Blog
It’s been a few months since we finished our beta Bridge for Product Designers course, so it’s a perfect time to reflect on the experience. If you haven’t heard of us before, at Bridge we build and run part-time courses that are free for students with the goal of fostering a more inclusive, diverse, and accessible tech industry. Our courses are made by volunteers and hosted at tech companies in Toronto. They’re designed to remove barriers for junior to intermediate professionals who are women, non-binary, or agender. We’re able to efficiently build courses that are tailor-made for these groups by applying design thinking and lean development methodologies. We utilized processes like project discovery, user research, user journey mapping, usability testing, and iterative improvement. This is the story of how we used those methodologies to make a really amazing product.
*This article first appeared in IT World Canada*.
It’s January, and that means New Year’s resolutions, that time of year when our best intentions--improve our lives, pick up that new hobby, and learn that new skill--last for a few weeks before real life gets in the way. As a Scrum Master at Rangle, I’ve been thinking a lot over the past few weeks about how I can take what I practice at work every day to help others achieve their project and team goals and apply those concepts to bettering myself in 2018. Luckily, there are lots of concepts that I can take from the Agile project management philosophy to make a series of resolutions that have a much greater chance of sticking than “I’ll go back to the gym...at some point...somehow.” Here are some simple concepts you can draw on to help you follow through with your goals in 2018:
Every January, many folks resolve to ensure the New Year is their best one yet. Yet, too often people fail at reaching goals that they set for themselves. Whether it’s losing that holiday weight, learning a new skill, or striving for that promotion, if you find yourself as someone who has trouble sticking to goals and resolutions, whether it’s a New Year's resolution or throughout the year, then maybe it is time to get yourself a coach. On the other hand, for those looking to enrich their own communication and relationship skills, then the role of the coach may be for you.
Most top-performing modern companies rely on web-based software to operate efficiently while providing value to their customers. These applications often contain custom and intricate business logic that gives businesses an edge over their competition.
The BQA acronym comes from Business Analyst/Quality Assurance and since neither role is properly defined in Scrum, we combined the roles to fill the void. This bridge between technical expertise and customer satisfaction is something we’re passionate about and have written about in the past. Today, we’ll go over the 6 gates of quality our BQAs implement to ensure quality in the process while maintaining business functionality and value throughout every phase of the development cycle.
Successful web app development requires delivering strong communication between backend servers and frontend applications. The end client of an API needs to easily understand how to utilize the system to develop features and improve the application. REST (REpresentational State Transfer) has historically been used as the paradigm for this communication.
If 2016 was the year of JavaScript fatigue then 2017 was most certainly the year of convergence. Most JavaScript frameworks have converged towards using similar tooling and concepts.