Keeping up with Tech
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The document outlines strategies for staying current in a rapidly changing technology marketplace, emphasizing a culture of continuous learning and adaptation. It details methods for evaluating new technologies, modernizing existing applications, and effectively adopting emerging tools within an organization. Additionally, it describes Kenzan's approach, including their tech radar, skills matrix, and the importance of internal and open source projects for professional development.
Keeping up with Tech
- 1. Staying current in a changing marketplace Denver Code Club Meetup Craig Martin, Vice President of Engineering January 19th, 2017
- 2. Agenda ● Changing market ● Approach and Adopting a new technology ● Staying Current ● Evaluation Process ● How Kenzan does it: ○ Tech Radar ○ Skills Matrix / Badge Board ○ Internal Projects ○ Open Source Projects
- 3. 2003 SOAP Webservices becomes popular Technology changes really fast. 2005 Google Maps & YouTube 2006 Initial AWS Cloud offerings 2008 RESTful Webservices take hold 2013 March ● React released ● Initial Docker release 2011 ● Google Cloud Platform ● January - Kafka ● December - Hadoop 2010 ● February - Azure ● October - Angular 2014 ● May - Apache Spark ● June - Initial Kubernetes release ● October - HTML 5 2015 ● January - Swagger 2016 ● January - Serverless architectures ● September - Angular 2 ● July - Apache Mesos
- 4. Approaching a new technology To keep in mind!: Perseverance will pay off You never stop learning Different technologies and starting points have different kinds of learning curves
- 6. How to stay current? In a changing market In Technology, standing still means falling behind • Two main perspectives Individual or Company • Correct attitude Embrace the change Create a culture or an attitude of looking forward • Be critical For every good product there is a “Clippy” • Apply in real world situations • Evaluate the alternatives Is there a market need? Why is it better? • Review from many perspectives (not just technology)
- 7. Technology evaluation ● Updating/modernizing existing legacy applications ● Comparing “old” vs “new” technologies ● Evaluating emerging technologies COMMON DRIVERS COMMON PITFALLS ● Resume driven development ● Treating technology stacks different than architectural patterns ● Lack of consistency in approach ● Stuck in the theoretical - Start Building!
- 8. Modernizing existing application Common Use Case: Company has an existing legacy application that needs a major feature overhaul or needs an upgrade. 1. Start with an honest evaluation of existing application stack a. What does it do well vs not so well (e.g. scalability, modularity, releases, extensibility, support, etc) b. How much of the challenges is related to the technology? c. Maybe code/arch cleanup would be better? d. Understand the architectural patterns 2. Determine list of potential technology replacements 3. Use the Pros and Cons as a template for each technology a. Evaluate each pro and con against the potential technology b. Suitability fit with development team(s) 4. Evaluate the “activity” of the the technology a. Lots of committers? b. Open Source vs Closed Source c. Release Cadence d. Available tooling and Plugins 5. Overall technology evaluation a. Ease of use, code management, cost, complexity
- 9. Comparing Old vs New Common Use Case: Company has a new tool or feature that needs to be built and we want to choose the right technology. Objective evaluation of pros and cons: ● Differences in paradigm or architecture approach ● Features and gaps in tech ● Performance ● Extensibility ● Activity & popularity = resources and support Compare costs of each technology ● Open source technologies vs licensed technologies ● Maintenance costs are expensive and will most likely rise Team Dynamics ● Skills of team ● Code handoffs Likelihood of longevity ● Judge by popularity over time ● Extensibility ● Voodoo Magic
- 10. Evaluating Emerging Technologies Common Use Cases: ● Helping clients to determine the correct strategic direction for their organization. ● Determining the technologies in market verticals and help establish the direction of the organization. Identify POC to get hands on with technology ● Focus on risk areas ● Establish checkpoints along the way Understand and the market or client needs: ● Problems that need solving (industry gaps) ● Challenges unique to the vertical ● Current competencies in the organization or marketplace ● Competition evaluation Builds on the technology evaluations from above: ● Pros and Cons ● Costs ● Team Dynamics ● Longevity Develop adoption plan and implementation strategy ● Switching over legacy apps ● Training Staff ● Rollout strategy
- 11. WHO? Find the right people! WHAT? The training! WHEN? Project! ● Not all people love picking up new technologies ● Prove out critical challenges ● Dedicate a percentage of the week/month to learn the new technology ● Leverage online resources and provide training when needed ● BUILD, BUILD BUILD! ● Join meetups and conferences in town ● Present a tech talk or teach to others ● Start building immediately ● Don’t be afraid to jump “too early” into the project ● Working on it is part of the learning curve, and will shorten the productivity dip time Tips on How
- 12. How Kenzan does it.... • Tech Radar • Skills Matrix • Badge Board • Building Skills • Internal Projects • Open Source Projects
- 13. Tech Radar Subject Matter Quadrants ● Languages and Frameworks ● Tools ● Techniques ● Platforms Evaluation Adopt (2 rings) Technologies in use, or recommended to clients. Trial Technologies should be used on internal projects or open source projects to gain practical experience. Evaluation Technologies worth putting effort toward investigating, pursued to generate a proof-of-concept. Hold Technologies not yet ready, out of date, or too risky to be used
- 14. Tech Radar Maintenance Tech Radar Maintenance Starts with the right people: ● Attitude and desire is importance ● Honest and critical (no ego’s) Routine meetings with tech leadership ● Monitor and discuss new technologies ● Discuss P.O.C. for emerging technologies ● Monitor existing legacy technologies ● Evaluate in progress P.O.C’s Author competencies for relevant emerging technologies Routine “checkpoints” for projects and people ● Project completion ● employee project rolloff ● Manager & employee checkins
- 15. Skills matrix and competencies ● Skills matrix is the sum of all the skills that we have ● Each skill has a set of competencies ● Typically broken into 3 different levels (Beginner, Intermediate, Expert) ● Goal is to have the “Kenzan Standards” of competencies ● Will be established once it is added to the tech radar ○ Only filled out when it becomes relevant
- 16. badge board The goal of the board is to have an accurate representation of all the skills within Kenzan. Functions: ● Provide the resourcing team a mechanism to determine which employees are best suited for a project ● Provide tenured employees a set of skills to work towards and competencies to meet those skills ● Set and track the "technology stack" within Kenzan's organization It’s expected and encouraged that the badge board will evolve over time. This will happen both from a tech stack perspective and from a employee skills perspective.
- 17. Open Source Projects Open Source and Internal projects are strongly tied to Tech Radar and Badge Board Open Source: ● Kenzan benefits a lot of the open source community ● Open source projects are Kenzan’s contribution to the community ● Usually created as Proof-Of-Concepts and experimentation with emerging technologies spotted in the Tech Radar. Internal Projects: ● Internal projects are for internal Kenzan IP ● They are created by “bench” employees ● Opportunity to pick up new technologies and earn badges Examples of Open Source Projects: ● MSL (Million Song Library) -> Angular + Java + Netflix + Cassandra: https://github.com/kenzanlabs/million-song-library ● Keystone (Front End Build Tool) -> Node + Gulp + Yeoman: https://github.com/kenzanlabs/keystone Internal Projects: ● Kenzan.IO -> React.JS, Wordpress API: http://kenzan.io ● Tech Radar -> React.JS + Redux + Node
- 18. Want to learn more? Follow us! @kenzanmedia www.linkedin.com/company/kenzan-media techblog.kenzan.com www.facebook.com/kenzanmedia/