Bol.com - Techlab
bol.com - Techlab
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In this podcast we share our experience with you to learn and entertain. Peeking behind the screens of IT and Tech in general at bol.com. Showing you our approach to IT, e-commerce and retail platforms.
Available episodes
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Oldest first
May 13, 2022
Product Led - Easier when done together
We discuss the way of working of the Tech Lead and Architect in the Marketing Domain. Functional- and Technical aspects need to be taken into account when defining the direction of the development teams. From our guests Alexandra and Lennart, we learn what cooperation means in these relatively new functions.
_*What this episode covers*_
Product-Led is adapted more and more as a way of organizing for innovation. In bol.com we are shifting towards this concept. One important topic in the adaptation is forming the leadership in a product organisation. Given the nature of the innovation teams we both need to focussing on functional- and technical aspects.
_*Guests*_
* Alexandra Egher ; Product Tech Lead in the marketing domain
* Lennart Billenkens;Product Architect in the marketing domain
_*Notes*_
* Learn more on the introduction of Tech Leads at bol.com.
* Product architecture for the product organization.
* Check how we adapted out innovation rhythm when introducing a pr…
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Apr 4, 2022
To indie game developer and back
A few months ago we noticed a message that stood out on our internal platform. Basically, it stated: "I'm back". Naturally, it happens every now and then that employees explore their horizons but still return to bol.com.
_*What this episode covers*_
However, the number of software engineers that turn to indie game developer and come back, is quite limited. That sparked our curiosity since for a vast group of engineers it is some kind of dream job to develop games. That must have something to do with the large number of gamers among software engineers.
There are some interesting learnings and experiences in our conversation with Roy. Listen and check what is in it for you.
* Have you always been intrigued by creating (computer) games?
* How did you prepare for your adventure to make games for a living?
* What were the obstacles you had to overcome trying to make a living crafting a computer game?
* What did you learn?
* Please share also some examples of how you learned th…
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Mar 16, 2022
Front-end Framework Journey
Everybody can go to bol.com and check the Front-End of our webshop. But what if you are a seller, supplier, partner or internal employee? What is your view when interacting with our IT systems? In general, you will use one of our Portals. These portals made a long journey to get to the stage where they are today.
_*What this episode covers*_
Not only does the backend site, mainly covered by SWAP's (Small Web APplications) rely on different frameworks, also the Front-End work does. How to adapt to a new 'Look and Feel'? How to be consistent? How to make the lives of Software Engineers easier? Listen to this episode and find out yourself.
* What does the Portal and SWAP architecture look like in bol.com?
* What is a front-end framework?
* What role play Design Systems like Figma, Storybook, Zeroheight, Frontify, Stencil?
* What are design tokens?
* How do UX Designers, Front-End Developers and Back End Developers work together and profit from a framework?
_*Guests*_
* Ja…
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Feb 25, 2022
Inclusion of Introverts
Welcome to episode number 100! A special show with a very interesting topic: Inclusion of Introverts and Introversion. We asked our CEO Margaret Versteden for a quote for this number 100. She surprised us with the fact that this topic is so important for her as she is dealing with this her whole life, as an introvert. So if you are an extrovert, we think this is a "must listen".
_*What this episode covers*_
It will help you to understand and to make the world and your environment safer for introverts. It is about the inclusion of everyone and the inclusion of introverts
Why is it so much harder for an introvert to be included than for an extrovert? To understand this, we first dive into questions like:
* What is an introvert?
* And what it is not, what are the common misunderstandings?
* Why is it so important to be more aware of these differences?
* We touch upon neurodiversity and neuro non-typical persons, as some of the requirements for a safe environment also applies f…
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Feb 9, 2022
Transforming your experimentation knowledge into a book
We are not only the hosts of the show but so far we also do the selection of the topics ourselves. Research what’s interesting. Find diverse subjects and guests, etc.
_*What this episode covers*_
And sometimes guests make it easier for us. They post on our internal platform a message….
“What is the superlative of bragging? I don't think I can go any further than telling you that I co-wrote a book. And of course, it's about experimentation Yesterday I received the first copy in my hands, and it is of course for sale at bol.com ”
The book is called “Steering on results”, how to work together on the greatest ambitions. Work smarter not harder. (So far only available in Dutch but English translation is being worked on). And since this week we know that the book is on the long list of books to become Management book of the year in 2022. A Dutch award organized by one of our partners managementboek.nl. (how can I check if this is true?)
This triggered us in two ways:
First…
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Dec 29, 2021
2021 Wrapped
This episode is 2021 Techlab Wrapped. Inspired by one of the platforms that host our podcast Spotify. It is the end of Season 3 and the end of 2021. Time to look back and to look ahead.
_*What this episode covers*_
2021 Wrapped and maybe a glimpse into 2022.
* We look back at 2021 by the numbers.
* Top 3 lists
* Top 5 countries
* We discuss the topics and episodes that really got us.
* For instance the one on Log4j and the PMC member who is working in bol.com.
* We share the plans of 2022 and the OKR we set ourselves: "we get on TikTok and you get to decide what dance we should perform if we double our listeners on the best episode ever"
_*Guests*_
Peter Brouwers
Peter Paul van de BeekShownotes
Top 3 according to Blubrry
* Episode 91 - Retailer API
* Episode 93 - The Programmers Brain
* Episode 81 - Data Maturity and Data Literacy
Top 3 according to Spotify
* Team Topologies
* The Data-Driven Approach to supporting products with KPI's and OKR's
* Curiosity is the common denominator for our business analysts
The new Bol.com ECOmerce podcast about sustainability
_*Notes*_
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Nov 25, 2021
Load testing with Locust
During the recording of this episode, we are in the week of Black Friday. An exciting week for people hunting for bargains. And also for a lot of our colleagues.
_*What this episode covers*_
Whether that is from a commercial point of view or an engineering one.
All the eyeballs on our website, bring a lot of traffic. And consequential a lot of load on our systems. In this episode, we focus on one aspect of preparing for a large load: Load Testing. In this episode, we are going to talk about Load Testing with Locust. An open-source load testing tool.
Triggered by our guest's presentation during the spaces summit, we wanted to know more about this and share it with you.
* What is Locust?
* Why did we start using Locust for Load Testing?
* Examples of Load tests and Performance tests performed with this tool
* What did we need to setup for it?
