5 Years of IT innovation
In everything we do, our customer is our primary focus. We always want to surprise and service them as best as possible. IT plays a crucial role in achieving our ambitions. When you look at our Jumbo Tech Campus, its foundation and growth in maturity clearly shows just how important IT is for an organization as big and complex as Jumbo.
This is the story of the history of the Jumbo Tech Campus, and about one of its founders: Gosse Reinsma. 5 years ago, he joined Jumbo. After 2 years, he became the manager of what we now know as the Jumbo Tech Campus.
What IT was
Gosse: “When we started here 5 years ago, IT was ‘just’ a department. Nothing wrong with that, but we something diferent. We envisioned a community of developers. That’s why we set up the Jumbo Tech Campus as a base for that community. It also was a clear signal from Jumbo about how important IT is to the whole organization. We wanted to build up our internal capabilities. So, we started hiring many people with the knowledge we lacked and started investing more in our colleagues. We have continued to improve our skills, because technologies can and will change overnight.”
The department that became a community
Gosse and his colleagues have achieved their goal: the Jumbo Tech Campus is a close-knit community of developers and other IT-specialists from 32 different nationalities. Some would be quick to point out the risks and obstacles of uniting so many professionals from different backgrounds and cultures. But Gosse firmly believes that these differences helped shape the Campus and improve its output.
Moving from dependency to responsibility
An important next item on the to-do list was optimizing the way of working. Gosse: “In the past, we would get requests and then we would develop features, with multiple teams with particular expertise. The dependencies amongst those teams impacted our flexibility and speed. What you want is team ownership: to solve problems and challenges and create value streams. As a team you get a question; you figure out together what the answer should look like, and you get it done. That’s much more challenging and rewarding for the teams.”
Welcoming new technology
According to Gosse, flexibility and speed are what you should aim for as an IT organization: “That’s what helps us keep up with Jumbo’s growth. We want to be a frontrunner in quickly adopting new, but also proven technology. In the past 5 years, many steps have been taken to innovate, says Gosse: “We have made great strides and gone through important transitions. We have adopted the cloud, implemented a service-oriented architecture, we have set up a front-end platform, and of course we are also implementing SAP S4, to name but a few examples.”
Gosse likes to describe the difference between the old and the new situation by using a car as a metaphor: “Essentially, we are upgrading a moving car. And in the past, if you wanted to change a spark plug, so to speak, the entire engine had to come out first. Now, our car consists of multiple, separate components, and we can change that same plug by lifting a cap and clicking in a new one. Without pulling over. And chances are no one will even notice that we’ve changed something.”
Impact that make people happy
Most of the people who once came to work on campus still do. Turnover is low and growth continues steadily. Especially today, that is extraordinary. Gosse has an explanation for that: “As an IT professional at the Jumbo Tech Campus, you help people get their groceries or order them online and get them delivered. Your work impacts many lives. This feels amazing!”
High Speed personal growth
Keeping up with new technologies and focusing on surprising and servicing customers is challenging. And IT-professionals love challenges. Gosse: “That’s exactly what we offer them. They get to work with the latest technology, which boosts their development. As an organization we feel obliged to support them. Not just in their growth as a professional, but also as a person. You can’t separate those two entities. To become what you want to be, you need to work on both.”
Gosse encourages his colleagues to step out of their comfort zones: “I believe that you yourself are the only limit to your growth. If you’re in doubt about being able to do something new: try it. It’s the only way to find out. And if it doesn’t work, no one will hold you responsible. Here people can get better in what they do or take on an entirely new role. It’s all about what you think you can achieve and how we can help you get there.”
Looking ahead
Gosse: “It’s both a cliché and the truth: nobody knows what the future will bring. All you can do is make sure your organization is ready to keep up and adopt new technologies. And that is exactly what we are today. We have the infrastructure, the knowledge and, most importantly, the professionals to be a frontrunner in our business. I’m confident our future is looking bright.”
Are you excited to work on the challenges of the future together? Check out our vacancies and join Jumbo Tech Campus.