This year, we are celebrating 115 years of International Women’s Day! For this special occasion, the topic is Give to Gain – embracing a mindset of generosity and collaboration.

At Tactile, we are proud of having an extremely diverse workforce. We are 75% international with Tactilers representing over 55 different nationalities. But one of the numbers that we are most proud of is that we have over 40% women 🩷

This International Women’s Day, we wanted to shine a spotlight on some of our amazing women who do so much for others at Tactile – whether it’s through mentorship, leadership, development, relocation support, language learning or knowledge sharing – the generosity they give increases the opportunities and support for everyone else. Giving does not take away, but instead, creates more.

As individuals, giving support doesn’t just mean celebrating each other, but also calling out stereotypes, challenging discrimination and questioning biases. When more of us thrive, we all rise.

We wanted to share these beautiful portraits of our amazing women and also share an insight into why giving to others is so important to them.

Sveta

Our ‘Office Mom’

“For me, Tactile is a second home, a place where you come and feel supported and cared for. And when you feel that way, you want to give back. I love it when people around me become a little happier if I do something for them, even if it seems insignificant, but is very important to someone at that moment. I love helping people, it makes me happy.“

Laura

Caring for our players & supporting game teams with insights

“Whether at work or in our communities, giving support is something that needs to be practiced with intention. In the workplace, it starts with sharing knowledge openly, avoiding gatekeeping, and creating an environment where people feel safe to ask questions, make mistakes, and grow.

Small actions matter: amplifying others’ voices, celebrating their wins, choosing to support women-owned businesses, contributing to mutual aid efforts, and highlighting others’ work that deserves recognition.

Giving doesn’t take something away from yourself, and support is not a limited resource. When we make space for others and advocate for those not in the room, we help ensure they’re invited into the room next time.“

Vera

Mentorship & Knowledge Sharing

“I try to support others the way I wish someone supported me when I was starting out – by sharing knowledge, giving honest feedback, and encouraging artists not to give up too early. Support from others helped me a lot at the beginning of my career, so I know how much it can matter.“

Anna

Enabling growth & development across Tactile

“I believe that my role is about giving people the room to succeed. I’m lucky to help shape our culture, and I want to use that influence to be a safe space for my colleagues. To me, that’s about being a sounding board for people’s ideas and dreams, and helping navigate them without judgment.“

Anja

Empowering Tactilers through language & culture

“The classroom is a small community where people join forces in learning new skills. I find joy and meaning in facilitating the best possible circumstances for a learning environment. My aim is to create a safe and constructive space where my students feel encouraged and comfortable to ask questions, make mistakes, take further steps and share experiences. And I try my very best to also make it fun along the way.“

Lene

Helping Tactilers arrive to and settle in Copenhagen

“It’s very important for me that people land on their feet when they come to Copenhagen. They have relocated to a completely new world and I know that helping them even with the smallest things, such as handling the bureaucratic processes, will help them arrive in a good way. Helping others should never be a question.”

Aleksandra

Enabling our game teams to thrive

“For me, it’s all about giving my team the space to express themselves and I focus on listening. Giving to others makes me feel useful in a personal sense but also ‘as a part of society’ sense and it inspires me a lot to see when people reach places they thought they’d never be able to.“

Tanya

Connecting Tactilers through cultural activities

“I find power and true joy in helping others because I know that by giving good things, good things will come back in compounding ways.“

Terra

Inspirational leadership

“I try to be mindful and open to those around me, noticing who might need an extra hand. Whether it’s reviewing someone’s presentation, offering a cup of coffee and a listening ear, or helping carry a stroller up the stairs, being able to help each other is what humanity is all about. We all need a little extra support sometimes.“

✨

The Art of Adaptation
Given our inability to predict market conditions for the upcoming year, our ability to adapt swiftly becomes critical for survival.

