Building a team is like making risotto

This analogy is available under a Creative Commons licence - use, amend, share

December 09, 2014

Hopefully the analogy is so clear and concise it doesn't need elaborating, but I'll do it just in case...

Silvrback blog image
Source : http://www.abelandcole.co.uk/recipes/cassanovas-celery-risotto

When you have a small team, and you're trying to grow into a big team, you can become susceptible to team indigestion - the new . . .

Read More

Testing developers by pull request

You gotta git our workflow, man

December 09, 2014

Here at YJ HQ we use a lot of freelancers - obvious when you think about it,but it does pose certain challenges. The main issue is that the team is fluid, and that puts a greater emphasis on the team fit than normal - we simply can't afford for someone to spend three months getting used to the way we work.

To that end, the most . . .

Read More

Docker at YunoJuno

How we (don't) use Docker in our daily workflow

December 09, 2014

Silvrback blog image
Attribution unknown, source http://www.forwallpaper.com/

I recently saw an article on HN entitled "Docker at Lyst" which contained the following quote re. their use of Docker within the development team, as opposed to production:

It [Development] mostly works but we are considering moving to a Vagrant . . .

Read More

Heroku app aliases

Using git remotes to alias your apps

November 18, 2014

We have four permanent Heroku apps running in production (our live site, our staging site, a development site and a demo) as well as various ephemeral apps that get created for long-running branches. Running Heroku CLI commands can become a bit of a pain in scenarios like this as you have to append the app name as an option:

# this will . . .

Read More

Simple request profiler for Django

From the "If you can't measure it, it didn't happen" department.

October 22, 2014

Premature optimisation is the root of all evil

The most important word in the above quote by Donald Knuth, who knows a thing about programming, is 'premature'. If premature optimisation really is the root of all evil, then how do you know when to begin? If you're anything like us, then "when people start . . .

Read More

We're Lean, handle with care

Original title: The Trouble With Lean

October 20, 2014

The original title of this post was "The problem with Lean", but that sounded negative, so I went with needy instead.

From the inside of a company, lean practices are great - they are efficient, responsive, and allow a small startup to iterate and advance at breakneck speed. The combination of early launches, measurement . . .

Read More

Tip: OSX Open File Dialog misfire

How to correct OSX's Finder Failure

October 20, 2014

[UPDATE: there is no update. This is still an issue in Yosemite]

I've had an ongoing hate affair with OSX's Finder app, which is so inferior to Windows Explorer as to make me want to switch back on a daily basis. It's terrible, and one of the bugs that has been annoying me most recently is the Case of the Missing . . .

Read More

Archive
   Subscribe by email and never miss a post.

This update link alerts you to new Silvrback admin blog posts. A green bubble beside the link indicates a new post. Click the link to the admin blog and the bubble disappears.

Got It!