A few months ago I got the Scrum Master certification from the Scrum Alliance! 🙂
RicardoAragonSMCertificateIt was a nice journey and a good opportunity to enforce some things I was learning through my career and especially new ones I wasn’t clear about.
Thank you Pressbooks for supporting this 100%!
A few weeks ago I have had the pleasure of lead the Pressbooks Geek Meeting for the Product Team. Was a nice journey where I presented my lovely country: Argentina.
I really enjoyed sharing with people from multiple countries and languages about my culture and roots. When I started to research and then explain our values, history and background, once more time I realized how amazing and complex we are.
Here are the slides:
This time, on the topic, I would like to share a little bit of Folklore Argentino by Pedro Aznar:
I still remember in one of my first experiences working in product teams, designers expected specifications from product managers to create their designs. Perhaps some suggestions here and there from the designer could have been considered. Or even worse, I still see product teams with any designer at all.
Years ago it was proven that product designers collaborate with product managers and engineers from discovery to delivery of products. Nowadays designers sit side by side with the product manager as a partner to discover the product.
I still see product teams measuring their designers on the output instead of the success of the product. Designers have many of the same concerns as product managers and they understand that user experience is as important to customer value as is underlying functionality.
Good designers think about the customer’s journey and his interaction with the product as a whole. They answer a ton of important questions, but some interesting ones are:
They are constantly testing their ideas with real clients, by presenting prototypes into their weekly cadence, so they are able to constantly validate and refine ideas by collecting information that they might not have been looking for. They know that their ideas can not be attached before they come in contract with objectives and enough insights from a prototype.
They don’t wait for specifications or expect mocks in .psd anymore, they use and create prototypes as their primary canvas for communicating ideas, internally and externally. Protectively they use different easy and fast tools to validate different approaches and apply the correct one for the task at hand.
My whole experience is based on small/medium startups. Is incredible common -at least in Latin America- to see product teams in serious situations, like product managers trying to design without design training at all by providing wire-frames, or even worst sending just high-level user stories to the engineers, then they have no choice but to work out the design themselves. And, although you do not believe it, I saw product managers creating wireframes and using those to create the interface for engineers.
The results of those rarely are good.
We know big companies (Apple, Google, Facebook and more) made huge investments in design talent from the beginning. In my opinion, any product for customers needs at least a designer as a team member. If the product is for businesses, it’s one of the best competitive differentiators. Especially these kinds of products have awful designs in many startup companies. They know it is important, but because the user is so often not the customer –the one that buys, sometimes they are considered less important. This is one of the differences I noticed in North America, B2B products take design very seriously and displace the old guard.
Investing in design staff is only a part of the solution. With the mentality of requesting good design and seeing the results on the user’s screen, you need only an agency and that would be enough. But design is much more than making the products beautiful, it’s a service to discover the right product.
The design drives the functionality of the product, engineers wait for the designer’s income to analyze and discover the product together, before thinking about any feature. For that reason, the designer is a first-class member of the product team working side by side with the product manager. They are included in any user experience discussion, including interviews and meetings. They try different design alternatives by fast prototyping different problems, so engineers don’t need to create multiple applications and features.
I think designers are really partners of the product managers to discover the necessary product solutions bringing critical skills for any tech product.
I didn’t know you can mix modern pop with a high jazz influence, high quality and incredible talent until I met Dirty Loops
A few days ago I was thinking about the hiring processes for developers. I had opportunities to participate actively in the selection processes in some companies and of course, I’ve been interviewed many times.
On both sides of the same coin, I found it pretty difficult to define what a good company for me as a developer is, and what a good developer means for the few companies where I select some candidates.
When as a part of a product team you look for a new developer, I think it’s very important to define and specify technically and culturally in a clear way what is expected from the ideal candidate, additionally from the organization’s perspective but I would like to focus on from the development team perspective. Sounds obvious, huh? sadly it is not in some cases.
Write an internal document within the development team with those specifications to think about and iterate over it and expose those things that sound very obvious but if you take a closer look, sometimes it is not. It will give a good idea about the dev team’s identity.
