SpringOne Platform 2018
Iterating For Success: A Case Study in Remote Paired Programming, The Evolution of a Dream With an International Twist
Kathy Ellison, CoreLogic; Michael Stuart, CoreLogic
24. > Stay Connected.
“Remote Teaming, Jellingly”
And check out…
“Continuous Data Governance with Spring Cloud
Data Flow”
Cahlen Humphreys
#springone@s1p
Hinweis der Redaktion
Iterating for Success: A Case Study in Remote Paired Programming
..The Evolution of a Dream with a International Twist
Sorry Onsi, hope you will still let us get a selfie with you later
conference
Start with an introduction of who we are AND tell you about the team where we pair
Share some history of CL and the factors that that led decision makers to move to the cloud
set the scene with an illustration of CL labs and how we have integrated Agile
STU
Start on common ground of Agile/XP
Go into why consider Remote Pairing, followed by things we feel contributed to it’s success
And then just show and tell you what our environment looks like
Finally, we’ll wrap it up with a sample day
Kathy Name, 2.5 decades, 3-6 pairs in size
Stu to talk about self
Downtown Austin Galvanize, overlooking the ever-evolving Austin skyline.
Spatial Replatform of legacy app to PCF, RiskMeter2
3 Pairs and a PM, lucky to have two pivots for first year
Other CL projects took off and we lost our pivots – our team had proved super successful and phase 2 was approved and more talent was needed
1 West coast pair, single pair on the East coast, and later our team in Kiev
Background of CoreLogic
Disclaimer: This is not a pitch for CoreLogic. In preparing for this however, we felt a little background about CoreLogic would help illustrate how and why CoreLogic has transformed its Infrastructure Paradigm
CoreLogic is a leader in real-estate services
in-depth property data paired with analytics for clients
BUSINESS SEGMENTS such as Mortgage Lender and Servicing, Insurance and Real-Estate Sales.
Corelogic.com today, you will find a slick engineered gateway with easy access to products and solutions
“unique property level insights”
(Corelogic.com)
CoreLogic was founded in 1991, headquarted in Irvine, CA. Over the last several decades CoreLogic has maintained billions of records of intelligent property data with financial analysis.
CoreLogic data consists of:
Mortgage Backed Securities such as Fannie Mae and Ginnie Mae, and Asset Backed Securities such as Home Equity Loans and Refinances
Property Tax Data consisting of escrow analysis
Geospatial Parcel Data with location coordinates and property attributes
Flood and Disaster Data
Traditional and Nontraditional Credit information
Criminal Background Records
(Corelogic.com)
Challenges
After years of growth through mergers and acquisitions, CoreLogic IT leaders realized they were supporting complex enterprise infrastructures with outdated technology stacks and redundant data.
According to one CL decision making leader at the time, “We had fifty, maybe sixty siloed technology stacks throughout the different lines of business that were cobbled together,” he continued to explain “These different tech stacks have served us well for years and have been delivering great solutions to our customers”.
A new foundation was needed with a streamlined infrastructure.
(“Demystifying”)
Why cloud native?
With Cloud native a common and scalable platform could be established that would help CoreLogic quickly meet strategic goals.
One goal was to consolidate 700+ applications down to approximately 300 applications. This would reduce maintenance costs and decrease data redundancy.
A second goal was to establish an ecosystem that improves data management to facilitate innovation and drive faster product delivery.
After evaluating several competing platform options, CoreLogic leaders decided to work with Pivotal and leverage the expertise of Pivotal Labs for re-platforming applications to the Pivotal Cloud Foundry infrastructure.
(“Demystifying”)
CoreLogic Labs
In this new partnership with Pivotal, CoreLogic was able to create our own home-grown digital lab.
With PCF, CoreLogic had the means to provide
faster delivery times and with blue green deployments, CoreLogic
could establish a zero-downtime deployment strategy and maintain high availability.
CoreLogic Labs adopted the Agile methodology as well. And emphasis was placed on
tighter iterations
frequent communications between the client and the team
a development strategy consisting of paired programming with test driven development and continuous integration and delivery
The CoreLogic dream for infrastructure transformation was now a reality.
“Colocation” was the mantra in the early days CoreLogic Labs.
With a focus on teamwork and collaboration, a new iterative workflow became common place.
