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best practices

May 30 2023

How To Build Full Stack Applications In AWS Amplify

Based on a Lightning Talk by: Nikolai Tarasov, Senior iOS Engineer @ InRhythm on May 18th, 2023

Overview

AWS Amplify is a comprehensive development platform offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that simplifies the process of building web and mobile applications. It provides developers with a set of tools, services, and libraries that streamline the development workflow and enable rapid iteration.

In Nikolai Tarasov’s Lightning Talk session, we will explore the key features of AWS Amplify and discuss its advantages in building modern applications:

  • Overview
  • What Is AWS Amplify?
  • Key Features Of AWS Amplify 
  • Advantages Of AWS Amplify
  • Closing Thoughts

What Is AWS Amplify?

AWS Amplify is an open-source framework that enables developers to build scalable and secure applications with ease. It abstracts away the complexities of backend infrastructure setup, allowing developers to focus on building features and delivering value to end-users. Amplify supports popular frontend frameworks such as React, Angular, and Vue.js, making it accessible to a wide range of developers.

Key Features Of AWS Amplify

  • Authentication And Authorization

Amplify provides a simple and secure way to add user authentication and authorization to your applications. It integrates with popular identity providers like Amazon Cognito, allowing you to easily handle user sign-up, sign-in, and password recovery flows. Amplify also provides fine-grained access control and role-based permissions, ensuring that only authorized users can access specific resources within your application.

  • Data Storage And APIs

With Amplify, you can easily integrate your application with various data storage options such as Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Aurora, or Amazon S3. Amplify’s DataStore API simplifies data synchronization between your frontend and backend, providing real-time updates and offline capabilities. It also supports GraphQL and REST APIs, making it flexible to work with different data models and query patterns.

  • Serverless Functions

AWS Amplify enables you to write serverless functions using AWS Lambda. These functions can be triggered by events and integrated seamlessly into your application’s backend. Amplify also provides built-in support for common use cases such as file uploads, image transformations, and sending notifications. With serverless functions, you can extend your application’s functionality without managing traditional server infrastructure.

  • Hosting And Deployment

Amplify simplifies the process of hosting and deploying your applications. It provides a managed hosting service that automatically provisions and configures the necessary infrastructure to serve your frontend assets. Amplify seamlessly integrates with popular Git-based workflows, allowing you to deploy your application with a simple push to your preferred Git repository.

Advantages Of AWS Amplify

  • Rapid Development And Iteration

AWS Amplify accelerates the development process by abstracting away the complexities of backend infrastructure and providing a streamlined workflow. It enables developers to focus on building features and delivering value to end-users without getting caught up in infrastructure management. The ease of integration with popular frontend frameworks further speeds up development time.

  • Scalability And Security

By leveraging AWS services such as Amazon Cognito, AWS Lambda, and DynamoDB, Amplify provides a scalable and secure foundation for your applications. AWS’s robust infrastructure ensures that your application can handle increased traffic and demand. Amplify’s built-in security features, such as user authentication and fine-grained access control, help protect your application and data.

Closing Thoughts

AWS Amplify simplifies the process of building web and mobile applications by abstracting away the complexities of backend infrastructure. It offers a comprehensive set of features, including authentication, data storage, serverless functions, and hosting, that enable developers to build scalable and secure applications with ease. By leveraging AWS services and integrating seamlessly with popular frontend frameworks, Amplify provides a streamlined development workflow and facilitates rapid iteration.

Written by Kaela Coppinger · Categorized: Code Lounge, Learning and Development, Product Development · Tagged: Application Development, AWS, best practices, Full Stack Apps, iOS Engineering, learning and growth, Mobile Development

May 26 2023

The Keys To Successful One-On-Ones

Based on Bar Raising Cultural Trainings, Led By: Gunjan Doshi, Founder & Chief Executive Officer @ InRhythm as part of our Founder-Led To Founder-Inspired Series.

Overview

Here at InRhythm, we are looking to implement not only the future of product and technology innovation – but what it means to truly foster a healthy, collaborative work environment that scales. My personal objective now is to scale the business from a founder-led organization to more of a founder-inspired high-growth organization that is run by the leadership and management team. 