I also, saw managers selecting, or defining developer positions and selection processes, or indeed members of others teams -unrelated directly like Marketing, Management, Sales, etc- taking the decision if the candidate is or isn’t a good developer.
Any other team must be more aware of what is needed from a developer that the development team. It is for that reason it’s so important development team achieves enough maturity to choose their own colleagues and ask for it and therefore be responsible for it. Of course recommendations, suggestions, and concerns from other teams must be an important input I think.
As a starting point, it is very important to define what a “good developer” for your current product team means in a clear and detailed way. If the team is totally aware and agrees about what technical and non-technical aspects they are looking for in a candidate, you should be able to answer very quickly “How do we know after the interview if the candidate is a good developer for us?”.
Of course, each team needs different developers, with different experiences, etc. But from my perspective, there are points in common that for me are totally independent of almost every startup or small/medium tech company. I will try to define, as a first approach what a good developer is for me. I think it is someone who:
I see so frequently job descriptions looking for specific tech stacks, all exposed in a long items list with different levels of details. For example:
– PHP 7.1 / Laravel
– Jenkins
– React.js
– UI/UX
What does that mean? Does someone with 10 years of experience in PHP 5.6 or Symfony qualify? UI/UX? that’s not a technology. There are multiple specification levels in the same list and if you are a developer, you know that does not make sense.
Frameworks, and tools are secondary and should be exposed only to inform the candidates what technologies you use, but not required. Talented developers can learn and use any technology pretty quickly. They are not specialists in tools or languages. A good developer is not worried about technologies because they know those change quickly.
They work in agile environments where everything changes quickly, the stakeholder’s opinions, the user perspective, the product owner’s ideas, the client’s request, the design, the architecture and of course the technologies.
Good developers do not spend several years in a fixed stack tech, because they love learning new things, and enjoy experimenting and practicing new languages, new tools and new products.
Instead of a big fixed tech stack as a requirement, I think a good job description should keep the focus on practices, and processes and mainly a good description of how the developers contribute to the product within the product team environment.
On the other side, I think good developers are aware and have a clear idea about what a good company means to them. This, just like the previous assumption, is susceptible to the circumstances. Sometimes a developer wants to earn more money because he needs to pay the university for instance, or because a new family member will be part of the current one. Sometimes the developer is willing to learn new techniques to expand his knowledge, or be part of a smaller/bigger team, etc.
In any case, a good developer knows that a new job is a new partnership with his employer. It means, there will be a strong and long-term relationship with the product and its users. There is not any boss/employee relation (behind the legal terms). The product, the vision, the medium / long term goals, the culture and values are very important in terms of the partnership.
If you are working in a company, you know that you need to attract good developers and there is a huge demand for them so if you want them to join your team, you need to consider that they are very selective about who will be their future employers, their working environment, autonomy, mastery, purpose, and the partnership style they will establish. They want to know how the team works and if there are talented and passionate people in place. You need to be aware that good developers are not the only ones being interviewed, they are also interviewing companies and they will exercise their option to reject the bad ones. The way they are interviewed is a decisive factor in them accepting the job and/or continuing the application.
They really care about their careers. For that reason they select their jobs carefully since they will spend more time in that job than other things -like family for example-, for that reason a good developer asks as many questions as he can to figure out how your team works, what are the main blockers and/or challenges your team is facing, what are the long term projects your team have, what is the dynamic / hierarchy within the product team, what are the spaces and opportunities to grow, etc.
In Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us, Daniel Pink says that assuming that money is off on the table, knowledge workers are motivated by 3 things: Autonomy (control of what/how/when we do: which is true in an Agile environment), Mastery (constantly learning and evolving) and Purpose (when we feel that our job is important and we contribute to making things better). The assumption about putting the money off is pretty important since, when we have some high-priority need or we are in a critical/rushing situation, this will be the highest priority for anyone despite any other factors.
Based on that, good developers during the interview will:
Probably in some next topic, I will explain more about my ideas for different approaches for interviews and processes for developers, at least for the technical interviews. As you can predict from the previous paragraphs, the technical interview is a decisive factor for the company and the candidate. I mean, as an interviewer you want to interview a good developer I guess, and good developers will decide based on many factors, and the technical interview is one of the most important points.
