General

5 Simple Ways Enterprise Engineering Teams Can Increase Productivity, Performance, and Developer Happiness

Published Oct 31, 2019

Updated Feb 14, 2023

3 min read

This article was written over 18 months ago and may contain information that is out of date. Some content may be relevant but please refer to the relevant official documentation or available resources for the latest information.

At This Dot Labs, we work alongside Fortune 500 engineering teams as development partners every day, focusing on how to help reduce deployment delays, decrease regression risks, improve application performance, maximize productivity, increase user engagement, and provide standards that allow for rapid iteration across design, engineering, and other disciplines.

Here are 5 simple ways you can achieve success multipliers within your own organization.

Resilient Development with Testing

As software development increases, so does our complexity. One of the root causes of defects is deficient testing and code inspection. Empowering developers with testing helps decrease regression risk, and reduce deployment delays.

Enables developers to develop and test components in isolation to understand component behavior under different conditions with ease. Decrease visual development iterations by at least 50% through testing multiple component views without the need for a data connection with tools like Storybook.
Capture 20-30% more regressions and UI bugs in pre-release cycle with automated visual testing, using tools like Applitools.2 Ensure scalability of performance at all stages of development, from the render layer to the API request layer by defining a constant web and API performance testing layer.

Efficiencies and Improved Performance with GraphQL

GraphQL increases application performance by allowing the reduction of complex data to achieve more performant deliverables. This also provides more productive options to deliver requirements faster without new APIs being developed.

Improve data enrichment performance and render speed by reducing unused field retrieval that can create an estimated 50-60% reduction of API payloads.
Adoption of GraphQL allows you access to features for free such as “out of the box” push based event design systems.
Separation of team concerns: Allow your API team to migrate to a microservices approach without impacting the deliverables of the UI teams.
Increase team efficiency by decreasing the need for coordination around architecture decisions between API and developer teams with decoupling,

Improving Developer Onboarding and Productivity with Standard Tooling

Bringing developers onto an existing or new project can often be difficult, resulting in lost project time handling start up procedures. Creating and/or improving standard development procedures will improve onboarding and developer spin-up time, regardless of the project. Here are a few simple ways to do so.

Create components faster that follow the organization standard by using template repositories, and existing build tooling created by architects.
Allows for scalability in growing development teams in any region by onboarding them into a system that automatically handles that spin-up of new or existing work.
Allows cross-functional movement of development resources between teams and easier integration of less expensive resources, gaining upwards of 62% greater productivity.
Reduce production defects through tightly coupled development processes that do not allow the commit of unverified or uninspected code.

Increasing Brand Consistency with Design Systems

Design systems are becoming a standard that enterprises are adopting to allow for rapid iteration using a shared vocabulary across design, engineering, and other disciplines.
Allows for developers, and designers, to create and build components that follow the agreed upon standard and philosophy, increasing brand equity by 39%.
Adhere to DRY development principles through a unified, customizable component library, such as inputs, buttons, modals, tables, tooltips, charts, icons, charts, snackbars.
Scale design standards seamlessly with the guarantee of a constant brand, and theme for all IP being released by your organization.

Replacing Dedicated Development Resources with Low Code Solutions

Companies with superior technologies or processes will invariably unseat established ones. Old ways of doing things must be replaced by better ones. Low code solutions help organizations achieve internal efficiencies through effectively outsourcing work previously completed by dedicated development resources, and building low maintenance technology solutions instead.

Low code solutions are force multipliers, and allow organizations to scale easily.
These technology enhancements increase the ability for internal teams to deliver business applications faster, and improve internal processes going forward.
Building in-house low-code solutions will reduce the need for ongoing, dedicated development resources, thereby decreasing overhead costs.

This Dot is a consultancy dedicated to guiding companies through their modernization and digital transformation journeys. Specializing in replatforming, modernizing, and launching new initiatives, we stand out by taking true ownership of your engineering projects.

We love helping teams with projects that have missed their deadlines or helping keep your strategic digital initiatives on course. Check out our case studies and our clients that trust us with their engineering.