Tactile has, for a long time, been defined as a developer of great story-driven, puzzle games. Whilst this held true for us for over a decade, and in particular since the launch of Lily’s Garden in 2019, we have in more recent years been observing big shifts in the casual mobile gaming market… which is becoming more and more hybrid-casual.

For us, this meant rethinking our strategy in terms of product. We wanted to challenge ourselves: first, to get better at launching games faster, and second, to shift our focus from story back to gameplay and to challenge ourselves with developing new core game mechanics.

This meant big changes for the business – both in terms of product focus and in terms of our workflows and processes. We have gotten really good at managing big productions, such as Lily’s Garden, which runs as a well oiled machine with weekly releases. Now we had to adjust to running smaller game productions with completely undefined processes.

As our culture is rooted in 3 core pillars – lean processes, agile workflows, and flat hierarchy – staying loyal to these has become more important than ever. Here’s why 👇

Our Culture Pillars

🔥Flat hierarchy – Our commitment as a lean company is to the work and the person, and not to the restrictions of a job title. It is hard for us to predict what we might need in a year’s time, so we instead commit to the people we work with and to growing their areas of expertise. We do so by enabling short decision paths and direct access to leadership, with high ownership at team level.

🔥Increasing outputs (agile workflows) – We want to get everyone as close as we can to giving max value. The only way to do that is for everyone to be aware of identifying processes that don’t make sense (the so-called ‘wastes’). We do so by fostering an open environment, where everyone is encouraged to share – ideas, observations, and most importantly, feedback – and that’s right at the heart of our culture. Specialists get to influence direction, not just implementation.

🔥 Identifying and removing non-value adding activities (lean processes) – We don’t want to spend time and resources that don’t add value to our production processes (and create ‘waste’). We make games, so a process doesn’t end when new content is delivered – it ends when it gets successfully released and our players get to experience it.

Let’s dive further into the 7 wastes* that our lean thinking aims to remove from our work processes.

The 7 Wastes of Lean

*The original seven wastes were developed by Taiichi Ohno, the Chief Engineer at Toyota, as part of the Toyota Production System (TPS).
#1 TRANSPORT

💡One way to imagine transport waste is when tasks get reassigned and restarted from scratch, or when individual priorities get rearranged.

In the context of Tactile, this means finding ways to ensure everyone can successfully complete the tasks they are working on.

We want to make sure that tasks don’t get reshuffled or restarted too often and that, if someone starts something, they have the tools and support needed to finish it. Then we look into how we can better set each individual or task up for success in the future.

#2 INVENTORY

💡Inventory relates to the lean organization’s ability to avoid having many tasks in the backlog and setting too many priorities.

In our context, this means that if we start working on a feature, we need to be able to release it to the players. We want to avoid logistics and administration along the way, which ultimately does not add value for the player.

The point is that we don’t want great ideas and important tasks to sit in a backlog – we want them to see the light of day, because in a short time, they might no longer be relevant.

#3 MOTION

💡 Motion relates to finding ways to have everything that is needed to complete a task in one place.

As the lean organization was born in a factory (Toyota), motion waste originally referred to workers having to move around the factory a lot to be able to do the same thing over and over again (i.e., put tires on a car).

It turns out that in reality, multitasking doesn’t really work. At the same time, when tasks switch hands, it often takes focus away. At Tactile, we want to minimize motion waste by having people focus on one thing at a time and doing that really well (i.e., in QA we try to minimize testers switching between different games and features too often).

#4 WAITING

💡Waiting refers to having to get thumbs up to be able to continue with your work.

In our context, this means that we do not want to create feedback gates. Instead, we want to enable feedback loops. We do not have a middle management layer validating and controlling everyone’s work, which reduces many bottlenecks.

Leadership might set the direction, but the teams decide on how to get there. We expect Tactilers to pull feedback and not leadership to push it. We don’t always work with strict deadlines, so we have to make sure that an individual’s work is not blocked by anyone or anything else. If you experience delays and serious waiting times, we need to talk about it.

