PT. Aniqma Kreasi Digital is a software house in Bandung, Indonesia, which was established at the early 2018. If you need assistance in adapting to Indonesia, we'd be very happy to provide consultation. For further inquiries, please contact upik@aniqma.com
2. Executive Summary
Since being founded at early January 2018 in Bandung, exceptional companies and
organizations have trusted their digital needs to Aniqma. Each of them come up with
their own challenges to overcome. Hence, our tagline, “Exploring Software
Development to Fit Business Needs”, perfectly underline each of Aniqma’s team
member believes in the needs to explore software development universe and to select
the best possible solutions to each of our partners picturesque business needs. To
provide collaborations, we’ve established a headquarter at Jl. Kupa No. 22, Cigadung,
Kec. Cibeunying Kaler, Kota Bandung, Jawa Barat, Indonesia.
3. Portfolio
Utilizing Waterfall to Answer Several Layer of Bureaucracies in
Government Based Projects.
Aniqma has been providing several technical-related supports for governments
across Indonesia, during their ardent fervor and zeal to create positive impacts for
their citizens.
Ministry of National Development Planning Indonesia, Badan Perencanaan
Pembangunan Nasional (Bappenas), aims to provide analysis, research, and
recommendations as a basis for policies that are related to economic and social
growth through low-carbon activities and minimal exploitation of natural
resources. Through collaboration with PT. DATC, Aniqma provide design and
front-end pieces to the platform which are capable to calculate automatically
the balance between gas emission to economic and social growth by utilizing
the system dynamics method. This platform was presented later during the IMF
— World Bank Annual Meeting at Nusa Dua — Bali, in October 2018.
Division of Economics, Regional Secretary Bandung City, wants to provide a
certain level of information transparency regarding the operation of several
regional owned enterprises / Badan Usaha Milik Daerah (BUMD) under their
domain, and also want to create synchronization between citizen, government,
and corporates in terms of issuing the verification of Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) activities. Aniqma provided front-end pieces to both of the
projects.
4. Five of Bandung City Government Sections initiated WUB (Wira Usaha Baru /
New Entrepreneur) Bandung, in which each of them has regularly organized a
dedicated workshop for aspiring entrepreneurs. Aniqma provided front-end
pieces to accommodate coordination and synchronization of initiative programs
between the five sections (Dinas KUMKM, Dinas Pangan dan Pertanian, Dinas
Pendidikan, Dinas Tenaga Kerja dan Dinas Pemuda Olah Raga).
During this collaboration, we found out that governments in general: (1) tend to have
several layers of bureaucracy that quick decisions are almost impossible to be made,
and (2) tends to use a top-down approach to define requirements. Hence, we find that
Waterfall software development is the most practical and cost-effective solutions to
be applied. The waterfall model is a relatively linear sequential design approach for
certain areas of engineering design. In software development, it tends to be among
the less iterative and flexible approaches, as progress flows in largely one direction
(“downwards” like a waterfall). The waterfall model provides a structured approach; the
model itself progresses linearly through discrete, easily understandable, and
explainable phases and therefore is easy to understand; it also provides easily
identifiable milestones in the development process. In the occasions where rapid
iterations are almost impossible to be made, having the requirements to be clearly
defined in the early phase will be extremely helpful toward the whole process.
5. Scrum is Suitable to be Utilized to Bridge Different Timezone
Existed in International Project
Keller Williams Realty is an American international real estate company with
headquarters in Austin, Texas. Keller Williams operates on the premise that if
the company focuses all its resources on building its agents’ businesses, the
agents, in turn, will build the company beyond all expectations. Now, the size of
the corporation grows exponentially to 170,000+ agents in 200+ corporate
worldwide. Since the opening of the first Keller Williams Realty office in 1983,
they continue to cultivate an agent-centered, education-based, and
technology-driven culture that rewards associates as stakeholders. As a
commitment to their values, they are currently building a system to
accommodate the growing interest of the services and to adapt to the rapid
development of technology. To support this effort, Aniqma is currently providing
Cloud back-end engineering services. The area of work including the
construction of several modules: Contact, User Identity Provider, Referral, and
Notifications. The technologies utilized are, but not limited to, Microservices and
Container Orchestrations.