Finally here’s the post’s soundtrack. In this case, I’ll introduce you (if you did not meet him) to Luis Salinas. I spent so many hours listening to his music during my adolescence. A great musician. Enjoy 🙂
I’ve been working on a Vue.js application, and I was thinking about how I can test it easily. The app has a couple of interesting libraries with custom directives and widgets, some of them with scoped-slot. Additionally, I have 10-12 Vue components with hierarchical structures in different .vue files, which means I need to test features that (as usual) imply > 1 component. And in this case, I have 4 stores.
My first approach was using Jest, it is pretty easy to install and configure. I tried 2 small and simple tests in the beginning and the result was good. But when I started to think to test larger units with 2 or more components, adding scoped slots + store + custom libraries with custom components +… each test was incredibly big and unmaintainable. Everything is for a really small application with 10-12 components. It doesn’t make sense to me. And an important issue: scoped-slot only can be emulated, but you can’t add those to the tests.
The second and great option was to create E2E tests with Nightwatch.js. I installed it and configure it locally and with BrowserStack pretty fast which allowed me to test on my Firefox and Chrome local installation but most important run my tests on different OS (like Windows and macOS) and Browsers (like Chrome, Firefox, Safari), but most importantly I could create tests really easy. Let me show quickly how you can configure it locally on my laptop (Ubuntu 19.04) (the installation process is available in docs):
In my root path I have this:
In the test folder, I have my tests, in conf my Nightwatch config files (for BrowserStack and local), in output I have the JUnit XML files (those are the results of Selenium tests). If some of the tests don’t result as expected, a screenshot is saved in the screenshots folder. And finally, in the log folder, there are log files with issues about tests and selenium server results.
Let’s see how looks my local Nightwatch settings:
module.exports = {
src_folders: ["e2e_tests/tests"],
selenium: {
launch_url: process.env.HOST,
start_process: true,
server_path: require('selenium-server').path,
cli_args: {
'webdriver.gecko.driver': require('geckodriver').path,
'webdriver.chrome.driver': require('chromedriver').path
},
log_path: './e2e_tests/log'
},
test_settings: {
default: {
launch_url: process.env.HOST_TEST,
screenshots : {
enabled : true,
on_failure : true,
on_error : false,
path : "./e2e_tests/screenshots"
},
output_folder: "./e2e_tests/output"
},
chrome: {
desiredCapabilities : {
browserName : 'chrome',
alwaysMatch: {
acceptInsecureCerts: true
},
chromeOptions: {
w3c: false
}
},
webdriver: {
port: 4444,
start_process: true,
server_path: require('chromedriver').path,
log_path: './e2e_tests/log'
}
},
firefox: {
desiredCapabilities : {
browserName : 'firefox',
alwaysMatch: {
acceptInsecureCerts: true
}
},
webdriver: {
start_process: true,
port: 4444,
server_path: require('geckodriver').path,
log_path: './e2e_tests/log'
}
}
}
}
These settings will open my local Chrome and Firefox browsers and run tests in port 4444.
Just to test the app quickly I can create a simple test in the e2e_tests/test folder like this:
// e2e_tests/tests/FirstTest.js
module.exports = {
'Checking title must contains Hello World! string in HTML title' : function (browser) {
browser
.url(process.env.HOST)
.waitForElementVisible('body')
.assert.titleContains('Hello World!')
.end();
}
};
If I add this script in my package.json "e2e": "./node_modules/.bin/nightwatch e2e_tests/tests/ -c ./e2e_tests/conf/nightwatch.conf.js"
I can run my first test on Chrome and Firefox running: $ npm run e2e -- --env firefox,chrome .
