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Are Product Roles Going Away? with Maggie Pint

Mar 6, 2024

1 min read

Maggie Pint, Engineering Manager at Istari, discusses the trend for companies to focus on streamlining their processes and reducing complexity to deliver products faster and more efficiently versus spending time on innovation this past year. This trend has led to the convergence (maybe consolidation) of product management and engineering roles, where engineers are not only responsible for building the product but also for shaping its strategic direction. Maggie and Tracy discuss whether this is good for the business, or something that should be more concerning to watch out for.

Maggie talks about design in the product role and emphasizes the significance of design beyond aesthetics. It's not just about making things look pretty; it's about understanding user needs and creating intuitive experiences. User research skills and customer engagement are becoming essential for engineers, as they need to build products that truly resonate with their target audience.

They talk about companies like Airbnb and Apple are leading the way in this regard and the successful integration of design thinking into their engineering processes, resulting in innovative and user-friendly products. By involving engineers in the entire product development lifecycle, from ideation to delivery, these companies are able to create seamless experiences that delight their customers.

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Transforming Platform Engineering Through Chargeback Programs with Shuchi Mittal

Shuchi Mittal, the Head of Cloud enablement at Honeywell, discusses how she as a leader in platform engineering has been able to transform internal platform engineering teams at other organizations by providing teams with value-added services, and how they effectively managed costs. She talks about how to treat these teams as customers, and delivering services that meet the customer needs, but also charging them for their usage. By providing policy-compliant infrastructure and unique services tailored to their requirements, platform engineering teams can showcase their commitment to supporting the success of other teams within an organization. This approach not only fosters trust but also positions platform engineering as a strategic partner rather than just a service provider. By going beyond the basic infrastructure provisioning, the platform engineering team can offer services that help development and product teams streamline their processes and improve efficiency. Shuchi shares her work at Fiserv where she implemented a chargeback system to track usage and costs effectively, incentivizing better development practices. This not only helped in managing costs but also encouraged teams to optimize their resource utilization, leading to improved overall efficiency and more easily scalable systems. Her platform engineering team recognized the importance of effectively managing financial aspects to secure upfront investment for product development. By implementing a billing system based on gigabyte hours, they aligned costs with usage, enabling teams to have a clear understanding of their resource consumption. This approach not only provided transparency but also incentivized teams to adopt cost-effective practices. By strategically managing financial aspects, the platform engineering team gained the trust of stakeholders and secured the necessary resources to drive innovation and deliver value to the organization. Shuchi’s journey of platform engineering serves as a valuable example of how a team can transition from being a basic service provider to becoming an innovation partner within an organization. By building trust, offering value-added services, and strategically managing financial aspects, the platform engineering team successfully elevated their role and became a strategic enabler of innovation. Download this episode here....

Apr 16, 2024

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Revolutionizing Pharma using Cutting-Edge Digital Innovation with Lee Dash

Lee Dash, SVP of Digital Innovation at Medistrava, sheds light on the pivotal role of user experience (UX) within pharmaceuticals. Lee underscores the importance of effectively delivering scientific content to healthcare professionals and the inherent challenges in innovating UX within an industry steeped in traditional systems. This episode navigates the complexities of adapting user-friendly interfaces to pharmaceutical contexts and the ongoing endeavors to elevate UX. Lee stresses the significance of optimizing the content supply chain and user testing to ensure a seamless user experience. In an arena where scientific information holds paramount importance, presenting it in an easily accessible and comprehensible manner for healthcare professionals is essential. By integrating user feedback and conducting thorough testing, pharmaceutical companies can refine their digital platforms to meet the diverse needs of stakeholders, encompassing medical science liaisons, patients, researchers, and physicians. A notable takeaway from the dialogue is the necessity for customized solutions tailored to the distinct requirements of various stakeholders within the pharmaceutical industry. Each faction possesses unique needs and preferences concerning the access and utilization of scientific content. By comprehending these specific needs, pharmaceutical entities can develop user-friendly interfaces that resonate with the preferences of each stakeholder group. This approach not only enhances user experience but also bolsters the overall efficacy of digital platforms. Lee Dash shares the significance of assembling a versatile development team equipped with multifaceted skills. In an industry characterized by rapid evolution, having a team capable of adapting to shifting technologies and user expectations is imperative. Additionally, Lee talks about the importance of infusing technical acumen into leadership teams. By cultivating leaders well-versed in the technical intricacies of digital innovation, pharmaceutical companies can drive efficient and effective development processes. Download this episode here....