As an entrepreneur, I look at everyday as an opportunity to support the ideology of our InRhythm Family and start each morning excited to get out of bed and meet the day’s potential. I want the same zeal to continue with the new leadership team in place. 

The Framework

I will be covering some of the winning set of tools and practices that our team is adopting that will help us keep the same passion and culture of entrepreneurship as we continue to grow. 

  • One-On-Ones
  • Operational Task Transparency
  • Open And Expansive Lines Of Communication 
  • Clear Playbooks
  • Pulse Surveys
  • Bar Raising Interviews

We are performing One-On-Ones through Lattice with our Operations Team on a weekly basis. Team members submit their weekly sentiment score as a way to help us lead with kindness and empathy. One-On-Ones have been a primary indicator of our success here at InRhythm – they allow us to take a pulse on what’s happening in our day-to-day and provide support across the board to our teams. We have successfully built a community that can talk transparently and collaboratively grow into their professional careers. 

The Keys To Successful One-On-Ones

The first of these tools is a proven “One-On-One” Rhythm. As a foundation, we mark this time as a regular and consistent calendar meeting – to ensure that our people know that their contribution takes precedence over all else at this time. These regular meetings are never skipped – building a culture of trust and mutual respect,

A primary pillar to this success has been our company-wide rollout of Lattice, a tool we’ve taken the time to personalize with an InRhythm Spin! Our Mentorship Program is run directly through our dashboard and hosts a number of features that elevate our one-on-one experiences. Having regular one-on-ones is a key way for managers to support their team members in a personal and professional way. It is a humanizing practice that allows leaders to not only maximize the sentiment of their employees, but adjust their growth goals to reflect the best strategy to accelerate their careers. Encouraging a personal cadence between leadership and their teams, brings shared goals and personalized professional development goals to alignment.

Learning from the experience of our past and current InRhythmers, we’ve taken the time to create a culture of transparency that has come to represent our foundational Keys To Successful One-On-Ones:

  • Pre-Work:
    • Thoughtfully Prepared Meetings
    • Honest Weekly Updates
    • Personal Sentiment Scores
    • Attainable Growth Frameworks
    • Intentional Goal Setting
  • Agenda:
    • Personal Check-Ins 
    • Review Weekly Updates Together
    • Thorough Goals Overview
    • Transparent Road-Blocks Discussion 
    • Incentive Growth Areas 
    • Open Forum Q&A

Pre-Work

Thoughtfully Prepared Meetings

One-on-ones are more than just a tool for managers, but instead should be a dedicated time for our team to express their needs, wants, and concerns throughout the work week. Frequent, recurring one-on-one meetings help boost employee engagement and keep everyone on a team aligned and motivated. This personal time should always be treated with the utmost respect and importance – in a fast paced environment, it is paramount that we don’t take this time for granted. 

Our one-on-one Lattice experience allows mentees to share any personal talking points they’re looking to cover, as well as provide the space for mentors to take notes prior, create reflective action items, and come prepared with solutions.

The ideal scenario will always see my mentee speaking 80% of the time, while I use the remaining 20% to thoughtfully share feedback, resources, and attainable benchmarks. This is a time for genuine connection – rooted in empathetic listening and a thoughtful exploration of where our mentees want their futures to grow at InRhythm.

This is their time to shine – so don’t hog the spotlight! Be prepared for your mentees to guide the conversation and come ready with the tools they’ll need to make their dreams a reality.

Honest Weekly Updates

At the end of every week, our InRhythmers are prompted to share their weekly updates. These updates can either be shared publicly or privately – allowing each individual to cater their experience to what makes them most comfortable (no two snowflakes are the same, and neither are your teammates!). 

This space provides the opportunity for mentees to share their weekly accomplishments, any roadblocks they may be facing, future achievements – and most importantly, who they’re most grateful for. By instilling a culture of gratitude, even the leanest teams can feel the trickle down of positive feedback and reassurance. 

