Tech Leadership Assignment: Front-end architect

  Observation created over 5 years ago

Featuring:Ethan M.Front-end architectFront-end engineering guild memberDevX Enablement Lead

I've been feeling a little down on our codebase lately, overwhelmed by the myriad things developers have to remember (and help each other remember in code reviews) to make the stuff we build work properly for our users. So I felt immense gratitude to Ethan for two things this week that will make developers/testers lives easier while helping us deliver better experiences for the folks using our software. But I'm also deeply impressed with how Ethan went about these changes. Change is hard, and the more valuable the change, typically the harder it is to make, or else we would have made it already! But Ethan met these challenges with curiosity, tenacity, and a drive to create clarity in messy situations.

The first example is with autoprefixer, a tool that automatically adds to our styling code to make things look right in older browsers. For years, we've often forgotten to add this code manually when building new pages, taking up testers' time catching bugs and leading to rework. While Waseem started the effort to introduce this automation tool, it was Ethan who saw the value and ultimately delivered on it in Waseem's absence, picking up the story and diving into an obscure IE bug to make it shippable. And look at this incredible comment explaining the issue, its cause, and what we need to retest: https://app.clubhouse.io/lessonly/story/41159/add-css-auto-prefixer#activity-42233 :chefs_kiss:

And then there's the UI Library, a massive project that will make the app more consistent for users and allow us to design and prototype new features at lightning speed. We've struggled for several quarters to prioritize that because it's hard to know where to begin. I'm not sure who all gets credit for the new approach (at least Ethan and Jaki) we're taking of looking at customers' custom CSS for clues about what's most valuable to standardize, but I'm :jazz_hands: to see movement on this project, and just look at the incredible statistical analysis Ethan did to get it moving: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pQPVfhRd1c-8wZiT7I5XibRwsKplGScaDgpM0Y2179w/edit#gid=72331942

The next time I find myself thinking "X would be so great, but how do we ever start?", I'm just gonna ask myself "What would Ethan do?" 😉True grit.

  Observation created almost 6 years ago

Featuring:Alec R.Ethan M.Waseem D.We share before we're readyDecomposition & SequencingEpic shaperFront-end architectBack-end architect

This thread speaks to it: https://lessonly.slack.com/archives/CPHPVJSTH/p1574698910011200

This is a great discussion and approach to taking on what could be a larger project in Linked Elements. The team was able to work together to identify and slice up the work in order to get value into the hands of customer faster. Alec said it in his summary here:

We are going to structure the epics so at the end of each element the element is fully implemented. This means that at the end of epic two the paragraph element will have all of the linked element functionality. Then epic three will be the photo element fully implemented.

• This will mirror how the platform team rolled out a role management, a fully functional piece of a larger whole. This means we can learn more about the entire linked element process earlier.
• It gets to value quickly. We have been hearing for years from clients about the linked element functionality. With this plan, we will allow admins to do this whole process faster!
• It will make the delivery manager role more smooth. Because of this plan, each epic will look similar technically speaking. The first element will take the longest because we have to implement all of Linked elements but after we will be able to determine with reasonable accuracy how long each element takes to build start to finish.

As a result...

• This enables the squad in efforts of successful decomposition of ideas into shippable units of work to deliver customer value, validate P&E assumptions, or both
• Developing right-size slices of work that fit into the checkpoint and quarterly goals
• Thinking through the stack in a way that promotes flexible story creation (e.g. model/database, API, routes, react components, UI).
• Your squad consistently gets slices of work into customers hands for testing as early as possible in the lifespan of a project

  Observation created almost 6 years ago

Featuring:Conlin D.We put learners firstWe share before we're readyWe ask clarifying questionsWe highlight what's workingWe own our requestsWe recognize the opportunity in challengesWe inspire others to do better workWe don't wait to be told what to do, we take initiativeWe put the team before ourselvesWe challenge ourselvesWe critique, we don't complainCommunityInitiativeMentorshipProduct DiscoveryDiscovery engineerFront-end architectFront-end engineer

Last week, I did a code review for Conlin. In the PR description, he did a phenomenal job at leaving detailed testing steps and notes around why the story was necessary. Beyond that, however, he also went out of his way to thoroughly talk through the issue on a deeper level. He explained the research he did on the problem, potential solutions (and why they wouldn't work), his decided solution (and why it does work), as well as the history and potential future of the problem. As both a reviewer and fellow engineer, I was really impressed by how much thought and effort went into this.
While I already find myself aiming to be as clear and informative as possible in my PR descriptions, seeing this inspired me to raise my standard going forward, and left me feeling grateful to work with Conlin.

PR of Reference - https://github.com/lessonly/lessonly/pull/7482

  Observation created about 6 years ago

Featuring:Waseem D.We inspire others to do better workFront-end architectFront-end engineer

The PR Waseem wrote for https://github.com/lessonly/lessonly/pull/7197 is just fantastic, even by his own high standard. The context, problem, mechanics of the solution (including diagrams!), and even performance data are included. He's showing a deep understanding of the issue and the PR is educational as it explains itself. Everyone should check it out!

This section is for Lessonly folks only. Sign your team up to find your Gruuv!

This section is for Lessonly folks only. Sign your team up to find your Gruuv!

This section is for Lessonly folks only. Sign your team up to find your Gruuv!

This section is for Lessonly folks only. Sign your team up to find your Gruuv!