Tech Culture in Startups

Alex Beletsky is Lead Architect blogfoster GmbH, meeting fast growing Ukranian startup Preply.com to share some insights on building high quality and productive tech culture, based on full stack development, XP practices, Agile and fun.

Transcript

1. TECH CULTURE in
   STARTUPS
   Kiev, May 2017
   

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2. Alexander Beletsky
   Ph.D, Software Engineer, Lead Architect at blogfoster GmbH
   http://beletsky.net
   https://github.com/alexbeletsky
   @alexbeletsky
   

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3. Full Stack
   Development
   Less specialization, more generalization.
   

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4. Back End
   REST API’s, Databases, Sockets, AWS, Message Queues etc..
   

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5. Front End
   JavaScript, ES6, HTML/CSS, React.js / Redux, Webpack etc…
   

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6. Full Stack Culture
   One Developer
   One Feature
   One Release
   Being able to produce the features, not just a code pieces.
   

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7. Embrace Full Stack
   It’s cheeper, faster more productive and fun
   

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8. XP Practices
   How to do right things.
   

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9. Continuous
   Integration
   The codebase is in deployable state. Always.
   

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10. master develop branches
    • No direct commits
    • Always green
    • Accepts merges from
    `develop` branch
    • Always reflects the current
    production
    • No direct commits
    • Always green
    • Merges from
    `feature_branches`
    branches
    • Always reflects the current
    staging env
    • Anytime could be merged to
    `master` and deployed
    • Work happens here
    • Rebased from `develop`
    branch
    • Could be red, but not for a long
    time
    • Source for pull requests to
    `develop` branch
    • Should take care of breaking
    changes
    

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13. Code Review &
    Pair Programming
    Early problem detection and knowledge sharing.
    

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14. .. just start the discussion
    

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15. The Good Code
    Review possible if:
    • Reviewer has better qualification
    • Reviewer fully understands user story
    • Reviewer is able to test the story
    

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16. The First Rule
    of Code Review
    

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17. The First Rule
    of Code Review
    &QPņVDGCPCUUJQNG
    

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18. Test Driven
    Development
    A program that has not been tested does not work.
    

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20. The Good TDD
    possible if:
    • Team has high qualification & experience
    • Team shares the same technical values and discipline
    • Team cares about quality of their output
    

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21. from
    TDD
    to
    BDD
    Behavior driven development is the way of testing, where focus is
    placed into behavior of whole system, not implementation
    details of particular function.
    

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22. Works great
    for REST API testing
    

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24. Embrace XP
    It’s time-proven, scalable, for predictable results
    

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25. XP Practices,
    work only for
    team of responsible professionals..
    

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26. Engineering
    Processes
    How to do right things with Agile approach.
    

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27. Product & Sprint
    Backlogs
    The overview of what need to be done.
    

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28. Resource Planning
    Estimate the available resources for a sprint.
    

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29. Planning Poker
    Estimate each story from a product backlog.
    

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31. Commit to the Plan
    Everyone have to be confident and commit to the plan.
    

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32. Execute it
    2 weeks sprint. Features which are ready immediately deployed.
    

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33. Demo Day &
    Retrospective
    Reflect what’s been archived in 2 weeks.
    

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34. Embrace Agile
    It’s iterative, easy to understand, lightweight
    

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35. Business &
    Technology
    We are on the same boat.
    

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36. Clear Business
    Goals (OKR’s)
    Objective-Key-Results brings a transparency for a whole
    company.
    

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37. Regular "all-hands"
    meetings
    Because you have to understand what guys from other
    department do.
    

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38. Regular company
    based retrospective
    Based on OKR’s or not, successes and failures all have to be
    visible.
    

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39. P.S.
    It has to be fun :)
    

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40. Build the Culture
    Culture is very important, even for early-days startup. Good
    culture in tech teams would make you feel being a part of
    something important, take your job seriously and grow as
    professional together with company.
    

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41. THANKS,
    

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