For almost a decade, Gigster has built products by using our fully distributed global network of expert product managers, designers, software engineers, and data scientists. We’ve worked with a number of Fortune 500 companies to create software that drives their business strategies forward and directly impacts their bottom lines. Simply put, these products drive business performance because people love them.
We are always curious about what works and how to make it better. So we asked a cross-functional team of freelancers sat down to deconstruct The Gigster Way, look through thousands of retrospectives and answer one question, “What really makes a Gigster team great?” The answers that emerged most often were: Engagement, On-Demand Expertise, Dependability, Always-On, and Optimism. Here’s a look at each:
We get all members of each team involved in the project at the absolute earliest stage possible. We encourage our developers to work with our clients to select technical stacks, propose an architecture, and provide their estimates of effort based on cross-functional collaboration with all parties.
Doing this creates a sense of commitment early, and everyone on the team enjoys a sense of ownership. Teammates who take part in scoping are also much more resilient to scope deviations and are able to flag potential risks earlier. Additionally, we keep our designers engaged until the end of our projects to ensure pixel-perfect accuracy for our customers.
The Gigster Network is made up of industry veterans from every vertical segment imaginable. When we are challenged by a problem that has multiple unknowns, we can tap the collective expertise on the network to find the best subject matter expert, or to get detailed post-mortems on similar projects.
The Gigster Talent Network is more than just a group of freelancers; the network itself acts as a vault of knowledge that can be accessed by anyone on the network.
Every freelancer on the Gigster network has been pre-vetted by an in-depth interview process that tests their aptitude in their specific disciplines. Some of our freelancers have been with the network for almost half a decade, and have worked across many different teams, creating a sense of familiarity and trust with their coworkers.
This sense of trust helps our teams embrace respectful differences of opinion conflict, and share ideas early in the product development cycle.
This makes sure that, strategically and technically, no stone is unturned before the first line of code is written.
The distributed nature of the Gigster network creates a unique team dynamic, where our projects span time zones across the world. This means that our clients can have a designated touchpoint with the team 24 hours a day, and have a subject matter expert ready to address their needs. The distributed nature of the team also provides support for our products at all times.
One of the most important parts of the Gigster model is optimism. Since our talent is a network of freelancers, they can opt into the engagements they are most excited about. This creates a huge execution advantage since everyone on the team is interested in, and enthusiastic about their assignments.
