About The App Business

Last year the company engaged an external consultant to work with the Senior Management team, alongside the rest of the company, to participate in various workshops. This allowed the company to take a step back and re-evaluate the previous values of the company, reworking them into 7 new TAB Principles which can be applied to daily life at TAB. Since then, the Senior Management team has embedded these core TAB Principles into the following processes; -Interview assessment to ensure all potential hires can demonstrate their adherence to company values; -On-boarding sessions focused solely on TAB Principles from one of the Founders within the first 3 months at the business; -To help articulate feedback at the end of probation periods, and use this as a guidance for highlighting improvement needs; -Guidance for ways of working in the daily work of Senior Management team members; -During retrospective sessions with clients to ensure the team builds on delivery and continuous improvements; -In the weekly Senior Management meetings to steer decision-making and problem solving; -End of year annual reviews where salary reviews are based upon fulfilling these principles.

The company's  ‘Leadership Team’ is cross-functional and includes a community of both  managers and future leaders. They meet weekly to share best practises and keep an open dialogue about keeping business areas focused. This includes topics such as learning and development, quality of delivery and resourcing. Managers receive fortnightly 1-2-1 guidance from Senior employees. These are specifically not their direct line managers, giving them additional guidance for their development. This year the company commissioned an external consultant to facilitate workshops with TAB’s senior managers to identify leadership skills and behaviours. This will give managers guidance about what is expected of them and areas for development in order to achieve this. Based on these development needs we will run action learning sets to ensure any skills gaps are fulfilled and managers are equipped. This forms the backbone of a newly designed bespoke training programme for managers.

To ensure that the company’s principles, mission and their ambitions remain core to how The App Business operate rather than an abstract ideas, the company maintain regular and open communication of them. It is both the values and vision which shape their annual mission statement, formulated and revised by the Co-Founders with input from our Senior Management. This mission is presented to the team by the Co-Founders. It then cascades down to each Community Practise e.g. iOS to establish tangible goals and initiatives for how their department will deliver again the mission for the coming year. Team members will refer to this mission at the start of each initiative to give a perspective and focus for their work and ensure it remains front of mind. The company principles are communicated extensively in our working day and life at TAB from a new starter’s first day induction sessions to their welcome meeting with the Founders focusing solely around our principles, which ensures their recognition from the outset. Self-organising project teams use them to set goals for each sprint cycle to drive direction and efficiency as well as retrospectives which aid future problem solving. Findings from these retrospectives are offered shared in their Friday ‘Wrap Up’ meetings so everyone can benefit and remain true to the Agile environment. The Principles are also used as a basis of who they hire as well as how they assess individual’s progress and development areas.