Personal Sentiment Scores

As part of our Weekly Updates structure, we encourage our team to share how their professional environment is affecting their personal sensibilities. Creating an employee experience that keeps mental well-being in mind cascades into our entire office culture. We want to continue working towards showing our people that working with InRhythm means working with an employer that respects and reciprocates their time and effort—a notion that can help foster great in-office experience. 

We take time to review our mentee’s sentiment scores every week, in order to continue to adapt and collaborate internally to meet the concerns of our people. We want each one of our team members to feel heard, as well as foster our HQ as a safe space for constructive feedback.

Attainable Growth Frameworks

One of the most important aspects of leadership is promoting from within. Our team works every day to meet extraordinary needs and expectations – and they deserve to see the outcome of that dedication. 

Our leadership has made it a priority to build out clear leveling expectations, that can both be easily followed and attained through their performance. Accelerating the careers of our InRhythmers is a key value that I hold close to the heart of our organization. We can’t bring value to our clients, without first investing in the value of our people.

Intentional Goal Setting

Setting goals is a great way for our team to be able to set milestones for themselves, both quarterly and annually. It gives a transparent view into their progress, as well as that of the company’s overall progression. Our growth is a direct result of the impact each one of our InRhythmers imparts both internally and externally to our clients. 

Goals are a driving force to success, unifying our team into one, cohesive community. Each goal and priority is a direct line to InRhythm’s continuing investment and improvement, uniting all of our InRhythmers in a shared motivation: creating opportunities for recognition as well as reinforcing our culture-driven missions and values.

Agenda

Personal Check-Ins

This time is allocated to check-in with each one of our InRhythmers in order to lead with a full-picture approach. Life doesn’t end outside of our office, and it’s important to remind our team that their personal lives are just as important for their overall success. The happier you are at work – the greater your productivity.

I like to take this time to adjust the tone of our one-on-one meeting and share a tone of empathy.The personal check-in is a simple activity that should appear at the top of every meeting agenda. Knowing where every member of your team stands on an emotional level before diving into the work provides clarity and increases transparency and builds trust.

Review Weekly Updates Together

The weekly update is a great indicator of where the emotional and professional flow of your team is. Every weekly update should be reviewed and treated with a level of care. The primary way to lead this area is to take time to assess and ask questions based on the feedback provided. When done properly, this time provides space for reflection and to get ahead of potential problem solving.

Reviewing these updates sets the stage for your primary talking points and how you may follow-through with setting your mentee up for success!

Thorough Goals Overview

Here at InRhythm, we utilize goal setting as a primary means of fulfillment and professional motivation. Goals are a key component to maintaining appreciation for key objectives met and progression. A quarterly “rock” is an overarching theme that will lead an individual’s focus into their next steps of learning and growth. 

Setting realistic goals will improve morale and find your mentees reaching more markers of personal success in their careers.

Transparent Road-Blocks Discussion

The reality of a growing organization is the inevitable meeting of road-blocks. Smooth sailing isn’t always a guarantee and what sets leaders apart from followers – is the ability to recognize them and collaboratively sync on how to overcome them. 

This specific interest in the day-to-day operations of sole contributors on our team creates a relationship based on boosting and working collaboratively to champion each other’s success.

Incentive Growth Areas

One of the key values of InRhythm is the focus of learning and growth for each member of our team – from operations to consultants, what sets us apart is the investment in our people. Taking care to create a personalized growth framework for individual mentees not only reflects your personal investment in supporting the acceleration of their careers but the trust you have in them as future leaders in our organization.

Create growth areas that best reflect attainable career milestones and play to the strengths of your mentee. This should include not only highlighting their passion, but in turn – giving room to learn new skills.

Open Forum Q&A

To close out your weekly discussion, be sure to give extra time allowance to collaborate on the conversation and next steps. This allows you to not only dig deeper into topics of discussion brought up by your mentee, but also to check-in with how leaders can improve and better understand points of interest. This is the time to tie up any loose ends and make yourself an approachable leader.

