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Yassir Super App

On Thursday, July 27, 2023, Yassir held its first tech meetup in Cairo, where over 60 tech enthusiasts, industry professionals, and thought leaders converged for a great day of inspiration, insights, and connections.

The event showcased the remarkable journey of Yassir, notably our bustling tech hub in Cairo, through captivating presentations and engaging discussions hosted by our product manager, Mary Girgis.

Ismail Chaib, our very own General Manager for product & tech kicked off the day with an introduction to Yassir, leaving everyone eager to learn from our achievements.

Renowned experts graced the stage, sharing their expertise on cutting-edge topics. 
Staff Engineer and local Youtube superstar, Yahya ElAraby enlightened us on scaling software to serve millions of users and how this is applied at Yassir.



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 <em>Hania Ghannam: product manager explored the future of Super apps.</em>





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While Ahmed Menaim provided insights into clean architecture in iOS development.



Finally, Shady Selim, a local Android community organizer and also Yassir’s staff engineer shared his expertise in Android and the latest development in this area. These talks provided attendees with invaluable knowledge to enhance their own projects and hopefully gave some inspiration for the next generation of Cairo-based entrepreneurs.


The meetup also fostered a vibrant networking environment, where professionals connected, exchanged ideas, and built valuable relationships. It served as a catalyst for potential partnerships, strengthening our team and the Cairo tech community.

Ahmed Fathi, our talent acquisition manager later reflected that “this event was a great opportunity to meet with the local ecosystem and to live by our commitment to build in the open”. Indeed, Yassir’s Cairo tech meetup was an unforgettable experience, leaving a lasting impact on all who were part of it. From inspiring success stories to insightful talks and vibrant networking, the event showcased the power of collaboration and knowledge sharing within our tech community. We express our deepest gratitude to everyone who joined and eagerly anticipates embarking on future events.

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Looking ahead, Yassir is committed to contributing to fueling local talents. We are excited to continue fostering knowledge-sharing, innovation, and collaboration in the region. Stay tuned for more meetups and opportunities to connect, learn, and thrive.

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Yassir meets Cairo’s vibrant Tech Ecosystem

Digital commerce continues to grow in Africa. With the recent COVID-19 outbreak, restrictions were placed globally everywhere — from airports to retail outlets — forcing the adoption of digital commerce across multiple regions. As a result, Africans tuned in online and have not slowed down since. According to a global study by Mastercard conducted in 15 markets, consumers are increasingly moving away from cash and opting for contact-free and digital payment experiences — and they don’t expect to return. E-commerce is also seeing a surge, with Mastercard SpendingPulse reporting record growth rates across the globe as consumers increasingly shop online.

Although initially focused on the Maghreb, Yassir started its expansion across other EMEA regions, and this came with an accompanying and exciting challenge — localizing digital payments per region, which, according to the World Economic Forum, 2018, is a determinant of the success or failure of e-commerce. This report documents the exciting challenges we faced, how we conquered the challenges, and how we are using the insights from this experience to shape novel innovations in different parts of Africa.

**The Challenge** 

Strong dominance in the Maghreb region and tight government policies on financial services may have stifled the pace of digital innovation (e.g., card tokenization, server-to-server integrations, etc.), regardless of PCIDSS, SOC, or any other security/compliance standards. Issues such as this will naturally impact the creative boundaries of technical creatives; however, with Yassir, it was different, as the Payment team is armed with diversity. As with any startup, technical depth is often sacrificed for speed, but this was a good problem.

We had built a multi-currency payment orchestrator localized for each region, but we needed some time to observe product adoption, study usage patterns, and discover insights for optimizations and improvements. We noticed that in one of the markets — South Africa- Mastercard (MC) had more local dominance than Visa; ironically, MC debit cards had an unusual failure rate.

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_Fig 1: Comparative analysis of card processing networks adoption rate_


**Problem Solving with Data**

This challenge was a good one, as it originated from a hybrid security and user experience update MC had just made to their infrastructure to protect merchants from chargeback fraud while provisioning a seamless user experience for merchants to optimize their systems for recurring payments/revenue. A new instruction type was instituted — eliminating the need for cardholders to tokenize every time they wanted to make a payment online.

Analyzing the transactions revealed a format code 800.100.156 for unsuccessful transactions, unique to MC cards. This happened as a result of failed authentication when a customer wanted to make a payment. However, on discussing with our providers, we discovered a mandate requiring merchants to set their standingInstruction.type to UNSCHEDULED and point initial transactions to Customer initiated transaction (CIT) type, enabling first-time card users to authenticate but returning card not to, using the Merchant initiated transaction (MIT) type to by-pass auth enforcement.

![93% success rate in digital payment.webp](https://storage.googleapis.com/cms-strapi-bucket-stg/93_success_rate_in_digital_payment_7576201d82/93_success_rate_in_digital_payment_7576201d82.webp)

_Fig 2: Analysis of error codes_

The concept of 3D secure authentication is one of the paradoxes of the payment processing industry, because if authentication is not enforced, it makes the card acquirer vulnerable to chargeback fraud. However, it is enforced for every transaction, it can reduce the success rate of payments by up to 40%. Finding a balance will always be a no-brainer, and Payment processing leaders such as Bolt who have succeeded at creating a seamless UX balance at scale, boast of increasing conversion rate by up to 70%.

**Business Outcome**

Like a Domino effect, solving this problem solved two other associated problems over time, such as risk management timeout and user authentication failure with format errors 100.380.501 and 100.380.401, respectively.

After deploying all the solutions, we observed a ~94% success rate for every unique customer who tried to make a payment and 84% success rate for unique transactions.

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_Fig 3: Analysis of change in success/failure rate_

This is a noteworthy milestone because it puts Yassir’s payment on par with global industry giants that have been in the domain for decades.

A post-mortem call with the provider revealed that this was the highest possible result achievable and top 1% by industry standard, and internal data was sufficient to validate their claim. In the payment space, It is impossible to achieve a 100% success rate because of scenarios such as insufficient funds, issuer declining transactions, the amount exceeding credit, canceled by users, amongst others, which are also an important part of the payment lifecycle, which reveals the activities/behavior of the entire ecosystem — from the issuing bank to the providers, the infrastructure partners, the integrators and finally, the end users being served.

