20 years at Wapice!
I am a Project Manager from Laihia. I was raised on a farm in Isokyrö and through the studying years in Vaasa I ended up living in Laihia. After graduation, I went to Vaasa Polytechnic to study electronics and information technology, which interested me because of the versatility, good salary and raising hype. My dad is a Mechanical engineer, and mathematics has always been present in our family. I have three siblings, and we are all engineers in our first degrees.
During the last school year, there were a lot of discussions about engineering works, job opportunities and graduation. I already had an engineering job agreed upon the last summer job. However, I got a competitive bid from Wapice, which was a company with less than ten employees, still quite unknown. One of my classmates was working at Wapice, and after listening to her talking passionately about her job and the nice, inspirational work colleagues, I did not have to think twice about accepting the offer.
I started working as a Software Designer in 2000 with a 10-hour contract, using home-made CD-ROM Java 1.2 environment and UltraEdit text editor. The next spring I made the architecture of an internet-based ordering tool as my thesis subject. Together with my colleague Toni we developed Summium's ancestor, Toni did the front end and I handled the server side, and our supervisor Markus worked as a Project Manager. The work was educational, interesting and, in particular, the matching of parts were challenging. First project, many pitfalls, but everything was cleared. After graduation, the studies continued to interest me and I applied to the KTM retraining and upgrading of qualifications course at the University of Vaasa. Daytime I was programming Java, on evenings and weekends I studied. In addition to my work I studied for three years to become a Master of Economics (KTM), majoring in computer science and as a minor subject I had educational sciences. After graduation I got the first project of my own, the responsibility for a single maintenance project. It started my career as a Project Manager: scheduling, reporting, defining, communicating, controlling task executions. Getting the responsibility from a bigger part was rewarding. Wapice has always had a good material bank, a quality system and helpful colleagues. With these, both project management and working in the project has been rewarding, and there has never been a feeling of being left alone.
Wapice has had a strong growth pace since the beginning. The company was divided into three teams at an early stage; embedded, industrial systems and business solutions. Wapice opened a new office in Tampere, my supervisor moved there and therefore there was one team in Vaasa without a leader. I became a Team Leader in the Business Solutions team. Responsibility and attending to personnel issues brought their own challenges and interest. Wapice grew more and in Vaasa another department was opened in Runsor. Initially four people were moved to Runsor, I was the office manager. The office in Runsor has grown and moved already four times to bigger premises.
I left for maternity leave in 2006 and three and a half years later I returned back to work two wonderful boys richer. During my maternity leave I had been thinking about the future and decided that I would like to develop my skills as a Team Leader and Project Manager and reduce coding tasks. Instead of coding, I began to get acquainted with the modelling of mass-tailoring products and the understanding of the tendering process. In project drafts agile methods began to get as good as the traditional waterfall model, and I got certified as a Scrum Master. With enough project experience, Wapice offered the opportunity for certification as a Project Manager as well. In the spring of 2014 I made the application, I went for a prep course and got the IPMA C level certificate. The certificate has definitely been my best career reward so far, as it can only be gained through experience and practice.
However, the studies continued to interest me and because of my colleague's recommendation I applied for the Master's Degree Program (technology leadership) to Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences. The courses provided a new perspective on both project work and supervisor tasks. This spring I finished school and I am once again one thesis and one degree richer. My work continued to develop when I felt that I wanted to focus more on my clients. So our team got a new team leader, and I continued as Project Manager and unit leader, but also in hands-on projects. I have worked in different projects with product modelling, testing, designing and coding as well as documenting. The Project Manager experience has enabled mentoring for new Project Managers and project audits. Work at Wapice is interesting; problem solving, new development, sometimes lonesome struggle, sometimes teamwork with colleagues. No day is the same!