Events

May 08 2023

InRhythm Presents The Propel Spring Quarterly Summit

Design Credit: Joel Colletti, Lead UI/UX Designer @ InRhythm

New York, NY – InRhythm recently concluded its very first Propel Spring Quarterly Summit; a premiere event consisting of six individual coding workshops aimed to support the learning and growth of engineering teams around the world.

Over the last three weeks, our consulting practices have led a series of interactive experiences that delved into the latest technology trends and tools, designed to propel professionals forward into their careers.

The workshops are free to access as a unique part of InRhythm’s mission to build a forward-thinking thought leadership annex:

SDET Workshop (03/17/23)

This workshop worked as an introduction to writing and running tests using Microsoft Playwright. Our SDET Practice went over Playwright’s extensive feature set before diving more in-depth with its API.

For the workshop, the team went over setup and installation of the tool, as well as wrote a series of comprehensive tests against a test application. Once tests were run, the team afforded participants the opportunity to go over some of Playwright’s advanced features, such as its powerful debugger and enhanced reporting.

To close out the workshop, SDET Practice Leadership compared Playwright’s features to some of its competitors, went over its pros and cons, and discussed why they believed it to be a paramount tool to consider for automated testing solutions.

Web Workshop (03/24/23)

Our Web Practice focused their workshop on their top three, intertwining technologies for development cycles.

With many modern web applications sharing many of the responsibilities that a middle layer/presentation and service layer/backend provide to the frontend layer, the project was kicked off by organizing the elements with a mono-repository.

Once the application moved into its build phase, it was time to accelerate the architecture to the next level using NextJS.

Web Practice Leadership wrapped their project, with an intuitive overview of web bundling and the variety of methods utilized – in order to best adapt to each individual build.

DevOps Workshop (03/29/23)

In this workshop, the DevOps Practice demonstrated tools for provisioning infrastructure as well as how to construct a self-servicing platform for provisioning resources. With these new developments in the industry, bridging the gaps between development and ops by allowing developers to self-manage cloud infrastructure to satisfy their needs will be a paramount skill to adopt. Our DevOps practitioners discussed the pros and cons of a number of tools for provisioning infrastructure and identified which tools can best fit a business’ needs.

For the hands-on interactive session, the team ran through the necessary steps to get started with Pulumi and provision a resource onto AWS, along with demonstrating Terraform in order to get a feel for the difference between the two popular infrastructure-as-code tools. After that, we set up some plugins to enhance the development experience with IaC.

Self-servicing platforms are the best way to allow for engineers to provision resources and infrastructure for their needs en-masse. With Backstage, the team was able to demonstrate a platform for engineers to come to and fulfill their needs whether it be creating a new microservice, a new repository, or even provisioning a new k8s cluster. Furthermore, the provisioning of these resources were proven to standardize and bring uniformity to ensure that best practices are enforced. Long gone are the days of submitting a ticket to create a new instance to deploy an application, with a wait time of a few hours or even a few days. Self-servicing tools are the future of bringing operations into the hands of developers and bridging the gap between development and operations.

Finally, DevOps Practice Leadership set up a self-servicing platform and hooked it into the aforementioned IaC repository to allow for the provisioning of resources from a GUI.

Managing infrastructure can quickly become tedious as the number of resources being used on a cloud provider continue to grow. With infrastructure-as-code, not only DevOps engineers, but developers can now lay out infrastructure using code. Since it’s managed via code, version-controlling/source-code management tools are also available, making management of infrastructure significantly easier.

iOS Workshop (03/28/23)

Our iOS Practice did a full overview of Swift Async/Await for iOS application development

Async/Await is a programming feature that simplifies asynchronous operations by allowing software engineers to write asynchronous code in a synchronous manner. It also makes code easy to read/write, improves performance/responsiveness, and reduces the likelihood of errors.

In short, Async/Await is a powerful modern feature in every avenue from development speed and simplified code to and application performance.

Android Workshop (04/11/23)

Our Android Practice performed a comprehensive demonstration of the practical integration of Kotlin Multi-Platform Mobile (KMM) for cross-platform development.

Kotlin Multi-Platform Mobile is an exciting, growing new technology that allows sharing core code between Android, iOS, and Web.

In this workshop, Android Practice Leadership explored what KMM was, how to setup a project for KMM, a walkthrough implementing a core module to a few APIs (network layer, data models, parsers, and business logic), and then consumed this core library in an Android (Jetpack Compose) and iOS (SwiftUI) application.

