0-60 IN STARTUP TECH

Monday June 6th

Daniel Doubrovkine

@dblockdotorghttp://code.dblock.org

dblock@dblock.org

STARTUP FOUNDERS

Job: Dream It

Carter

YOU (ME)

• Technical Co-Founder• Head / VP of Engineering• Lead Developer

Job: Build This

WEEK ZERO: DAY ONE

What will you do?

“Dear ___,

Saw your excellent presentation at ___. I liked the Q&A and learned a bunch of new things.

I have a favor to ask. I’ve joined a NY startup, ___. We’re just starting, and I am hoping to do things ‘right’ from the start. I was wondering whether I could borrow someone’s time at ___ next week (yours or someone who works for you) and maybe bring 1-2 people with me to see how your code and tooling is organized.

-Me”

DAY ONE: CODE NAME

• Create an Identity• Version 0.1

Job: Build This“Gravity”

DAY TWO: A PLACE TO DOCUMENT

• Hosted by a 3rd Party• Free or Cheap• Private• Share• Backup Data

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/143321/best-hosted-wiki-solution-for-private-wikis

Team 1 Team 2 Team 3

Trac

DAY THREE: A PLACE FOR PROCESS

• Create Tasks• Assign Tasks• Start Tasks• Complete Tasks

Team 1 Team 2 Team 3

PivotalTracker Trac

+ Basecamp+ Redmine

PROCESS

Extreme Programming

(XP)Scrum Waterfall

Agile Not Agile

What do we do next?

What do we do during the next

month?

What are all the things we need to

do this year?

#FAILGrow this way >>>>>>>>>

DAY 4 AND 5: ACQUIRE KNOWLEDGE

• Domain Driven Design• Taxonomy• Specs• People

Team 1 Team 2 Team 3

People

DAY 5: DDD/SME/KB

CONCLUDING WEEK ZERO

• Scheduled exciting meetings with other startups

• Created a place to write information, a team wiki

• Created a KB and a way to create new knowledge

• Created a place to manage and track work.

… I feel like we forgot something important …

CONCLUDING WEEK ZERO

WEEK 1, DAY 1: A PLAN

• Story: “Users can sign-up for beta”• ETA: EOW• Breakdown: ?

WEEK 1, DAY 1: A PLACE TO PUT CODE

Subversion Git• Checkout• Commit• Branch• Trunk

• Fork• Pull• Push• Merge• Master

Team 1 Team 2 Team 3

+ TFS+ Mercurial (HG)

WEEK 1, DAY 1: PEER CODE REVIEWS

• Peer review of every check-in• Shared knowledge• Shared responsibility• It’s common to push back

Team 1 Team 2 Team 3

ReviewBoard Crucible

WEEK 1, DAY 1: YOUR FIRST COMMIT

• Getting Started

WEEK 1, DAY 2: A FRIENDLY VISIT

• Bring Pastries• Tell Your Story• Be Impressed• Ask “Why?” at Least 3 Times• Owe One

4sq 10gen

WEEK 1, DAY 3: PICK A TECHNOLOGY

• Your and Your Team’s Experience• Other People’s Experience• The Cutting Edge• Learn Something New

Team 1 Team 2 Team 3

It Failed Before It Worked Before It Looks Cool

WEEK 1, DAY 3: CHOOSE A STACK

Team 1 Team 2 Team 3

WEEK 1, DAY 4: IMPLEMENT “USERS CAN SIGN-UP”

• Test-Driven Development– Unit Tests– Integration Tests– System Tests– Regression Tests– Acceptance Tests

Team 1 Team 2 Team 3

Full CoverageRSPec, Jasmine, Selenium No Tests, Ever Unit and System

Tests

WEEK 1, DAY 4: CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION

• Build and run tests with every check-in

• E-mail the team.

Team 1 Team 2 Team 3

CIJoe Live Edit the Site CruiseControl

• Hudson / Jenkins• TeamCity

WEEK 1, DAY 4: CONTINUOUS DEPLOYMENT

• Dev• Staging• Production• Demo

Team 1 Team 2 Team 3

WEEK 1, DAY 5: DEMO DAY

• Team Wiki, KB, PM• Demo! Demo! Demo!• Story: “Users can sign-up for beta”

– Developers know how to get started.– Developers can commit code with a peer code

review.– Every time a developer checks in code, continuous

integration runs tests and e-mails results to the team.

– Every time continuous integration executed tests successfully, a developer can push the code to a staging environment.

HOW FAST ARE WE GOING?

• TGV

A 2 AND A 3 WEEK SPRINT

• Stories are user-facing, always• Under-promise, over-deliver• Focus on making developers happy• Don’t build technical debt• Best management is one that nobody

notices

HIRING

• People make all the difference.• There’re excellent developers who are a bad

cultural fit.• There’re bad developers who are an excellent

cultural fit.• Hiring via open-source.

Team 1 Team 2 Team 3

2x Very Visual Front-EndPhD in Algorithms

2x Ruby/Rails Developers1x Database Guy

2x PHP Developers4x Developer

1x Developer in Ops

HOW FAST IS 60 DAYS?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDd9vlnqRuo&feature=related

E-Mail: dblock@dblock.orgTech Blog: http://code.dblock.org < Slides Here

http://iwny.co < Recorded SessionsTwitter: @dblockdotorg