Blog

January 19, 2017

The Dark Standup

By Alan Brouilette

In September, our Operations team was authorized for a limited amount of overtime during the fiscal year crunch. The team needed the extra hours, but like many others in America, it always feels like we need 50 hours a week to get everything done. Once we were in the fiscal new year, we decided to determine how accurate our perception of not having enough time to get everything done truly was. So the team did something interesting.

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January 17, 2017

The life-changing magic of writing release notes

By Noah Manger

A key part of agile development is constantly shipping new features. With so many changes happening to the product, it can be hard to keep track of how the product is growing and improving. Release notes help keep everyone on the team in the know about what’s shipping, give a clear list of features to check, and help always frame our work in terms of the value it delivers to users.

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January 11, 2017

The best way to build big is to start small

By Kane Baccigalupi

Large software systems are hard, and in government we're tasked with building large systems to manage complex benefits and processes. Often those mandates arrive on the back of a failing legacy system. An agile workflow has the benefit of allowing us to try out our ideas before committing to years of time and money.

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January 10, 2017

Mark Hopson: Negotiating on America’s behalf

By Jeannine Hunter

Mark Hopson joined 18F in January, 2016 after working as a Contracting Officer at the Census Bureau. He works for the TTS Office of Acquisitions on call orders for the Agile BPA, procurement strategy, and other projects that are helping advance the way that government buys technology.

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January 6, 2017

Open source collaboration across agencies to improve HTTPS deployment

By Cameron Dixon

Cameron Dixon at the Department of Homeland Security writes for 18F: To facilitate secure connections for citizens, immigrants, and other users, the Department of Homeland Security began delivering 'HTTPS Reports' directly to federal agencies. We open-sourced the tool we scan with, in collaboration with our colleagues at 18F.

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