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Common Interview Questions & What They Mean

Introduction Who hasn't been asked some weird and interesting questions in previous interviews? Interviewers are known for asking a variety of weird, interesting, and confusing questions to possible employees for a variety of reasons. And this makes sense because they want to know as much as possible about you in the limited interview duration. Here are some interview questions you might be asked and what the interviewer is trying to find out about you from your answers: Introduce yourself Here, the interviewer is not really interested in your answer. What they are looking at your confidence and your passion, so this is the best time to show them your communication skills! So, you should tell them about your education, where you grew up, your past work experience, your hobbies, and your personal interests! Be calm, relaxed, and confident! What are your strengths? Here, the interviewers want to know how positivly you think about yourself! It’s a quite general question, so there is no right or wrong answer for it! So it’s a good opportunity for you to share what makes you so unique, and what are you good at! But you should tie your strengths to what they’re looking for! That’s why you should read the job description very carefully, and get a good understanding of what they are looking for, and then try to fit yourself in there! What are your weaknesses? In this question, the interviewers are looking at is whether you can identify your weaknesses, and how you can cover them up! You need not be really negative about yourself! For example, don't say “I am a very impatient person”, or “I am getting angry easily”. The best way to answer this question is to talk about a weakness that you had that isn’t related to the job, and what you did to overcome it. That way, they can see a progression, and that is what they really want to hear in the answer! What is your expected salary? Here, the interviewers, of course, have knowledge about the typical salaries offered by the company. By asking this question, they're often trying to see whether the applicant did research about the company. So learn about the company before the interview! You can use websites like Payscale or Glassdoor and read the reviews from other people who worked at this company! Can you work under pressure? This is a behavioral question, and the reason behind this question is the interviewers want to know if you get really stressed out. So the best way to answer this question is by talking about a situation where you experienced pressure, and the action that you took to diffuse that pressure. Then, talk about the result and what happened. How do you make your decisions? You might be asked this question if you are applying for management or lead position. They're interested in knowing your process when making decisions, because it's very likely that at some point, you will have to make a critical decision in the workplace. So, the best way to answer is to be confident and walk them through some of your management exercises, or some of your work situations that you handled successfully. What attracted you to this job? Here, the interviewers are typically trying to know if you understand the position you’re applying for, and that your goals and experience align with the role. Always remember that employers value candidates who aim to meaningfully contribute to company goals while also advancing their own careers. Where do you see yourself in five years? This is a growth-oriented question. So, if you just simply say: “I see myself sitting around here for the next five years until I figure out what I want to do”, that’s not what they want to hear. You should align this question to where the company is going and then you talk about how you see yourself fitting in their future. Why are you applying for this job? Here the interviewers want to know if you know their core values. A lot of people make mistakes answering this question and say that they are applying for the job because of the compensation package. Of course, salarie and benefits are an important thing, but you should have a long-term goal you want to achieve from the job! So it’s better to make sure this goal alligns with the company’s goals. That is what they want to hear from you. Why do you want to work here? The key to answering this question is to align yourself with where this company is going, so that’s why you must do some research on the company, like what are their values? What is their mission? Where are they going? What do they want to do? And by doing that, that will make you appear to be someone who can contribute to their overall mission, their projects, or whatever it is they’re trying to do. What makes you a good fit for this job? Here, they want you to talk about your past experiences, your past education, the kinds of things that you have done that are related to the kinds of things that they're looking for. So, you have to get a lot of information about the position, the job description, what they're looking for, and what the goals are for this position. Why should we hire you? I guarantee you are probably going to get asked this question, but it will most likely come near the end of the interview, after they’ve had a chance to build up some rapport and they’re actually thinking that you might be a good fit. Now, this is the chance to sell yourself, but you have to understand what they are looking for and the pains and problems that they have. Do you have any questions? This is usually the last question, and I made it the last one for a reason because this is most likely the last question they're going to ask you. Now that's your opportunity to find out more about what the next steps are, where they're going, or whatever is important for you. Don't just ask them questions to ask questions. Ask them questions that will help you determine whether this is a place that you want to be. Don't just ask questions about their organization chart or their finances or things that just don't really pertain to you. Ask them questions that are going to help you make a decision about whether you want to work there....