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Fig 4: analysis of unsuccessful transactions

**What This Means for the Rest of Africa**

Sometimes, innovation can mean creating something completely new; other times, it can mean discovering something novel and expanding it into a region where it does not exist, and this has been the case for us. Inspired by this Journey, we have moved beyond just standardizing our payment designs to auditing and co-designing the payment experience of payment partners in other parts of Africa to create a seamless yet secure payment experience for our customers in parts of the Maghreb region and West Africa, giving Yassir an opportunity to frontier innovation in the payment industry across the EMEA region.

Achieving this milestone is significant as it creates trust, which is necessary for individuals to add and, in fact, save their credit card details on e-commerce solutions. It allows the insights gained from this experience to be replicated in other EMEA regions with notoriously low adoption of digital payment — unlocking these regions for complete digital commerce while becoming a leader in payment orchestration. We believe that this is just day 

**Acknowledgement:**

Boipelo.M, Yousra.H, Amadou.B, Marho.O, Mehdi.A, Xiaoxi.Z & Other members of the payment processing team.

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How we achieved a 93% success rate in digital payments, and what it means for the rest of Africa

Our journey began as a small team with a big challenge: merging ride-hailing, delivery, and financial services into a single, powerful SuperApp. Existing apps functioned independently, relying on a basic UI kit that lacked customization and scalability. Fixing it wasn’t an option.


Our first dilemma: build or buy a design system? Buying wouldn’t provide the understanding needed for long-term success. Off-the-shelf systems lacked the specialization, character, and accessibility we needed. Additionally, vendor lock-in and limited RTL (right-to-left) UI support were important concerns, especially for an application that mainly operates in Arab countries.

**The Challenge: Building a Foundation for the Future**

Creating a SuperApp that covers multiple user needs meant crafting a design system from the ground up. We embarked on a deep exploration of color palettes, meticulously balancing weight and harmony while prioritizing accessibility from the very beginning. This included tokenizing our color system for easy adaptation during a planned rebranding project.

Typography presented another hurdle. Most Latin fonts lack support for Arabic characters. We meticulously matched the look and feel, ensuring consistent baselines and weights across both alphabets to deliver a seamless reading experience for all users.

But the challenges didn’t stop there. Building bidirectional and responsive UI components for right-to-left (RTL) interfaces proved particularly complex. We tackled everything from simple elements to intricate layouts, ensuring all components functioned flawlessly regardless of language direction. We’ll delve deeper into these specific challenges in future articles.


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*Test*

**Fostering Collaboration: Building SEFAR Together**

Given the challenge’s nature and our team’s size, we decided to approach it with a collaborative spirit. Eight passionate designers from various product domains volunteered their expertise to form the core SEFAR team. Their diverse perspectives ensured the system catered to the needs of all our products.

Building a successful design system requires robust governance. We established a comprehensive set of processes encompassing every step of the development lifecycle:

- **Discovery**: We hosted collaborative workshops that fueled our initial design decisions, for component usage across domains.
- **Delivery**: A well-defined workflow that ensured efficient component creation and library maintenance.
- **Review**: We embraced the 4-to-8-eye principle for both design peer review and developer handoff review to foster open communication and ensure craft quality.
- **Handoff & Versioning**: Clear handoff procedures and a version control system maintained consistency and facilitated collaboration across teams.
- **Bug Reporting & Support**: Efficient bug reporting processes and ongoing support addressed issues promptly.

Our vision for SEFAR resonated with the business. Recognizing its long-term benefits, they provided critical support by allocating eight developers from different platforms (iOS, Android, Web) to work alongside the design team. This collaborative, cross-functional approach ensured the seamless integration of SEFAR into our development workflows.

This combined section emphasizes the collaborative spirit, details the established governance processes, and highlights the crucial buy-in from the business for developer support.

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**SEFAR: A Symphony of Design Disciplines**

SEFAR transcends the boundaries of a typical UI component library. It functions as a comprehensive “System of Systems,” harmonizing various design disciplines to create a cohesive user experience. Here’s how each element contributes to the symphony:

- **Design**: SEFAR’s core offering lies in its vast library of pre-built, reusable UI components. The majority of these components are opinionated, therefore encompassing behavior and business logic, to ensure consistent, efficient, and scalable behavior across all product domains without being over-generalized. These components are then used to form domain-specific Patterns, where a core component is properly adjusted, within a range of given out-of-box preferences, to address each domain’s needs
- **Illustration**: Visual communication plays a vital role in user experience. SEFAR boasts a rich library of over 200 illustrations, empowering designers to enhance interfaces and engage users. The potential for a future illustration system is also under exploration, offering an even more streamlined approach to visual storytelling.
- **UX Writing**: Clear and consistent user communication is paramount. SEFAR champions multilingual UX writing (English, French, Arabic + dialects), ensuring a seamless user experience across different languages. Features like live integration with Lokalise, a translation management platform, further streamline the localization process.

By integrating these UX disciplines, SEFAR creates a unified design language that fosters a consistent and positive experience for users, regardless of their product or language preference. This holistic approach positions SEFAR as a powerful tool for driving user engagement and brand recognition.

![The Birth of SEFAR 3.webp](https://storage.googleapis.com/cms-strapi-bucket-stg/The_Birth_of_SEFAR_3_cc8b6a9687/The_Birth_of_SEFAR_3_cc8b6a9687.webp)

**Conclusion: A Collaborative Triumph and A Look Ahead**

SEFAR’s journey is a testament to the power of collaboration. Recognizing the need for a unified design language, a passionate team of designers and developers came together, fueled by a shared vision. We didn’t just build a design system; we created a collaborative environment that went beyond departmental boundaries. The high adoption rate of SEFAR across our products speaks volumes about its success, demonstrating how it empowers both designers and developers to create a cohesive user experience.

But SEFAR is not a static entity. It’s a living, breathing system that continuously evolves alongside our products and user needs. In future articles, we’ll delve deeper into SEFAR’s functionalities, exploring the intricacies of its component library, its commitment to accessibility across various platforms, and its potential for seamless integration into global experiences. Finally, we’ll discuss the ongoing governance processes that ensure SEFAR remains a valuable tool for all teams and a cornerstone of our design philosophy.

Stay tuned as we continue to refine SEFAR and showcase its role in elevating our design experience. We believe SEFAR holds immense potential for not only our products but also for the design community at large. We’re excited to share our learnings and explore the possibilities that lie ahead.