And tatan!! after opening both browsers simultaneously and then close automatically, I got something like this:
firefox [App] Test Suite
firefox ================
firefox - Connecting to localhost on port 4444…
firefox
firefox ℹ Connected to localhost on port 4444 (7131ms).
firefox Using: firefox (77.0.1) on linux 5.3.0-59-generic platform.
firefox Results for: Checking title must contains Hello World! string
firefox ✔ Element was visible after 142 milliseconds.
firefox ✔ Testing if the page title contains 'Hello World!' (10ms)
firefox ✔ firefox [App] Checking title must contains Hello World! string (5.429s)
firefox [Filter] Test Suite
firefox ===================chrome [App] Test Suite
chrome ================
chrome - Connecting to localhost on port 4444…
chrome
chrome ℹ Connected to localhost on port 4444 (2494ms).
chrome Using: chrome (83.0.4103.116) on Linux platform.
chrome Results for: Checking title must contains Hello World! string
chrome ✔ Element was visible after 58 milliseconds.
chrome ✔ Testing if the page title contains 'Hello World!' (12ms)
chrome ✔ chrome [App] Checking title must contains Hello World! string (1.944s)
chrome [Filter] Test Suite
chrome ===================OK. 2 total assertions passed (6.023s)
Now let’s see how looks my Nightwatch config file for BrowserStack, so we can run our tests in multiple browsers and OS remotely:
// e2e_tests/conf/browserstack.nightwatch.conf.js
nightwatch_config = {
src_folders: ["e2e_tests/tests"],
selenium: {
start_process: false,
host: "hub-cloud.browserstack.com",
port: 80,
log_path: './e2e_tests/log',
output_folder: "./e2e_tests/output"
},
test_settings: {
default: {
launch_url: process.env.HOST,
screenshots : {
enabled : true,
on_failure : true,
on_error : false,
path : "./e2e_tests/screenshots"
},
log_path: './e2e_tests/log',
output_folder: "./e2e_tests/output"
},
chrome_win10: {
desiredCapabilities : {
'browserstack.user': process.env.BROWSERSTACK_USER,
'browserstack.key': process.env.BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY,
'os': 'Windows',
'os_version': '10',
'browser': 'Chrome',
'browser_version': (process.env.CHROME_W10_VERSION) ? process.env.CHROME_W10_VERSION : '83.0',
'resolution': '1280x800'
},
webdriver: {
log_path: './e2e_tests/log'
},
log_path: './e2e_tests/log',
output_folder: "./e2e_tests/output"
},
chrome_catalina: {
desiredCapabilities: {
'browserstack.user': process.env.BROWSERSTACK_USER,
'browserstack.key': process.env.BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY,
'os': 'OS X',
'os_version': 'Catalina',
'browser': 'Chrome',
'browser_version': (process.env.CHROME_CATALINA_VERSION) ? process.env.CHROME_CATALINA_VERSION : '83.0',
'resolution': '1280x800'
},
webdriver: {
log_path: './e2e_tests/log'
},
log_path: './e2e_tests/log',
output_folder: "./e2e_tests/output"
},
firefox_win10: {
desiredCapabilities : {
'browserstack.user': process.env.BROWSERSTACK_USER,
'browserstack.key': process.env.BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY,
'os': 'Windows',
'os_version': '10',
'browser': 'Firefox',
'browser_version': (process.env.FIREFOX_W10_VERSION) ? process.env.FIREFOX_W10_VERSION : '77.0',
'resolution': '1280x800'
},
webdriver: {
log_path: './e2e_tests/log'
},
log_path: './e2e_tests/log',
output_folder: "./e2e_tests/output"
},
firefox_catalina: {
desiredCapabilities : {
'browserstack.user': process.env.BROWSERSTACK_USER,
'browserstack.key': process.env.BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY,
'os': 'OS X',
'os_version': 'Catalina',
'browser': 'Firefox',
'browser_version': (process.env.FIREFOX_CATALINA_VERSION) ? process.env.FIREFOX_CATALINA_VERSION : '77.0',
'resolution': '1280x800'
},
webdriver: {
log_path: './e2e_tests/log'
},
log_path: './e2e_tests/log',
output_folder: "./e2e_tests/output"
},
safari_catalina: {
desiredCapabilities: {
'browserstack.user': process.env.BROWSERSTACK_USER,
'browserstack.key': process.env.BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY,
'os': 'OS X',
'os_version': 'Catalina',
'browser': 'Safari',
'browser_version': (process.env.SAFARI_CATALINA_VERSION) ? process.env.SAFARI_CATALINA_VERSION : '13.0',
'resolution': '1280x800'
},
webdriver: {
log_path: './e2e_tests/log'
},
log_path: './e2e_tests/log',
output_folder: "./e2e_tests/output"
}
}
};
// Code to copy seleniumhost/port into test settings
for(var i in nightwatch_config.test_settings){
var config = nightwatch_config.test_settings[i];
config['selenium_host'] = nightwatch_config.selenium.host;
config['selenium_port'] = nightwatch_config.selenium.port;
}
module.exports = nightwatch_config;
In this file, config will run my tests in BrowserStack on Chrome and Firefox in Windows10 and Catalina OS (Mac) and Safari on Catalina OS. Results of those tests will be in e2e_tests/output, but in BrowserStack App Live Dashboard as well with a nice Video and Screenshots. Awesome, eh?