Closing Thoughts

From discussing ongoing work to coaching performance and even working through interpersonal conflict, having moments for candid conversations at work has a whole host of benefits. Ultimately, understanding the purpose of one-on-one meetings—and the specific purpose they hold for your organization— will always make this dedicated time productive and impactful. As a leader, you should always consider your weekly one-on-one as the most important meeting you can have because it lays the foundation for a trusting and productive work relationship.

Sample Questions For Managers To Ask During One-On-Ones

Asking the right questions is a major component of running an effective and efficient one-on-one meeting. While each meeting and employee will require a different set of questions, there are some general best practices that are helpful to follow. 

To enhance your own learning and growth, here are five key topic indicators that will help guide your one-on-ones… the InRhythm Way:

  • Personal Life – How’s It Going?, How Was Your Weekend?, Are There Any Non-Company Issues Making It Challenging To Focus On Work?
  • Productivity – What Are Your Goals For Next Week?, What Can I Do To Make Your Life Easier?, What Have You Accomplished In The Last Week That You’re Most Proud Of?
  • Collaboration And Teamwork – Do You Feel The Team Is Communicating Effectively?, Do You Feel Connected With The Rest Of The Team?, Is There Anything I Can Do To Fill In Any Possible Gaps?
  • Career Development – Are There Are Skills You’re Most Interested In Learning And Growing Into?, Do You Feel Your Current Job And Responsibilities Align Well With Your Career Goals?, What Aspect Of Your Role Do You Love And Why? 
  • Manager Feedback – Do You Have Any Feedback For Me?, How Can I Change My Management Style To Best Support You?, Would You Like Me To Share More Updates From The Leadership Team?

Written by Kaela Coppinger · Categorized: Agile & Lean, Culture, Employee Engagement, InRhythm News, Learning and Development · Tagged: best practices, CEO, company culture, Culture, Founder-Led To Founder-Inspired Series, INRHYTHMU, learning and growth, workplace culture

May 23 2023

How To Effectively Measure The Direct Impact Of Your Design Language System

Author: Ashton Coghlan, Senior Product Manager and Oleg Ivanov, Design Tech Architect @ InRhythm

Overview

The work of your designers has a substantial impact on your business, despite it sometimes being a challenging, tangible KPI to measure. Showing the value of your designers’ work, can result in a positive focus on business goals around the needs of your users. You can start driving value around the infrastructure of a Design Language System so that your designers can focus on higher value problems, moments of delight in your customers’ experiences, and your overall product quality. A Design Language System can help refine the quality of your product by making the experience more consistent, predictable, and accessible. 

In order to understand the lasting impact of a Design Language System in your organization, we’ll be prioritizing some high-level subject areas:

  • Overview
  • What Is A Design Language System?
  • How Do We Measure The Business Impact Of A Design Language System?
  • What Are The Leading Indicators To Measure Impact?
  • Design Efficiency
  • Developer Efficiency 
  • Closing Thoughts

What Is A Design Language System?

A Design Language System is a collection of reusable design components, guidelines, and standards that are used to create a consistent and cohesive user experience across an organization’s products and services. It is a set of rules and principles that guide the design and development process, ensuring consistency and coherence in the design of digital products.

A Design Language System includes not only visual elements like typography, color palettes, and iconography, but also components like buttons, forms, and navigation menus, as well as guidelines for interaction design, accessibility, and branding. The purpose of a Design Language System is to streamline the design and development process, reduce inconsistencies, and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of design teams. It also ensures a better user experience, making it easier for users to interact with and navigate through digital products.

How Do We Measure The Business Impact Of A Design Language System?

Measuring business impact is important because it helps organizations understand the value that their Design Language System is providing to the business. By tracking key metrics, organizations can identify areas where the Design Language System is driving business outcomes, as well as areas where it may need to be improved.