The main challenge of this project located in the different timezone existed between
Indonesia and The United States of America, which Jakarta is 13 hours ahead of
Austin, TX, USA. Hence, each day when we finished our tasks at night, Keller Williams
teams started their work schedule in the morning. Through this challenge, we find that
Scrum is very useful to be applied. Scrum is an agile way to manage a project, usually
software development. The Scrum model suggests that projects progress via a series
of sprints. In keeping with an agile methodology, sprints are time-boxed to no more
than a month-long, most commonly two weeks. Scrum methodology advocates for a
planning meeting, commonly named Sprint Planning Meeting, at the start of the
6. sprint, where team members figure out how many items they can commit to, and then
create a sprint backlog — a list of the tasks to perform during the sprint. On each day
during a sprint duration, all team members should attend a daily Scrum meeting or
Stand-up Meeting. This meeting is time-boxed to no more than 15 minutes.
Directly lead by our CTO, Nurcahyo Al Hidayah, Aniqma is working closely with Keller
Williams team by doing a stand-up meeting every 08.30 CST at which we regularly
report about day-to-day progress. The difference of time zone resulted in a common
agreement to adjust a little bit of Stand-up meeting agenda, where Aniqma team will
report on what we’ve been worked on during all day, the impediments, and what will
be worked on tomorrow, and then Keller Williams team will perform stand-up meeting
as usual: what they worked on the prior day, will work on that day, and identify any
impediments to progress. In the Agile Scrum world, instead of providing a rigid set of
rules about how to do everything, much of it is left to the Scrum development team,
because the team knows the best optimal solutions to their problem.
7. During Covid-19, Scrum is also Suitable to Facilitate Remote
Working Environments
Covid-19 comes with many challenges and limitations which compel each and every
business to adapt. As Covid-19 countermeasure, the Indonesian government
suggested that private company employees need to work from home, of which the
standard concept of 9-to-5 work attendance become obsolete. Therefore, many
businesses that required their employees to physically present at the office need to
find an acceptable resolution as soon as possible.
One of them is the FMCG industry. Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) are products
that are sold quickly and at a relatively low cost, for example, non-durable household
goods such as packaged foods, beverages, toiletries, over-the-counter drugs, and
many other consumables. Because the goods are moving so fast, they will need to
keep track of the shipment among the limitation of Covid-19.
During the pandemic, Aniqma has been working with one of a global scale FMCG
company in Indonesia to develop an app to track the progress of their distribution
team. Now, their monitoring tasks can be conducted remotely.
The challenge during this collaboration is that each of our developer team has to be
working from their home since the earliest days of the pandemic. The consolation is
that our team is already accustomed to Agile and Scrum. Therefore, during this
collaboration, we applied Scrum. By dividing the sprint into a smaller timeframe, the
task can be easily monitored, even though the team is working at a separate location.
Also, to set up independent roles: one Scrum Master to keep track of the progress, and
one Product Owner to keep with the client requirement, so that the development team
can focus on their own tasks, and the product can be delivered on-time.
8. Utilizing Lean method to Develop Our Flagship Product
Other than providing a solution to our partner business needs, Aniqma team also in
the process of exploring any possibilities to answer our own business needs. These
needs then got translated into certain product concepts.
Lokaven (Marketplace of Tour Guides Services)
Each one of Aniqma squad loves to travel. But the problem with travel is that
there is tremendous time spent on research and to build travel itineraries. We
are currently on the process to build MVP, which is a mobile app where tour
guides are allowed to market their service. The prototype will be released to the
West Java area first. The pool of user and tester is already secured, provided by
Hafizd Ahmad network to local tour entrepreneur, and the expansive plan to
West Java will be facilitated by using Rian Andrian network to West Java
government.
To prove this concept, we’re going Lean. Lean Startup methodology is the loop
between Build, Measure, and Learn. Therefore, since the loop began with Build, hence
the first appropriate step to take is by developing a minimum viable product (MVP) to
begin the process of learning as quickly as possible.
9. Squad and Assets
As years went by, the company that once was started by the 4-man army in early
2018, now are growing to more than 15 person squad. Each individual is equally
strong, passionate and blossoms under our very own nurturing ‘Exploration’ culture.
The squad composition consisted of:
Chief Executive Officer (Rian Andrian)
Magister of Software Engineering Studies from Institut Teknologi
Bandung, with > 10 years of experience as project leaders in
software-related works. Currently, working as an active lecturer
at Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, and also spearhead product
and innovation division at West Java provincial government.
Chief Technology Officer (Nurcahyo Alhidayah):
Expert in the software industry with > 10 years of experience as
a dedicated software developer and team leader to national and
international-scale projects. Currently working remotely from
Indonesia as lead backend engineer of Keller Williams, a global
scale property business. Therefore, highly accustomed to the
software architecture of a global scale industry, and also skilled
at managing remote workers.
