TechLab by Bol

Next level leveraging cloud computing

We moved 70% of our services to the cloud and new services start in the cloud unless... Time to dive into a topic brought up by our tech leads. Want to know how you can maximize your cloud benefits?

Alexandra wrote a blog post on Horizontal Pod Auto-scaling, HPA.

What this episode covers

It triggered us for this episode.

Maximizing cloud benefits can be done in many different ways. For this episode, we dive into auto-scaling. Cloud computing brings great features for scaling up and down based on the needs of an application. But if you think my application can scale on-premise, just copy that principle in the cloud. Think again. You might be overspending or still underperforming. Our guests explain why this is and what to do to maximize your cloud benefits.

Topics discussed

• Introduction
• What our cloud strategy is (GCP, run in Kubenetes, Istio, cloud-native, etc)
• Migration strategies for feature teams (check)
  • Lift and shift
  • Move and improve
  • Rip and replace
• Explain horizontal vs vertical scaling (based on the lawnmower metaphor)
• A concrete example of using k8s HPA: MESS application
  • Prerequisites before setting up HPA
  • Before and after setup:
    • The only way to make this faster is by adding bigger hardware and remain the number of instances.
    • And IF you can add more instances easily, then there is the problem that the new instance contains everything, so you’re not only scaling the parts where it hurts the most.
• Cost optimization

Guests

• Rogier Lommers – Space Tech Lead at bol.com
• Alexandra Egher - Product Tech Lead at bol.com

and both friends of the show!

Notes

• The podcast about Axle, our own framework for developers based on Spring Boot can be found here 
• R2D2, our own cloud integration tool is explained in this episode
• Link to Techlab blog post of Alexandra

Sidenote

In general, a story about architecture that relates to all of this.

Writing an article is reflection, publishing it is getting feedback

Learning from our colleagues. That is important to us. So, we were delighted when we found another great piece of this on LinkedIn, Elinore shared.

to inspire others who are thinking of transitioning from tech into a leadership role or are just curious about my experiences and thoughts.

The transition from tech into a leadership role is actually a very hot topic and not only within bol.com.

What this episode covers

We learn this from the job interviews when candidates ask us about career paths in bol.com. Also when we introduced the role of the tech lead in bol.com last year. And when we formalized the job profile for Engineering Manager. We used to call this Team Lead IT and with this formalization, we also had discussions about the background of the Engineering Manager should or shouldn’t be a former engineer?

In the article Elinor addresses 5 aspects she learned:

1. Management Is actually a job.
2. You can’t have the cake and eat it too.
3. A leader doesn’t have to be a manager.
4. What got you here won’t get you there.
5. Your next step is not the rest of your life.

We will go over these items in this episode and along the way we touch on other great insights, will there be a next article? One of the insights we want to share with you here is that a lot of people in tech are leaders.

Guests

• Elinor Bakker – Lead Architect, Creative problem solver and silo buster. Friend of the show, Small Web Apps

Notes

From how it was born to what it is now in 45 minutes

One of the things that make us really proud about working in Tech at bol.com is our annual Space Summit. Our internal tech conference by developers for developers. And maybe you can recall we had quite some interesting episodes, blogs and videos about it and some of the talks given there in the last 2 years.

This year is a special edition! We celebrate our 5th anniversary!!

In June 2018 Peter published an article on Linkedin with the subject: “What happened to me today? After the Spaces Summit of that year, he had to write down that experience.

What this episode covers

Why? Because he was really proud of what the engineering community within bol.com was capable of. And now, three years later we celebrate the 5th one.

Topics in this episode

• The journey of the spaces summit
  • The early years.
  • Growing
  • Moving to an online event
  • Anniversary edition - hybrid
  • The future
• The organization of the Spaces Summit
  • Preparation
  • Communication
  • Speaker selection and preparation
  • Speaker support
  • Coordination
  • Fun stuff and Enjoying
  • Mediocre stuff
  • Playground
• Raising the bar is what we do in our jobs but also for this summit.
  • How do you top each year the previous year?

Guests

• Luc Kleeven – Software Engineer (Platform) – Venue and budget
• Aysegul Guldes – Software Engineer (Reverse) – Venue and budget + Speakers and program
• Jasper Adegeest – Data Scientist (SAFe space) - Speakers and program
• Tim van Hardeveld – Coordinator Onboarding, Learning & Development- Venue & Budget + Playground +

Notes

Data Maturity Model as common ground, Data Literacy Model to measure the level of speaking, writing and reading data

To state as a company we want to become more data-driven is the first step. To truly understand what this means and define a common ground to discuss the progress is the second.