Here are some key metrics to measure business impact:

  • Return On Investment (ROI): This metric measures the financial impact of the Design Language System on the organization. It helps to determine whether the investment in the Design Language System is paying off in terms of increased revenue, cost savings, or other financial benefits.
  • Time To Market: This metric measures the speed at which new products or features can be launched to the market using the Design Language System. It helps to determine whether the Design Language System is enabling the organization to be more agile and responsive to market changes.
  • Customer Satisfaction: This metric measures how satisfied customers are with the products or services that are built using the Design Language System. It helps to ensure that the Design Language System is meeting the needs and expectations of customers, and can also provide insights into areas where improvements may be needed.
  • Employee Productivity: This metric measures the efficiency and effectiveness of the design and development teams that are using the Design Language System. It helps to determine whether the Design Language System is improving productivity, reducing errors, and enabling teams to work more collaboratively and efficiently.

What Are The Leading Indicators To Measure Impact?

Adoption and usage are the only things that matter after you know what you need to build. And the sneaky hard part of this is you often don’t know what you truly need to build until you measure adoption and usage. (This is where the magic of Product Management comes into play!)

Here are some key metrics to measure adoption and usage of a Design Language System:

  • Number Of Active Users: This metric measures the number of users who have actively used the Design Language System components in a given period, such as a week or a month. It helps to gauge the reach and impact of the Design Language System across the organization.
  • Number Of Design Language System Components Used: This metric measures the number of unique Design Language System components used in products or applications. It helps to identify which components are most popular and which ones are underutilized.
  • Number Of Design Language System Integrations: This metric measures the number of products or applications that have integrated the Design Language System. It helps to determine how widespread the adoption of the Design Language System is across the organization.
  • Number Of Design Language System Updates: This metric measures the number of updates made to the Design Language System in a given period, such as a week or a month. It helps to ensure that the Design Language System is up-to-date and relevant to the changing needs of the organization.
  • User Feedback And Satisfaction: This metric measures user feedback and satisfaction with the Design Language System, which can be collected through surveys, user testing, or other means. It helps to identify areas for improvement and to ensure that the design language system is meeting the needs of its users.

By tracking these metrics, organizations can gain insights into the adoption and usage of their Design Language System and make data-driven decisions to improve its effectiveness and impact.

Design Efficiency

Measuring design efficiency is important because it helps organizations ensure that their Design Language System is supporting efficient and effective design processes. By tracking key metrics related to design efficiency, organizations can identify areas where they can streamline workflows, reduce errors, and improve the quality and consistency of their design outputs.

Here are some key metrics to measure design efficiency:

  • Time To Create New Designs: This metric measures the amount of time it takes to create new designs using the Design Language System. It helps to identify areas where the Design Language System may be slowing down the design process or where additional training or resources may be needed to improve efficiency.
  • Time To Make Updates To Existing Designs: This metric measures the amount of time it takes to make updates to existing designs using the Design Language System. It helps to identify areas where the Design Language System may be creating bottlenecks or inefficiencies in the design process.
  • Design Consistency: This metric measures the level of consistency and coherence in the design outputs produced using the Design Language System. It helps to ensure that designs are aligned with brand standards and that user experience is consistent across different products and services.
  • Design Quality: This metric measures the quality of the design outputs produced using the Design Language System, including factors such as usability, accessibility, and visual appeal. It helps to ensure that designs are of a high standard and meet the needs and expectations of users.

By tracking these metrics, organizations can gain insights into the efficiency and effectiveness of their design processes, identify areas for improvement, and ensure that their Design Language System is supporting high-quality design outputs that meet the needs of users and the business.

Developer Efficiency

Measuring developer efficiency is important because it helps organizations ensure that their Design Language System is supporting efficient and effective development processes. By tracking key metrics related to developer efficiency, organizations can identify areas where they can streamline workflows, reduce errors, and improve the quality and consistency of their development outputs.

Here are some key metrics to measure developer efficiency:

  • Time To Implement New Designs: This metric measures the amount of time it takes developers to implement new designs using the Design Language System. It helps to identify areas where the Design Language System may be slowing down the development process or where additional training or resources may be needed to improve efficiency.
  • Time To Make Updates To Existing Designs: This metric measures the amount of time it takes developers to make updates to existing designs using the Design Language System. It helps to identify areas where the Design Language System may be creating bottlenecks or inefficiencies in the development process.
  • Developer Satisfaction With The Design Language System: This metric measures the satisfaction of developers with the Design Language System, including factors such as ease of use, accessibility, and usefulness. It helps to ensure that the Design Language System is meeting the needs and expectations of the development team and that they are able to work more efficiently and collaboratively.
  • Number Of Bugs And Issues: This metric measures the number of bugs and issues that are encountered during the development process using the Design Language System. It helps to identify areas where improvements may be needed in the Design Language System, as well as areas where additional training or resources may be needed to reduce errors and improve efficiency.

