Technology connects systems. People connect ideas. And it’s people, not processes that turn vision into reality.
From the start, we knew that the success of Xenia would be defined by the team behind it. But how do you build a team that doesn’t just survive under pressure, but becomes unstoppable? The difference isn’t just skill – it’s trust, purpose, and the willingness to push forward together.
The challenge at hand was difficult. Situ already had a skilled P&D team in-house, but it needed to evolve – not just in size, but in structure, capability, and expertise. We weren’t just assembling a team; we were creating an environment where Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose would drive everything we built. To ensure expertise was applied where it had the greatest impact, the team was structured into self-contained agile squads, each focused on a core business value stream – Booking, Content, and Data & AI. This approach created seamless collaboration between disciplines, accelerating progress and keeping innovation tightly aligned with business needs.
BJSS brought more than expertise – they brought a new way of thinking. Product and service designers, business analysts, architects, and platform engineers challenged assumptions, introduced fresh perspectives, and embedded best practices into every stage of development. Every interaction sharpened skills, deepened knowledge, and strengthened Xenia’s foundation. The impact was immediate. Situ’s P&D team wasn’t just working on Xenia; it was evolving because of it.
The team didn’t operate in isolation. We engaged the wider business, redesigning workflows alongside the Product Design Authority, bringing in real-world feedback through shadowing sessions, ongoing collaboration with operations, and fortnightly Show & Tells. Every decision, every iteration, remained grounded in human-centric design – ensuring that what we built wasn’t just powerful, but truly useful.
For two teams to work together, synergy had to be more than an idea – it had to be instinctive. Like a Formula 1 team, where the driver alone can’t win unless the pit crew is perfectly in sync, every person in the Xenia project had a role to play. The success of one depended on the precision of all.
At the final stage of team building, we scaled up. New people were recruited to add to the strong core we had created. This wasn’t just about growing a department. It was about building capability. Strengthening the foundation with expertise that would drive Xenia forward – Data Science, AI, Platform Engineering, and Integration specialists. Bringing in Academy engineers, giving them a start in a tough market. Ensuring quality wasn’t just a step in the process, but a mindset embedded in everything we build.
Working together with BJSS, delivering the vision, and overcoming obstacles along the way is what shaped the team – welding them together through pressure, challenge, and the heat of shared ambition. Great teams don’t just communicate. They anticipate. They act together, almost instinctively, in pursuit of something bigger than themselves.