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From Collaboration to System: The Birth of SEFAR

In this article, we discuss how Platform Engineering is used at Yassir to transform the use of Cloud-native tooling with a focus on the introduction of the principles of self-service, Internal Development Platforms (IDPs), and automated infrastructure. We also delve into how Platform Engineering benefits such services by encouraging automated infrastructure provisioning, enhanced observability and monitoring, enforced security practices, and finally scalability and resilience.

**Platform Engineering; A fresh air**

Platform Engineering is a discipline that focuses on building tools that combine automated infrastructure and self-service capabilities to provide developers the ability to create apps using standardized frameworks, instead of starting from scratch. Platform engineering aims to create Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) that abstract the underlying complexities of infrastructure, enabling developers to focus on delivering value, without being experts in infrastructure thereby improving software delivery, reducing toil, and increasing operational efficiency.


According to the State of Platform Engineering Vol 2, when developers focus on writing code completely, organizations can slash Time To Market (TTM) by 30%, achieve 4x higher deployment frequency and accelerate lead time by 30%.

**How we transform Developer Experience and Cloud Operations with Platform Engineering at Yassir**

At Yassir, we are committed to leveraging cutting-edge tools and practices to deliver innovative services and solutions. We rely on tenets of Platform Engineering to bridge the gap between DevOps practice and the Software Development Cycle, enabling our engineers to deploy faster, easier, and without much friction. One of the cornerstones of platform engineering at Yassir is the use of the CDKTF library for designing infrastructure. This library allows our developers to review software in a relatable programming language without the hassle of having to learn Terraform or understand its syntax.

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At Yassir, we are focused on the right developer tooling to allow us ship products faster and deploy new releases seamlessly. We make use of an open-source platform called backstage as our Internal Developer Platform(IDP) to encourage collaboration between teams, squads and domains. In addition to backstage, we use another open-source tool called Apache Devlake for our core DORAmetrics. We use Devlake to measure deployment frequency, change failure rate and other necessary metrics that enhance observability.

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Security is a major concern at Yassir, we employ the use of standard security practices in the use of HashiCorp Vault for secrets management and SonarQube for continuous vulnerability scanning and static code analysis. We integrate these security tools into our CI/CD pipelines, automatically scanning for vulnerabilities and bugs. We also utilize PagerDuty, to ensure the highest reliability and availability of our services. We use pager duty for incident response to automate escalations and manage our incident response systems.

With the strategic implementation of the afore-mentioned services and tools, Yassir has completely transformed its developer experience and Cloud Operations, making it easier to abstract complexity, automate process and build software securely from start to finish.

**Introducing Platform Engineering to your organization**

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Introducing platform engineering to your organization should be an iterative process that requires careful planning and continuous improvement. The goal is to build a self-service platform, encourage its adoption then initiate a culture switch to the self-service orientation. The following steps are quick steps ways to achieve this:

- Assess the current state and define the objectives of your migration to Platform engineering.
- Gain Executive support and align stakeholders.
- Establish your first Platform Team.
- Develop a Platform Strategy.
- Implement a pilot project.
- Document your findings and iterate.

**Conclusion**

Platform engineering is leveraging cloud-native technologies to redefine how software is deployed and improve the collaboration between Software engineering and Infrastructure. Also, by abstracting layers of infrastructure into modules and APIs, Platform engineering is improving developer autonomy and embedding best practices into the software deployment process. Adopt Platform Engineering in your organization today.


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How Platform Engineering is transforming the use of Modern-day Cloud Native Technologies

**What are OKRs in the first place?**

First of all, let’s start from the beginning and explain what this methodology called OKRs is. OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) is a goal-setting framework used by organizations and individuals to define and measure their objectives. Objectives are qualitative, aspirational goals, while Key Results are specific, measurable outcomes that indicate progress. This approach fosters alignment and transparency at various levels within an organization, from company-wide goals to team contributions. Regular check-ins ensure focus and adaptability, creating a dynamic system for achieving and celebrating success. OKRs promote **transparency, collaboration, alignment and agility in goal pursuit.**

As we entered a hypergrowth phase, it became urgent to adopt an intentional way to set and track goals. We use OKR to focus on the right direction (Do the right things), align on the right things (Do things right) and making fast decisions autonomously (Do things fast).

**Starting with the Why**

When coaching on OKRs, I often notice individuals start setting their OKRs (Objective and key results) by discussing tasks, action plans and initiatives. Few can easily connect these solutions with outcomes, and even fewer can explain why they engage in those initiatives in the first place.

If this resonates with you, know that many share the same experience. In his **Golden Circle** theory, Simon Sinek explained how we are programmed to communicate. We’re used to expressing **WHAT** we do instead of **WHY** we do things. Moreover, we spend much time discussing solutions like products, services, and ideas (outputs), neglecting the reasons behind these solutions. 

Simon mentioned that leading companies communicate from the inside-out, starting with why they exist, then how they function, and finally, what they do.
The field of Neuroscience highlights the importance of always starting your message by stating your purpose. When presenting your WHY, you activate the part of the brain that activates behaviors — Prefrontal Cortex.

Starting with the why helps us uncover the true purpose and objectives of a task. This in turn, might transform how we motivate people to pursue more meaningful goals towards making Africans’ lives easier than just “developing a new feature”.

**Objective & Key Results — Real-life example**

When I guide Product and Tech teams at Yassir in setting significant objectives and Key Results, I often ask them if “losing weight” is considered an Objective or a Key Result.

Generally, individuals respond by identifying it as an objective. The reason for this is, as humans, we usually perceive goals like “Getting in shape, losing a few pounds, gaining muscles…etc” as more tangible and measurable.

Following that, I ask another question **“Why would someone try to lose weight?”** Responses come in like this:

- To play around with their kids without feeling tired
- To lace their shoes without struggling
- To increase their self-esteem
- To have better health and live longer

Setting goals focused only on gaining muscles and losing weight may not be that inspiring after a while and would likely lead to giving up in the middle of the journey. However, when we design our metrics to be focused on deeper reasons behind the goal, we send a strong message to our brain: “It is important to keep going to the gym because we are tired of not being able to lace our shoes properly”.