* How to configure your Locust tests
* How to run your tests on Kubernetes
* What were the challenges?
* How does it make use…
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Nov 19, 2021
How could this happen
If you are a regular listener to the podcast or an e-commerce watcher, you know “the season” is very important for us. It is a yearly recurring theme in the podcast. You are probably also aware that uptime and responsiveness of our app and website are crucial.
_*What this episode covers*_
And you might have noticed that enabling our software engineers to perform at their peak is very important for us. Enabling teams and engineers is what we do to build a great place to engineer.
And sometimes things just go sour. A perfect storm occurs that is definitely not a tailwind…
As our CTO will say “never waste a good crisis”. We have to learn from what happened. Let’s explore one of those incidents. We go back to the season start of 2019. Just before the start of the Friday Afternoon Drinks, a huge incident started in our Android App. This triggered downtime in other areas of the platforma as well. And maybe just like when investigating a plane crash there is not just one thing…
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Nov 3, 2021
AI for Retail Lab on recommendations
In this episode, we virtually visit the AI for Retail Lab and dive with two members into the world of recommendations. The AI for Retail (AIR) Lab Amsterdam is a joint UvA-Ahold Delhaize industry lab and conducts research into socially responsible algorithms aimed at the retail domain. Think of developing models for recommendations and managing goods flows.
_*What this episode covers*_
The research, testing and application of the models take place in Albert Hein Delhaize and bol.com.
* What is the AIRLab (Artificial Intelligence Research Lab) and what is it trying to achieve?
* PHD projects?
* How does science profit from business involvement and the other way around?
* We take a deep dive into recommendations
* What is being researched?
* Why is this important?
* What is the hypothesis?
* What has been discovered so far?
* Explore the approach to the research.
* How can both business and academia benefit from this research?
_*Guests*_
* Barrie Kersbergen – Recommendations bol.com & PhD Candidate at AI for Retail LAB
* Sebastian Schelter - Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam
_*Notes*_
* AIRLab research papers
* Earlier episode on the gathering of measuring data. The feedback loop for recommendations
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Oct 28, 2021
Warehouse Mechanization
Warehouse mechanization is a part of our IT landscape where our IT meets the physical world. It is one of those places where we encounter that while we could scale our IT almost indefinitely in the cloud, the physical world and warehouses don't work that way. As you listen to this episode you will learn how the world of IT has to adapt to the physical world to make things work. And as Peter states this is also the place where e-commerce comes to life.
_*What this episode covers*_
This is the place where all the bits and bytes in the webshop have to lead to tangible products that are picked and delivered to our customers. By all measures a real interesting place.:
* What sets warehouse mechanization apart from other software engineering?
* To enable our growth we need more and more warehouses. What do we need to get a warehouse live from a WMS and/or warehouse mechanization perspective?
* To what extent do you need access to the physical parts?
* Do we use simulation?
_*Gues…
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Oct 7, 2021
The Programmer's Brain
Some aspects of software engineering are easily overlooked. In the book The Programmer's Brain some of these like reading code, thinking about code and collaborating on code are at the centre. In this episode, we talk to the author of this book to guide us through these aspects. To improve your coding skills it is good to know how your brain works.
_*What this episode covers*_
That will enable you to set your brain to work for you. If you spent significantly more time on reading code than on writing code, shouldn't we focus more on learning to read code? These are the topics we explore in this episode.If you’ve ever wondered what working smarter instead of harder is supposed to look like, you should read this book. I am already seeing improvements in my day-to-day work.
What the programmer's brain covers
* What every programmer needs to know on how the brain works.
* What you should know about cognition.
* A lot of exercises for programmers.
* How do I improve myself on co…
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Sep 30, 2021
Understanding customers using their search queries
Imagine you want to buy something. You go to bol.com and you start typing the article in the search bar. Automatically you will be served suggestions and as a result, you want a limited number of articles from our 30 million products catalogue.
_*What this episode covers*_
You select the product you want, press the buy button and there it is, at your doorstep at the selected moment.
Sounds simple, right?
Inspired by a talk of our guest of this episode earlier this year, we wanted to find out what's behind the search bar. We wanted to understand search queries. Simple at first glance, but when we dive into it we found out it's way more complex than you might think.
We had great learning: as a customer, I help other customers to improve their search results. How that works? Listen to this episode.
(Image: https://cdn.sanity.io/images/qxrxmo3r/techlab-prd/bd51783981f1b35051359902ea03bea2213d1a9f-680x361.jpg)
The search bar on the bol.com websiteWhat it takes to search
Questions wi…
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Aug 31, 2021
How the Retailer API became the heart and soul of an ecosystem
In early April the latest version of our Retailer API was launched. Given the importance of the API for almost 15.000 partners this was again a major step. Over the years the retailer API became the heart and soul of our ecosystem.
_*What this episode covers*_
But this path wasn't always that obvious. It took vision, decisiveness and perseverance to get this far. In this episode, we explore this journey.The importance of the Retailer API
API’s are considered a major part of a serious platform. They enable growth and stability. The 80/20 rule applies when it comes to the usage of the partners of their interaction with bol.com. 80 per cent of the sellers use the seller dashboard, 20 per cent the Retailer API. But when it comes to the number of orders, it’s the other way around. 80 per cent via the API and 20 per cent via the dashboard. And if you imagine that over 50% of the goods being bought at bol.com are goods from our partners, it shows the importance of this API.What we disc…
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Aug 23, 2021
Engineering Productivity and Backstage
Engineering Productivity With the growth of our engineering community, the need for more focus on engineering productivity is clear. We invited two experts to discuss this topic with us. We actually got to this point when one of our listeners pointed out one of the products we are using for this and how awesome a topic that would be for our podcast. Backstage The product he was referring to, is Backstage.
_*What this episode covers*_
Backstage is a platform for developer portals that is used as an app store for tools for software engineers. This product was build inside Spotify and later on open-sourced by them.We thought it was a good idea to get these tools in a unified package
Questions we touch upon
* What does engineering productivity mean?
* How is engineering productivity measured?
* Why is engineering productivity important?
* How can engineering productivity be improved?
* What is Backstage open source?
* Who uses backstage io?
* Why Backstage io?
