Country Financial
In less than two years, I created three Django applications to improve existing manual processes within our Information Technology department.
Here's a highlight of one application I made:
Release Dashboard
This application played a significant role in reducing headaches related to testing application updates.
Each weekend, after developers installed software updates, testers at 6 a.m. would begin manually testing deployments. When one found a problem, they had been required to send an email to a shared communication box. Issues were then recorded in a spreadsheet so that coordinators could begin calling a developer to log on and fix the issue. Issues were recorded in a OneNote document. Human error often meant information wasn't recorded consistently.
I worked with release coordinators to understand the current process, and limitations. Then, we co-created a new process that allowed us to leverage use of a Django application to speed up reporting. We had testers report errors in our ticketing system, rather than by email. The release dashboard then queried our ticketing system and provided an up-to-the-minute view of all changes and how many errors were found with each issue.
I learned a lot about how SOAP calls work and how Information was structured in our internal ticketing system.
This application saved $1,672 each weekend of use, in terms of regained employee productivity time.
Technologies used include Django, uWSGI, Nginx, AngularJS, RHEL Linux Server, git, GitLab and more.
In addition to the applications I designed, I also played an integral role in launching DevOps Connect, a conference dedicated to exploring DevOps principles and ignighting conversations on how to re-imagine things at Country Financial.
The image featured in this post is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0). It has been cropped from its original format, which available here.