**Setting OKRs using the Golden Circle model**

To stimulate the part of the brain that controls behaviors, we can take inspiration from the Golden Circle model, starting with the objective instead of the key results or tasks. This involves:

1. The clarity of our objective (WHY)
2. The discipline of tracking our key results (HOW)
3. The consistency of what we are doing to reach it (WHAT)

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Returning to the example of getting in shape and setting a personal OKR by using the same approach above, we might have:

**Objective: Become healthier than ever to be able to play with my kids**

- KR1: _Lose weight from 85 kg to 80 kg_
- KR2: _Decrease my body fat percentage from 27% to 22%_
- KR3: _Reduce my waist circumference from 104 cm to 94 cm_

**Objective: Enhance my running performance to complete Berlin’s Ultramarathon**

- KR1: _Achieve an average pace of 5:30’’/km during training._
- KR2: _Lose weight from 75 kg to 72kg_
- KR3: _Increase my VO² max from 65 to 75 mL/kg/min_

Both examples share the goal of losing weight, but their action plans (tasks) may vary based on the underlying context (reason). Someone aiming to shed pounds for better health might establish tasks like reducing sugar and carbohydrate intake, whereas an individual focused on improving running performance may set goals such as increasing exercise frequency or hiring a professional coach. The crucial factor is must align our initiatives with the underlying motivation (WHY); failure to do so may lead us in the wrong direction.

**Takeaways**

Many teams struggle with OKR implementations due to the inability to change how they work. While new frameworks or tools can help, changing the way we approach our goals and tasks can make significant improvements in our work results. What I learned at Yassir is that prioritizing purpose in setting OKRs proved to be effective. Having a narrative that mobilizes and a clear and detailed reason simplifies tasks and makes them more straightforward toward the goal.

As the OKR framework continues to gain prominence in the start-up world, OKR practitioners and champions are asked to be outstanding storytellers who can articulate a compelling vision for why we do what we do (be it losing weight or otherwise).


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Connecting OKRs approach to the Simon’s Sinek Golden Circle model

Mastering OKRs: Is losing weight an Objective or a Key Result?

As tech teams grow, every executive would like to know whether they are still (high-) performing. McKinsey, Gartner, and some industry luminaries all came up with their own answers, but as every company is different, we felt there was always something missing in what was out there.

We pondered a lot about developer productivity and performance. We have built our own framework which has shown good results so far. In this post, I will summarise the core pillars we rely on for measuring and driving engineering performance. If you are on a similar path of hyper-scale, this could serve as a good starting point for you to adapt and improve.

**Our performance framework relies on 4 pillars:**

1.  **Company OKR to set the direction and provide alignment**

We use the OKR Framework to define and communicate what the teams need to achieve during a set period. Objectives are shared amongst product and tech teams. Each team inherits a set of ambitious OKRs that include business outcomes as well as engineering performance goals. These objectives are also co-created with the teams.

The most important engineering objectives that we share are:
- **Velocity**: how fast we can deliver stuff
- **Quality & Reliability**: how stable and defect-free our services are

OKRs are a great way to ensure smooth execution and build a culture of accountability. The co-creation elements help strengthen ownership. The shared nature of the OKRs provides the required focus.

We tend to overshare and over-communicate about our OKRs internally. Reminding the teams on every occasion about the objectives and overall progress.

2. **Key metrics and targets to measure progress**

Once you have your objectives, you need to define the target key results to achieve. We figured there are three categories of metrics that are important for us:

a) **Lag metrics to define what success looks like**

In our case, each objective described above will come with 3–4 key results. We rely on DORA Metrics to set the targets as well as a home-grown “reliability score” and Tech Debt Index.

From one quarter to another, we might include additional key results that are usually aligned with some target benchmarks. These “Lag Metrics” (i.e. metrics that show the outcomes) are great to align teams and offer them a clear definition of success they can strive to reach.

b) **Lead metrics to foster the conditions of success**

We noticed providing a clear idea of where we want to go is not enough to achieve high performance. We need, at the same time, to enable the conditions and environment for high performance. We achieve this by tracking “lead metrics” (i.e. input-based metrics that show what is being done). Here, our focus is on two areas:

- **Team Composition**: we have strong views on what a high-performing team looks like, from the team size (smaller teams tend to perform better), the skills it contains (cross-functional teams tend to perform better), or the level of seniority. We call this the Yassir SAUCE. We track how each team fares on this team composition index and strive to get all teams to perfection.
- **Capacity Allocation**: we monitor our engineering efforts spent and ensure that a certain level is dedicated to maintenance and tech improvement (vs building new capabilities), sprint over sprint.

c) **Sentiment Analysis for Reality Check**

We can spend a lot of time in Excel sheets tweaking the best formula for high-performing teams, but nothing replaces the unfiltered feedback of the front-line teams to inform on how well we are doing. A solid performance framework should also make space for the voice of the engineers.

We run several surveys throughout the year to capture this voice. Employee NPS score is a critical metric for us. We also measure psychological safety, developer satisfaction, and our agile maturity regularly. This feedback helps us calibrate our interventions and identify gaps that would otherwise go unnoticed.

3. ** Tech Roadmap to ensure execution**

Once we have goals and targets, we can layer in initiatives that enable us to move the needle. Initiatives are organised into a technical roadmap that lives alongside our product roadmap and includes activities such as tech debt management, platform improvements, etc. We also hold demo days and architecture reviews to check on progress and offer a forum for discussion and feedback. We tend to invest 20–30% of our capacity into the tech roadmap each quarter.

Having a plan and a cadence to review progress helps us strengthen our execution muscle and hold a high standard of accountability.


4. **Continuous monitoring of individual performance to foster growth & development**

The last bit of the framework is about individual performance. Performance reviews are a powerful tool to shape certain behaviors and identify and grow your top performers. You will need a standardized career framework that clarifies the expectations for each role and what is needed to move to the next level. At Yassir, every engineer is evaluated against 4 broad behaviors that reflect our performance expectations as well as our values. Crucially, we decouple individual performance from OKR execution.

We recommend running bi-annual performance reviews instead of just once a year. That helps capture a more accurate picture. In fact, performance reviews should not be limited to once or twice a year, we encourage all our managers to run 1:1 meetings with their subordinates to provide/receive feedback constantly. We find that type of direct communication to be the number #1 productivity booster.

**Wrapping up**

To summarise, hundreds of models for measuring engineering performance exist. Choose the one that suits your environment, as no two companies are similar. Ours, built through trial and error and observing thousands of developer hours, relies on four key pillars:

- **Company objectives**: shared across product and tech teams that cover velocity and quality
- **Key metrics **and ambitious targets that inform about outcomes, key activities, and developer sentiment progress
- **Tech roadmap**: that highlights what needs to be done by whom
- **Individual performance**: that links company performance objectives and expectations to individual career goals and growth plans


This framework has been instrumental in overhauling Yassir tech capabilities. We’ve seen substantial improvement across our lead time for change (-30%), deployment frequency (+100%), and Mean time to Restore (-90%) as well as developer satisfaction (as measured by eNPS).