* What is…
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Jul 23, 2021
Outside perspective on the edges of autonomy
How interaction resulted in a guest appearance “We like interactions and feedback”, that’s what we say in our outro. The guest of our show reacted to one of our podcasts earlier this year. We reached out to him and invited him to the podcast.
_*What this episode covers*_
Why? Because it’s good to look in the mirror. Check our stories with the outside in view. And that’s exactly what we are going to do in this show. Getting the outside perspective on the edges of autonomy.Discussed Items on the edges of autonomy
* Why do you interact and why is interaction helpful?
* How can we complete our stories?
* What items do you miss when you listen to the stories in a holistic way?
* What is an example of autonomy?
* What is team autonomy?
* What is autonomy and why is it important?
* Does autonomy mean control?
* What are the three types of autonomy?
* Is autonomy good or bad?
_*Guests*_
* Thomas Heijtink - Full Stack Software Engineer & Product Owner at Fleet…
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Jul 15, 2021
Predict the Unpredictable
How Data Science supports us to predict the unpredictable Just like for any store, forecasting is an important tool to support the business and its profitability. At bol.com we have worked on several major iterations of our forecast. One of the hosts worked on a large leap in forecast performance over 8 years ago. You can check some another leap we have made while listening to our podcast episode from May 2019 - nom more crystal ball for forecasting, Data Science it is. In this episode, we explore how we have improved on that one.
_*What this episode covers*_
One of the leaps we made Is in the operational part of running a Data Science-based forecast in production. This is intriguing because this mechanism at the same time speeds up our innovation speeds because it enables us to do more experiments and train our models more often.
One important input we added to our forecast during the pandemic was the "Covid Severity Index". This improved our forecast performance and enabled us to…
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Jul 10, 2021
Why would you build an open source FTP server in Rust?
Why build an open-source FTP server in Rust? Sometimes, I must admit I’m a little dazzled by all the languages, frameworks and stuff our engineers work with. So, when our guest of today explained to me some of the intriguing aspects of the language we will be discussing in this episode I had to stretch my mind a little. I managed and could follow his explanation.
_*What this episode covers*_
And I found a great topic for this podcast.
In the episode, we explore the Rust programming language and our first open-source code in this language: unFTP. When you need to FTP but you don't want to. We will show you the advantages of using this FTP server in the Cloud for the cases that still require you to FTP.What we discussed
* The programming language Rust
* What is Rust and why is it so popular?
* What programs are written in Rust?
* Why should software engineers learn Rust?
* The project unFTP
* Why unFTP?
* Where does the need for a cloud FTP server stem from?
* unF…
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Jul 1, 2021
The Podcast Guest
Who is the Podcast .
_*Guests*_
?
This will be a bonus episode. Maybe not that tech-related but instead you will listen to a very energetic, passionate and inspiring person: The Podcast
_*Notes*_
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Jun 25, 2021
Curiosity is the common denominator for our Business Analysts
What is the key competence of our business analysts (BA) We talked about domain knowledge, tech affinity and building bridges between stakeholders and software engineers. Sometimes the business analyst is almost seen as a project manager. Aligning with product owners is key in this role.
_*What this episode covers*_
Every business analysts within bol.com fills in this role differently but about one thing they are very clear; for our business analysts curiosity is key.
Time to dive into this BA role. We see this role as a key to success in our multidisciplinary product teams. They form a bridge between the stakeholders with their business requirements and the software engineers providing the tech solutions.
_*Guests*_
* Adinda Biesbroeck – BA Retailer portal – 5 years at bol.com.
* Naomi Platenburg – BA Capacity Management Warehousing – Daily steering – started in March after an internship.
* Mitch de Vries – BA Team 15 C – Contract en Condition management in Re…
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Jun 16, 2021
Maximize cloud benefits
Next level leveraging cloud computing We moved 70% of our services to the cloud and new services start in the cloud unless... Time to dive into a topic brought up by our tech leads. Want to know how you can maximize your cloud benefits? Alexandra wrote a blog post on Horizontal Pod Auto-scaling, HPA.
_*What this episode covers*_
It triggered us for this episode.
Maximizing cloud benefits can be done in many different ways. For this episode, we dive into auto-scaling. Cloud computing brings great features for scaling up and down based on the needs of an application. But if you think my application can scale on-premise, just copy that principle in the cloud. Think again. You might be overspending or still underperforming. Our guests explain why this is and what to do to maximize your cloud benefits.
Topics discussed
* Introduction
* What our cloud strategy is (GCP, run in Kubenetes, Istio, cloud-native, etc)
* Migration strategies for feature teams (check)
* Lift and shift…
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Jun 3, 2021
A lot of tech people are leaders
Writing an article is reflection, publishing it is getting feedback Learning from our colleagues. That is important to us. So, we were delighted when we found another great piece of this on LinkedIn, Elinore shared. to inspire others who are thinking of transitioning from tech into a leadership role or are just curious about my experiences and thoughts. The transition from tech into a leadership role is actually a very hot topic and not only within bol.com.
_*What this episode covers*_
We learn this from the job interviews when candidates ask us about career paths in bol.com. Also when we introduced the role of the tech lead in bol.com last year. And when we formalized the job profile for Engineering Manager. We used to call this Team Lead IT and with this formalization, we also had discussions about the background of the Engineering Manager should or shouldn’t be a former engineer?
In the article Elinor addresses 5 aspects she learned:
* Management Is actually a job.
* You can’t have the cake and eat it too.
* A leader doesn’t have to be a manager.
* What got you here won’t get you there.
* Your next step is not the rest of your life.
We will go over these items in this episode and along the way we touch on other great insights, will there be a next article? One of the insights we want to share with you here is that a lot of people in tech are leaders.
_*Guests*_
* Elinor Bakker – Lead Architect, Creative problem solver and silo buster. Friend of the show, Small Web Apps
_*Notes*_
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May 27, 2021
The 5th anniversary of the Spaces Summit
From how it was born to what it is now in 45 minutes One of the things that make us really proud about working in Tech at bol.com is our annual Space Summit. Our internal tech conference by developers for developers. And maybe you can recall we had quite some interesting episodes, blogs and videos about it and some of the talks given there in the last 2 years. This year is a special edition! We celebrate our 5th anniversary!! In June 2018 Peter published an article on Linkedin with the subject: “What happened to me today? After the Spaces Summit of that year, he had to write down that experience.
