In today’s episode we talk with DEPT Digital Products Software Engineer Ali Halim about his origin story. We talk about late nights in college, what got him hooked, paying your dues in your first job and seizing opportunities to grow your career.  This is a great one for the aspiring technical team leaders out there!

In this episode, we’re talking about Architecture Sprints and why they’re valuable.  Our client Bloomerang joins us for this one.  Bloomerang is the donor relationship and volunteer management platform for thousands of nonprofits. Their SVP of Payments, Evan DaSilva talks with us about how an Architecture Sprint with DEPT helped them get past a challenging situation with technical leadership during the busy end of year giving season! We dive into what an architecture sprint is and why it’s a valuable investment to get your product moving, or moving again!

In this episode, we talk to DEPT® Project Manager Kate Flynn about her origin story: She talks about how she went from Architect, to Construction Manager, to Software Project Manager. This leads to a great conversation about the parallels between architecture and software, and what software engineering can learn from architecture. Kate also shares her thoughts on striking a balance between planning too much, and planning just enough. Finally, what origin story would be complete without a tale about building a two story underground bunker and powerlifting? Enjoy!

In this episode, we interview Jonah Jolley, Director of Engineering, and Stephanie Bressan, PSM, CSPO of DEPT® about the relationship between product and engineering teams.   What makes a good partnership? What doesn’t make a good partnership? We also talk about the importance of empathy, trust, keeping priorities visible, and how you must come prepared with snacks! We wrap up with thoughts on Agile: Does it help or hurt? Do velocity metrics matter? Are standups even helpful?

On this episode of Ship It! We go further into the topic of CMS’s, or Content Management Systems by talking about DEPT DASH, a new product from DEPT that helps you bootstrap applications that use headless CMS’s like Strapi and Contentful.  Host Matt Merrill is joined by Allan Winterseick, Managing Partner, DEPT US and John Berger, Principal Engineer on DEPT DASH to talk about it as well as why you might use headless CMS’s. We also have a screencast of using DEPT DASH you can see here.

In this episode we dive into Content Management Systems or CMS's with two experts from DEPT®, Daniel Paterson and John Askew, both of whom have been working with large scale CMS's for over 10 years.  We answer the questions: Why do they exist?  What are their features? And why, as a developer, would I want to use once when I could make custom software that might do the job better?  We also dive into how to choose a CMS, headless CMS's as well as antipatterns for implementing CMS's. 

In this episode, we're continuing our Origin Stories which dive into how talented people got their start in software.  Today, DEPT® director of engineering Matt Merrill talks with DEPT® Executive Sponsor and Sr Director of Innovation Carlos Dominguez about how his interest got sparked in computers and his fascinating journey from his grandmother telling him that computers were the future, learning to program, and then finally how Jackie Chan and Jet Li got him into the video game industry.

At DEPT® we’re all builders, tackling projects from the interconnected realms of engineering and design. So much of what we build as engineers is often informed by the work of designers.  On Ship It! we often focus on engineering, but we haven't yet dove into the design side of the coin. In this episode of our Origin Stories series, Matt Merrill talks to DEPT® Senior Product Designer Breon Waters II about how he got started and the various types of projects he has worked on.

Come with us as we explore the Digital Nomad lifestyle at DEPT®! In this episode we cover some key considerations to take into account if you’re thinking about pursuing this lifestyle: how to set the right expectations with clients, your friends, and (most importantly) yourself.

In this follow-up episode to our Crypto Through Immersion: Part 1, Dave Merwin and Brandon Aaskov from DEPT®’s crypto practice go into detail about how to get crypto safely. This episode covers centralized exchanges, decentralized exchanges (DEXes) and what “staking” is all about.

Does crypto seem cryptic, and you don’t know where to start?  Sometimes the best way to learn is to dive in and immerse yourself.  In the first episode of this two part series, Brandon Aaskov and Dave Merwin from Dept’s Crypto collective will shed some light and share some resources to get you well on your way to understanding this exciting new frontier.

