Caktus Blog

Insights and strategies from a team recognized at Python and Django conferences worldwide since 2009. The Caktus Blog is your space for practical how-to’s, real-world solutions, and expert advice on building better user experiences, strengthening quality assurance, solving deep and complex Python/Django problems, and managing projects that deliver impact. Whether you’re refining a UI or prepping for launch, join us to learn, level up, and lead with confidence.

2017


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DjangoCon 2017 Recap

Whitney Hill

Mid-August brought travel to Spokane for several Caktus staff members attending DjangoCon 2017. As a Django shop, we were proud to sponsor and attend the event for the eighth year.

Letting Go of JIRA: One Team's Experiment With a Physical Sprint Board

Charlotte Fouque

At Caktus, each team works on multiple client-service projects at once, and it’s sometimes challenging to adapt different clients’ various tools and workflows into a single Scrum team’s process.

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ShipIt Day Recap Q3 2017

Whitney Hill

Caktus recently held the Q3 2017 ShipIt Day. Each quarter, employees take a step back from business as usual and take advantage of time to work on personal projects or otherwise develop skills. This quarter, we enjoyed fresh crêpes while working on a variety of projects, from coloring books to Alexa skills.

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Transitioning to Scrum: Mapping Job Titles to Scrum Roles

Sarah Gray

Early in your transition to Scrum, you will be faced with a hard truth: your team or organization has job titles and Scrum has roles, and there is probably little to no overlap between the two. How do you map Susan, lead technical architect, and Tom, project manager, to the three Scrum roles: product owner, Scrum master, and developer?

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From User Story Mapping to High-Level Release Plan

Basia Coulter
Charlotte Fouque
Daryl Katz Riethof

At Caktus, we begin many projects with a discovery workshop. A discovery workshop is an opportunity for our product team to get together with client stakeholders in order to answer three questions:

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Is Django the Right Fit for your Project?

Charlotte Mays

You need a website. You may have done some searches, and come back overwhelmed and empty-handed, having found hosting providers offering services that may have sounded familiar (“WordPress”) and ones that may have sounded like a foreign language (“cPanel”). You may have considered hiring someone to build your website, and gotten conflicting answers about what you need and what it would cost. You may have also heard about Django, but you’re not sure how it it fits into the picture and whether or not it’s the right fit for your project. This is common, because there are many different types of websites out there. To help answer the question of whether Django is the right fit for your project, let’s take a look at the landscape.

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Upgrading from Wagtail 1.0 to Wagtail 1.11

Erin Mullaney

There are plenty of reasons to upgrade your Wagtail site. Before we look at how to do it, let’s take a look at a few of those reasons.

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Caktus at DjangoCon2017

Whitney Hill

In less than a month we’ll be heading out to Spokane, WA for DjangoCon 2017. We’re proud to be attending as sponsors for the eighth year, and look forward to greeting everyone at our booth. On August 16th, we’ll be raffling off a GoPro Session action camera, so be sure to stop by and enter. We’ll also have our comfy new t-shirts and some limited-edition Caktus 10th Anniversary water bottles to give away. They went fast at PyCon, so don’t wait to get yours.

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Constructive Code Review (Bonus PyCon 2017 Must-See Talk)

Sarah Gray

There were so many good talks this year that we’re including a bonus entry in the 2017 edition of our annual PyCon Must-See Series, highlighting the talks our staff especially loved at PyCon.

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Readability Counts (PyCon 2017 Must-See Talk 6/6)

Charlotte Mays

Part 6 in the 2017 edition of our annual PyCon Must-See Series, highlighting the talks our staff especially loved at PyCon. While there were many great talks, this is our team’s shortlist.