In the latest episode of the Simucube Podcast, host Freddie sits down with Simucube’s Project Manager Thomas Richter, to explore his journey and get insights from the heart of R&D. Here you can see the key takeaways from their discussion. Listen the whole conversation from Youtube.

From Germany to Finland

In the episode, Thomas shares his story of moving from Germany to Finland, first as an exchange student and eventually settling down for over ten years. At Simucube he has been working for 1,5 years now as a Project Manager.

In his role, Thomas is taking care of Simucube’s new product development portfolio within R&D  department. In the R&D team there are approximately 20 people, and Thomas is taking care of them with two other colleagues. Him being responsible of the new product development, one of the technology and research projects and one of the people and leadership things.

“At Simucube, basically my customers are within the company. So, Im working very close with the team inside of the company, very close with the product management team, who are basically our customer,” Thomas explains.

Thomas is working closely with the R&D team, signing the right people for the right projects, taking care of dependencies between projects to see if the project schedule align, overseeing the project goals, and also working closely with the customer experience team.

“We are collecting feedback basically all the time and trying to improve future product lines, but also software-wise.”

Three key highlights from Thomas’ episode

Team commitment and culture

Thomas shares that one of the things which stands out and makes working at Simucube different than his previous places is the deep commitment and ownership displayed by every member of the team. He feels that every team member is committed to the projects and tasks they have.

“Everybody is basically every day doing their best, very committed, and want to see the project moving forward, the product being launched, and the customers being happy with the product.”

Thomas feels that at Simucube the whole company celebrates when a new product has been launched. He has been a part of Simucube Valo GT-23 wheel launch and also Simucube ActivePedal Pro launch, and he has witnessed a company-wide celebrations happening before moving on to the next project.

Customer-centric development

Thomas explains that after finishing a project, they do a retro session with the team. In this session they are going through what have been done, what went well, and what could be done better. From these types of sessions they take the lessons learned to the next projects.

Customer-centric development is deep inside Simucube’s way of work. In the episode, Thomas shares that customer input, which is coming from community platforms and the customer experience team, plays a vital role in shaping product development.

The Idea-to-product process

Thomas discusses about Simucube’s approach to product development, from product specifications provided by the product management team to final product launch. Simucube’s roadmap is done together with R&D and product management team.

He explains that this process starts from getting the information, kind of like an order from a product, where product management team shares what kind of product they want, what it is, the budget, timeline, and what’s the fit in the market. After this Thomas executes role assignments and kicks off the project with the lead engineer.

In Thomas’ opinion one of the biggest challenges in product development process is to specify what we do within the requirements we have. He thinks that we need to understand who’s the customer in the new product idea and to who we are doing it for.

Conclusion

In this episode, Simucube’s Project Manager Thomas Richter opens up about what makes working at Simucube unique. This is a blend of innovation, teamwork, and passion to deliver high-end sim racing products. Thomas explains that the company is constantly developing and the it’s filled with the drive to do very good products.

Listen the whole episode from Youtube and stay tuned for more episodes of the Simucube Podcast.

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