Caktus Blog

Making connections

Before the conference, our team listed “making connections” as one of the main reasons to attend PyCon. We certainly did that, welcoming visitors to the booth and catching up with friends old and new.

The words we use, and the tone in which we use them, can either nurture or hinder the growth of Scrum teams. This is especially true for teams that are new to Scrum or that may be transitioning into a new Agile methodology.

Editor’s note: This post was written in 2018 when Django 1.11 and Django 2.0 were current. The code samples may need to be updated to work with more recent versions of Django.

A defect, or bug, in a software product can be defined as a flaw in the system that leads to a measurable or observable deviation from its expected result. During development, it’s part of the quality assurance process to prioritize defects in order to minimize the impact to the end product and meet the agreed-upon quality level for the product. This prioritization can seem like a dark art. How do we decide what gets addressed and what doesn’t?

Since Caktus’ founding in 2007, we have dedicated ourselves to growing sharp web apps the right way. The tenets of our Success Model drive us to focus on strategic partnerships, prioritize the most valuable features, develop for scalability, and recruit a sharp team. We’re pleased and honored that this focus on doing things right has been recognized by leading review website Clutch.

Businesses and organizations come to Caktus to build custom web applications that will help solve their users’ problems. Before contacting us, clients spend time and effort thinking through their users’ problems. But in doing so they do not always talk directly to potential users of the application. As a result, they come up with ideas for the application based on who they think the target users are rather than who they know those users are. Or, if they have correctly identified their target user segment, they may make assumptions about the ways users think, behave, or accomplish tasks.

March 2018 marked the end of my fourth year as a Scrum master. I began with a Certified ScrumMaster workshop in 2014 and haven’t stopped learning since. I keep a running list titled “Lessons Learned,” where I jot down thoughts I find significant as they occur to me so that I can go back to the list and draw from my little bank of personal wisdom.

We’re one month away from PyCon 2018 and are looking forward to this year’s event in Cleveland, OH. Caktus is proud to sponsor once again and will be in attendance with a booth.

In Agile development, a stakeholder is anyone outside the development team with a stake in the success of the project. If you are a stakeholder, knowledge of Agile will help you understand how the project will be developed and managed, when you can expect to see progress, and what the team needs from you in order to deliver their best work. Understanding these basic concepts and what your role entails are essential to your project’s success.

Another quarter, another ShipIt Day! Take a look at what our team dove into in the first part of 2018.