Be A Developer Experience Super Hero: Robust Dev Scripts For Peace and Joy

Attendee Preparation:

This talk will cover a lot of rather advanced topics including containerization, continuous integration, and automated testing. Attendees should have familiarization with Docker, common PHP testing frameworks, and how continuous integration platforms work.

Problem:

Time is wasted and quality suffers when there is no agreed upon process for onboarding new developers into a project, running project tests (you wrote tests right?), and deploying the project to your staging infrastructure. Time = money, Quality = money. Your team needs predictable and easy to use systems and processes that free up brainpower and creativity to deliver amazing web work.

Solution:

Use an open source, cross-platform set of tooling and appropriate infrastructure (Docker, CI services, a scriptable host) along with a zero config solution for setting up your projects. Remove all decisions from collaborators so they can focus solely on delivering their feature work.

How:

• Make the experience of adding a new developer as quick, painless and low friction as possible
  • Set a consistent development environment, no matter the preferences or hardware of your team. 
  • Make all daily tasks (tests, pull-requests, environment sync) effortless.
  • Make your infrastructure inviting to extend with scripts your whole team can contribute to.

Takeaways:

Attendees should leave this session with a clear understanding of the value of:

• standardization of development environments
• automation of intricate but highly repetitive tasks

in relation to:

• The quality of life of their development staff
• The profitability of their projects
• The quality of the work they produce.