In my package.json I added another script for BrowserStack tests: "e2e:browserstack": "node ./e2e_tests/conf/local.runner.js -c ./e2e_tests/conf/browserstack.nightwatch.conf.js"
So now I can run my tests just running: $ npm run e2e:browserstack -- --env firefox_win10,safari_catalina
I will get in my console something similar to:
Connecting local!
Connected. Now testing…
firefox_win10 Using insecure HTTP connection on port 80. Consider using SSL by setting port to 443 in your Nightwatch configuration.
firefox_win10 [App] Test Suite
firefox_win10 ================
firefox_win10 - Connecting to hub-cloud.browserstack.com on port 80…
firefox_win10
firefox_win10 ℹ Connected to hub-cloud.browserstack.com on port 80 (10779ms).
firefox_win10 Using: firefox (77.0) on windows 10.0 platform.
firefox_win10 Results for: Checking title must contains Hello World! string
firefox_win10 ✔ Element was visible after 1999 milliseconds.
firefox_win10 ✔ Testing if the page title contains 'Hello World!' (418ms)
firefox_win10 ✔ firefox_win10 [App] Checking title must contains Hello World string (7.624s)
firefox_win10 Using insecure HTTP connection on port 80. Consider using SSL by setting port to 443 in your Nightwatch configuration.
In my BrowserStack App Live build for Firefox on Windows 10 I will see something like this:
So finally, now I just need to add more tests and add them to my CI/CD pipeline.
Aaaaaaaaaand, today we have a super classic Argentine musician who wrote incredible rock music since the ’80s. One of him masterpiece is “El amor después del amor” (it’s Love after love).
With the objective to help and inspiring families interested in emigrating to Canada as workers I recently talked about this issue through YouTube Live. It is in my native language: Spanish. You can use the YouTube translation feature.
Without any more preambles here is the video:
That’s it, enjoy!
HEY HEY wait… music! This time I have something special. A few days ago a co-worker introduced me to an incredible trumpeter: Ibrahim Maalouf! I never heard anything similar… enjoy the trip:
A few days ago using Vuex I tried to use watcher vue’s property to apply some changes in a specific vue’s component according to a store property. It looks easy to do, just adding to my component:
watch: {
'$store.state.myStore.aProperty': function(newValue) {
// do something
}
}
If this.$store.state.myStore.aProperty it is not an object or array it should work perfectly. But in my case I would like to watch an array of objects. So this solution would not work, that’s because we should use deep property it’s something like:
watch: {
'$store.state.myStore.aProperty': {
deep: true,
handler(newValue): {
// do something
}
}
}
To my surprise this doesn’t work either, looking on internet (including in my favorite lifeguard: StackOverflow), I couldn’t find the solution easly. In fact I had to think about the issue and find my solution on my own, that’s because I’m writting it. Let’s see how looks my store and what’s the change I’m interested to watch:
let myStore = {
aProperty: {}
};
export default {
state: myStore,
mutations: {
setAProperty: (state, newValue) => {
state.aProperty[newValue.key]= [];
state.aProperty[newValue.key].push(newValue.value)
}
}
}
I’m using a new key for my store object and as a value an array where I’m using the push method to add a new value.