The key is to combine the right mix of metrics (aligned with your business goals) with a solid discipline of execution and excellence. In doing so, one should not rely on metrics solely or too eagerly as it will most certainly fail. Neither should you overlook basic HR hygiene (competitive pay, work conditions, etc) or your team’s motivation and well-being. It’s a system and for it to work, you will need to find the right balance.


Ultimately, the most important thing is to start somewhere. As long as your high-performance expectations are clear and shared by everyone, you are on the right path. Perhaps, one of the biggest risks with such an endeavor is to over-engineer it and, in doing so, get distracted and lose focus over the business. High performance makes sense, if and only if it enables us to serve our customers better.



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Driving Engineering Performance the Yassir Way

With the purpose of making communication easier, more cost-effective and secure, we decided to add in-app chat options for our riders and drivers. Here’s how and why we’re doing it!

Imagine you’re a rider standing by the library. You have your earphones on, you have requested a ride and a driver accepted, then your favorite song comes on. You want to contact your driver to describe to them exactly where you are but do not want to cut off the music. You wish you could just text them. Well, now you can do that without having to leave the Yassir Super app.

Listening to your favorite music is but a minor example of situations where texting comes in handier and more effective to ensure a pleasant ride experience. For drivers, in particular, they can simply send a text instead of calling while driving. Besides, you don’t need to leave the app to send a text or call, find everything in one place!

**Why embedding Chat?**

- **More convenience**: Miscommunication can lead to losing your ride or missing an important appointment. A convenient chat conversation can prevent that by making it easy to connect drivers and riders.
- **A Cost-effective solution**: Is your data still running but you do not have enough balance left? You can still request or take up rides with Yassir and all your communication with your driver/rider will be done for free on the app.
- **Enhanced safety and privacy**: Oftentimes, people do not like to share their personal phone numbers with people they do not know. In order to ensure more privacy, the in-app call and chat feature helps you avoid sharing your phone number.

**How does it work?**

Using the feature is rather simple. Here is a mini guideline:

**Check Your Message Status!**

![Hotline Bling 1.gif](https://storage.googleapis.com/cms-strapi-bucket-stg/Hotline_Bling_1_cc518e319c/Hotline_Bling_1_cc518e319c.gif)

To send a message, you can tap on the text field, type your message then hit send to your driver. You will then be able to see the status of your message; whether your driver has seen it or not yet.

**You Can Always Call!**

In case the driver did not see your message, you can always resort to a call with the availability of a call button at the top.

![Hotline Bling 2.webp](https://storage.googleapis.com/cms-strapi-bucket-stg/Hotline_Bling_2_8a731103cb/Hotline_Bling_2_8a731103cb.webp)

**No Need to Type while You Can Have Message Suggestions**

For smoother and easier communication, we introduced message suggestions as well!

Both you and your driver can have a set of multiple suggested messages that you can select from. Once selected, the messages will be sent instantly.

![Hotline Bling 3.webp](https://storage.googleapis.com/cms-strapi-bucket-stg/Hotline_Bling_3_084a4ac325/Hotline_Bling_3_084a4ac325.webp)

**What’s Next?**

In an effort to make communication for our users more seamless and efficient, we plan to include in-app messaging for our other products, as well. The feature will not only be exclusively used for our ride-hailing product, but customers, delivery personnel and vendors will also have the ability to communicate with each other using the app.

Importantly, we are also exploring adding voice calls within the chat so that you can talk to your driver seamlessly from within our app

Stay tuned for future updates from us!

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Hotline Bling: Bringing Drivers and Riders Closer through In-App Chat

Digital tools and skills have helped many companies weather the COVID-19 crisis, but there is also an analog source of innovation and adaptability in tough times: product-oriented engineering teams.

The past 2 years have felt like a series of massive disruptions, one after the other, and yet, some companies have emerged stronger because they were able to use the disruption as an opportunity for innovation. While technology has been a major driver of these innovations, organizational changes will impact which companies retain their competitive advantage over the long term.

**Putting Engineering and Product in Sync:**

The first trait of a successful product engineering team is **not to operate in silos.**

At Yassir, we found out that by empowering engineers to be more collaborative with product managers, designers, and other leaders, they understand their own tasks better and are ultimately more productive. Not just in the sense of code velocity but also in the sense that they are contributing to meaningful decision-making that affects both their work and the end-user.

_“As a software engineer, I’ve always felt like my job is much more than writing code.” — Abdellah Ladoui — B2B team_

**An Engineering Manager to Maximize the Team Growth:**

A big part of our engineering manager’s job rests on identifying the strengths and weaknesses of individual members. It is to help them address their weaknesses by pairing them with a senior engineer and performing frequent code reviews, and focus on their strengths. After all, it’s our strengths that motivate us and shape what we enjoy doing.
One of the critical ingredients in the team are product-minded engineers; identifying them and working well with them will help to build a successful product.

**The Importance of Ideations & Iterations:**

We believe that in order to have a successful product, our engineering teams must be customer focused. Let’s suppose the designer creates a product outline. The developers are on for development. But what if the work done isn’t in line with what the customers want? This is where iterations come into the picture.

With every iteration, product-oriented teams modify the scope of a product. During this time, any team member can come up with creative alternatives. Iterations help the team learn new scenarios and figure out the next steps.

**Shipping Fast & Safe:**

Shipping fast, safe & learning quickly boosts the velocity within the team. In fact, we encourage engineers to ship the smallest thing as quickly as possible, and every new hire on our engineering team ships a feature within their first week.

But, as always, with great power comes great responsibility. Every new change increases the risk of failure.

![Product-Minded Engineering Teams 2.gif](https://storage.googleapis.com/cms-strapi-bucket-stg/Product_Minded_Engineering_Teams_2_ad7bbc46c6/Product_Minded_Engineering_Teams_2_ad7bbc46c6.gif)

**End-to-end Product Feature Ownership:**

Product-minded engineers own their work end-to-end: from getting the specification, through implementing it, all the way to rolling it out and validating that it works correctly. Juggling both the product and engineering tradeoffs and the impact of each is a unique strength our teams have. Engineers can quickly go back-and-forth between the two sides of the same coin: product features and engineering effort and tradeoffs. Because they do it all in their head, using their engineering and product insights, they get to valuable conclusions remarkably quickly.

