Clarity The latest episode of the Coffee Break interview series is about the members of the Development Team working in Szeged.

How long has Clarity Consulting been present in Szeged?
The first project started in 2006, financed from EU funds, which have priority area in digitization of public administration. The main task was to prepare an integrated municipal system and write the related application with the support of RITEK Zrt. Later, in 2008, Clarity worked on the preparation of the Software Innovation Cluster (network of companies) with the participation of University of Szeged. Clarity even has become member of the Cluster later. We supported stakeholders to cooperate and share knowledge. The first project was called ‘DQM Professional’, which is a software package for data cleaning and data quality management. In 2016, we prepared the Szeged Smart City Strategy and Action Plan and at the end of the year, we set on the R&D project financed from GINOP (Economic Development and Innovation Operational Programme). At this point, we considered to set up a new branch in Szeged.

How was it created and what is this GINOP project about?

Our consortium has won a GINOP-2.1.1-15 project within the framework of Economic Development and Innovation Operational Programme (Széchenyi 2020). It was a 24-month research and development task. We delivered the development tasks together with Szeged Software Zrt. and the research tasks jointly with the University of Szeged. The purpose of the R&D project was mainly to analyse relational databases, including structural and data link analysis.

How did the job start in the newly opened office?
Attila and Tamás has started to work as database developers in Szeged, but later several colleagues participated in the research and development tasks, as well as in the life of the office in Szeged. In a short time, Dávid has joined the team as a junior full-stack developer and then Levente as a senior full-stack developer. The project also provided an excellent opportunity for interns to try their wings. Among them, Betti has clearly stood out, no wonder that she has already become a junior developer. As the leader of the DEV Competence Centre, Zoltán aids with the organisation of work and trouble shooting.

How did you build up team cohesion in the course of the common work?

Attila and Tamás have already known each other from their previous workplace so they had it really easy in this aspect. The others drew from successes of joint problem solving. The hospitality sector of Szeged also helped a great deal.

What was the greatest difficulty in this project?

Creating two applications that stand their ground in large enterprise environment from thin air is never an easy task. We had to comply with several professional requirements, which was often difficult but at least we had the opportunity to be creative. We had to make several decisions from both the technological and the business perspectives which required much exploration and research.

What are these two products about?

DALIA is an application which analyses the program codes in order to display the data flows and make these more comprehensible for humans. It can be deployed for data warehouses and transactional systems.

Dexter analyses custom developed transactional systems to evaluate their database structure.

How can the clients be informed about these products?

In the course of the development we involved many of our large enterprise clients to contribute ideas and observations in order to concentrate our efforts on features that make a real difference. We will carry on with this cooperation while we are also on the lookout for projects relating to data warehouses.

We frequently appear at conferences. Most recently, we made a presentation at the Budapest Data Forum.

For the international introduction, we had two webpages designed for those who are interested. You can find out additional information about DALIA and DEXTER at daliaflow.com and databasestructureequality.com respectively.

In 2018, we participated in the GITEX Technology Week in Dubai for the first time with our local partner, Cayenne Technologies FZE. GITEX is one of the largest IT exhibitions in the Gulf Region. We headed home from this exhibition with many ideas and plans, therefore we could fill up our development schedule with content for the foreseeable future.

Does the team also meet off-work? Do you have any free time activities together?

The entire company gets together several times a year to share our knowledge and professional experience with one another. These events are always good opportunities for team building as well. Besides these, once a year we go on couple of days long company trip where relaxation and team building are the primary goals. It is also worth mentioning the annual trip of the DEV team where we invent new programs for ourselves every year. Naturally, the wine festival at Szeged or a good darts game are also great opportunities but charity run and escape room have also come up as ideas.

How does the professional cooperation with colleagues in Budapest work?

We utilize modern teamwork applications daily and also, we regularly hold meetings with the help of VoiP applications so we can work together with screen sharing technique. Naturally, traditional communication channels such as email and phone are still ubiquitous.

The aforementioned company events in Budapest also help. At these events colleagues hold presentations about the most recent developments concerning their individual area of expertise and also give an account about the results of projects they are currently working on. As result, we can gain some insights into each other’s work, get familiar with new technologies and also hear ideas that may help accomplishing our tasks.

Are there any opportunities to participate in trainings at the company?

There are various trainings and workshops, depending on area of expertise for colleagues in Budapest and Szeged as well. Usually, these take place in Budapest but the most recent Project Management training took place in Szeged. The dinner in the evening was a further opportunity for networking.

Clarity: Thank you for the interview and for the introduction of the Szeged team!