Looks like push doesn’t dispatch the correct event to watch vue’s feature. But if I use assign values it works, it’s like: state.aProperty = otherObject it works. So I use a auxiliar variable to save a copy of the current store and re-assign it to the store object in order to dispatch the correct event for watch feature:
let myStore = {
aProperty: {}
};
export default {
state: myStore,
mutations: {
setAProperty: (state, newValue) => {
let auxVar = Object.assign({}, state.aProperty);
auxVar[newValue] = [];
auxVar[newValue].push(newValue.value); // Using push in auxiliar var
state.aProperty = auxVar; // This line will dispatch the correct event
}
}
}
I hope this is useful to you!
And now as usually let’s learn something interesting on music. Spinetta-Jade was a jazz / rock progressive Argentine band, with incredible exploration between Tango/Symphony rock/Jazz with high virtuosity in fretless bass (by Pedro Aznar), guitar (by Luis A. Spinetta) and other incredible musicians. I love this because it represents the exploration of popular 80’s Argentine rockers in Progressive rock and jazz, since in USA and England this stage was on the 70’s, in this case we add folk, tango and other influences that makes it a precious jewel in the Argentine culture.
Almost 3 years ago I haven’t written anything here! I am alive and I exist!
A few months ago I received an email from a Spanish company with an invitation to be part of a selection process to work as a developer. I never thought about the idea to move to another country for work, much less in Spain. After that experience, a few months later I received a LinkedIn messenge form a german IT recruiter for a job in Germany. That made me think I could work and move to another country.
Well, there was anything to stop me from doing it, so I started to think about it… but I guess for reasons of time and work I just abandoned the idea. Until a good day, I received an email from an Argentine recruiter living in Auckland and he had an interesting offer to work as a Sofware Develper in New Zeland. I remember that moment was like a sign that I should pay more attention about work in another country. At the same time my wife and I started to think about start a family.
If you are a Developer and think about your family, security and future, Latin America is not a good option at the moment, trust me. The question is, where could be an acceptable option? After research and try to understand what we want for our family and what is important for my career, we found Canada sounds like the best option for us.
I mean it is not just about the country, the culture, the safe place, etc. It’s about my career as well. I will spent most of my time with my colleagues, my teammates working for a product or service that I need to trust, in a company with nice values and culture aligned to my expectations, I should like this and stay motivated. So, I spent some time time thinking and discussing with my wife about our future, the objectives in my career, my next steps as a Software Developer, you know it is a really great and important change for our lifes and for my career.
The question are: Are there opportunities as a Developer in Canada? How to move to Canada if you are a Developer? What I need to move to Canada as a Developer? and there are a lot of other questions that I had around this. I sent five or six resumes to a different companies via LinkedIn without success. Fortunately I found VanHack a great company that makes a great job bringing Canadian (and European) companies closer to qualified candidates trough a modern platform and system. Try it, it’s free! it will save you a lot of time and resources trying to answer the questions I mentioned if you are thinking about work in Canada. If you spend time and effort you will get your job in Canada more easier and in less time.
Thanks to VanHack and the effort dedicated to make a plan and a hard preparation now I’m working for Pressbook an amazing Canadian company, remotely at first but ready to move to Montreal for work when visa is ready with increible teammates highly qualified and motivated creating and developing a super interesating open source product that allow hosts and mantain book production networks for academic institutions, presses and consortia. Once more time I feel I’m working for real and interesting purposes, and on the other hand with the incredible opportunity for me and my family to move to Canada soon!
Thanks Pressbooks, VanHack and God for this opportunity of a new life for me and my family.
Do you think you’ve heard tehcnically complex music? I believed that yes, I mean there are incredible genius… but let me show you something:
I developed a new product for Poker Mavens of Briggsoft Works: MavensManager.
MavensManager is a backend for owners of Poker Rooms with Poker Mavens developed with CakePHP 3.xx (API) and AngularJS (Front End). Jackpot, Rake in realtime, Stats and an Affiliate system are some of the features.
Each user can view all the reports and histories of the game, and get stats for know trends of their business.
For more info send me a message to: iam[_at_]ricardoaragon.com
Remembering good music.