By tracking these metrics, organizations can gain insights into the efficiency and effectiveness of their development processes, identify areas for improvement, and ensure that their design language system is supporting high-quality development outputs that meet the needs of users and the business.

Closing Thoughts

In summary, a Design Language System is a collection of reusable design components, guidelines, and standards that are used to create a consistent and cohesive user experience across an organization’s products and services. Measuring the success of a Design Language System is important because it helps organizations ensure that the system is meeting the needs of users and the business. There are several key metrics that organizations can track to measure the success of their Design Language System, including adoption and usage metrics, design efficiency metrics, developer efficiency metrics, and business impact metrics.

To track and analyze these metrics, organizations can use tools such as analytics platforms and surveys, as well as conduct user testing and gather feedback from development teams. Product Managers can play a critical role in driving the success of a Design Language System by setting clear goals and objectives, identifying key metrics to track, and ensuring that the Design Language System is meeting the needs of users and the business.

At InRhythm, we have extensive experience in helping organizations set up their design language systems for success. Our team of experts can provide guidance on best practices for tracking and analyzing key metrics, as well as help organizations develop and implement a design language system that is tailored to their unique needs and goals. If you’re interested in learning more about how we can help your organization succeed with its Design Language System, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

Written by Kaela Coppinger · Categorized: Agile & Lean, Design UX/UI, Learning and Development, Product Development · Tagged: best practices, Design Language Systems, Design Programs, learning and growth, product design, product development, Product Management, ux, uxui

May 16 2023

Why Your Design Language System Needs A Product Manager

Overview

A Senior Product Manager specializing in Enterprise Design Language Systems offers expertise in creating, scaling, and optimizing cohesive Design Language Systems that drive efficiency, consistency, and innovation across large organizations. By leveraging their deep understanding of product development, user experience, and cross-functional collaboration, they empower enterprises to accelerate innovation, hack their own bureaucracies, and enhance product quality while reducing design debt, as well as development and maintenance costs. 

In Ashton Coghlan’s Lightning Talk session, we will be uncovering the the primary strategies for effectively Product Managing Design Language Systems:

  • Overview
  • What Is A Design Language System?
  • What Does A Product Manager Bring To Your Design Language System?
  • Top 10 Reasons To Hire A Product Manager
  • Closing Thoughts

What Is A Design Language System?

By direct definition, a Design System is a collection of reusable components, guided by clear standards, that can be assembled together to build any number of applications. According to Emmet Connolly, Director Of Product Design at Intercom, “… most Design Systems are really just Pattern Libraries: a big box of UI Lego pieces that can be assembled in near-infinite ways. All the pieces may be consistent, but that doesn’t mean the assembled results will be. Your product is more than just a pile of reusable UI elements. It has structure and meaning. It’s not a generic web page, it’s the embodiment of a system of concepts.” 

The Design Language System can be considered the source of truth for how elements look and behave.

  • Designers, developers and content authors can use the DLS to check if an element of design already exists
  • Content authors can use the DLS for instructions on how to use certain design components

Like a natural language, the Design Language System is supposed to grow over time as components are progressively added to it.

Design Language Systems are aimed to be a shared Language for understanding design, that transparently leads to understanding implementation. 

In short, a Design Language System is a living, breathing organism that guides and supports the building blocks of your product.

What Does A Product Manager Bring To Your Design Language System?

Design Systems have become an essential part of efficient product development workflows, and there is a great benefit to treating the system as a product itself. Design Systems are ever-evolving tools and processes that need product management to support the full lifecycle from the initial build throughout ongoing maintenance and iterations.

