Martin Hellspong

I used to think more things were “impossible”. When I first started, I was so used to making most software design decisions by myself that I often unconsciously limited myself to considering design options I was familiar with, or was certain I could pull off. When I’d discuss project challenges with Jimmy, and say “ideally we’d … but …” he quite often replied “so why don’t you do that?” challenging me to reconsider the “impossibility” of a better solution, especially getting further input and ideas from my colleagues. It is not about finding the perfect solution up-front, it is more about getting feedback in order to move in the direction of “better” most of the time.

Our culture is in a way based on just four words; Excel, Lead, Challenge and Care - we try to let those words guide us in the big and the small. From time to time we renew the discussion about what they mean to us, and I think knowing what they stand for makes it easier to make a lot of those micro-decisions that you need to do constantly.

I was helping a client for a year and a half, then they wanted the client team to manage without our help. Eight months later, they weren't where they wanted to be, and asked their team what they could do to become more productive. The client team asked if it was possible to get me back on the team. This has happened more than once with me and my colleagues.

The way it all lines up - factor10 and I care about excelling in software development, my family and I care about quality of life, and factor10 allows me to care about both.

Per has been architect and lead developer for the same client project I think 12 years now, from initial small-scale conception to today's quite successful market-leading b2b cloud service, without any major rewrites, just constant refactorings keeping it up-to-date, while replacing just about everything over time, hosting, storage, UI framework, you name it. I think it is very seldom the case in our industry that consultants are afforded that level of trust from a client for such a long time, but in this case I know the client doesn't see the need to change a winning team.