Heard a lot about AI and Machine Learning but don’t understand it?  This month’s episode is for you: we’re introducing machine learning in the simplest way possible, as if we were chatting with a five-year-old!   Special guest Tyler Renelle, host of Dept’s Machine Learning Guide podcast, sits down with with Dept Engineer and Resident Five Year Old, Matt Merrill to teach him about the history, background and technical landscape of machine learning. Just enough to get anyone, even an actual five-year-old, started!

Happy new year! We’re kicking off 2022 with one of the strongest themes of 2021: NFTs and cryptocurrency. Last year these took the world by storm, with “NFT” even being named the Word of the Year!  In this episode of Ship It, host Keegan Sands revisits a Dept Talk in which we explore this breakthrough year and ask ourselves, what’s next for crypto? Some of the highlights of this conversation include the different use cases of NFTs for brands, the value of one blockchain platform over another, compliancy conundrums, and expert predictions of what the near-ish future will look like.

Shipitio is entering a new dimension with an episode all about 3D! And here to talk about their 3D experiences are a few folks from Dept, Rocket’s parent agency: Jake Rainis, Matt van Voorst, Rachel Caires and Richard Thompson. Together with host Keegan Sands, they’re sharing their expert opinions on how 3D Experiences can enhance products as well as the technical challenges of implementing 3D in the browser.  Enjoy!

Shipit.io is back! In this episode Rocket founder Jesse Streb and Rocket Director of Engineering Matt Merrill dive deep into scaling teams.  We cover ”team smells”, how DevOps is key to scaling teams and other topics related to making sure your software team grows healthily. Enjoy our round-up of picks at the end and don‘t forget to round off this episode with our recently published scaling teams blog post and eBook!

Episode 10 continues our "Origin Stories" series where we interview senior engineers about their careers in software. This time around, host Keegan Sands (Full Stack Developer, Rocket Insights) interviews Tiffany Pereira, Rocket Insights' QA Practice Lead.  Tiffany studied Computer Science to be a software developer, then did a QA internship and really loved it. Even after that internship, she viewed QA as a steppingstone to be a developer, but over time she found that by embracing the parts of QA that many people overlook, that she could develop her talents into a career path that she loved.Tiffany and Keegan touch on the "dream" of automation testing, the investment necessary to get there and why automation might not be a panacea.  They also dive deep into the importance of why QA can be so much more than just writing test cases and why it's so important to have an open dialogue between QA and Developers. Picks: Tiffany - Diagnosis on Netflix Keegan - For All Mankind on Apple TV+  

Episode 9 continues our "Origin Stories" series where we interview senior engineers about their careers in software. This time around, we're interviewing Brian Manning, Principal Software Engineer at Rocket Insights. Brian started out digitizing football playbooks and wound up getting hooked on coding, becoming an Android developer in a series of startups and even starting his own company. He talks about the importance of knowing what you don't know and how, with enough work and persistence, anyone can be a developer.

Episode 8 is the first in a series we're calling "Origin Stories."  We'll interview a senior developer about how they got into the field of Software Development and the lessons they learned along the way.  We hope you find these stories interesting and that they might offer you guidance if you're figuring out your own place in the world of software development! Our first Origin Story is with Matt Merrill, Principal Software Engineer at Rocket Insights.

Rocket developers Brandon Aaskov, Dave Oelfke, Simon Ingeson, and Matt Merrill dive into the topic of clean code. When is it worth it? When is it unnecessary? Will it get you in trouble with your teammates? We also share some practical tips for walking the line between "You ain't gonna need it" and when it's worth it to spend that extra 20 minutes cleaning up code.  This podcast was inspired by the article "Goodbye Clean Code" by Dan Abramov which ignited a lot of talk in the Rocket Insights engineering slack channels!

In episode 6, Rocket Insights developers Brandon Aaskov, Scott O'Brien, Adam Fraser and Matt Merrill take a deep dive into Single Page Applications (SPA's): How did we end up with SPA's over Server Side Rendered (SSR) apps?  What problems do SPA's solve?  When should and shouldn't SPA's be create? They explore the idea that perhaps developers create SPA's because it's fun, but we forget about user experience.  The phrase "Postmodern Hellscape" is uttered.  They also explore a solution that might provide the best of SPA's and Server Side Rendering (spoiler alert: it's next.js/nuxt.js)!