Back in the eighties, the Capability Maturity Model was defined to develop and refine software development processes. Later on, many more Maturity Models were introduced like the Business Maturity Model, the Lean Maturity Model and Agile Maturity Model.

What this episode covers

To develop and refine the data-driven organization, we created the Data Maturity Model. This model enables us to measure where we stand in our goals towards 2023:

• Our data consumers are self-sufficient: They know what they need, what they look at, how to analyze this and how to use insights/focus on in their daily jobs.
• We want to do this in a scalable way and empower the users.
• To know what the current level of maturity is in the organization we apply different models and this helps us to fill in the white spots (e.g. in training).
• And we can apply the same for partners (future).

Bol.com Data Maturity Model

(Image: https://cdn.sanity.io/images/qxrxmo3r/techlab-prd/b5fe8f6cd4bdcc72dda891985ce7b2eea9cdd40f-680x382.jpg)Data Literacy Model

One specific element of the Data Maturity Model is about skills. On what level are you able to read, write and speak data. This is captured in the Data Literacy Model. We discuss the bol.com interpretation of the Data Literacy Model.

Bol.com Data Literacy Model

(Image: https://cdn.sanity.io/images/qxrxmo3r/techlab-prd/6a8ecfb1da2940d4b945dd2da57e989d67dce4dc-680x286.jpg)

Guests

• Willem Bekkers – BI specialist and Data Coach – involved in eg our measurability month.
• Meike Teunissen – BI specialist who is in the Autonomous Insights team and the expert within bol.com in Tableau.

Notes

• This podcast episode can be seen in a combination of podcast episodes covering the data-driven organization:
  
  • Data-Driven Approach to supporting products with KPI's and OKR's
  • Innovation Rhythm - How to drink less coffee and achieve more
  • Cloud as Enabler to become more data-driven
  • Agile at Scale – Reality is complex, don’t expect simple solutions
• OKR Guide

Supporting products with KPI's and OKR's

We had previous episodes on how bol.com is moving to a product organization. In this one, we’ll dive into how to measure the success of these products and set objectives for them. Including measuring whether we are getting the desired results.

What this episode covers

Being the data-driven company that we want to be we asked our data people to help us to get the right KPI’s for all our product and support the products in defining proper OKR's.

Data availability should never be an excuse to not start KPI's or OKR's - Frans Poldervaart

We came with a team to support products with KPI's and OKR's. One of the recurring themes is the difference between KPI's and Key Results and what their relation is to metrics. If you want to know more about that topic, check this video.

What will we explore?

• Some context first. What are domains, products, OKR's and KPI's.
• What is a product KPI and a product OKR?
• What is the difference between OKRs and KPIs?
• What is the Product KPI and OKR program about?
• How do you set OKR's?
• How do we support our teams with this?
• 6 elements of a data driven team.
• Data culture.
• What does this support look like?
• Data maturity model.
• What did we achieve?
• Data coaching toolbox.

Guests

• Willem Bekkers – BI specialist and Data Coach – involved in eg our measurability month.
• Frans Poldervaart – BI specialist and Data Coach, who thinks he is over-exposed and a big fan of the Hoi Anh food truck. Loves sharing all kinds of data thingies on bol.com.

Notes

• There will be an upcoming episode on data literacy framework.
• OKR Guide
• KPI = Key Performance Indicators
• OKR = Objective and Key Results

Every time I look at you. I see myself.I'm so proud of you.For you help make me what I am.A better man.I'm just so proud of you.~ Lyrics by Alain Clark

A special episode comes with a special opening. In February we had an extraordinary occasion during our onboarding.

What this episode covers

Father and Son in the same 'virtual room. Father started as Software Engineer in the bol.com security department and son started as... Software Engineer in the security department, doing his final intern assignment.

We have got many examples of father and son working relationships, One of the most famous at the moment are Max and Jos Verstappen. And we know more in the F1 (Hamilton in the past, Stroll). And of course, we know about company’s set up by one and succeeded by the other. So, really interesting to find out how that works in IT.

This story gave us a lot of hooks to discuss different aspects of our Engineering Culture and Way of Working. Besides the fact that we had a very proud father in the show, he also explained how he is impressed by the speed of this young generation. It will give insights into the internship position and the role of the intern. Is an intern an employee? What type of employee? At least we discuss what it means to onboard for an intern assignment and the steep learning curve to overcome in our environment.

He will always be my child, but he is not a kid anymore - Chris Polderman

It will trigger you to think about your own relationship with your kid and/or father/parents. Do you know what your fathers work look like? Your kid is ready to enter the working life, did you perform well as a parent? Is your father the same person at home as he is at his work? What can I learn from my own kid?