_*What this episode covers*_
Why? Because he was really proud of what the engineering community within bol.com was capable of. And now, three years later we celebrate the 5th one.Topics in this episode
* The journey of the spaces summit
* The early years.
* Growing
* Moving to an online event
* Anniversary edition - hybrid
* The future
* The organization of the Spaces Summi…
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May 5, 2021
Data Maturity and Data Literacy
Data Maturity Model as common ground, Data Literacy Model to measure the level of speaking, writing and reading data To state as a company we want to become more data-driven is the first step. To truly understand what this means and define a common ground to discuss the progress is the second. Back in the eighties, the Capability Maturity Model was defined to develop and refine software development processes. Later on, many more Maturity Models were introduced like the Business Maturity Model, the Lean Maturity Model and Agile Maturity Model.
_*What this episode covers*_
To develop and refine the data-driven organization, we created the Data Maturity Model. This model enables us to measure where we stand in our goals towards 2023:
* Our data consumers are self-sufficient: They know what they need, what they look at, how to analyze this and how to use insights/focus on in their daily jobs.
* We want to do this in a scalable way and empower the users.
* To know what the current…
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Apr 22, 2021
The data-driven approach to supporting products with KPIs and OKRs
Supporting products with KPI's and OKR's We had previous episodes on how bol.com is moving to a product organization. In this one, we’ll dive into how to measure the success of these products and set objectives for them. Including measuring whether we are getting the desired results.
_*What this episode covers*_
Being the data-driven company that we want to be we asked our data people to help us to get the right KPI’s for all our product and support the products in defining proper OKR's.Data availability should never be an excuse to not start KPI's or OKR's - Frans Poldervaart
We came with a team to support products with KPI's and OKR's. One of the recurring themes is the difference between KPI's and Key Results and what their relation is to metrics. If you want to know more about that topic, check this video.What will we explore?
* Some context first. What are domains, products, OKR's and KPI's.
* What is a product KPI and a product OKR?
* What is the difference between…
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Apr 16, 2021
Father & Son into IT
Every time I look at you. I see myself.I'm so proud of you.For you help make me what I am.A better man.I'm just so proud of you.~ Lyrics by Alain Clark A special episode comes with a special opening. In February we had an extraordinary occasion during our onboarding.
_*What this episode covers*_
Father and Son in the same 'virtual room. Father started as Software Engineer in the bol.com security department and son started as... Software Engineer in the security department, doing his final intern assignment.
We have got many examples of father and son working relationships, One of the most famous at the moment are Max and Jos Verstappen. And we know more in the F1 (Hamilton in the past, Stroll). And of course, we know about company’s set up by one and succeeded by the other. So, really interesting to find out how that works in IT.
This story gave us a lot of hooks to discuss different aspects of our Engineering Culture and Way of Working. Besides the fact that we had a very proud…
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Mar 31, 2021
Software engineers on Duty - so you sleep well at night
The why and what of our Software engineers on Duty Let's be honest about this, nobody likes to be woken up at night to react to an alert whether it's a text- or whatsapp message, (automated) phone call or traditional pager. But every company taking his 24/7 run seriously has to organize their on call duty in a scalable and sustainable way. Initially bol.com organized it in a traditional way, meaning a team of system engineers with different specialism took care of the duty.
_*What this episode covers*_
Only a couple of years ago we realized we needed Software Engineers in this setup as well. In this episode we ask our guests everything about this journey so you can learn from this.We explore aspects and explain why you sleep well at night
* Why did we start the Software Engineer on Duty (SoD) initiative?
* What does the current SoD look like?
* What is the relation between SRE and SoD at bol,com?
* What are the prerequisites for a team to hand over responsibilities to SoD?…
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Mar 26, 2021
What you should know building a Tech Lead community
Don't miss our story of the introduction of the Tech Leads During the podcast, you will find out what Tech Leads are and why we need to build this community of Tech Leads at bol.com. You will learn how we approached this and avoid hiding the Tech Leads in ivory towers. The two tech leads and an IT director share best practices and pitfalls (and what we learned from them). The Why and What of our Tech Lead Community Tech Lead Community Why did we start to define the role? What is the Tech Lead for bol.com, Responsibilities Product Tech Lead Space Tech Lead It's a fun challenge and it's taking time" - Eduardo da Silva The backlog of the tech leads Backlog of community Tech Radar Tech Vision Backlog Space Tech Leads Cloud Migration Backlog of products Examples Introduction of the role (process) Definition Scale, number of Tech Leads needed Rollout / Hiring part Building the Tech Lead Community Lessons Learned so far Best Practices Pitfalls / Challenges.
_*Guests*_
* Alexandra Egher; P…
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Mar 2, 2021
Applied Improv in Business
Introduction Peter is very honest in this episode (the stage is not the place he is really comfortable at) and Peter Paul is sharing his first experience with Improv (is it a small trauma Peter Paul?). So time to talk about Improv, Improvisation Theatre and applied Improv because we do want to learn about it and we are really curious how this relates to our Tech Community. Our guest Burgert prepared this along with these main topics Mindset, Skills, Culture, Structures and Who benefits. Mindset - Relates to the Improv Manifesto Making your partner look good over making yourself look good. Saying yes and over saying yes but. Playing in the moment overthinking and talking about the past of the future. Everything is an offer. There are no mistakes. Be average. Make a strong choice and stick to it. Skills Listening. Making choices. Speaking with confidence. Connecting/collaborating with others. Mental agility. Staying calm in uncertainty. Role flexibility. Culture Safe to make "mistakes" - happy accidents. The positive atmosphere of acceptance. Open to what emerges. Respect and value for others. Courage. Commitment. Focus. Structures Games, formats. Who does benefit I - The Individual We - The Team Everybody - The Organization.
_*Guests*_
* Rob de Groot; systems- and metrics engineer in the Technical Platform.
* Burgert Kirsten; Way of working coach in Platform - Innovation Support. He previously appeared in the Techlab post on human systems engineering.
_*Notes*_
-
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Feb 18, 2021
Google Assistant - The potential of brand recognition
Introduction In July 2019 we had our first podcast episode on voice and Google Assistant. Back then Marieke and Marvin introduced us to the future of interaction by voice. In this episode, we dive into the potential of brand recognition. Many people in The Netherlands will recognize the voice we use in our commercials on radio, television and social media as the voice of bol.com.