Today, this process is used in the Risk Meter project.
weekly Iteration Planning meetings where the team points a story or reviews a chore or bug that our PM had often just written for us after receiving new requirement changes.
The team participates in a weekly retro meeting as well where we review any process changes that could benefit the project.
Sustainable development team that maintains a constant delivery pace.
But what happens if a sustainable pace with a team that is collocated is not possible?
What if the customer requirement changes are coming more quickly than the team can sustain?
I’m going to hand it over to Stu where he elaborate and advocate further…
References from extremeprogramming.org, Extreme Programming Explained, Agile Manifesto
Prevent loneliness and isolation, encourage team members to do and lead more
Stu to talk about holograms and Kathy to steer back on track
Prashant Baheti, Exploring the efficacy of distributed pair programming
- Virtually paired using Microsoft NetMeeting performed similarly to collocated pairs
Canfora et al. [12] studied virtual pairing by having students use a screen sharing
application along with a text-based chat application. No audio channel was provided. They found that distributed pairs tended to stop cooperating and began to work as two solo programmers
Stotts et al. Although distributed pairs successfully completed their programming assignments, they complained of their inability to point or gesture.
Principles are exactly the same/Unchanged
Workstation setup (Sprout)
Terminal/Text or IDE sharing not sufficient for us (logs, communications)
Travel – Project kickoff, new hire immersion, jelling
Kathy to look at phone and check twitter
Kathy to eat
Opinionated Remote Pairing – HEY, it’s a case study, I’m sure a pivot will be speaking with me after the meeting
Appear.in allows up to 4 in a “room”, upgrade to Pro for more rooms and for up to 12 participants for about $10 month
Brady Bunch
Before dedicated meeting room, lost time in setup but got progressively better until we got this setup
XP Rule – Give a team dedicated (informative) open work space:
Speakerphone/Chat150 ($300)
Camera ($25)
2 Mac Minis (675 x 2 = $1350)
2 Large monitors (500 x 2 = $1000)
TOTAL: $2675
IDE sharing too limited
Mac remote management ends in fighting for mouse/cursor, no audio/video
Slack (was Screenhero) lacks video, have to use Appear.in
Zoom allows group meetings up to 40 mins (we use Appear.in)
PLUS touch up and virtual backgrounds!!!
SORRY: Not endorsing working from coffee shop, home, hmm, maybe
Even if remote station will not act as collocated on different days – get a second monitor to show video as well as the dashboard
Worst case, you iPad or Chromebook like we did in beginning
Digital-To-Analog converter (DAC)
Headsets – SennHeiser headsets $100-150
Nothing ever goes wrong when you add network to the picture!
My bumps: underpowered station, wireless, firewalls, single monitor – side conversations
Feedback: “Dynamics have changed”
Recent conversation I had with pair: To present something, this person would feel insincere if they truly did not believe in topic presenting – I had doubts along the way (but maybe mostly myself and the team overcame together) but I agree and hopefully I have been that evangelist for you,
ADVOCATE
Today the Risk Meter team at CoreLogic has taken on a distributed makeup. We have 5 pairs across the globe.
5 devs in the Austin location.
There is a team in LA consisting of one pair,
a single Corelogian (as we call ourselves at times) who just happens to be standing next to me) resides in FL,
and a one pair team resides in Kiev.
The biggest “shift” has been shifted hours.
follow the same agile practices described,
As Kiev starts earlier, they will pair 4 hours then break for lunch. When they return onshore and offshore shifts overlap and we rotate in pairs for the remainder of their day.
Using all the tools we discussed, all the remote pairs participate in our IPM meetings and have equal input in team collaboration.
Pivotal tracker tool has been instrumental in maintaining a workflow that works.
We start our day with breakfast.
Then we will take a few minutes for office.
project standup when we share
dashboard to confirm everything is green.
Then we pick our pairs and go about our day iterating as a team, regardless where we may sit.
It should also be noted, at the end of standups, retro and IPM, we like to snap, or clap for those of use that can’t snap
😊 And, sometimes Stu will join us for breakfast, over appear.in.
Add stuff about experience and friendshps
Note, getting the team together, esp. when on-boarding, can help share context and organization culture… but can help improve “jelling” of the team whenever
Shout out to Glen and Greg for opportunity, to our pivots, Grant, Kurtis, Cat and Jermy
And to our team around the globe
September 27, 201812:30 pm - 1:00 pmMaryland Ballroom C