Apr 30, 2024

2 mins

CRMEngineering LeadershipSoftware Engineering

3 VueJS Component Libraries Perfect for Beginners

For developers checking out VueJS for the first time, the initial steps are overwhelming, particularly when setting up projects from square one. But don’t worry! The VueJS ecosystem offers a plethora of remarkable component libraries, easing this early obstacle. These three libraries are pre-built toolkits, providing beginners with the means to kickstart their VueJS projects effortlessly. Let’s take a look! Quasar Quasar is among the most popular open-source component libraries for Vue.js, offering a comprehensive set of ready-to-use UI components and tools for building responsive web applications and websites. Designed with performance, flexibility, and ease of use in mind, Quasar provides developers with a wide range of customizable components, such as buttons, forms, dialogs, and layouts, along with built-in support for themes, internationalization, and accessibility. With its extensive documentation, active community support, and seamless integration with Vue CLI and Vuex, Quasar empowers developers to rapidly prototype and develop high-quality Vue.js applications for various platforms, including desktop, mobile, and PWA (Progressive Web Apps). PrimeVue PrimeVue is a popular Vue.js component library offering a wide range of customizable UI components designed for modern web applications. Developed by PrimeTek, it follows Material Design guidelines, ensuring responsiveness and accessibility across devices. With features like theming, internationalization, and advanced functionalities such as lazy loading and drag-and-drop, PrimeVue provides developers with the tools to create elegant and high-performing Vue.js applications efficiently. Supported by clear documentation, demos, and an active community, PrimeVue is an excellent choice for developers seeking to streamline their development process and deliver polished user experiences. Vuetify Vuetify is a powerful Vue.js component library that empowers developers to create elegant and responsive user interfaces with ease. Built according to Google's Material Design guidelines, Vuetify offers a vast collection of customizable UI components, ranging from buttons and cards to navigation bars and data tables. Its comprehensive set of features includes themes, typography, layout grids, and advanced components like dialogues and sliders, enabling developers to quickly build modern web applications that look and feel polished. With extensive documentation, active community support, and ongoing development, Vuetify remains a top choice for Vue.js developers seeking to streamline their workflow and deliver visually stunning user experiences. For newcomers venturing into Vue.js, the initial setup might seem daunting. Thankfully, Vue.js offers a variety of component libraries to simplify this process. Quasar, PrimeVue, and Vuetify are standout options, each providing pre-built tools to kickstart projects smoothly. Whether you prefer Quasar's extensive UI components, PrimeVue's Material Design-inspired features, or Vuetify's responsive interfaces, these libraries cater to diverse preferences and project requirements. With their clear documentation and active communities, these libraries empower developers to start Vue.js projects confidently and efficiently, enabling Vue developers to create polished user experiences....

May 1, 2024

2 mins

VuetifyVueQuasar

What is Cypress Studio?