Cloud Native Application Development Workshop (04/21/23)

In this workshop our Cloud Native Application Development Practice introduced the participants to gRPC, which is Google’s take on Remote Procedural Calls. Our Practice Leadership presented a brief history of gRPC and Protocol Buffers. Google and other companies use gRPC to serialize data to binary which results in smaller data packets. Throughout the presentation our team went over some of the pros and cons of using gRPC for individual API calls.

In our hands-on workshop portion participants created a simple application to manage users and notes powered by Java, gRPC, and Postgres. The grand finale featured a full-circle moment as we worked together to create a series of CRUD APIs in Java using gRPC to send/receive data packets, translate those into objects, and store them in a database.

About InRhythm

InRhythm is a leading modern product consultancy and digital innovation firm with a mission to make a dent in the digital economy. Founded in 2002, InRhythm is currently engaged by Fortune 50 enterprises and scale-ups to bring their next generation of modern digital products and platforms to market. InRhythm has helped hundreds of teams launch mission-critical products that have created a positive impact worth billions of dollars. The projects we work on literally change the world.

InRhythm’s unique capabilities of Product Innovation and Platform Modernization services are the most sought-after. The InRhythm team of A+ thought leaders don’t just “get a job,” they join the company to do what they love. InRhythm has a “who’s who” clients list and has barely scratched the surface in terms of providing those clients the digital solutions they need to compete. From greenfield to tier-one builds, our clients look to us to deliver their mission-critical projects in the fields of product strategy, design, cloud native applications, as well as mobile and web development.

Feb 16 2023

The Positive Effect Of Sharing #InRhythmLove

Overview

Here at InRhythm, we strive to prioritize a healthy work/life balance. Employee Engagement is key to crafting inner-office relationships that reflect mutual respect and foster a culture of compassion. It can be difficult to remind oneself to take a moment amidst the fast-paced happenings currently surrounding our industry – but, when you prioritize the wellbeing of your workforce… incredible things can happen.

This year, InRhythm’s leadership took the initiative to craft our #InRhythmLove exercise. The idea is to recognize that love goes beyond those with immediate significant others on Valentine’s Day, but is instead an opportunity to extend that appreciation to the people we spend most of our time with. Our InRhythmers work tirelessly to meet objectives, go above and beyond, and provide exemplary services for our client – and it was just about time to return the favor.

What Is #InRhythmLove?

#InRhythmLove was a surprise celebration hosted by our InRhythm Leadership Team as a way to give back to our community. Our Operations Team normally meets every Wednesday afternoon to discuss all the latest and greatest InRhythm happenings – in order to develop an open door policy for information sharing and critical suggestions. So, it only felt appropriate to call for a laptop close and reclaim the time to really focus in on the incredible impact our team creates.

Our Leadership opened up the floor by presenting each participant with an index card and a rose to share positive thoughts with their peers, randomly and anonymously. We know it can be difficult to lift one’s self out of the hustle and bustle, so we felt that now more than ever – our team members deserved to know how their hard work contributes to all those around them.

From kind anecdotes to professional praises, our team went above and beyond to make everyone feel cared for and included in our office culture. It was an experience that left our office with a lighter air, proudly displayed desk roses, and a whole new motivation to work collaboratively.

Why Share #InRhythmLove?

One of our primary missions here at InRhythm is to build a team that experiences a fulfilling balance of work and personal achievement. You can’t build an effective team without touching the key milestones to first and foremost maintain a – happy team.

The more included your team feels, the more positive the results. Inclusion should be a primary milestone ideal for any company structure

Companies with a high level of employee engagement find themselves more profitable by a factor of 21% in the long run according to TechJury. The Workplace Research Foundation further supported this with their findings that employees who are engaged with their work culture are 38% more likely to produce above-average performance and productivity.

In implementing engagement strategies for your employees, a company is putting forth a crucial investment not only for themselves, but also the overall wellbeing of their workforce.
96% of employees believe that showing empathy at work is an important way to build trust and advance employee retention, according to Forbes. This finding by Gallup punctuates the fact that employee engagement consists of concrete behavior, not an abstract feeling. Organizations that view engagement as a feeling conduct employee surveys and offer perks to improve the results. The report finds that the most successful organizations make employee engagement central to their business strategy. They give employees clear expectations and provide them with the tools and support to do their best work. Why are engaged teams more profitable? Those teams who score in the top 20% in engagement realize a 41% reduction in absenteeism, and 59% less turnover. Engaged employees show up every day with passion, purpose, presence, and energy.

