Rockstar Interview
IT Rockstar Kenneth, along with another developer, was responsible for maintenance and development on an existing Web application. The application is the system for managing recipes for the paints Akzo Nobel produces. End users around the world are enabled to link product/brand/color information specific to their region to these recipes.
WHY DID YOU CHOOSE THIS PROJECT?
The primary reason is that it was an excellent opportunity for me to apply and further develop my ASP.NET knowledge and skills. It is an environment where development could be central by keeping up with new techniques and developments in .NET.
WHAT ARE YOU MOST PROUD OF WITHIN THIS PROJECT?
About two months after beginning my participation in the project, I was given the space to automate the deployment of the application. This used to take a lot of time for several people on the team and is now completely automated using Visual Studio Team Services. The process has been simplified to the point that the delivery process has accelerated since my arrival and saves a lot of time.
What techniques tooling did you use?
The application will be developed in C# 6, ASP.NET MVC 5 for the backend and HTML 5 / JavaScript / CSS 3 for the front-end. This using Visual Studio 2015 – and later Visual Studio 2017 – as an IDE. The front-end also uses an MVVM framework in the form of KnockoutJS. The application uses SQL Server and Entity Framework to manage data.
Visual Studio Team Services is used as source control and management of the SCRUM process.
WHAT DID THE PROJECT DELIVER TO THE TARGET AUDIENCE/USER?
For the client, it is a business critical application that supports the primary sales process. The application is used by internal employees to disseminate necessary information to points of sale around the world. The maintenance and enhancements result in these employees being better able to meet the demands from their customers.
WHAT DID YOU LEARN IN THE PROJECT?
In addition to general work experience and further experience on software development in .NET, I have gained experience in the following areas:
- Automation of deployments using Visual Studio Team Services and on-premise build agents.
- Deployment and management of NuGet packages using Visual Studio Team Services.
- Optimization SQL Server / Entity Framework queries.
- Owning tools / frameworks in form of KnockoutJS, Automapper, Nsubstitute and Autofac.
WHAT MADE TEAM ROCKSTARS IT-WORTHY?
What makes it eminently IT Rockstars-worthy for me is that I had constant opportunities to develop my existing knowledge and was able to learn new knowledge and skills.
What does our rockstar say on this project?
I was constantly given the opportunity to further develop my knowledge.
