A Spotlight on Altora’s Developer Team – Australian Made

Did you know that Altora is Australian made, developed and hosted? And our developer team are all right here in Melbourne!

Our Marketing Manager, Grace, decided to put our Lead Software Developer and Lead Web Developer under the spotlight to find out what goes on behind the scenes, how they operate, challenges they face and their future predictions for the industry.

So, who are our developer team?

Chris Rodgers: Lead Software Developer

Ben Osborn-Macpherson: Lead Web Developer

Vincent Lim: Director / Software Manager

John Banh: Director / Software Manager

How do the developer team operate and collaborate?

When discussing this with Chris, he shared “Every development cycle starts with a planning meeting and ends with a debrief meeting, to reflect on what worked well and what didn’t work so well. During the development cycle, weekly meetings are held to ensure everything runs as smooth as possible and all members are on the same page. When it comes to larger and more complex solutions, we generally opt for a brainstorming meeting or two, this could be in person or via teams.”

What challenges have you faced as a developer, and how did you overcome them?

Chris explained “Being a developer is all about facing challenges, I haven’t dealt with a task that didn’t have some unforeseen challenges. The best way to overcome these challenges is by understanding and with incremental progress. Eventually what seemed like a roadblock becomes a working solution.”

Ben took the opportunity to highlight “As I started my career as a print graphic designer, the biggest challenge for me was the change in mindset around work being ‘finished’. With print design, nothing can be changed once it is sent off to the printer, but on the web everything is constantly changing. The other big challenge is how fast technologies develop – there is always something new to learn, which keeps things interesting and requires continuous learning.”

Can you describe a project you’ve worked on that you’re particularly proud of?

When asked about this Ben shared “I recently built a menu component with a heavy focus on accessibility. Menus are especially important to assistive technology users, but tricky to get right for developers.”

“Working on the check-in system was an enjoyable process” Chris disclosed. “It seemed to move at a decent pace from initial concept to its release. After its release, it allowed us to instantly offer our customers a broader solution, making the Altora platform more appealing overall. The interest and adoption were immediate, with largely positive feedback which helped validate that we had invested our time in the right direction. This feeling made all the effort worthwhile.”

What trends do you see shaping the future of development in our industry?

“The biggest and most obvious is Artificial Intelligence (AI)” Chris expressed. “One example I see is AI’s ability to identify patterns in data to help improve the safety of workers. Along with AI, Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) or even a combination of the two could improve the delivery and realism of training, leading to reduced costs and risks in comparison to training in real world environments.”

Ben revealed “I’m a big proponent of the browser over native applications, and I think that we’ll continue to see a push in this direction across all industries as more native features are exposed to web browsers. This is exciting as it allows developers to create better products for any device that can run a web browser.”

Get in touch

Contact Altora to find out more about our products and features. Our Product Specialist, Hamish Horvath, will be delighted to walk you through the process and give you a demo of how the system works.

Simply click here to get in contact and we will be in touch.

This article was written by Grace, Altora’s Marketing Manager. Grace has significant experience in marketing and writing.

This content was 100% human-created.

About Grace