Introduction

Automated browser testing is essential for asserting the quality of the code you deliver when developing web applications. Some defects only become visible at the point when you tie everything together in your application. You want to catch these defects as early as possible to minimize the cost of fixing them. There are a lot of great tools out there to help you with this and I would like to highlight a tool named Playwright.

Asynchronous streaming solutions, such as Rx or Reactor, rely on callbacks to perform flow control (or backpressure). Without flow control, systems could overflow and eventually crash. In this post we will look at the difference between flow control in synchronous applications and their asynchronous counterparts? [more…]

Do you want to increase the quality and most likely the conversion rate of your web pages? In this blog post, I provide the steps on how to integrate Google Lighthouse into a CICD pipeline. Read on.

Microsoft just shipped an update for Microsoft Teams. It has the option to insert one of a set of predefined images. And a hidden one to add your own!

With a lot of people working from home now, we’re giving the world a peek into our homes. It may not always be the most representative. You may not have a dedicated room (like me) and sit at the kitchen table. The option to inject a picture of your office or your favorite spot in the mountains is super useful.

Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity – VUCA – or simply a catch-all phrase to say “it is crazy out there”. Living in a VUCA world means we have to think differently about how we organise our organisations and projects. It is important that any organisation is able to quickly adjust their plans and structure if the environment requires to do so. As the COVID-19 pandemic shows us our environment can change in a snap and have huge consequences on any organisation. Working in a VUCA world might sound scary, but it doesn’t have to be. When you are aware of your strategy, the surrounding landscape and have the ability to learn quickly, I feel that any organisation can thrive in this VUCA world.

By Pim Smeets & Evelyn van Kelle

A real team is more than just a collection of individuals . It provides members of that team with a common purpose, identity and a safe-to-fail environment where people can thrive together and creativity flows freely. Building a team is hard work, requires significant (emotional) investment and takes time.

A while back the virtual Domain-driven design meetup experimented with doing a remote EventStorming. The outcome was that doing remote EventStorming as you would do it offline is sub-optimal. The interaction was lacking during the storming parts, and the number of insights gained was lower. That is the power of EventStorming, and it was not present. Still, we asked ourselves how we can make remote EventStorming more optimal, and with most of the world being stuck at home due to corona, I started experimenting with it. In this post, I will describe heuristics about my first experience with remote EventStorming.

The jokes must go on

It sounds like a paradox. Contradictio in terminis, as the linguistic in me likes to put it. Staying connected in times of isolation. Now that most of us are working remotely, teams need to find ways to stay connected. 

I’d like to think that times like these also bring opportunities for us to get creative, learn from each other and rise above ourselves, so let’s share ideas and experiences as much as possible. 

There is a lot of buzz around the practice of Progressive Delivery lately. Rightfully so, as it’s a great addition to continuous delivery. By gradually exposing new versions to a subset of users, you’re further mitigating risks. As usual with new and shiny things, many of us are eager to try it out, learn about the tools and shift to this way of working. But as is also common, there are reasons to do it, reasons to not do it, and reasons you might not succeed at it. Let me save you some trouble by elaborating on a few of them. 

Did you know that, on average, we use six metaphors a minute? Surprised? Me too! They are so embedded into our speech that mostly we are unconscious about them. Research suggests that metaphors change the way we think of a concept on an unconscious level.

In 2011 a study was conducted in which two groups of readers have been presented with two articles describing the same crime. In the first article, the crime was compared to a beast, and in another to a disease. When asked to solve the crime issue, readers of the first article suggested control strategies while the second group came up with diagnostic or treatment strategies. Hence, changing the metaphor changes the way we think.