_“As engineers, we know that our work affects our customers, but working alongside customer-facing teams has really allowed me to experience firsthand what features our users want and how influential they can be in the sales process.” — B2B Team._

**A Final Note: Share your Knowledge and Join our Team!**

Reimagining role boundaries allows all of our teams to do great things together and, as a result, our collective of peers continues to be transparent and united in achieving our goals. How has your team reinvented roles or role boundaries? Tell us about it in the comments. And if you’re interested in joining a team like ours — be it engineering, product, or something else — we’d love to hear from you!

![Product-Minded Engineering Teams 3.webp](https://storage.googleapis.com/cms-strapi-bucket-stg/Product_Minded_Engineering_Teams_3_55e97155f1/Product_Minded_Engineering_Teams_3_55e97155f1.webp)



Product-Minded Engineering Teams 1.webp

How Yassir Became More Efficient and Innovative Through Product-Minded Engineering Teams

It is our mission at Yassir to make people’s lives better, whether it is our customers, partners or employees. In this series, we’ll present some of our colleagues at Yassir and give them space to share their own perspectives on the work they do, inside and outside Yassir.


**My Story @ Yassir: Aymen Masmoudi**


Have you ever felt like a square peg in a round hole? That’s how many people with disabilities feel in the tech industry, facing a real struggle to find a job, start a career and simply have a fulfilling life.

As a worker with a disability, having had to deal with certain difficulties has made me learn how to be more resilient and focused on problem-solving.

We aim to no longer see disability as an obstacle, but rather a challenge, and since we all have challenges of our own, each one of us can simply be seen as differently able.


![I am Differently Abled 2.webp](https://storage.googleapis.com/cms-strapi-bucket-stg/I_am_Differently_Abled_2_1e426b3df2/I_am_Differently_Abled_2_1e426b3df2.webp)


Moreover, technology gives people with disabilities one of the best opportunities to learn, grow and work (hello remote work). I contend that people with disabilities can be a great assets for tech companies. Here’s why:


1 — **We are real-life superheroe**s, we do more with less, we have higher-than-average motivation and adaptability.

2 — **We are organization freaks**, making plans, performing risk assessment and mitigating risks is our daily bread and butter.

3 — **We are outstandingly good at explaining stuff**, we explain to relatives and caregivers how to take care of us on a daily basis. And this requires a lot of patience and pedagogy. In the long run, it becomes second nature.

4 — **We are willing to go the extra mile** to stand out of the crowd and prove that we are perfectly able to succeed.


However, for this to work out, companies need to overhaul their recruitment process. Many disabilities aren’t visible and may not be recognised by hiring managers, notably because they tend to lack the knowledge of how to ask about this matter. Beyond ensuring there is no discrimination based on disability in the hiring process and workplace, companies needs to train their hiring managers and rethink the process for people who are differently abled.

**Here at Yassir: Everyone is Welcome!**


![I am Differently Abled 3.webp](https://storage.googleapis.com/cms-strapi-bucket-stg/I_am_Differently_Abled_3_6dddf29078/I_am_Differently_Abled_3_6dddf29078.webp)


I’m grateful our team at Yassir works everyday towards building an accepting and empowering workplace for everyone no matter their situation. We don’t get everything right from the get-go but we’re improving. I’m glad to contribute to this culture that stands on principles of inclusion, diversity and care. We are lucky to have such a beautiful team and I can’t wait for us to grow further.

I am Differently Abled 1.webp

I am Not Disabled…I am Differently Abled

Yassir is one of the first North African companies to join the prestigious Silicon Valley based Accelerator Programme YCombinator (YC). We learned a lot through this experience and gained valuable insights in product development, scale up and entrepreneurship.

So it was only natural that earlier this year, we invited our teams at Yassir to join YC Future Founder school, an online curriculum targeting future startup founders, so they can learn more about the nuts and bolts of building a startup. This 8 weeks program offers would-be entrepreneurs a great opportunity to learn and experiment with launching a product from creating something based on people’s needs, to managing startup finances, getting investment, pitching, etc. Something that product managers especially need in today’s startup world.

We asked some of our folks who joined the program to share their learnings and here’s what they have to say.

**What did we learn from YC’s future founder school?**

**1. If you can’t launch it in two weeks, it’s not an MVP**

This is an interesting way to look at things, as it is preferable for any startup founder to consider not overdesigning or overbuilding a project. Instead, the main focus should be on having a presence in the market, and knowing the users needs, before jumping on other details.

The same thing goes for PMs in larger companies, you need to launch as minimally as possible, all while listening to users figure out how to optimize your product, given the difficulty to perfect your product assumptions from the beginning.

![YC Future Founder School 4.webp](https://storage.googleapis.com/cms-strapi-bucket-stg/YC_Future_Founder_School_4_24f361a722/YC_Future_Founder_School_4_24f361a722.webp)

**2. The importance of having a company culture**

Having a company culture is one of the pillars that set your startup for growth, as it encourages everyone in the team to be focused on one goal. Take for example, Silicon Valley, whose one of the most common mottos is: “Work hard, play hard”. No matter how simple they are, strong words and quotes can push teams across all departments to adapt to the same working style and share the same values.

**3. Surround yourself with people who get things done**

If you are a startup founder, someone who’s hiring, or a PM, you need to make sure that you are encouraging a sense of ownership and taking initiative across all team members. Hiring for a get-things-done mindset is one of the most successful methods to set your teams for success.

![YC Future Founder School 3.webp](https://storage.googleapis.com/cms-strapi-bucket-stg/YC_Future_Founder_School_3_3442ebcc8f/YC_Future_Founder_School_3_3442ebcc8f.webp)

**4. Write code and talk to users**

Maybe you have heard about this before, being a piece of great advice for entrepreneurs, PMs, designers, and Engineering Managers need to follow. It brings focuses on two things: building and user needs. Fundamental factors to be successful in today’s world

**5. Find a tech co-founder**

If you are trying to start a startup but don’t have enough technical skills, you will need to have a tech co-founder by your side. As you will always need to iterate on the product you are building to meet the customers needs. The only way to outsource your tech without burning a lot of cash is to find a good technical co-founder.