Nov 11, 2021

5 mins

General

7 Tips to be a Successful Developer in a Remote Company

When the pandemic hit in March of 2020, most companies were forced to go remote and millions of workers had to learn how to work from home. Two years later, a lot people now prefer the work from home option, and many job seekers are looking for remote-only companies to work for. For software developers, there are many advantages to working from home and still effectively working as a team to produce high quality results. But how can you be successful in a remote company? In this article, I will provide 7 tips on what it takes to be a successful developer in a remote company. Communication is key It is now more important than ever to communicate effectively with your team. Now that everyone is working from home instead of being in one physical office, you have to be very conscious to reach out to teammates and share your progress on a project. In a physical office, you are surrounded by other co-workers all day, which makes it easier to walk over to someone's office and share what you have been working on. It also makes it easier to have impromptu meetings with other team members throughout the day. But in a remote setting, it is very easy to become isolated and get carried away with work without reaching out to anyone all day. This becomes an issue for your team, because now they are no longer keeping up to date on the latest changes you have been contributing to the project. My tip would be to post periodic updates throughout the day of what you have been working on. If your company is using something like Slack or another chat server, make sure to post a detailed update on what you have been up to the past few hours. Here is an example of one of the status updates I would post to my team. Status update: - finished making changes to xyz case study and put it up for review - reviewed a couple of PRs - ran accessibility audits for the homepage and working on increasing the performance score I would usually post this in the middle of the day to update the team on what I have been working on. I also try to ask questions throughout the day to ensure that I don't get blocked on a particular issue for to long. This method of communication helps me stay connected with the team and helps my manager know where I am at in the project. Find a separate space in your home just for work When you are working in an office, there is a clear separation between work and home. This makes it easier to end your day and leave your work at the office. But with remote work, sometimes these lines between work and home become a little bit blurry. This is why it is important to designate a separate work space in your home. In my situation, I have a small desk in another room where I do all of my work. That space is only used Monday through Friday for work purposes. I have found that by creating a work space, it allows me to be in the moment and fully concentrate on my duties. Then at the end of the day, I logout out of everything and leave the work space just like I would leave a physical business. That has given me freedom to relax in my home when I am not working and fully recharge for the next day. I understand that everyone's living situation is different, and you might not have room for a designated work area. In those cases, do the best you can to carve out some space in your living situation just for work. The more you can do to separate home and business, the more productive you will be at work. Set consistent work hours When you are working in an office, you have set hours for when you are going to be there. It might be 9-5 or 8-3 with breaks throughout the day. But when you are working from home, it is very easy to work without a set schedule and put in more time outside of the standard work hours. This can quickly lead to burnout which is a huge issue within the developer community. It is really important to set a consistent work schedule so your team knows when you are available, and when you are off work. This also forces you to work within a time frame which will lead to better focus, time management and productivity. I have personally found that setting that time frame from 8-5 with breaks helps me structure my day better and get more done than if I had an open schedule. Take breaks throughout the day Developer health is another huge issue within the community. Many developers, including myself have gone for hours hunched over their computers trying to get something to work. In these situations, it is very easy to lose track of time and develop back, neck, shoulder, and eye problems. One of the key advantages of working from home is being able to take breaks and leave your work space. Take ten minute breaks throughout the day and make sure to walk around, stretch, go outside, and drink water. Taking breaks from the computer will give your body and brain a chance to rest and recharge. When I first started working remotely, I would be glued to the computer for hours at a time. But I quickly felt the negative health effects and started becoming more intentional about taking breaks. Now, I have developed a healthier work situation and can see the difference in the quality of work I am producing. Dress appropriately for important meetings We all enjoy the relaxed dress code that often accompanies working from home. In an office, you will typically be in a more work appropriate attire especially when it comes to meetings with clients. But when you are at home, it is very easy to work in some sweatpants and a t shirt. If you don't have any meetings that day, then coding in your casual attire is fine. But if you are meeting with clients or interviewing remotely, it is important to dress appropriately. Remember that it is still a business and you want to be as professional as possible, even in a remote setting. Avoid mixing personal tasks and work tasks When you are in an office, you don't worry about personal chores like doing laundry or taking the trash out. But when you are working from home, it is very easy to get distracted and mix personal tasks with work tasks. It is very important that while you are working, you are focused on work. Then during breaks, you can take care of personal items. In my situation, I make sure to finish up the task I was working on and then take a break to put a load of laundry on or take care of another personal chore. There are definitely times where something has come up and I will make sure to communicate that with the team so they know I will be unavailable for a certain amount of time. But just try to do the best that you can separating personal tasks and issues from your work tasks. Time management and structuring your day In order to work productively, it is important to plan out your day as best you can and structure your time accordingly. For example, as I am writing this blog today, I made sure to set aside time for writing the first draft, revising it and submitting it for review. During that time block, I am not focused on other PR's or other work responsibilities. That ensures I am focused 100% on writing a high quality article. Once I complete a large task, then I make sure to take a break, hydrate, walk around and eat something. That allows me to energize and gear up for the next task in my day. I found that breaking up my day into manageable tasks has provided me the opportunity to focus and produce good work. Conclusion Those are my 7 tips on what it takes to be a successful developer in a remote company. I encourage you to give each of those tips a try and see how it affects your work productivity....