10. Chief Operations Officer (Taufik M. Aditama):
A creative and analytical person with diverse skill sets gained
from > 10 years of experience working at various digital startups,
mainly as PR, user researcher, copywriter, art director, and
audiovisual content creator. The first half of the work experience
was spent on jagoanhosting.com, a startup in the red ocean that
later got successfully scaled up as a profitable business.
Chief Relations Officer (Hafizd Mukti Ahmad):
Magister of American Studies from Universitas Indonesia, with 10
years of experience working as a journalist of several big media
outlets such as Media Indonesia and CNN Indonesia. Also the
owner of Abraham & Smith, a moderately famous coffee shop in
Bandung. Therefore, tightly knitted to national journalism
network, central politics ecosystem, and local Bandung creative
industry.
11. Lead Engineer
Supervising the developer team to build the most technically optimum product
based on the design provided.
Frontend Engineer
Execute an engineering sprint which focused on front-end tasks. Capable of
code in Vue and React.
Mobile Developer
Execute apps development sprint which focused on Android and iOS. Capable
to code in Flutter and React Native.
Backend Engineer
Collaborating with frontend and mobile developers to provide a seamless
technical experience. Fluent to code in Java, Go, gRPC framework for
microservices, Hydra for Identity and Access Management.
Engineer Dedicated to KW Project
Fully dedicated to working on Keller Williams tasks. Most of them are a full stack
developer. They are capable of code in PHP or React and some can code in Go.
DevOps
Providing system backbone and infrastructure to each project. They are
capable of setting up Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, integrated with Terraform.
12. Product Designer
Planning a user experience design concept based on stakeholder feedback.
UI/UX team primarily uses Abstract as version control, Sketch as the primary
design tool, Marvel to create a clickable prototype, and Protopie to create a hi-fi
prototype.
UI & Graphic Designer
Translate design concepts to UI designs to be provided to the developer team.
System Analyst
Perform analysis of all projects and products by utilizing the most appropriate
methods possible. Experienced in diverse software development methodologies
e.g Waterfall, COBIT, and Scrum.
Finance and Administration
Record in-and-out cash transactions, insurance benefits, tax, and several legal
documents.
13. Culture at Work
In order to encourage collaboration, personal growth, ownership, and productivity,
Aniqma invented “Exploration” culture, which consists of:
Day to day operations.
The collaboration is facilitated by using JIRA, general communication is
facilitated in Whatsapp, the discussion is facilitated in Slack, daily standup
meeting was facilitated in Google Hangout, and note-taking was documented
through Notion. Therefore, working remotely is more than possible. Each
employee also has the flexibility to set their office hours through Timelogger, as
long as the task is done timely, and collaboration between the team is not
blocked.
Special Mondays.
Monday is special in Aniqma because, in each Monday, we promote care to
share behavior. For example, during January, Aniqma held ‘Ideas workshop’ in
every Monday to gather fresh product ideas where each of our squad are
encouraged to contribute their product idea that was concatenated in Notion.
By utilizing ‘Value Proposition Design’, each idea owner taking a turn to present
their idea to the squad, and by using ‘de Bono 6 Thinking Hats’, the feedback
was collected to shape the raw ideas into sharper and more executable ideas.
Months prior to this event, we held a ‘knowledge sharing workshop’ where
cross-department would occasionally share their knowledge to be shared to
the squad, since we believed that each person had a different frame of
reference and field of experience, and knowledge sharing will facilitate people
to reach common ground.
14. Employees Benefits
Working in Aniqma comes with several benefits:
Employment and health insurance, and taxes, was taken care of management
as soon as the employee joined.
Free lunch. We are in cooperation with third-party food vendors to provide
lunch to all of the Aniqma squad.
Free flow coffee. Provided by ‘Abraham and Smith’ each Friday.
15. Assets
Fully operational headquarter.
After resided at Gudang Selatan no 22 for 1 year, we’ve finally moved our
headquarter to a more personal space at Jalan Kupa no. 22. This new office is
equipped with a plethora of electric outlets, sufficient lighting, comfortable
chair, sturdy table, safe, some office necessities such as whiteboard, marker,
printer, scanner, paper, and sticky notes and to further increase comfort level,
we’ve prepared fully operational kitchen, mini library, bedroom, treadmill,
bathroom with hot water, and bonfires area. Our office is also equipped with 2
established internet line and a local phone number.
Legality.
Under the flagship of PT. Aniqma Kreasi Digital, our business is already
registered, incorporated, and legally running in Indonesia.
Local network.
Under aniqma.com, we’ve operated and gained network to several local
communities e.g PHP Indonesia and Female Geek, and network to local
government e.g: Provincial Government of West Java, and City Government of
Bandung.