How to Train Your Developer

Gergő Ertliis a Chief Software Architect

at Phonedeckfor Startup Safari Berlin 2014

What what?

• to introduce what we do• to explain how are we doing it• to show how we got to this point• to point out the technical challenges• to give out some of our tech secrets• … and …• to explain why do you want to be part of this

team

Communication in the Cloud

• Where do you…– …chat with your friends?– …publish your beautiful photos?– …invite people to an event?

• Why?– context– convenience– added services

• Where do you start a call to talk to people?

Startup Formula

• Find an unsolved problem– Phone calls are handled differently than other

communication

• Solve the problem– Phonedeck website, you start/answer a call/text just by

clicking in your browser

• Measure and evolve– FUUUUUUUUU

So Much Fail

• But the dogs did not eat the dogfood

• Context– We could get data from social networks, but it

usually works the other way around• Convenience– Install, pair, network unreliability

• Added services– Nothing really useful for end users

The Solution

• Fixing the problem: more context, more contacts, more phonebook– “Poor man’s CRM” we were called

• But our business is telephony integration

• Then integrate:– Enterprise IT!– Salesforce!

What did Salesforce give us?

• Context– contacts; previous correspondence; business

processes• Convenience– has a very different definition here

• Added services– thinking differently, we add services to Salesforce

ENOUGH OF THIS MANAGER TALKLet’s talk developer

Separating Roles

• Startup: everyone does everything– In the beginning

• Business people (+ marketing, sales)– market research– product plans

• Tech people (+ UX)– design– implementation– have to keep up with the needs

Different Language

• Business: from tomorrow we will integrate with Salesforce

• Tech: what is Salesforce?

• Business: SF is cloud CRM with business processes

• Tech: SF is a big database with a standard UI, triggers and a scheduler

Release Management

• Business: I want to demo my new ideas ASAP but the product has to be rock solid

• Spans to different topics:– Continuous Integration– Product Planning– Documentation

Continuous Integration

• Test Driven Development• Everything compiled by scripts• Automatically on each commit• Separating prototypes from products• Releasing and deploying a new version– one click

• We use Jenkins

Product Planning

• We like Scrum• It just doesn’t fit– one or two people per project or platform– UX

• User stories are great– as a [who] it want to [what] so [benefit]

• UX– Sprint 0– stakeholders

Documentation

• Every developer hates to document• Making it as easy as possible• Automatically created from code/comments• Hard to choose a good format– Markup (HTML or TeX): business cannot write it– Word/Power Point: awful for tech documentation– Wiki/Confluence: hard to export

Represent

• Business: I want our developers to represent our company and product

• Big tech marketing events: Google AppEngine, Amazon Web Services

• Partners: Alcatel-Lucent• Hackathons• Meetups• Public projects on GitHub• Scientific Conferences• Teach it until you know it

LET’S PLAY A GAMEI want to control a phone call from my browser

So, How to Train Your Developer?

• Give them the best tools• Buy them the best books• Send them to the events

• Make them love what they do• Give them time to learn new things• Learn new things together• Present and teach them how to cooperate

LET’S SEE THE DEVELOPERS’ NESTPhonedeck Office Tour 2014