#5 OVER-PRODUCTION

💡We do not produce a large amount of in-game content in advance. For us, value is not achieved when content is created, but when our players actually get to experience it. So when a new feature or story day is done, it immediately gets released.

Having said that, throughout all of our production processes, we want to make data-driven decisions. This gives us a way to continuously check if what we’re doing still makes sense. Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should.

Yes, producing a large amount of content ahead of time means that you can have a more relaxed production pipeline, but if the market suddenly changes, you have to make that content all over again. This then leads to over-production.

#6 OVER-PROCESSING

💡At Tactile, we try to reduce the number of processes and meetings that we have.

For some, sitting in meetings and solving problems has value, but that is not necessarily the case for everyone.

If we identify that we are doing something that doesn’t add value or doesn’t make sense (like sitting in meetings), then we shouldn’t be doing it. Or we should at least put it up for discussion, to see what can be done differently. We also don’t do internal communication via emails or reports. We want people to talk to each other in person as much as possible.

#7 DEFECTS

💡We do quality checks all the time and at every single step.

For example, our programmers focus on clean coding principles and practices. They also get paired up with QA testers from the very start of the development of a new feature. It is crucial for QA to be present already at the ideation phase, as it helps flag any potential issues early on and prevents us from repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

It’s not about fixing bugs, but about avoiding them. The quality of new releases should not only be tested at the very end of their development cycle.

Lean Management Practices

Besides reducing wasteful processes, we also follow these two lean management practices:

POKA YOKE (or mistake proofing)

💡Avoid unexpected surprises!

This concept comes from the idea that we should never blame the user for things that are not working properly. For us, this refers to fool-proofing our internal tools and tech.

Are the tools easy to use and to understand? Whoever is making them should also think about how users could get them wrong. This is why, within our teams, we encourage everyone to give constructive criticism and to speak up when they see that something can be improved.

GEMBA WALK (‘The Real Place’)

💡Go and see, check, and talk.

We solve problems and search for solutions by talking to each other. A lot.

This is not about micromanagement, but about having a discussion in the moment we identify something that doesn’t work. To stay lean and to keep moving fast, we need to be able to talk to each other in real time.

Reflection

One of the key reflections of one of the lean leaders at Toyota (the principles of Lean originate from the Toyota car factory in Japan) is that despite them realistically not being able to reduce all waste from their processes, this is not stopping them from setting ambitious goals (0 waste). As technology develops, so do processes and so does our understanding of how we can work better and more efficiently.

We’re not at the perfect place yet, and we might never get there, but we continue working hard on ensuring we’re staying true to the core pillars of our culture and how we wish to operate as a workplace. This is to give the best possible experience to both our Tactilers and to our community of players all over the world.

It’s Time for Talent – with Daniella Feiglin

Hi, my name is Daniella, it’s nice to virtually meet you! 👋

I joined Tactile in August 2025 as a Product Manager. I work with development teams and stakeholders to take concepts from a general idea to complete, live features. I also keep track of our data and market trends to help identify what we should focus on next.

Meet Daniella 👋

🚀 Before Tactile

I’ve been in the mobile games industry for about a decade. I started as a Game Designer at a startup, then moved to a larger company where I worked as a Market Researcher before transitioning into Product Management. No formal degree – just a lot of learning on the job and a genuine passion for games.

💜 Joining Tactile

I relocated to Copenhagen and was surprised by how quickly I was able to feel connected – everyone is genuinely nice and welcoming. I get to work with talented teammates from many different countries, which has really broadened my understanding of the industry.

💪 Having an impact

My absolute favourite thing in my work is the feeling that something I did made a good impact (whether it’s game metrics, processes, or helping the team).

My time here has been very dynamic: I started on Lily’s Garden, then got a chance to work on a new game prototype, and just recently joined the Simon’s Cat Match team. A lot of that is because opportunities come up where I can be helpful, and at Tactile I get to influence where and what I work on. I’m also fully trusted with advanced product decisions – that level of autonomy is rare.

📚 The keys to success