_*What this episode covers*_
The value of this brand recognition is the starting point of the journey to get this voice into the Google Assistant. By doing so we differentiate from our competitors who are using the 'regular' Google Assistant voice.
Join us to see how we can increase brand recognition with Google Assistant.
_*Guests*_
* Kristiaan Hoogendoorn; system engineer in the Site Reliability Team and Young Professional
* Dave van Kasteren; software engineer in the Logistics domain and Young Professional
_*Notes*_
In an earlier episode, we explained how we started our voice journey and enabled…
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Feb 4, 2021
The YP Bookclub - Never Split the Difference
Introduction Another week another book discussion. Maybe we can start a second Techlab Podcast dedicated to interesting books? We got some great responses on the last week’s episode about team topologies and we had a good opportunity. So it is time for the Never Split the Difference - Podcast. In earlier episodes, we talked with YP’s about their side projects (behind the mask - platform for the hospital to share experiences and Real-time sales dashboard), about the YP program itself and participating in competitions, the BAPC2020. This time we sit together with representatives of the YP program because they started something really cool.
_*What this episode covers*_
The YP Bookclub. And why do I think it so cool? Because they came up with a title I wouldn’t think of Never split the difference Authors: Chris Voss Tahl Raz. Chris Voss is a former FBI hostage international kidnapping negotiator and in this book he takes you inside the world of high-stakes negotiations, revealing t…
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Jan 26, 2021
Team Topologies a DSL for organizational design
Introduction A lot of people involved in the design and structuring of organizations could learn a lot from the book Team Topologies. Our guest describes it in the episode a Domain Specific Language (DSL) for organizational design and evolution. The header of the website and the subtitle of the suggest that it is the way for organizing business and technology teams for fast flow. In the episode, we discuss the 4 kind of teams and the 3 ways of interactions between these teams that are at the core of Team Topologies.
_*What this episode covers*_
Besides that, we cover the fundamental topics like Conway's Law, Cognitive Load and share examples of the use at bol.com.
_*Guests*_
* Eduardo da Silva - Space Tech Lead and sociotechnical architect
_*Notes*_
Blog post by Eduardo on Team Topologies
The book Team Topologies
Our previous podcast on sociotechnical architecture
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Jan 22, 2021
TypeScript, where we love strict
Introduction It sparked in the episode Interactive heavy applications we should record a podcast episode on TypeScript. Around the same time, we came in contact with Hackages. A company focusing on learning tech.
_*What this episode covers*_
Time to bring the engineers together and dive deeper into TypeScript.
Typescript is mentioned amongst the 5 most promising languages in 2020.
We talk about:
* What is typescript and how do you benefit?
* What are good implementation strategies?
* Bol.com examples
* Examples from Hackages
* Maturity in the usage of Typescript
_*Guests*_
* Niels van Midden; Front End software engineer at bol.com
* Davy Engone; Software Engineer at Hackages (the– The guy that is going to make you use/adapt TypeScript
* Kasper Peulen; Fullstack engineer at bol.com with focus on Front End
_*Notes*_
Refactoring your code blogpost, one of the areas typescript is being used in bol.com
Typescript home
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Jan 13, 2021
GraphQL - start but start small
Introduction We want to share our approach to IT to learn and entertain you. In this episode, we are happy to have an external guest at the table discussing with our internal guest. GraphQL stands for Graph Query Language and is used for interacting with services from the frontend. We are talking about API's here.
_*What this episode covers*_
Explore with us the possibilities this approach has to offer and how it could even help you to speeds up innovation in the front-end.
Like our guest mentions:GraphQL is a specification not an implementation
Topics
We discussed the following topics
* What is GraphQL?
* What problems does it solve?
* When should you avoid it?
* Do you need additional security measures?
* How is it used at bol.com?
* What is (a)typical for the use of this Query Language at bol.com?
* What does a development team need to get started?
* How do you document what you can query?
* What is the future?
_*Guests*_
* Albert Groothedde - Software eng…
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Jan 4, 2021
BAPC2020 - Olympic spirit or serious business?
Introduction No rhythm like algorithms. We have been talking in the podcast about programming contest before. For example, about our own Spaces Championship and Advent of code, which also takes place at the end of the year.
_*What this episode covers*_
Today we’ll be talking to some participants in the BAPC - The Benelux Algorithm Programming Contest.
Like stated on the website of BAPC, it is a contest in which about 90 teams from leading universities in Luxemburg, Belgium and The Netherlands participate. The teams have to solve a series of algorithmic problems and puzzles. The BAPC 2020 was held on December 12th at the Delft University of Technology and is organized by Mathematics Informatics Study Association ‘Christiaan Huygens’
Topics discussed:
* What is BAPC2020?
* Serious business
* Strict rules
* Two bol.com teams competing, why?
* How is it organized? Virtual, gathering?
* What kind of problems to solve?
* Should you be an experienced SE?
* Our own…
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Dec 18, 2020
The Storybook story
Introduction It happens a lot that listening to a podcast sparks new questions. So, after our episode on Front-End quality, we wanted to know more about Storybook. This coincided with some people reaching out to us to collaborate in the podcast.
_*What this episode covers*_
And look where we are now: creating a new podcast on this subject. We asked our selves the question: Could it be the holy grail for front end development?
Topics discussed:
* What is Storybook?
* What problems does it solve?
* How does it support app development?
* What does the Add-on ecosystem look like?
* Is there a way to do accessibility testing?
* How do we at bol.com use this tool?
* What future developments can we expect?
_*Guests*_
* Yann Braga (twitter)- Senior Front-End Engineer at FrontMen; Contributor to Storybook.
* Niels van Midden - Front-End engineer at Bol.com in the checkout team.
_*Notes*_
The Storybook page.
The presentation at Codemotion by Yann.
Yann is building a S…
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Dec 3, 2020
Service Mesh - a must have for a dynamic infrastructure
Introduction Weaving a Service Mesh for Multiple Clusters at bol.com - that was the title for the presentation our guests gave during the virtual KubeCon and CloudNativeCon 2020 earlier this year. This triggered our curiosity. We have questions like what is this service mesh about? Why do we need it? How did we implement it?.
_*Guests*_
* Remco Overdijk; Tech Lead Provisioning Fleet / Expert System Engineer at bol.com. You might know him from the episode where we spoke about Kubernetes.