How To Host You Own #InRhythm Love Session

Looking to build an #InRhythmLove campaign for your workplace? Be sure to prioritize an activity that puts your employees front and center.

It doesn’t have to end with roses and index cards – you can give chocolates, do an act of service, or share a favorite pastry… the sky’s the limit!

The key is, to make sure whatever activity you choose, you’re anonymously crafting words of affirmation for your chosen “valentine.” The most important piece to this exercise is maintaining a positive acknowledgement for your team to take with them… not only the day of the exercise, but as a lifting spirit for all the days ahead!

If you decide to build your own #InRhythmLove Session be sure to share on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter with the hashtag #InRhythmLove so we can start a beautiful chain reaction of sharing kindness and gratitude in the workplace.

We can’t wait to see what you’ll create!

Closing Thoughts

#InRhythmLove has been such an impactful implementation of gratitude in our everyday workplace, and we will strive to continue fostering an environment rich in love and acceptance.

Thank you to our InRhythm family for continually sharing the best of themselves with professionalism and grace – we wouldn’t be where we are today without you.

May 01 2019

Sprint 2.0: 4 Day Design Sprints

It was a humbling experience to kick off the InRhythmU Speaker Series at InRhythm HQ. InRhythmU was created to foster a culture of continuous education through onsite events and comprehensive workshops for anyone who is looking to learn and grow in their field. As the Director of UX/UI Design at InRhythm, it seemed fitting to give a talk about Design Sprints and how it impacts the speed to market as well as the creativity a group can bring to a room when working together.

We started the session with a brief overview of where UX/UI sits in the cadence of a products journey, showing where intelligence (UX) meets creativity (UI). We discussed the difference between design thinking and design sprints and then the sprints themselves, which was started by a group from Google Ventures in 2016. The five day sprint is a team workshop for learning, iterating, creating and deploying. Sprint 2.0 is a four day sprint with even more collaboration and problem solving.

While we discussed the iteration process, we did a hands on task of Crazy 8s, where attendees were giving a module to design and had eight minutes to create eight drawings per minute. The attendees were a mix of designers, product owners, scrum masters, engineers and marketers, which is the perfect cross section for this exercise. While the start was slow, the group found their footing and cruised through drawings. Coming up with idea after idea in the 8 minutes allotted. The mix of job types showed how a group can have a similar idea for a singular task.

We concluded by discussing how this methodology not only builds experiences quickly and creates a strong team dynamic but gives us the option to test our ideas. Testing creates a level of flexibility that only breeds better experiences and if everyone brings this type of creativity, iteration along with strong dynamic back to their jobs and creates some next level experiences for us all.

You can watch the full session here. Apologies in advance for the sporadic use of profanity.

Mar 11 2019

InRhythm’s Totally Radical 80s Day

There’s always music playing at InRhythm HQ—we even offer free streaming to InRhythmers to keep everyone in the zone with their favorite tracks. Music boosts productivity and psychological well-being, in addition to sparking impromptu singalongs throughout the day.

One of our go-to playlists is an epic greatest hits of the 80s, and we decided to lean into that spirit with radical 80s-themed outfits all day, leading up to a happy hour at our favorite local spot in the Financial District.

Check out photos of our outfits—including a Breakfast Club tribute and some epic wigs—below. While you’re at it, you can see what we’re listening to at InRhythm HQ by following us on Spotify or checking out some of our workday playlists.

We’ve always got a lot going on at InRhythm HQ, from fun days in costume to open workshops on the latest in software engineering. If that sounds like an environment you’d like to be a part of, we’re always looking to bring on talented consultants to work on exciting projects with industry leaders. Head over to our Careers page to see the latest openings at InRhythm.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

Jul 18 2018

Women in Tech: 5 Crucial Lessons from Successful Women in Technology

This article by InRhythm COO Shivani York originally appears on Medium. For the full text and additional links, check out the article here.

This past Thursday, we hosted an amazing group of women leaders here at InRhythm HQ for a panel discussion on how they have built their careers in an industry that is still overwhelmingly dominated by men, and how to overcome that imbalance and succeed regardless. I was delighted to see a full house across the room; this topic impacts both men and women, and there is much to be learned from our collective experiences.

Statistics show that a lack of diversity in the workplace stymies innovation and company valuation across the board, making it an issue that affects everyone. The discussion throughout the panel was honest and inspiring. All five women had taken different courses and focused on different roles and sectors of our industry, but there were some great takeaways that can guide and inspire us all toward a more open, diverse, and strong workplace. Read More