The collaborative efforts of a cross-functional product trio including design, engineering, and product management are key to building a successful Design System that will continue delivering value to an organization over time. 

As the Design System matures, a product manager can help keep a groomed backlog for new releases, maintain intake and support processes, and measure/report on the impact of the Design System to ensure ongoing investment.  

Top 10 Reasons To Hire A Product Manager

Where system designers and engineers have the subject matter expertise to build a Design System that’s compatible with current workflows and technology, a dedicated product manager can help align the vision for the System to the goals of the organization, prioritize the roadmap based on those goals, and build a communications strategy to drive adoption and create feedback loops with consuming teams.

Proven benefits of hiring a Product Manager to support the implementation of your Design Language System are:

  1. Cross-functional Collaboration– A product manager facilitates communication and collaboration among different teams, such as design, development, and business. This ensures that the Design Language System meets the needs of all stakeholders.
  2. Strategic Vision– Product managers have the ability to define and execute a long-term strategy for the Design Language System, ensuring it aligns with the company’s goals and objectives.
  3. Prioritization– With many competing demands, a product manager can prioritize features and improvements to the Design Language System, maximizing the value delivered to the organization.
  4. Customer Focus–  Product managers have experience understanding customer needs and incorporating their feedback into the Design Language System. This ensures a user-centric approach that improves usability and adoption (Your downstream product teams are your customers).
  5. Change Management–  Implementing a Design Language System can involve significant changes in processes and tools. A product manager can help manage these changes, ensuring a smooth transition and minimizing disruptions.
  6. Metrics And Measurement– Product managers track and analyze metrics related to the Design Language System’s adoption, usage, and effectiveness. This data-driven approach helps identify areas for improvement and demonstrates the value of the Design Language System to stakeholders.
  7. Scalability–  As your organization grows, a product manager can ensure that the Design Language System scales effectively, addressing the needs of an increasing number of users and projects.
  8. Documentation And Training–  Product managers can oversee the creation of clear, concise documentation and training materials, ensuring that team members can easily access and understand the Design Language System.
  9. Continuous Improvement–  Product managers are adept at iterating on products and systems, ensuring that the Design Language System remains up-to-date and evolves with the needs of the organization and industry.
  10. Budget And Resource Management–  A product manager can help allocate resources efficiently, making the most of your budget and ensuring that the Design Language System’s development stays on track.

These factors not only enhance the viability of the Design Language System from the start – but provide a solid foundation for its enduring influence within your organization.

Closing Thoughts

Working with the client, Product Managers craft a tailored Design Language System strategy that aligns with their unique business objectives, elevates their brand, and fosters a seamless user experience across all their digital products and platforms.

Written by Kaela Coppinger · Categorized: Agile & Lean, Design UX/UI, Learning and Development, Product Development · Tagged: best practices, Components, Design Language Systems, Design Programs, Designers, DLS, learning and growth, product development, Product Management

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:

  • InRhythm Propel Spring Quarterly Summit / SDET Workshop / March 17th 2023
  • InRhythm Propel Spring Quarterly Summit / Web Workshop / March 24th 2023
  • InRhythm Propel Spring Quarterly Summit / DevOps Workshop / March 29th 2023
  • InRhythm Propel Spring Quarterly Summit / Android Workshop / April 11th 2023
  • InRhythm Propel Spring Quarterly Summit / Cloud Native Workshop / April 21st 2023
Design Credit: Joel Colletti, Lead UI/UX Designer @ InRhythm

SDET Workshop (03/17/23)

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

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)

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

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)

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

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)

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

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)

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

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)

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

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. 

Written by Kaela Coppinger · Categorized: Culture, DevOps, Employee Engagement, Events, InRhythm News, InRhythmU, Java Engineering, Learning and Development, Product Development, Software Engineering, Web Engineering · Tagged: Android, best practices, Cloud Native Application Development, devops, INRHYTHMU, ios, JavaScript, learning and growth, Mobile Development, Press Release 2023, Propel, Propel Workshop, SDET, software engineering, Spring Quarterly Propel Summit, Web

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