* James Brook; Cloud Solutions Architect at Google
_*Notes*_
CNCF
Istio
Remco and James presenting at KubeCon/CloudNativeCon 2020
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Nov 25, 2020
Real Time Sales - In 100ms from sales to dashboard
Introduction One of the purposes of this podcast is to share our unique bol.com culture with you. Traditions play an important part in culture. So, in this episode, we share a view on the evolution of a tradition.
_*What this episode covers*_
A tradition that underlines our focus on data. In this sales season, everybody in bol.com wants to know how we are doing, preferably Real-Time. With the latest version of the Real-Time Sales dashboard, our guests managed to get the information within 100ms from sales to the dashboard.
If you are one of the people that spent maybe a little too much time watching the results of the election in the US of A unfold on CNN or another network, you could catch the bug of this tradition too. We have a magic board, but we don’t have the talking heads that came with it....Background
In this episode, we talk about that one screen all bol.com colleagues have open all day in this season period. The initial version which was born back in 2004 and got the n…
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Nov 19, 2020
To become official F/OSS committer and eventually PMC member
Introduction In this episode we are sharing something that is unique at least in the Tech Community here at bol.com. To become official F/OSS committer and eventually PMC member. Without spoiling too much, I think this contribution will make a positive impact far beyond the bol.com Tech landscape and serve in an enormous number of companies. Helping engineers all over the planet.
_*What this episode covers*_
Hoping to inspire you as well to become official F/OSS committer and eventually PMC member.
Our guest is the first bol.com employee to become official committer to the Apache Logging Services. A well known, widely used Free and Open Source Software project (F/OSS). The umbrella for all kinds of logging stuff including the very well-known Log4j. And timing of the recording couldn't be better. The night before Volkan received the invitation to become PMC member. The project management committee of the Apache Logging Services project.To become official F/OSS committer and eventuall…
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Nov 6, 2020
Proof data consistency in a micro service landscape
Introduction Even if it doesn't appeal to you, you might want to think about it when you work in a larger microservice landscape or have a serious big data platform...Proof data consistency in a microservice landscape. When we google this subject I already get 1.2 MLN results so there’s something going on here. To ensure data consistency several practices are available: Saga Pattern Reconciliation Event Log Orchestration vs. ChoreographySingle-Write With EventsChange-First Event-First Consistency by Design Accepting Inconsistency But in this episode, we won't go over these practices.
_*What this episode covers*_
We will dive into the verification part. The proof of the correct operation of your implementation.
Within bol.com we implemented a Data Quality Service (DQS). Actually, the second generation is already in place. The first generation focused on the immutable data in the 2nd improved version mutable data is covered as well. We will go over these questions to explain how we…
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Oct 28, 2020
Front End Quality in an interactive-heavy application
Introduction In this episode, we show a little of our front-end love. And our love for testing and enjoying the quality of a good front-end. It was time for that because the last time we talked about front end related stuff was quit some episodes ago.
_*What this episode covers*_
We are going to talk about Front End Quality in an interactive-heavy application.
First, we discuss two statements/dilemmas:
* Testing is always balancing. Time vs. Quality: How much time to spent on getting all the cases (interactions) and edge cases clear vs. the level of quality.
* Testing in non-pro is overrated, Canary testing is the future
After that we will dive into the topic by going over the subjects:
* Sketching the context & share the example
* Explain the Front end architecture
* Discuss the test setup and how it is different from the rest of webshop- including tools and frameworks used
* Lessons Learned
Interaction in the checkout results in changed components(Image: https://cd…
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Oct 19, 2020
Behind the Mask - Young Professionals contributing to the online platform for healthcare
Today we take a look behind the mask. The moment we recorded this podcast episode the 2nd wave of Corona is hitting The Netherlands. In the first wave, the Corona crisis was causing a lot of pressure and stress on our healthcare system and nurses & caretakers specifically. With a couple of IT Young Professionals, we are helping a great project called “Behind The Mask”. It is a joint effort of UMC Utrecht, TU Delft and Erasmus MC.
_*What this episode covers*_
The project aims to help nurses maintain mental and physical health by providing an online platform where they can share experiences and stories and help each other by giving tips, support and sharing articles.
As Bol.com we are helping them with a team of Young Professionals. We are providing them with technical expertise and guidance to get this unique platform up and running.
_*Guests*_
* Nathan de Bruijn; Software Engineer in bol.com started in team Hedwig (marketing campaigns) and participant of the YP program
* A…
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Oct 12, 2020
Let's get Ethical
"This is how we do IT", is the slogan of our Techlab site and podcast. Every now and then we reach out to external guests to learn from them and exchange ideas. We are really happy to have this external guest in our show to talk about "Let's get ethical".
_*What this episode covers*_
This multi-talent released her book ‘De bubbel’ mid 2019 after 15 years at Google, Spotify and Booking.com. She writes columns for the Dutch newspaper FD. One of those was the reason for me to reach out and invite her to the show. Currently, she is advising startups and scale-ups on their commercial and marketing strategy and she is a mentor for the SVDJ Accelerator (Foundation for Dutch journalism).
In this episode, we first get to know Sanne and her career a bit better to understand where the statement "let's get ethical" comes from. We discuss her book and the story of this woman who starts her career in a start-up and get dragged into "situations that have to be shared" as Sanne explains. The re…
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Sep 24, 2020
Sociotechnical Architecture to maximize impact
In this episode, we touch a field that we don’t explore that much, Architecture. To be more precise: Sociotechnical Architecture to maximize impact. In a way, it's strange since Peter Paul has worked as an architect for quite a while.
_*What this episode covers*_
On the website of our guest, esilva.net, it's called “co-design organizational and technical systems to maximize impact”. We think there is so much to explore in these words Sociotechnical Architecture so we asked Eduardo to join this show.
(Image: https://cdn.sanity.io/images/qxrxmo3r/techlab-prd/b1d94d3dfef08a393cc6680af37d51e839904767-1596x876.jpg)
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We discuss what it is and also, why it is fundamental to maximize the impact of our products and the teams building & owning them. We discuss the 5 traits:
* Conway's Law
* Team Cognitive Load
* Team Boundaries & Interrelations
* Continuous Discovery & Delivery in Team
* Understand your context & Design based on that
And to make it tangible…
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Sep 16, 2020
Moving to multilingual, first step Wallonia
Bonjour ! Félicitations messieurs, il y a seulement deux semaines, que le bol.com application multilingue est disponible dans les app-stores.That's how we started this episode. Congratulate our guests with the launch of the multilingual bol.com app. It was launched in the French-speaking part of Belgium, Wallonia.