**6. Learn how to pitch**

When you have a startup, you will always be asked about what you are working on, therefore it is very important that you learn how to explain your work concisely, otherwise people will lose track of what you are saying.
What you can try to do is find the most abstract phrase to describe what you are working on. For example, if you want to pitch a startup like Yassir (YC 20W), you can say:

_Yassir is the first African Super App, to move people, packages, food, and money._

With such a phrase, people can easily figure out what our services are, who our customers are, and how we interact with them.

Try using this template:
_Building x, for y, to make them do z_

![YC Future Founder School 2.webp](https://storage.googleapis.com/cms-strapi-bucket-stg/YC_Future_Founder_School_2_ca46ff77e6/YC_Future_Founder_School_2_ca46ff77e6.webp)

**7. Build things that don’t scale**

You may know the story of Airbnb founders and how they built the business without a scalability system. For example, when they launched a website even without a payment method, or when they used to visit different houses on the platform to meet the owners and ask them about the overall experience. But there are other stories of billion-dollar companies who achieved many things that aren’t scalable at all. Facebook, for example, was simply cloning its backend and database along its expansion as a company.

Simply get things done and don’t over-engineer it.

**8. Competition is for losers**

Competition is for losers to try to get a monopoly over a small and growing market. If you are still looking for a good startup idea, here’s a nice tip for you: don’t run after mature markets. Run after a small market with a big potential to grow in the future, if you do that, you might have a big chance to be the market leader in that segment.

**Takeaways**

- Fail fast and fail forward, build things as quick and cheap as possible, launch your product to the market, get users’ feedback and repeat.
- Express your thoughts clearly when you are pitching to investors, talking to customers, or talking to your grandmother, you will always need to describe what you are doing as quickly and as efficiently as possible.
- Sounds crazy but be right, you will always find resistance to what you are building. Know that no matter what you want to create, you need facts and insights from and about users to encourage people to support your narrative.

YC Future Founder School 1.webp

8 Lessons From the YC Future Founder School to Improve Product Management

Artificial intelligence (AI) is neither good, bad nor neutral. Like any new revolutionary technology it is the source of many innovations intended to make our lives easier. However, it can also have a negative impact on our lives if developed carelessly or for malicious purposes.

At Yassir, AI underpins a great part of our future development. In the future, any feature you use, from requesting a driver to predicting how much an order takes to be prepared, everything will be powered by some form of machine intelligence. Thus, making sure that we are building a system that a) works for all our users and b) does no harm, is crucial. We’d like to walk you through some of the guiding principles we are considering to make our AI safer.

![Building Ethical AI 1.webp](https://storage.googleapis.com/cms-strapi-bucket-stg/Building_Ethical_AI_1_cc62b5126f/Building_Ethical_AI_1_cc62b5126f.webp)

**How can AI go wrong?**

We all heard of AI horror stories, data privacy issues, biases in facial recognition algorithms which turn out to be much less efficient on the faces of dark-skinned women than on the faces of light-skinned men caused in most of the time by what is called intelligence biases or algorithmic biases which can sometimes impair the usefulness of AI.

A (negative) bias is a distortion in the functioning of the algorithm whose result is to systematically disadvantage a group of individuals identified by “sensitive” attributes such as gender, ethnicity, etc.

Biases are usually unintentional. We are not aware of them, yet they could lead to grim unintended consequences. Imagine you are a fintech company that extends loans to users after computing a credit score for each user based on AI algorithms. Given the large unbanked population in Africa, there is a risk, the algorithm would extend loans to people who are not able to pay it back even if the data says so (so-called fintech debt trap).

The biases mainly come from the data used to build a model and/or in the design of the model. They result from the following situations:

- The data are poorly collected and do not reflect reality; groups and projects tend to be misrepresented.
- The data are correctly collected but contain structural biases. For example, if we collect employment data historically, certain jobs are systematically attributed to men rather than women.
- The data necessary for the classification model development in supervised learning is poorly categorized by humans.
- Algorithms are not well designed, by not being neutral, they reflect the values of those who design them. Human bias manifests itself in the choice of the data types integrated into the model, the transformation operated on these data and the weight attributed to them, etc.
- The decision-making algorithm is semi-automatic, the final decision is up to the human, however, the latter can misinterpret the results produced by the algorithm and therefore, may introduce biases.

As it is known, this is even more challenging in an African context. For services used on the continent, users are perhaps less tech savvy, relevant data is typically sparse and/or of bad quality, pre-trained models are usually trained on non-african datasets and only a few Africans get to design and interpret those algorithms. So if you design AI for Africa, the risks of embedding biases are higher.

If we want to prevent those biases and maximize the benefits of AI, especially in the sector of industry intended to offer services to large swathes of everyday users in developing countries (like Yassir), it is important to confront our blindspot head on and to adopt ethics by design. It is all the more effective to consider ethics at the start of an AI project, as it is difficult to correct a system to make it ethical once implemented, not to mention the damage when the algorithms derail.

**What is an ethical AI?**

An ethical AI is defined as an AI developed with respect for fundamental rights with regards to the following principles:
- **Respect for autonomy**: Humans interacting with AI systems must be able to maintain full and effective self-determination.
- **Preventing infringement**: AI should not harm humans.
- **Equity**: to not only avoid unfair biases, discrimination and stigmatization of certain individuals or groups, but also, to implement procedures that allow to challenge decisions taken by AI and the ability to submit an appeal against these decisions
-** Explainability**: AI systems should be transparent and decisions made using these systems should be explainable.

![Building Ethical AI 3.webp](https://storage.googleapis.com/cms-strapi-bucket-stg/Building_Ethical_AI_3_7a4b115178/Building_Ethical_AI_3_7a4b115178.webp)

Few frameworks exist today to guide the development of an ethical AI. For instance, The European Union is keen to stand out in the field by making ethics an essential element in the development of cutting-edge AI, by defining a framework in the form of Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI, which are based on the following elements:

- Compliance with applicable laws and regulations — lawful
- Adherence to ethical principles and values — ethics
- Technically and socially, AI cannot cause unintended harm — robust

We believe that adopting/adapting an existing framework makes more sense than reinventing the wheel.

**How we build ethical AI at Yassir**

Several techniques have been developed to measure and prevent algorithmic biases, however the technique alone is not enough. One needs an ethical compass that provides transparency, mobilizes the teams and provides guidance when introducing new AI systems.

