Jack Moore, Director and Co-Founder, WeShape
The software industry widely acknowledges the advantages of DevOps, which contributes agility, innovation and resilience.
Computing's DevOps Excellence Awards showcase outstanding achievements from organisations, personalities and solutions that have successfully applied DevOps methodologies.
This year's winners will be announced at a live awards ceremony this evening.
This year WeShape is a finalist in three categories: Best DevOps Consulting Firm, Best DevOps Services Company, and DevOps Rising Star of the Year.
We talked to Jack Moore, director and co-founder at WeShape, to find out what are the company working on this year.
Jack is behind some of the industry's leading events, such as London DevOps, a 9000+ member events community; London Tech Leaders, a C-suite event network; and Oops - an event network dedicated to exploring IT degradation and outage response.
Computing: Please provide some background on your company for our readers.
Jack Moore: Founded in 2019, WeShape is a DevOps, cloud, and IT consultancy on a mission to provide expertise on demand and at scale, all while having a positive impact. We aim to solve the hardest technical challenges and deliver lasting value with expertise in GCP DevOps, AWS DevOps (Partner certified) and Azure DevOps. Our service lines include on-demand consultants, technical squads and advisory work.
We also have our tech pathway, which provides coding scholarships to impressive individuals from diverse backgrounds, in an effort to improve diversity within the industry.
Our business began as just myself and my co-founder Chris Monticolombi. Four whole years later we are a team of 22 internally and 65+ including consultants, and we couldn't be prouder of the team we've built.
What makes you different from other technology companies?
JM: What makes WeShape unique is our hybrid engagement services model which focuses on flexibility and speed of delivery.
This engagement model begins with a discovery phase, where our associates will identify skill gaps, critical project demand, and product delivery demand within the business. Next is the scope and define stage, where a robust statement of work (SOW) is developed including agreed outcomes, and milestones. Then there is the bespoke team creation stage, where we engage our associate network within 48 hours.
Next is the project implementation stage, where our associates are deployed within two weeks from project confirmation, delivering to the agreed statements of the SOW.
Finally there is the reporting and governance stage, which consists of weekly sprints to review deliverables, with a clear reporting and accountability structure in place to ensure deliverables are achieved, and potential issues quickly resolved.
What one company achievement in the last 12 months are you most proud of?
JM: Last year after a rigorous selection process, we were pleased to be announced as one of just over 1,000 B-Corp businesses in the UK. One of our core values is Impact - and for us, that's having a positive impact on all of our stakeholders.
To achieve certification we had to demonstrate high social and environmental performance; make a legal commitment by changing our corporate governance structure to be accountable to all stakeholders (not just shareholders); and exhibit transparency by allowing our impact information to be displayed publicly on the B-Corp website.
We received an incredible score of 91.5 out of 100. Typically 50.9 is the median score for most businesses, and 80 is required to get certification. So we see that as our biggest achievement last year.
What are you working on this year?
JM: We have multiple focuses this year including expanding our AWS capability and services. We recently became AWS consulting partners and we intend to push forward on that.
We are also expanding our business in multiple locations. In London we are about to move into a 50-person office near Aldgate, and we are also looking into nearshore European expansion.
In terms of services, we are focusing more on larger squad-based solutions with more governance. However, to achieve all of this, we are looking to hire strong internal and external staff this year who want to join us on our technical problem solving journey.
Why are events like the DevOps Excellence Awards important to the IT industry?
JM: The DevOps Excellence Awards are important to the IT industry because they recognise the individuals and teams in an industry that typically is behind the scenes. DevOps builds much of the planet's most critical IT infrastructure, and is very much a backbone of the industry. These awards shine the spotlight on individuals that historically haven't got the plaudits they deserve.
Another reason why these awards are important is because they give businesses like WeShape a unique opportunity to get their name out there to the industry and our peers. Through these awards we have built strategic partnerships and valuable relationships within our industry.
DevOps Excellence Awards take place on 14th March in London. Click here to view the shortlist.