_*What this episode covers*_
With this launch, over 5 million French-speaking Belgians were able to shop in their native language.
In this episode, we dive into this move to multilingual that started two years ago. After the 'why' and 'when' we go into the 'how'. From both an architectural and project management perspective, this is really interesting. We share the best practices and learnings and close off with a small peak in what's next.
_*Guests*_
* Jan Willem Mathijssen: Business Architect/Program Manager/Innovation lead multilingual app
* Johan Wijnmalen: IT project manager at bol.com
_*Notes*_
Bert Kruismans – Belgium celebrity
Portfolio management by ag…
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Sep 10, 2020
Site Reliability Engineering; that's music to my ears!
Site Reliability Engineering, or SRE, is seen by a lot of people as the next logical step in developing DevOps capabilities. SRE takes concepts from software engineering and puts them to use in an operations context. Over the last 3 years, we have been experimenting with SRE approaches and gradually integrating them into our DevOps way of working.
_*What this episode covers*_
In this episode, we share the experience we gained on our journey.
_*Guests*_
* Bart Enkelaar; Software Engineer and SRE advocate in bol.com and external speaker and friend of the show (SRE during spaces summit 2019)
* Rob Klein Gunnewiek; System Engineer Extraordinaire and Site Reliability Engineering guru.
_*Notes*_
Bart's SRE presentation on SRE during spaces summit 2019
The starting point for SRE at Google.
Books on Site Reliability Engineering
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Sep 3, 2020
Shifting gears to maximize your personal productivity
Welcome back after the summer holidays! Hope you were able to enjoy an awesome break. We took some time to prepare some great podcast episodes for you. Holidays, always a nice moment to reflect on things. One of the things might be your personal development and productivity.
_*What this episode covers*_
Saying yes to too many things, do these things add to my personal development, how do you keep track on all these commitments, how do you ensure you don’t drown and eventually don’t be productive at all. Sounds familiar to you these questions? Keep listening, we dive into the personal experiences with the two guests of the show.
We discuss some nice statements on personal productivity:
* If I am invited for a meeting and I don’t know my value/contribution I skip the meeting.
* I say “Yes” too easily so I need a strict WoW that helps and remind me to say no.
* There’s no I in a team but there’s an I in Winner (Team over Person or not?).
* Tools like GTD, Pomodor…
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Jul 29, 2020
Simulation, building the digital twin of our warehouse on experiments
In this episode, we take another look, a fresh perspective on Data Science for Logistics. In earlier episodes, we talked about related topics like Forecasting and crafting a Picking Algorithm using Data Science. With the guests of this episode, we dive into two specific challenges in the warehousing domain, the cost-based selection is the first one and the second is put-away with simulation as the red line. During the recording, we found out that our guests have a big dream: realizing the Digital Twin of the bol.com fulfilment centre. But at the same time, they are very practical and they explain how they started with the two examples and how this will eventually add up to the digital twin.
_*What this episode covers*_
To speak with them:It would be very nice to create a digital twin of the warehouse to simulate the whole warehouse to create not local but a global optimum.
_*Guests*_
* Christianne Wisse – Data Scientist at bol.com and a professional doctorate in engineering at…
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Jul 16, 2020
Looking back at 55 episodes
We changed roles for this unique episode. And why is that? We are going to look back on the first 55 episodes. So, Peter Paul and Peter will be the guests of this show and Niels Kuiper and Bruno Lauwers will be your host. Our motto is 'sharing is caring'.
_*What this episode covers*_
So, practise what you preach and share the podcast journey as well. That was what we had in mind. We share how it all started over a year ago. We dive into the learnings and memorable moments. We were asked about our dreams and plans for the next 55 episodes. What did we learn from each other? We share our own favourite podcasts and of course the advice we can give to people that want to start. Spoiler: just start and have fun....
_*Guests*_
Peter Brouwers - Team manager in IT. He started as a Service Delivery Manager and is now leading one of our Site Reliability Teams, Project Leads and Software Architects.
Peter Paul van de Beek - Working as an IT team manager in bol.com. Started at bol.com as soft…
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Jul 9, 2020
Love your logging
When it comes to developing software we use the adagio: You built it, You run it, You love it. Same should hold for all the -ilities or non-functional requirements. So, one should love their logging. One of the subjects that we did not really touch yet in our podcast is non-functionals.
_*What this episode covers*_
Today we take a closer look at logging. An aspect that typically fills some of the non-functionals or -ilities. Love your logs and Love the people after you.
For the first time in the history of the bol.com Techlab podcast, we are able to provide 5 free eBooks about today's topic. Because that was the starter for this episode. We were contacted by the publisher of this book if we were interested in an episode about logging with the author of this book. So, we came up with the idea to combine it with the bol.com way of logging. During the episode, we will explain what’s needed to obtain one of these codes.
We start our logging journey talking about moving away from mono…
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Jul 2, 2020
Great products are build on a great Product Architecture
Today we explore our product architecture. We have been talking with Jim van de Waal about product organizations. We spoke to our Agile at Scale friends about product organisations and Agile at Scale. Now it is time to talk about the foundation to build these on.
_*What this episode covers*_
We call this the product architecture.
We believe that a lot of companies are in the same transformation. Years ago we dealt with a 'monolith architecture'. We transformed this architecture in a 'microservices architecture'. And now it's time for the next logical step in evolution: the transition into a 'product architecture'. We discuss why it is needed and what it will solve. We asked our guests about the steps we took so far and the first pilots we are starting. Above all we wanted to know what we learnt so far. If you want to leave a reaction, go to Twitter @bol_com_Techlab, mail us at techlab@bol.com or reach out to the hosts directly.
_*Guests*_
* Marcel van Leeuwen – Enterprise Arch…
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Jun 24, 2020
Women in tech encourage inclusion in tech
Update 11th march 2021 This week started with the International Womens Day. #ChooseToChallenge #IWD2021 We wanted to start a new experiment so that's why we started the experiment with this episode.We want to add automated transcription to our posts. Podcasts are a great way to share knowledge but unfortunately people who are deaf or hearing impaired are excluded.
