Cantiere Creativo 2014: the most intense and demanding year in our history

The year started with a vital goal for our sales team: helping potential clients really understand the agile methodology we use to develop projects, which lets us keep our promise of quality and solidity, values we hold dear. We're extremely happy with the results. We improved our pitch by working with some thirty clients, always applying the method. Goal achieved!

We completely overhauled our tool stack, adopting services like Flowdock and Freckle to make communication with clients ever more transparent.

Finally, after countless attempts and deep dives, we adapted the Scrum framework to our kind of organization, adding PivotalTracker to our list of key tools for tracking project progress together with our client contacts.

To stay up to date in an industry moving at breakneck speed, client work alone isn't enough. We have to study, study and study some more. That's why many companies like ours set aside time to build internal products, which serve two main purposes: experimenting with new technologies and gaining skills to build ever better projects for clients. In 2014 we built many projects, including Admino, Tedium, Bemo, Mentionizr and Showcase.

In a more playful spirit, we took part in Rails Rumble, a contest where about 600 professional Ruby developers from all over the world compete to build web projects, from scratch in just 48 non-stop hours, which are then judged by a jury. We're very proud that our team won the silver medal with Hi Guys!, a fun way for remote workers to "see" their colleagues. We're pleased to see the service is still alive and being used around the world.

Also in 2014 we launched LeanPanda, the brand we use to offer our services abroad (/kanˈtjere/ /kreaˈtivo/ is quite hard to pronounce outside Italy). For this spin-off we chose a super colorful, illustrated visual identity.

Over the months we grew fond of Lea, the panda mascot who won over Cantiere too, steering us toward a complete company rebrand. That's how the redesign of our logo, our communication and our new website came about, one that reflects much better who we are and what we do. The website's visual redesign is still in progress, and the official launch will happen only once the work is complete.

Conferences have been a key part of our work for years, and 2014 had no shortage of important events!

For about three years we've been part of the organizing staff of Better Software, one of the leading reference points for software management and IT companies. Around 300 professionals attended this innovative two-day event in October 2014. I had the pleasure and honor of being one of the fifty speakers who presented their ideas. I shared the experience we've gained at Cantiere developing projects backed by testing practices.

We gave two more talks at RubyDay2014, held in the Veneto region last September. We talked about backend and frontend development, introducing our approach and presenting some of our products, such as Admino and Bemo.

Since almost every project we worked on gave us satisfaction, we can only share some of the most interesting stories here. Some are covered by NDAs, so we couldn't even if we wanted to!

Without a doubt, one of the biggest this year was PrivateGriffe, an Italian ecommerce site for second-hand designer clothing and accessories. PrivateGriffe is the startup that reached the exceptional figure of 4 million euros in investment on a single project, running a TV ad on Mediaset networks for several weeks. We worked with them on structuring the APIs, built the entire frontend as an AngularJS Single Page Application, and developed the iOS and Android apps.

In 2014 we reaped the rewards of the development we started the previous year for Opera del Duomo di Firenze. For this client we built several web applications that have to handle huge daily traffic from all over the world. The two websites came to life, were translated into about 10 languages, and work continues nonstop in an agile way, delivering new sections and improvements every month.

Among the most promising startups in our portfolio is Bee My Guide, the service that brings together tourism and crowdfunding. BMG has been covered by major news outlets, has attracted investors, was presented at Web Summit in Dublin and, within a few months, expanded its services to offer tours in London, Dublin, Naples, Rome, Turin, Emilia-Romagna, Sardinia and various parts of Tuscany. Enthusiastic users and praise on social networks feel great, we can't deny it!

Things don't always go to plan; it's part of the game, and it's important to recognize your limits so you can learn to overcome them. Chorally is a project that began back in 2013, which we chose to invest in after a large development job for a major telecom operator. Step by step, as its technology partner, the project won us over as we discussed and envisioned it with our friends at WelikeCrm, seasoned industry experts and the source of its overall vision.

It was an exceptional learning experience, in which we had to learn firsthand what a startup really means, manage its development and vision, and better understand how the magical world of investors works. After more than a year, we realized that the project, thanks to its continued success, was growing too big to run alongside the agency work we're dedicated to. Reluctantly, we chose not to continue with the project, so as not to hold back its potential growth, which we hope will carry on in the best possible way.

For 2015 we've chosen the path of happy degrowth (in terms of how many projects we run at the same time) in order to invest in training two new teams. That's why we've opened positions for both senior and junior profiles to join our staff. It won't happen overnight; we're focused on gradual, organic growth, looking above all for a cultural fit in new hires. This seems to us the best possible recipe for continuing to do things well.

We're working out how to invest even more in training. We want to grow the Ruby community, giving young developers the chance to learn development best practices with this language (and more!). We don't have a clear idea of the how yet, but we're already putting a lot of work into it!

Cantiere is a den of passionate Ruby developers, the language we use for our projects. The Ruby community is very active, and thanks to it we have a huge number of libraries at our disposal. We think it's right to give something back. In 2015, together with friends, we decided to join the organizers of the next Ruby Day, to be held in Turin in June.

Of course there are, albeit shamefully late! We're taking this post as a chance to wish all our friends, old and new, the very best! So rather than just wishing you a merry Christmas or a happy new year, here's a more fitting quote:

We'd also like to send special greetings and thanks to everyone who joined us (Ruggine, Woody, Tommy) or moved on (Andrea, Max) and shared this year with us! It was an honor either way! :)