Save Time and Money with Automation
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The document discusses how iThemes improved their workflow and saved hundreds of hours by automating processes like version control, zip file creation, and uploading using tools like Git. They found that automating tasks like checking for changes from other developers, creating consistent zip files, and uploading releases saved significant time and reduced errors. The automation system has now been in place for three years, handling over 7,000 version updates and allowing the small team to be more productive while expanding.
Save Time and Money with Automation
- 1. Save Time and Money with Automation
- 2. Who am I? Chris Jean @chrisjean chrisjean.com Developer for iThemes.com Code WordPress themes Develop needed internal solutions Wear funny shirts and hats
- 3. What is this about? This presentation is about how we at iThemes improved our workflow by using automation. We did this by putting together some existing tools, adding some customization, and implementing a standardized workflow. This has saved us hundreds of man hours and creates a more consistent product for our customers.
- 4. Why should you care? I believe that every business can reduce needless waste of man hours by simply spending a little bit of time putting in smart solutions. This not only saves money but can reduce worker stress and make your customers happier.
- 5. Old iThemes development workflow ● Need to make a change ● Check with everyone working on the project to ensure that they are not making changes ● Download the latest release ● Make modifications ● Create zip file ● Upload zip file to server
- 6. Problem 1: Checking with everyone is slow and wastes time Sometimes I would have to check in with four other people. If one was away for a meeting or a personal appointment, I might have to wait hours before I can start my work. Sometimes a miscommunication would happen and I would overwrite someone else's changes that I didn't know existed. If they didn't keep a copy, the work they did had to be recreated and retested.
- 7. Solution 1: Use Git to remove the social requirements Git is a kind of version control software. It keeps a full history of every change made to the project and doesn't allow people to accidentally overwrite the work of others. We no longer had to contact everyone in the company and wait to get permission to work. We no longer had accidental loss of work due to miscommunication.
- 8. Solution 1: Use Git to remove the social requirements We got additional benefits from switching to a standardized workflow using Git: ● Full account of when each change is made and who made it. We can see who made the last change to a specific line of code. ● Ability to control who has access to the projects and who can modify them. ● A Git feature created the ability to automate processes when projects were updated.
- 9. Problem 2: Consistency of zip files I was the only non-Mac user in the office. Macs have a bad habit of adding junk to zip files. This junk created problems for our users. Since my machine didn't add junk to zip files, zipping projects became my responsiblity. Every time any project needed to be updated, I would get an email with a zip file that needed to be cleaned up and rezipped.
- 10. Solution 2: Make the machines do the work via automation Git has a feature that allows for automation. It can be set up to do specific things when any project is updated. I added code that would automatically generate a nice clean zip file each time a project was updated. I lost my title of "best zip creator." I didn't mind.
- 11. Problem 3: Uploading the zip file takes time and can be forgotten Rather than hosting our own zip files, we used a service that did this for us. Their interface was horrible and took too much time to navigate. So each time we had an update, we would have to load up their site, log in, navigate their slow back-end, and then manually upload the file. It was a time sink.
- 12. Solution 3: Automate zip file uploads We already had an automated process to create the zip files. It just made sense to once again let the machines do the work for us. We moved the zip file hosting to one of our servers and added an automation process that would automatically upload new zip files to the server.
- 13. Taking full advantage of automation After we started automating things, we just kept going. We added an automation step that automatically added translation support for all of our projects. This could have been done before, but required a very specific process and was time consuming. Now its automated.
- 14. Taking full advantage of automation We added a feature where our projects could easily share sections of code. When these code sections are updated, all of the projects automatically get updated with the changes. For each project, the code is updated, the translation support is regenerated, the zip file is recreated, and it is uploaded to the server... automatically.
- 15. Taking full advantage of automation With our system, when sending an update, if the version number isn't new (and higher), the system will refuse to do the other automation steps and will tell the developer about it. This prevents us from releasing confusing updates with duplicate or old versions. This is a form of automated process control.
- 16. Benefits of automation Our automation system is around three years old now. In total, all of our projects have received 7,137 version updates. If automation saved just 1 minute for each version release, that is a savings of nearly 15 8-hour business days of labor. This is far less time than was put into creating and maintaining the system.
- 17. Benefits of automation When this automation system was first created, we had only two developers and one support person. We currently have 5 developers and 5 support staff spread across two brands. We communicate frequently, but not because we are afraid of stepping on the other developers' toes.
- 18. What you can do 1. Inspect your workflow and processes to identify the tedious manual steps. 2. Talk to your coworkers/staff to see if any of these tedious processes could be automated or improved by using better tools. 3. Be willing to invest in creating these better processes. 4. Rinse and repeat as opportunities for improvement can occur at any time.