Embracing agile working has earned Bath-based software company Mayden, which specialises in innovative cloud-based software for the healthcare sector, has won a top industry award.
The firm was named Development Team of the Year at the UK IT Industry Awards staged by the British Computer Society and Computing magazine.
The awards are considered the national benchmark for outstanding performance in computing and focus on the contribution of individuals, projects, organisations and technologies that have excelled in the use, development and deployment of IT over the past 12 months.
Other businesses recognised for their hard work and innovation at the awards included Virgin Trains, Hewlett Packard and BT.
The Development Team of the Year category was judged against four criteria: professionalism, excellence, innovation and measurable success.
Mayden’s team was celebrated for their adoption of agile methodologies and for helping the rest of the company to embrace agile working, resulting in process and productivity improvements across the company as well as software quality improvements and frequent customer deploys.
Mayden has a flat structure and judges praised developers’ direct involvement in formulating then driving strategy, running specialist working groups to generate ideas and promote best practice across different areas of the business.
Mayden’s developers take a customer-centric approach and 80% have been on client visits in the past 12 months, building understanding of client needs.
The team also volunteers time and skills to participate in NHS Hack Days – one-off events to rapidly develop prototypes for technologies to help healthcare professionals in their work. The most recent involved working on a project alongside a mental health professional and three users of a child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS).
Together they built a mood-tracking app with questions that could be customised easily by a therapist to give a tailored and personalised approach to treatment.
Mayden MD Chris May said: “Our development team is the driving force behind our product, the champions for our users and a crucial voice in the way that the company is structured and run.
“The team is driven to help shape the industry and create systems in ways that ultimately benefit the quality of care that patients receive. They continually go above and beyond what is traditionally expected of a development team, and we’re absolutely thrilled that their efforts have been recognised nationally.”
Around 30% of the current developer team at Mayden was trained by Mayden Academy, the firm’s training school for aspiring software developers.
Academy lead trainer Mike Oram said: “We’re really proud that so many of our graduates are having their work recognised nationally by this award.
“To be part of an award-winning dev team with just two years’ experience is fantastic. It’s a testament to their hard work and to the calibre of those they work with at Mayden.”
Mayden is driven by a mission to create digital technology that changes what is possible for clinicians and patients and is behind iaptus, the market leading psychological therapy patient management system.
Pictured: Mayden developers Aimee Wyld and Ben Morris collect the Development Team of the Year Award from comedian Shappi Khorsandi
