A Year In Review

While this year may have flown by, for many of us 2021 was the most intense roller coaster we’d ever ridden, with incredibly rewarding highs and heart throbbing lows. Nevertheless, we are a resilient bunch and this is the perfect opportunity to reflect and celebrate. We’ve put together a few of the highlights from this year to remind ourselves of how much we can achieve together, and also encourage one another as we gear up for 2022.

May the famous words of our CEO, Amit, spearhead us as we reach new heights next year. “When you look back at yourself after 12 months, you should not recognise yourself." - Amit

“For me, the highlight of the year was the team’s commitment to producing innovative, quality work for our clients during such tumultuous times. While the pandemic stumbled on, and the future of the world was (and remains) uncertain, every single member of the Byte Orbit team came together to overcome the challenges this presented. Collaborating on new processes and ways of work to ensure success for our clients in some of the most complex financial solutions available in South Africa has been a great source of pride for me, over the course of the last year in particular.” - Greg/ Finance

“The highlight for me this year is all the amazing talent we recruited. I think we have built a team that can really take our business to the next level. I love how Byte Orbit is a space where we can be ourselves and have the opportunity to take ownership of our purpose here.” - Alandri/ HR

“This year we redefined how we manage and deploy our infrastructure and applications. We focused on creating frameworks that will allow more autonomy for developers but also better security by implementing zero trust models. Our DevOps team has done a great job, but this is only the start of the journey and I am looking forward to involving more of the teams in the new year.” - Carel/ Technology

“We have upscaled the QA workforce with the recruitment of some talented Test Engineers, to align with the industry standard ratio of Dev to QA. We have also tested and been a part of some successful project launches including the cash component of the Shoprite Money Market Account, Shyft Shares & CIB Online to name a few.

The QA processes have been defined according to testing principles and I’m looking forward to the next chapter of transitioning into a fully functional automation and manual test execution team.” - Wesley/ QA

“This year we ramped up all our marketing activities, not only for our clients, but also for our internal communications. We are so proud of the immense growth on the Shyft platform this year and the win at the MTN App of The Year Awards. In terms of the Byte Orbit marketing, our efforts brought us new team members, engaged our existing team members and helped to foster a fun remote-working culture. We also worked on the new Byte Orbit website, which will be launched in 2022 – watch this space!” - Anja/ Communications and Marketing

“The highlight of the year was having our tools nice and sharpened in Figma, the incredible marketing and product design teams and of course all the new faces in all our various teams, it has been a good year for meetings, whether you’re screenshotting a team mate who’s connection has frozen, or designing beautiful birthday backgrounds to celebrate the day with them, it has been an amazing year of growth.” - Brent/UI Design

“The past year has seen us dabble in a number of new problems and technologies. We have carefully considered how each of these technologies align with our existing capabilities and skill sets as well as the overall long term vision of the business. Given the nature of our core offering, we realised that technologies that leverage data offer the most intriguing avenues for us to pursue. Specifically, machine learning and computer vision have emerged as the technologies most aligned with our vision. Not only have we prototyped a number of concepts, but we have also extensively investigated how we can integrate these prototypes into our production cycle. We believe that it will provide many exciting opportunities for all of us to be exposed to new problems, knowledge and technologies.” - Aidan/ExpoTech

“The highlight of the year was the addition of the new Product Design team members. We have built such wonderful team cohesion, with each of us bringing a unique set of skills and perspectives. Whether it's been virtual Friday catch ups, which are full of laughs, or in person or IRL (as Clara likes to say) Thursday collaboration sessions, we have managed to create a great sense of support. All of our projects are going really well and we have happy clients, which is the main thing!” - Leo/Product Design

“2021 was the year of maturation of our Scrum process at Byte Orbit. We paid close attention to the gaps that existed in our product delivery process, and plugged them with processes that resulted in more unified teams and exceptional quality of work. We delivered some really amazing product launches this year and learnt a heck of a lot in the process. We’ve set the foundation for even more growth in 2022!” - Dean/Product Delivery

We’re expectant that 2022 will be another exceptional year at Byte Orbit and look forward to all that it may hold. If you’ve got a great idea that you’d like to develop, contact us. We’d love to hear from you. Want to join our team? We have exciting positions available on our careers page or if you’d like to see what we get up to, check out our social media platforms below.