Guests

• Chris Polderman – Software Engineer in security.
• Martijn Polderman – Intern in security

Notes

Father and Friend - Alain Clark

The why and what of our Software engineers on Duty

Let's be honest about this, nobody likes to be woken up at night to react to an alert whether it's a text- or whatsapp message, (automated) phone call or traditional pager. But every company taking his 24/7 run seriously has to organize their on call duty in a scalable and sustainable way. Initially bol.com organized it in a traditional way, meaning a team of system engineers with different specialism took care of the duty.

What this episode covers

Only a couple of years ago we realized we needed Software Engineers in this setup as well. In this episode we ask our guests everything about this journey so you can learn from this.

We explore aspects and explain why you sleep well at night

• Why did we start the Software Engineer on Duty (SoD) initiative?
• What does the current SoD look like?
• What is the relation between SRE and SoD at bol,com?
• What are the prerequisites for a team to hand over responsibilities to SoD?
• Experiences working as an Engineer on Duty.

Guests

• Ruud Straver - Site Reliability Engineering Manager
• Bart Enkelaar - Regular on the podcast, host of the Friendly Tech Chats

Notes

Don't miss our story of the introduction of the Tech Leads

During the podcast, you will find out what Tech Leads are and why we need to build this community of Tech Leads at bol.com. You will learn how we approached this and avoid hiding the Tech Leads in ivory towers. The two tech leads and an IT director share best practices and pitfalls (and what we learned from them).

The Why and What of our Tech Lead Community

Tech Lead Community

Why did we start to define the role?

What is the Tech Lead for bol.com,

Responsibilities

Product Tech Lead

Space Tech Lead

It's a fun challenge and it's taking time" - Eduardo da Silva

The backlog of the tech leads

Backlog of community

Tech Radar

Tech Vision

Backlog Space Tech Leads

Cloud Migration

Backlog of products

Examples

Introduction of the role (process)

Definition

Scale, number of Tech Leads needed

Rollout / Hiring part

Building the Tech Lead Community

Lessons Learned so far

Best Practices

Pitfalls / Challenges.



Guests

• Alexandra Egher; Product Tech Lead at bol.com
• Mirko van Ede; Director IT - Shopping & Marketing Technology at bol.com
• Eduardo da Silva; Tech Leader & Sociotechnical Architect at bol.com

Notes

The book Talking with Tech Leads by Patrick Kua.

We talked about API design and development in a previous episode.

Introduction

Peter is very honest in this episode (the stage is not the place he is really comfortable at) and Peter Paul is sharing his first experience with Improv (is it a small trauma Peter Paul?).

So time to talk about Improv, Improvisation Theatre and applied Improv because we do want to learn about it and we are really curious how this relates to our Tech Community.

Our guest Burgert prepared this along with these main topics Mindset, Skills, Culture, Structures and Who benefits.

Mindset - Relates to the Improv Manifesto

Making your partner look good over making yourself look good.

Saying yes and over saying yes but.

Playing in the moment overthinking and talking about the past of the future.

Everything is an offer.

There are no mistakes.

Be average.

Make a strong choice and stick to it.

Skills

Listening.

Making choices.

Speaking with confidence.

Connecting/collaborating with others.

Mental agility.

Staying calm in uncertainty.

Role flexibility.

Culture

Safe to make "mistakes" - happy accidents.

The positive atmosphere of acceptance.

Open to what emerges. Respect and value for others.

Courage.

Commitment.

Focus.

Structures

Games, formats.

Who does benefit

I - The Individual

We - The Team

Everybody - The Organization.



Guests

• Rob de Groot; systems- and metrics engineer in the Technical Platform.
• Burgert Kirsten; Way of working coach in Platform - Innovation Support. He previously appeared in the Techlab post on human systems engineering.

Notes

-

Introduction

In July 2019 we had our first podcast episode on voice and Google Assistant. Back then Marieke and Marvin introduced us to the future of interaction by voice. In this episode, we dive into the potential of brand recognition.

Many people in The Netherlands will recognize the voice we use in our commercials on radio, television and social media as the voice of bol.com.

What this episode covers

The value of this brand recognition is the starting point of the journey to get this voice into the Google Assistant. By doing so we differentiate from our competitors who are using the 'regular' Google Assistant voice.

Join us to see how we can increase brand recognition with Google Assistant.

Guests

• Kristiaan Hoogendoorn; system engineer in the Site Reliability Team and Young Professional
• Dave van Kasteren; software engineer in the Logistics domain and Young Professional

Notes

In an earlier episode, we explained how we started our voice journey and enabled Voice control with bol.com (Ok Google)

Google Dialogueflow