and figured out how to do what the people who built the equipment said couldn’t be done.”

AIRPLANES | Flickr – Alex Martinez

Even though these are just two examples, they serve to highlight the constant innovation and change happening at Cimpress. Being part of the world leader in mass customization means that teams are always thinking outside of the box when it comes to creating and developing new software, products, or technologies. While other companies wait for the runway to be built by someone else first, Cimpress is creating new products while simultaneously laying the runway down so that they can take off.

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Why and how did you start the WIT?

When starting at Cimpress, I noticed the small number of women who were software developers. I had met three others who started the same year as me, but we all agreed we didn’t know any other women in the same field. In a way, we all wanted to network and support those who felt the same way.

In college I was a part of the Women in Computer Science group. On a field trip to Google’s Cambridge office, we met several Google Women in Engineering (GWE) members. Stacy Wong’s presentation on Imposter Syndrome (being unable to own your achievements) sparked my inspiration. It was eye opening how many women in the room shared that same feeling. I reached out to Stacy afterward. She inspired me to think about starting a new resource group for women at Cimpress.

With the support of my manager, Charles Dale, I started the Women in Technology (WIT) group with eight of my colleagues from both technical and non-technical backgrounds. They didn’t know each other because they worked in very different groups. However, I happen to be the link between them because as part of the Global Strategic Partnerships team in the Vistaprint brand, I collaborate with various groups among Cimpress to understand how to hook up our systems with our partner systems.

What are your activities?

The WIT group began to meet once a month over lunch, and we’d just talk about anything – just like friends. By word of mouth, awareness of our group grew, and so did our attendance. A committee was created in order to help run operations for the group. The casual lunches started to evolve to incorporate an event each month. The meetings consisted of both internal and external speakers discussing their career paths while offering advice, intern presentations at the end of the summer and potluck parties and lightning talks given by our very own members. Members have also participated in trainings and networking and teaching events, all suggested or run by the WIT group. With more variety, our group started to exponentially grow. We have a strong cohort of 103 members only one year after it started!

What are your hopes for the group?

What gets me excited is that this group is still very young. There is so much potential for it to grow in many ways. Everything is new to us, so there are no limits to what we can try. We are still challenging ourselves to expand our portfolio to include more events for our members to enjoy and to offer the opportunity to connect and encourage others to succeed.

Do you think the technology field is changing for women? How?

Even though there are still not enough women in the field, there are tremendous opportunities for women who want to enter it. Many companies are working hard to attract women in technology. Already, I see that there are more women in the management side than I imagined. This is a great step to show that women are being recognized for their achievements and leadership abilities in the technology industry.

What advice would you give to other women looking to get into a career in technology?

From studying Computer Science to working full-time, I’ve noticed a few things that could be beneficial to women starting out. For example, speak up and ask questions. It is OK if you don’t know the answer to everything. Problem solving is one of the key skills a person needs when striving for a career in technology. By asking questions, you can show that you can be depended on to tackle any task and that you can always learn something new.

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We’ve opened a small, agile office in the heart of downtown Detroit where our SHE-Q (Safety, Health, Environment, and Quality), Supply Chain Engineering, and the Corporate Technology Logistics team will work.

The 210m² office, located on the 18th floor of the historic Penobscot Building, looks across the Detroit River to Canada and is a short, 30 minute car ride to Cimpress’ largest manufacturing facility in Windsor. This new space allows for co-location of global resources and enables us to locate engineering and technical expertise near our production sites.

“The rebirth of Detroit is centered on the renewal of entrepreneurship so this location provides great opportunity for us,” says Holger Arnold, Sr. Dir, Safety, Health, Environment, & Quality. “Some of the things we are doing are cutting edge and being in Detroit allows us to tap into technical people who can help us grow.”

We are excited to tap into the deep engineering and technical talent the region has to offer: Southeast Michigan has a university-level student population of nearly 200,000 and one of the largest concentrations of engineers in the country.

Stay tuned to learn more about our open positions.

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