Introduction Cypress Studio has been around for some time. It was introduced in Cypress v6.3.0, removed in v10, and reintroduced in v10.7.0. This blog post will dive into its current state and how to use it today. What is Cypress Studio Cypress Studio is a tool built on top of Cypress. It offers an interface for creating tests as if you were using your site without requiring code to be written. It adds functionality to query elements and to add assertions from the interface. It's important to note that Cypress Studio is still under an experimental flag and lacks support for Component Testing (another feature of Cypress). Creating an app to test We first need a working app because the tool we will use is meant for end-to-end tests. I'll pick Svelte and Vite for this demo, but you can choose any framework. Cypress is agnostic in that matter. ` Make sure to select the Svelte and Typescript options to follow along. Now open your project location, install dependencies, and start your app to ensure everything works correctly. ` Installing and setting up Cypress Studio Now it's time to add Cypress to our dev dependencies. ` With our dependency installed, let's launch it so we can start configuring it. But first let’s add an entry under scripts in our package.json file. ` ` A new window will open that will guide us through the initial setup. Select the "E2E Testing" option to create the required configuration files. Then, you can close the window. A new folder called cypress and a configuration file cypress.config.ts are created at the root of our project. To enable Cypress Studio, we must open the newly created configuration file and add the experimentalStudio property. ` For this project, we need to ensure that TypeScript is configured properly for Cypress when it runs, as it conflicts with the one in our root folder. We will extend the original typescript configuration and override some properties. Create a new tsconfig.json file inside the' cypress' folder. ` You can find more information on setting up TypeScript with Cypress in their documentation Creating tests Now that our setup is complete let's write our first test. We will create a folder called e2e and a new test file. ` Open the new file and create an outline of your tests. Don't add anything to them. I initialized my file with a few tests. ` There is an option to create spec files from the interface, but it will contain some initial content that you most likely remove. There’s third option to scaffold multiple specs files, these can serve as a learning resource for writing tests as it contains many different scenarios tested. Make sure your app is running and, in another terminal, start cypress. ` Select E2E testing and Chrome. You should now see a list with all your test files. Click on home.cy.ts. Your tests will run and pass because we have not made any assertions. This looks the same as if we haven't enabled Studio, but there's a new detail added when you hover on any of the tests: a magic wand that you can click to start recording events and adding assertions directly in the UI. Let's start with our first tests and check what assertions we can make. The first step is to navigate to a page. This interaction will be recorded and added to the test. To make assertions, right-click on an element and select the ones you want to add. After we complete our test, let's review our generated code. Go to the test file and see the changes made to it. It should look something like this. ` Cypress Studio will attempt to pick the best selector for the element. In this case, it was able to choose button because it is unique to the page. If there were more buttons, the selector would've been different. You can interact with elements as if you were using the page regularly. Note that Studio supports a limited set of commands: check, click, select, type, and uncheck. Let's record our second test and verify that the button will increase its count when clicked. That was quick. Let's review our generated test. ` So far, our tests have been very accurate and didn't need any modifications. However, take Studio as a helper to write tests visually and their selector as suggestions. Let's take the bottom link with the text "SvelteKit" as an example. It will generate the assertion: ` This selector is accurate, but modifying the elements' structure or order would break the tests. We don’t want tests to break for reasons that do not affect our users. A change in order does not have the same impact for the user as changing the text of a button or changing the url of a link. These selectors should be as specific as possible, but rely as less as possible on implementation details. Selecting images by its alt attribute it’s a way to find a specific element and at the same time ensure that element is accessible. (Accessibility has a direct impact on users) As a counterpart, when clicking any of the logos above, we will get very interesting selectors (and assertions). ` With these assertions, we check that our images have an alt attribute set and are tied to a specified link. Conclusion As with any other automated tool, check the output and solve any issues that you may find. Results depend on the structure of the page and Cypress Studio's ability to choose an adequate selector. Overall, this tool can still help you write complex tests with plenty of interactions, and you can later modify any selectors. Besides the selector, I found it helpful in writing the assertions. If you’re new to Cypress or e2e testing, it can be of great help to go from an idea to a working test. Reviewing these tests can be a great way to learn how these tests are built....

May 3, 2024

5 mins

CypressTesting

Are Product Roles Going Away? with Maggie Pint

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