May 16, 2022

7 mins

General

A Breakdown of RxJS 7.0 Performance Improvements

It’s official. RxJS 7.0 has been deemed stable and is now available in its beta form. The core team, committed to maintaining a dependable and adaptable reactive programming tool, has built this new release to improve many aspects of developer experience without triggering changing breaks to existing code. Through a partnership with Google, the RxJS core team was able to test its latest release by integrating the library into the Google 3 monorepository. In doing so, they ran RxJs against thousands of build targets, and across countless applications, to identify where code breaks were happening, and what could be done to ensure stronger stability. Updated Typing RxJS 7.0 is written in Typescript 3.8, which allows users to leverage all of Typescript’s latest features. For example, RxJS’ typing inference capacity, especially with respect to how the library handles generics, has significantly improved. Previous versions struggled to type larger rests of arguments, with prior upper bound limits not usually exceeding 8 or 9 values. These limitations, however, have been removed, allowing developers to pass an infinite number of values with one call. The team was also able to fix many antiquated types that did not reflect the runtime behavior of actual APIs. As a result, several Observables, including *'toPromise()'*, have been deprecated in order to mitigate the challenges of legacy behavior without significantly impacting existing code. New Features animationFrames(): an Observable that returns the milliseconds elapsed since the start of the Observable, which is especially useful for coding animation, and replaces previous methods of incrementing numbers. lastValueFrom() and firstValueFrom(): Observables that return the last and first values in a promise, respectfully. They improve upon *‘toPromise()’* by returning an ‘EmptyError’ when passing promises without values, and giving users more flexibility when selecting the values they want returned. AsyncIterable support: Any areas of code that previously accepted a Promise, or an Observable, now also accept AsyncIterables. rxjs-for-await: a separate library which supports async-await for-await loops via AsyncIterables. *'retry({resetOnSuccess: true})'*: In 6.0, if you had a source that errored with, for example, a retry count valued at 5, it would only error a total of 5 times, no matter how many successful messages it had passed. With *'retry({resetOnSuccess: true})'*, the retry count value will reset every time a successful message is passed. TimeStamp: an interface with a *‘now()’* method that returns a number. Name Changes: In order to create fewer collisions between four legacy operators, and creation methods with the same name... *'zip(other$)'* is now *'zipWith(other$)'*. *'combineLatest(a$, b$)'* is now *'combineLatestWith(a$, b$)'*. *'merge(partner$)'* is now 'mergeWith(partner$)'. *'concat(ender$)'* is now *'concatWith(ender$)'*. Deprecations In 7.0, no critical elements have been removed from the library, but several features have been deprecated. These include: ResultSelectors, which have been deprecated since 5.0. The process of passing scheduler arguments through functions such as ‘of()’ or ‘range()’ has been deprecated, and should be replaced by using ‘scheduled()’ or ‘observeOn()’. This has been done in order to remove scheduling logic from operators that don’t need it. Some subscription signatures will be deprecated. With this newest release, subscriptions should only be called with a single function, or a partial or complete Observable. The same will also go for tap signatures. This will simplify the development process and help eventually make the library more lean with future releases. Functions that pull in schedulers are now deprecated as of this release in order to prepare users for the eventual phase-out of passing schedulers to certain functions. Looking Forward to 7.1 and Beyond In order to support future changes to the library, the RxJS team will begin introducing ESLint transformations. These updates will help developers remove deprecated code, such as APIs, from their applications, and prepare users for future, major releases as the library becomes faster and leaner. However, Ben Lesh, RxJS core team lead, ensures that no breaking changes will be scheduled until version 9.0 at the earliest. How You Can Contribute The RxJS core team welcomes enthusiastic RxJS experts to help contribute to refining version 7’s future updates. Those experienced with ESLint transformations, or who want to update documentation are welcome to contribute to this open-source library. And of course, the RxJS team relies on the amazing work of authors, bloggers, content creators, and those working in developer relations, to share insights into the library with the development community. If you’re just getting started with RxJS, check out this fantastic “1 Hour to Learn RxJS” tutorial by Ben Lesh from This Dot Labs' Javascript Marathon, where you can learn about Observables and operators, including how to build an Observable from scratch!...

