Day in the Life

Welcome VMS Students

Itinerary

  • Intros
  • Tour
  • What is Kenzan?
    • Products, Culture
  • How to become a developer?
  • What does a Kenzan front-end dev do?
    • Teams, Roles, Process
  • Typical Day
  • Exercise

Intros

What is Kenzan?

  • Ideation, architecture, platform development, UI development, devops, testing, project management

  • tl;dr: help communicate information to solve problems

What is Kenzan?

Culture

  • Distributed teams

    • Other offices in Providence, New York City, Los Angeles. Contractors out of Costa Rica, Brazil, Lithuania, Canada

    • Blue Jeans (like FaceTime), Hipchat, Email

  • Hack Nights, study group

    • Easy button

  • Lunch, A-Basin beach day, bike rides, ping pong, Rockies’ game, coffee-tasting

How to become a dev

  • Self-teach

    • Pros

      • Learn at your own pace, as-needed

      • Many low-cost options available

    • Cons

      • Entirely up to your decisions

      • Many low-cost options available. Lots of sifting

How to become a dev

  • Bootcamp

    • Pros

      • Deep-dive on many topics

      • Guided learning on relevant topics

    • Cons

      • Very fast-paced, not everything will sink in

      • Very competitive

How to become a dev

  • College

      • Pros

        • Well-rounded education, may discover other things that interest you

        • Learn how you learn

      • Cons

        • Not always the most up-to-date information

How to become a dev

  • Any way you go:

    • Important to be solid on the basics, need a strong foundation

    • Things are constantly changing, always learning - exciting and frustrating at times

    • Build (break) things, play, experiment

What does a Kenzan FED do?

What do I need to know?

  • HTML

    • Structure, accessibility

  • CSS

    • Styles (Sass, LESS)

    • RWD

What does a Kenzan FED do?

What can I do with this knowledge?

 

 

  • Websites, apps

  • Native apps, Electron

  • IoT

  • Examples of each?

What does a Kenzan FED do?

What do I need to know?

 

JavaScript

  • More than just writing functions, it can interact with the DOM and CSSOM to make websites interactive

What does a Kenzan FED do?

What do I need to know?

 

JavaScript

  • Open-source libraries - leverage other people's’ code to make our development cycles faster

    • jQuery, AngularJS, React, Lodash

    • Node.js/Gulp.js

    • Npm, Bower

  • AJAX

  • Unit, E2E testing

What does a Kenzan FED do?

Roles

  • Front-end developer - (mostly) browser-based

    • UI: markup/structure, styles, functionality

    • Testing

Roles

  • Back-end developer - server-based

    • Microservices

      • Databases

      • Middle: Heavy-lifting, abstracted away from API layer

      • Edge: APIs send data from the database to the browser

        • Node.js, Java

    • Interactive developers - specific to Kenzan

      • Both! Though not necessarily on the web, sometimes on SmartTV apps

    •  

Roles

  • PMBA

    • PM - Facilitates a project’s development, interface between the client and the development team. Making sure it’s done on time and within budget
    • BA - Helps the client determine their needs, determines requirements for a project. Ensures the requirements are met.

Roles

  • Technical architects

    • Develops a plan for implementation of the requirements to be followed by the developers, ensures plan is followed

    • Code reviews

    • Release management

Roles

  • QA

    • Test our sites on all kinds of browsers, machines, and devices, making sure there are no unintended bugs and that the code meets the client’s expectations

Roles

  • Copywriters

    • They write the copy on the site geared towards the client’s audience

  • Technical Writers

    • Write how to use the pieces of the software being developed

Roles

Designers

  • They are the ones who come up with the look, feel, and (often) the user experience

  • Devops

    • When a website is ready to be launched, the devops will facilitate getting the tested code to the server.

Roles

  • Designers
    • They are the ones who come up with the look, feel, and (often) the user experience
  • Devops

    • When a website is ready to be launched, the devops will facilitate getting the tested code to the server.
    • Help with build environments for testing

Roles

  • Marketing, Administrators, HR, etc.

Process

  • Requirements gathering - user stories, acceptance criteria.

  • Ticket grooming - what stories get done and when

  • Sprints

    • Planning Poker

    • X weeks of development

    • X weeks of testing, bug fixes

    • Demos

    • Deployment

    • Retrospective

Process

Typical Day

  • Coffee, check/respond to emails, messages. Prepare for the day

  • Scrum - Review, goals, blockers. Kenzan.io

  • Work through task list, communicate in Hipchat as needed. Iterative process:

    • Work on tickets

      • Bug fixes, add new features, cleanup/investigation tasks

    • Write tests as needed

Typical Day

 

  • PR reviews

    • Deployment

    • Send to QA

    • Take another ticket

  • Log hours

Exercise

Welcome VMS

By Craig Freeman