HellO, ITAS 2018

@brandonb927 

About Me

https://brandonb.ca

QA Developer @ Sendwithus

Work

• In-house IT office for 100+ REALTOR®s on VI
• Web development + maintenance for real estate websites in PHP with MySQL
  • Built a multi-site custom Wordpress package
  • Maintained existing websites
• Networking + server management
  • Implemented wireless network auth system
  • Applied Windows server + desktop OS knowledge
  • Linux server management

• Real estate website development
  • built with custom PHP framework "Caffeine"
• Built and worked on core parts of web apps built in Python
  • QuoteRobot.com, invoicing Saas for Designers & Devs
  • Postach.io, Blogging platform built on Evernote
• Trips & events in San Francisco
  • Evernote Devcup (hackathon)
    • Won $20k cheque & gold trophy
  • Evernote Accelerator (1 month)
    • Pitched to very high profile investors on Sand Hill Road

• Product Developer
  • Worked on web app UI/frontend
  • Dealt directly with customers to build features
• API powered by high-scale, high-throughput systems
  • Hosted on Heroku, services powered by AWS
  • Infrastructure is a mixture of Python and Go
• Worked in mixture of legacy and new code
  • Frontend - written in Coffeescript & KnockoutJS
  • Backend - large Django monolith --> "micro-services" for most new code

• Product Dev -> QA Developer
  • Working alongside product developers to ensure quality of code and customer-facing product
• API powered by distributed container-based systems
  • Hosted on AWS powered by Kubernetes
  • Infrastructure is a mixture of Python, Go, and Javascript-languages
• Working in new, fast-iteration environment
  • Frontend - Typescript and React
  • Backend - GraphQL graph database, micro-services

Transactional Email & Templating API solution

Provide email marketing solutions for startups to large companies

Enterprise-focused, GDPR + SOC-2 compliant

Visual Email Template Editor solution

What we wanted Sendwithus the product  to be, with a specific focus on Enterprise utilizing more current technology choices to scale to the size the product needs to be.

Secure by default, gated by your own SSO provider

(GSuite, Okta, Azure, Outlook, and more)

Community Engagement:

• Open Source Email Templates
• Open Source API Clients
• Community Events in Victoria
  • Battlesnake (v5, March 3 2019)
  • Startup Slam (v6, Fall 2019)
• Speaking in middle/secondary classrooms in/around Victoria

Battlesnake

Startup Slam

Building a Product

From idea to shipping

IDea

• Find a problem to solve, don't invent one
• Talk to potential customers
• Don't build until you can get at least 10 customers willing to pay you

Planning

• Requirements gathering and proposals
• SCRUM
  • Working closely with stakeholders
  • Task estimation

Build An MVP

• Build the smallest working prototype to demonstrate your idea
• Get it in front of the people willing to pay you
• Solicit feedback & measure success

Iterate

• Iterate on building new features/fixing bugs based on customer feedback
• Build smarter, not faster - use data to help drive your ideas
  • Analytics & event-based Saas products can help
• Continuous iteration, don't stop building

Repeat

Pivoting

Sendwithus to Dyspatch

How We Build Dyspatch

Customer-driven feature development

Build benefits, not features

Reduce friction for the customer

Make things easier, cheaper for them

Solve specific problems

Product Development Breakdown

• Customer-driven "Epic"
• Epic broken down into Stories
• Define success measurement and KPIs
• Story estimation
• Stories broken down into Tasks by App/Platform team
  • Tasks given Point Estimations (effort value)

Product Development Breakdown

• Tasks worked on, fulfilled
• Story Owner & QA Review Dev work
  • Iterate with Dev(s) until Story complete

Product Development Breakdown

• Continue until Epic is complete then ship a Release
• Measure impact, KPIs
  • Was it successful?
  • Did it work in the way you expect?
  • Did you actually solve the problem?
  • What did you learn?

Product Development Breakdown

Absorb learnings, start the process over!

Decide to:

• build the next version or release
• pivot

Product Development Breakdown

Agile is a framework, not a prescribed process.

Find what works best for your team, customers, and the work you're doing.

• Velocity of work
• Try things, even if they don't work
• What is a healthy team?
• Team structure is fluid
• Collaboration is key

Visual Studio Code

• Cross platform editor
• Hackable, configurable

Insomnia REST Client

• Cross platform request builder
• Manage your API testing, requests, and environments

Cypress Test client

• Futuristic end-to-end testing client
• UI + code testing in one tool

Built with Javascript!

electron.atom.io

YYJTech Slack group (http://bit.ly/yyjtechslack)

Startup Job Board (https://goo.gl/tqZxv6)

Careers and Education

• Maintain a side project, something you want to work on when you're not "working"

• Software development is a great gig, and technology isn't gonna disappear anytime soon

• Be a generalist, specialize when you feel the need to

• All else fails, start something cool (a project, a company, a movement)

Advice After ITAS

Got questions, looking for opportunities, whatever?

just email me!

itas@brandonb.ca