Jul 31, 2020

4 mins

RxJS

Generative AI in the Global Payments Industry: Insights from Dondi Black, CPO of TSYS

Dondi Black, Chief Product Officer of Issuer Solutions at TSYS, to explore the transformative journey of innovation, cultural shifts, and emerging technologies in the payments industry. Dondi shares her insights from three decades in the field, discussing how her organization leverages synergies, empowers teams, and implements measurable strategies to drive innovation and transformation. The conversation dives into the practical applications of generative AI, privacy-enhancing technologies, and a North Star approach to cultural transformation. Tracy and Dondi also touch on the importance of self-advocacy, honest feedback, and creating inclusive environments to foster innovation at every level. Chapters 00:00:04 Welcome & Introductions 00:00:34 Reflections on Transformation & Innovation 00:01:28 Synergies & Organizational Transformation 00:02:19 Measuring Success in Cultural Transformation 00:05:07 Empowering Individuals & Leadership Growth 00:08:07 Emerging Innovations: Generative AI in Fraud & Risk 00:10:15 Security Investments & AI's Industry Impact 00:12:28 The Future of Privacy-Enhancing Technologies 00:15:30 Sustaining Momentum in Transformation 00:18:28 The Industry’s Pragmatic Shift 00:20:39 Inclusive Innovation & Cultural Change 00:23:12 Advocating for Yourself & Your Ideas 00:25:27 Leaders as Coaches: The Power of Feedback 00:28:56 Sponsor Spotlight: This Dot 00:29:53 Where to Connect with Dondi 00:30:39 Closing Remarks Follow Dondi Black on Social Media Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dondi-black/ Sponsored by This Dot: thisdot.co...

Nov 25, 2024

1 min

Engineering Leadership

Let's innovate together!

We're ready to be your trusted technical partners in your digital innovation journey.

Whether it's modernization or custom software solutions, our team of experts can guide you through best practices and how to build scalable, performant software that lasts.

5 Simple Ways Enterprise Engineering Teams Can Increase Productivity, Performance, and Developer Happiness

Resilient Development with Testing

Efficiencies and Improved Performance with GraphQL

Improving Developer Onboarding and Productivity with Standard Tooling

Increasing Brand Consistency with Design Systems

Replacing Dedicated Development Resources with Low Code Solutions

This Dot

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Common Interview Questions & What They Mean

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A Breakdown of RxJS 7.0 Performance Improvements

Generative AI in the Global Payments Industry: Insights from Dondi Black, CPO of TSYS

Let's innovate together!

You might also like

Common Interview Questions & What They Mean

7 Tips to be a Successful Developer in a Remote Company

A Breakdown of RxJS 7.0 Performance Improvements

Generative AI in the Global Payments Industry: Insights from Dondi Black, CPO of TSYS