This is the first in a series of articles that explore how the SkyTouch technical team is changing how hotel software is made, released, and imagined today.
The SkyTouch performance standards are evident not only in the product that’s delivered. They’re present in the entire process through which SkyTouch Hotel OS® features are developed for customers. “I’ve never seen a company invest so much in performance,” says Arunesh Gupta, a SkyTouch developer.
The SkyTouch development team is just that: a team. These teams are organized into Scrums, an incremental Agile development framework that focuses on innovation, collaboration, and adaptability. “Agile means change,” says Scrum master Billy Whala. “It means you are adaptable to change.”
In traditional development, often called “waterfall,” a project is organized into phases, each of which can take months to complete. The final product is delivered at the end, after everything is done. In Agile development organized by Scrum, teams of developers work in incremental phases usually lasting about two weeks, with a component of the product delivered at the end of each phase. As one developer notes, in Agile, “time to market is reduced. You say, ‘I’ll work on only one small feature, and you see it in your production really fast, within two weeks.’”
“Instead of building the entire house and delivering it, you do one room at a time,” Whala explains. “You say, ‘OK, one room is ready, the color is good. It’s good to go.’ You can start living in that room.” Not only does this allow for time-sensitive deliverables to roll-out quickly, Agile makes room for immediate customer feedback. “The client can say, ‘The color of the room is not really my taste, not something that we wanted.’ And we can change that color easily,” Whala says.
This adaptability allows developers not only to monitor their progress and stay on top of deadlines, but also to constantly be asking whether the features that comprise the final product are still relevant. “If something changes, it’s pretty easy to switch,” Whala says. “For Bank of America, for example, say we were going to develop an application to transfer money between accounts. Then Chase comes out with the ability to take pictures to deposit checks. That feature becomes a priority for Bank of America because it adds so much value. So businesses can change, and our teams can work on their new priorities immediately.”
Within the team-centric Scrum framework, SkyTouch developers are constantly contributing, testing, and incorporating the most cutting edge technical solutions for hotels today. With the support of Agile development, hotels using the SkyTouch Hotel OS® can rest assured they are running their properties on only the most current and competitive technical solutions.
Look out for the next article in this series, Be Agile, Part 2, to get an inside look at a day in the life of a SkyTouch developer and how their processes keep technology moving forward.
