How we Work Archives - Inside FishingBooker

How a Company Reset Brought in a New Era of Impact and Innovation

All successful companies look alike, but the challenges they face on their road to success are unique. While the core of those challenges may be recognizable – even common – how they happen in the first place is usually not. Being stuck between a rock and a hard place is never somewhere you want to find yourself, but contrary to popular belief, it’s a privilege to be there. It’s an invaluable lesson that puts us at the crossroads of what is right and what is easy.

And that’s where FishingBooker found itself in July of 2023.

As the biggest online travel company that specializes in organizing fishing trips worldwide, our goal is to make it possible for everyone to access enjoyable fishing experiences, anywhere. We’ve been on that mission for over a decade with successes and failures always coming hand in hand. But the summer of 2023 brought about a ship-horn-sounding wake-up call that FishingBookers now know as “The Reset.”

Šta je Shape Up metodologija

U prvim danima FishingBookera nije bilo zvanične metodologije kojom smo pristupali razvoju proizvoda. Seli bismo, dogovorili bismo se na kojim funkcionalnostima treba da se radi i onda ih napravimo. Bez ikakvih rokova. Bez code reviewa. Bez automatskog testiranja. Delovi proizvoda su se razvijali brzo, ali zbog manjka vremena utrošenog na istraživanje, često su i standardni slučajevi (golden path) bagovali, a da ne pričamo o ivičnim.

U to vreme, programer je bio i programer i produkt menadžer i QA i samo se čekala eskalacija. Prvi programerski ustanak se desio 2017. godine i tada je između ostalog usvojena i Shape Up metodologija kao način upravljanja proizvodom.

Ovim tekstom želimo da približimo Shape Up metodologiju pre svega inženjerima i produkt menadžerima.

Ideja nam je da uputimo potencijalne nove kolege u to kako radimo i šta mogu da očekuju ako nam se pridruže.

Imamo proces koji prilično dobro radi, ponosni smo na to i nadamo se da će vas to dodatno zainteresovati da se i sami oprobate u Shape Upu, ili priključite FishingBookeru.

Dve nedelje u Americi: utisci Product, Engineering i BizDev timova

US Trip 2022

Petnaest članova Business Development i Product timova otputovali su u USA na petnaeast dana. Zašto baš ovi timovi i što baš tamo? BizDev kao prvi naš glas koji kapetan čuje i Product kao tvorci feature-a koji im čini posao lakšim, su ključni za dolazak i uspešnost FishingBooker kapetana i mušterija koje pecaju sa njima. Cilj im je bio da bolje upoznaju korisnike i njihove potrebe, kao i glavna tržišta na kojima FishingBooker posluje.

Zaključaka i utisaka je bilo dosta, ali najbolje je da ti to ispračaju oni sami.

Koja je veza između salpe i biznisa?

Ili: O transparentnosti kao suštini

O transparentnosti se već godinama priča na stranim IT tržištima, u svim slojevima poslovanja, na mikro i makro nivou, eksterno i interno. Reč je gotovo isključivo o transparentnosti kao pozitivnom konceptu. Ako neko želi da se predstavi kao dobra kompanija, samo je potrebno da kaže da je transparentan. “Samo”. Ostaje upitno da li to zaista i jeste?

Tako u poslednjih nekoliko meseci svi krećemo masovno da upotrebljavamo tu reč, transparentost odjednom postaje neizbežan sastojak u svim employer branding strategijama, a nije sigurno koliko nas zapravo razume njenu suštinu i koliko nas primenjuje transparentnost kao ključni model poslovanja.

Mi (kao društvo), kao i u većini slučajeva, uhvatimo se za jedan ili dva segmenta, koji često nisu od suštinskog značaja. Tako u kontekstu transparentnosti u našem narativu dominira jedna reč – plata, i jedan koncept – objavljivanje metrika poslovanja.

Ne želimo da pišemo kako smo mi naj i začetnici transparentnosti u Srbiji, nego da potvrdimo da je koncept transparentnost dobar kao model poslovanja i da podstaknemo druge da ga implementiraju. I opet, ne prema našem modelu, nego osluškujući svoj ekosistem.

Razvoj Karijere — Iz Četiri Zida do Team Leada

A man and a woman sitting on a boat on a sunny

Kada govorimo o tome šta je magnet koji zadržava zaposlene u kompaniji, na pamet prvo padaju vrhunska plata, odličan tim i izazovni projekti. Uglavnom se kao bitni faktori pridodaju i menadžment koji ima viziju, stabilnost kompanije, savremene tehnologije i atraktivni benefiti.

Ono što često nije dovoljno u fokusu je karijerni razvoj u kompaniji. U FishingBooker-u smatramo da je on podjednako bitan aspekt koji jedna kompanija treba da pruži. Jasna trajektorija po kojoj zaposleni može da se kreće i razvija je u direktnoj korelaciji sa njegovim zadovoljstvom — samim tim i sa vremenom koje će provesti u firmi.

“Time Flies, Don’t Have Saggy Eyes”: A Unique Day in the Life of Our Legal Team Lead

Want to know how a high-flying team lead makes sure he’s on top of his game every day? We’ve got you covered. Uroš Marić, head of FishingBooker’s Legal department, has decided to let us in on all of his secrets – tongue firmly in cheek, of course. Read on to discover his unique perspective on cold spoons, hot showers, and early starts…

I wake up at 04:00 A.M. and immediately turn on Basecamp, our internal communications system. It’s extremely important to me to be the first person to post something every day.

Bringing Work Home – 3 Weeks In

On March 9, our team reached a milestone here in Belgrade – we were now a 100-person company! A week later, our office was empty. Initially planning to work from home for a week and see how the new coronavirus was spreading locally, we, like so many other companies in the world, had actually become “remote” overnight.

Busting Bugs and Managing Disasters – How we Tackle Stability

Nobody – and nothing – is perfect. Anyone who deals with the inner workings of a website knows all too well that bugs are a fact of life. But managing a site that’s used by thousands of people and processes hundreds of bookings in a day means we need to be quick to identify these issues and act on them.

Forget “Typical Days”: What’s Support Team at FishingBooker really like?

How do you describe a day in the life of the Support Team? Do you come into work, sit in your spot, put your headphones on, and steel yourself for a deluge of emails? Finally, you call it a day, ready for it all to start again tomorrow?

No.

How We Solved Trip-Specific Availability

Sometimes, the best way to solve a problem is to take everything apart and start again.

Usually, we go for the alternative. With a large inventory and endless growth ideas, we use our engineering resources very carefully. That means building on what we have or, if we’re introducing a new way of doing things, starting with a minimum viable product, testing, and iterrating. This helps us make smart decisions without letting individual projects spiral out of control.

But when we set out to improve the way our calendar works for scheduling fishing trips, we realized that the single best course of action was to go back to the drawing board. Here’s why, and what our engineers did next.