Kirsten Spence works in our fantastic Product and Software Development team at Dstnys’ Rotterdam office. Originally from Canada, she moved to the Netherlands to take the next step in her career. Her role is to lead effective collaboration within her team to ensure successful product development and delivery. One of these projects is Paris, where she assisted in leading all development towards internal and external stakeholders. Kirsten is a music lover always, and listens to all kinds, but especially bands like Pink Floyd, The Smiths and The Beach Boys. She also has a curious interest in Space, planets and the mystery of the unknown. She also is an avid traveller, and has spent the last 6 years traveling to experience new countries and their respective cultures. Like many of us at Dstny, she also loves golf and enjoys spending weekends playing with friends and enjoying the scenery.
Name: Kirsten Spence
Smeknamn: Kirst
Department: Product & Software Development
Role: Team Lead
4 quick questions
Agile or waterfall? Agile
Slack or Teams? Teams
Office dog or office cat? Office cat 🙂
Data informed or data driven? Data informed
The Role and Dstny
What do you do in your role? As the team lead for the product development team in Dstnys’ Rotterdam office, I assist the team by collaborating with internal and external stakeholders to ensure a smooth build and delivery of new UCC products and services to the market. Together with T-Mobile I assist in creating the product roadmaps and coordinate the Dstny IT sprint and release planning. I also focus on ensuring that the team has the things that they need to achieve our mutual goals and remove barriers for them if they arise.
How does your team collaborate to reach mutual goals? Our team uses agile to provide structure in our collaboration and build processes. Agile allows us to be flexible in terms of our collaboration and planning by helping us to adapt quickly when changes or high priority cases arise. Our team also works very closely with the product team from T-Mobile and our release & sprint cycles are even aligned with each other. This helps us to really work together with T-Mobile as one team and helps us gain a common understanding of what the mutual goals are.
What pros and cons do you recognize with agile project methodology? Agile provides benefits in terms of better understanding the scope of a project by splitting it up into smaller elements. It allows us to be really flexible and adaptable in terms of planning and allows us to quickly react to the needs of users. This is also the challenge I think. In order to be flexible you need to be able to come up with creative and efficient solutions to problems.
What benefits and challenges do you see in a project like Paris?
Benefits: Paris has the ability to provide great benefits for partners and customers. The benefit for us is that we get to assist in creating a better partner experience by providing them with the best tools to help them achieve their goals. Its exciting to see continuous improvement and be able to see the impact that these improvements have on the partner and customer experience.
Challenges: The biggest challenge is how fast innovation is moving these days. The team always needs to be ready to be flexible and adapt when the planning or the needs of customers change. However the speed of digitalization is continuously giving us new opportunities to innovate new solutions to help improve the user experience.
Where do you see Paris in 5 years? I see Paris as the go-to tool for our partners for their everyday tasks and support. Paris is one universal portal for all the needs of the partners whether that is to activate users and products or find support documentation. Paris will be a real digital colleague that automates business processes and provides 24/7 support to help empower our partners.
What motivates you at work? Learning and building new things. At Dstny the speed of innovation always keeps me on my toes and keeps things exciting. I also get a lot of motivation simply by collaborating with the team to achieve common goals.
What challenges have you experienced in your role? The biggest challenge I think was the beginning of covid when we all made the transition to working from home. Getting used to a new way of working was definitely challenging. We all had to quickly adapt from an in person way of collaborating to an online way of collaborating which was a big change, however I am thankful for all the tools we have today that allow us to maintain such good collaboration and communication.
What is your best memory from Dstny in 2021? My best memory is definitely at a quarter update we had last year when we were able to come together as a group for the first time in a long time and enjoy a great day together.
Why did you start working at Dstny? I was looking for a new challenge! I wanted to be a part of a company with an innovative mindset and a place where I could get out of my comfort zone and learn new things. When I got in contact with Dstny it was a no brainer, a company with great culture and a passion for innovation. It was exactly what I was looking for and still is to this day.
What is the craziest thing you’ve experienced at Dstny? Definitely becoming part of the Destiny group! I am really excited to see what we can achieve together as a group and even more excited for the new innovation opportunities that may arise!
What do you look forward to this spring? Getting to come together as a group when the covid restrictions decrease.
Who is your favorite colleague? I love all of my colleagues. ???? It is almost impossible to choose out of such a great group of people.
What is your best tip for someone new at Dstny? Ask as many questions as you can! And don’t be afraid to think outside the box.
When you get off work, what do you do? Definitely hang out with my cats. ???? If the weather is nice I would probably go for a walk on the beach or play some golf with friends.