Building on existing frameworks, we ambition to integrate ethics into the development and deployment of any new AI system by adopting a few key principles:

- Define an AI Ethics Charter for all AI projects.
- Before starting an AI project, assess the risks and the impact related to the algorithm you want to deploy by involving the technical actors, the people directly affected by the algorithm and those who use it. This risk assessment should continue throughout the life cycle of the AI system.
- Ensure diversity in the people involved in the development and implementation of the algorithm.
- Set clear objectives regarding the biases that you want to reduce/eliminate in a certain legal context.
- Identify metrics (with the technical teams) that allow these biases to be measured.
- Ensure transparency, it is important to know the elements that are crucial in decision-making, especially when things go wrong. This limits the use of algorithms such as neural networks or the use of third-party algorithms whose intellectual property is protected.
- Ensure robustness of algorithms, eg., by verifying that they react adequately when the input data is slightly modified. In case of two similar situations, the algorithm must give a similar decision. This ensures every citizen to be treated equally, specially in the public sector.
- Monitor the algorithms, re-train them regularly on new data, taking care not to amplify any biases through a feedback loop process (the decisions made with an algorithm affect the new data which are themselves used to generate a new version of this algorithm).
- Audit algorithms, even though there are not yet clear rules as to how algorithms should be audited.
- Work with public and private stakeholders to develop and adopt industry standards.

![Building Ethical AI 2.webp](https://storage.googleapis.com/cms-strapi-bucket-stg/Building_Ethical_AI_2_a5ebc459bc/Building_Ethical_AI_2_a5ebc459bc.webp)

**What’s next**

As technology continues to reshape the future of the African continent, we see enormous opportunities (and risks) in what AI can offer to Africans.

It is beyond doubt that we need a mix of regulatory interventions, robust technology and world-class talent to be involved, in order to maximize social benefits. However, we also need to consider ethics.

Unfortunately, little precedent exists when it comes to providing safe AI services to millions of Africans. This needs to change and as a company we are committed to doing more towards this goal all while sharing our progress.

As an industry, we need a hippocratic oath for African AI startups (call it Al-Khawarizmic oath?), a compass that helps us steer our decision in the right direction, reduce potential harm and prepare the next generation of AI specialists.

Many believe in the importance of having ethics and at Yassir we are convinced that it is the core of any sustainable AI/technology offering to come, especially for Africa.

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Building Ethical AI for Africa at Yassir

**Our first event to promote women’s participation in technology**

Together with the DAN (Digital Arabian Network), we have dedicated our first event in Berlin to celebrating Women in Tech. This was a great opportunity for us to meet with inspiring individuals and highlight female success stories at the beautiful venue of the Moos.Garden in the city of Berlin.

We held this gathering of like-minded individuals to praise female representation and success in the tech world. We reached out to three women that inspire us and invited them to speak at our event and to learn from their journeys in the tech sector.

Due to the relatively low presence of women in this industry in Europe, the attendees were very curious to get an insight into tech-experiences from a female angle and to ask questions about the risks these women had to take when pursuing a career in tech, as well as the most valuable lessons they gained from their experiences.

![Women in Tech 2.webp](https://storage.googleapis.com/cms-strapi-bucket-stg/Women_in_Tech_2_a70c6f582f/Women_in_Tech_2_a70c6f582f.webp)

Xiaoxi Zhang, Head of Financial Services at Yassir, underlined the importance of building enough knowledge, in order to thrive in the industry and build one’s career. Xiaoxi shared interesting parts of her journey, and how she made it from knowing nothing about the industry to be one of the most knowledgeable people in the first company she worked in.

_“The choice that I made that really made the difference for me was knowledge, in a service-oriented industry, knowledge is king/queen.” _— Xiaoxi Zhang

While sharing her experience, Xiaoxi insisted on the importance of one’s first job, and how it requires commitment and persistence in order to develop, regardless if the job is desired or not.

_“On your first job, regardless if it’s satisfactory or not, embrace it, take your time to understand the responsibilities and the impact your job is creating in the bigger picture of your company’s business cycle. This will allow you to understand the value you’re creating and a holistic view of what it takes to be successful in the industry. And then you can start shaping your career path on where you want to grow.”_ — Xiaoxi Zhang

While on the subject of taking risks and seizing opportunities, and how it plays a crucial part of the process of a woman trying to make it in the tech game. **Akua Appiah-Lindberg**, who is a Software Engineer at Bayer, told us how she took the risk by moving to Berlin with her three daughters, having no job, and hoping to get one as soon as she can. She took a job with no salary and did her best to master her skills. The risk Akua took has paid off well, since it led her to meet with her first mentor in the field of software engineering, who in turn has helped her to get a great start into her career.

_“The one way to make substantial progress is by being authentic and bringing our whole selves into whatever we do.”_ — Akua

By giving her all, Akua has made sure she makes a significant difference in her life and career. Her best advice to the attendees is to take one step at a time, to always be surrounded by role models, and to never stop working on their skills. This is something that another inspiring speaker has highlighted Lina Yassin, the Numo Co-Founder and Organizational Designer, has talked excitedly about her experience in tech, seeing it rather as a career adventure, calling her mistakes experiments and the obstacles challenges.

_“Leverage your network and take bold steps, fear is overrated”._ — Lina Yassin

Lina is very passionate about what she does, she repeated that she will always be on a continuous journey of learning by trying different things in her career and always being adaptive to change.

_“Fail soon, fail fast, reflect more and just get it done!”_— Lina Yassin

![Women in Tech 3.webp](https://storage.googleapis.com/cms-strapi-bucket-stg/Women_in_Tech_3_e72cf5b812/Women_in_Tech_3_e72cf5b812.webp)


**Takeaways from our Women in Tech event:**

- With the rise of tech companies, organizing events where people exchange their knowledge and experiences in tech, is such a positive experience that builds a strong network, create great opportunities and brings together passionate individuals.
- Taking risks and gaining knowledge is the most common advice for a successful career in tech.
- Tech companies are striving for diversity by the day, and women are showing interest more than ever in joining the tech business.

We, at Yassir, were pleased to meet our women in tech, and looking forward to seeing you at our next event!


Blog

Yassir meets Cairo’s vibrant Tech Ecosystem

How we achieved a 93% success rate in digital payments, and what it means for the rest of Africa

From Collaboration to System: The Birth of SEFAR

Access to the personnel data and tracker charter