_*What this episode covers*_
That is not what we want.Introduction
Once again we are sharing our diversity and inclusion stories. We discuss how women in tech at bol.com encourage inclusion in tech. The idea for this podcast stems from of course the importance of the subject but also from the diversity and inclusion month we have at bol.com. In June and November last year we spoke about diversity and women in tech in the podcast with several guests. Let’s see what the latest developments and insights are, given that there has been a lot of attention to the subject in the world around us in the last weeks.
In our opinion…
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Jun 17, 2020
Innovation Rhythm - How to drink less coffee and achieve more
Ever since we recorded the podcast about Agile @ Scale, we wanted some of the people involved again in our show. We care about the topic. Think there is a lot to tell and learn.
_*What this episode covers*_
And it is of interest to a lot of our listeners. That is why at least we think it is awesome that this episode is about Innovation Rhythm - How to drink less coffee and achieve more.
In the first Agile@Scale episode we talked about the 'Why' of Agile@Scale, the flight levels of Klaus Leopold. OGSM and OKR processes and the first step of this transition. We talk July 2019, so time to find out what happened since.
_*Guests*_
* Judith Verkerk – People Lead in Retail Technologies at bol.com; She is in the show because of her contributions as Domain Lead for Retailer bol.com in the group of Domain Leads.
* Hessel de Gelder – Agile Innovation Lead at bol.com. Given that this is the second appearance in our podcast he now is “Friend of the show”.
_*Notes*_
Another episod…
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Jun 10, 2020
How is life with Jim van der Waal - Product Manager at Onefootball
Almost a year ago we spoke to Jim van der Waal, a former colleague and now working as a Product Manager at OneFootball. Back then he had just delivered his presentation: “Scary close to autonomous teams” during the Spaces Summit 2019. Recently Jim posted a range of blog posts, with topics like: Product Owner vs. Product Manager: what is the difference? Making SLO’s fast Product Teams: striving for Autonomy & reaching for Business Agility Which triggered questions like: Would the teams be fully autonomous now? How are things with Jim? What did Onefootball discover and learn this year?.
_*Guests*_
Jim van der Waal; now works as Product Manager at Onefootball in Berlin. Before that, he started as Information Analyst in 2014 at bol.com and built up a broad experience in roles like Scrum Master, IT Project Manager and Product Owner. Always engaged with how can I improve the product, the organization and ... himself.
_*Notes*_
Jims blogs on medium.com
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Jun 3, 2020
Dealing with stress in the tech sector
In this episode, we are exploring a topic that is definitely work-related but not that tech-related: Dealing with stress in the tech sector. At bol.com we have at least twice a year an employee engagement survey. Some of the questions are about how the workload is perceived.
_*What this episode covers*_
If you look at the results they differ per domain. So, context is very important. As is being pressured by deadlines.
Our guest reached out to us with the following message:"For all of us working in the tech sector most of us have felt the presence of anxiety from time to time. Especially when a big project has a hard deadline which cannot be pushed further in the future, or maybe sometimes due to the pressure we put on ourselves in order to "show the world we're capable and worth our position". Of course this subject can be way more relatable in nowadays where the pandemic has hit the world causing us to change our work habits, which might cause drops in productivity. Sometimes this…
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May 28, 2020
Spaces Summit goes virtual - Organising our internal tech conference
Spaces Summit in corona time means Spaces Summit goes virtual. Maybe you remember from last year that we have an annual internal tech conference at bol.com. Given the measures, in place, we can’t come together.
_*What this episode covers*_
So, we go for a digital online equivalent. We wanted to know what it takes to organise an event like this?
But we found out there's an even more important step before. It's getting the answer to the question "what are we going to do?" Many people and organisations who are organizing conferences, meetups, summits and other gatherings will recognize this. The preparation already started months before the date of the event. And than Corona kicked in and it wasn't safe and allowed anymore to do this event. So there's this question "what are we going to do?"
We start with a brief explanation of the Space Summit, what is it and why are we doing this in bol.com? After that, we dive into this "what are we going to do?" question. After the decision to g…
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May 20, 2020
Using Data Science for Marketing Attribution
The topic of this show is exactly why we like to be the hosts of this podcast. We learn a lot about all areas in our business. In this show, we dive into the marketing domain.
_*What this episode covers*_
We will learn about models like multi-touch, lift studies, time decay, and more. We talk about Data Science for Marketing Attribution.
Put simply, marketing attribution is the analytical science of determining which marketing tactics are contributing to sales or conversions. And then there is a Data Science twist to this.
_*Guests*_
* Ernst Kuiper; Data Scientist and Craft Lead Data Science
* Ivan Budincevic; Senior Software Engineer Data Science
_*Notes*_
Ivan refers to measuring 2.0 (M2) Measuring 2.0 – Streaming measurements; this episode discusses the source which is used for Marketing Attribution.
Search Engine Advertising and and Search Engine Optimization (SEA and SEO)
Bol.com afiliate partner program (APM)
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Apr 23, 2020
Opening our Data Treasure Chest with Tableau
Turning to business analytics this episode, we discover it’s a broad field. Business Intelligence hasn't been discussed that much yet in our podcast. So, we are excited to learn more.
_*What this episode covers*_
In an earlier episode, we discussed moving our Big Data platform to the cloud. This blog is described how we move our data platform into the cloud.
What tools do we need to get the data out and have all our users use it to their advantage? One of the tools is Tableau and together with our guests of the show, we dive into everything around this theme. How to become data-driven? What is the role of the data coach? How can you become scaleable? The road to self-service BI, etc.
_*Guests*_
* Frans Poldervaart – Data coach and “Analytics Ambassador”
* Willem Bekkers – Business Intelligence specialist / Data Coach
_*Notes*_
Tableau; the BI tool used by 50% of the company to do their daily analysis
Atscale; the layer in between BigQuery and Tableau
BigQuery; Go…
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Apr 15, 2020
Python for Tools, Data Science and more
Let’s look at another programming language we use at bol.com: Python. At bol.com we use Python for Tools, Data Science and more. It has been around since 1991.
_*What this episode covers*_
It was created by a Dutch guy: Guido van Rossum. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability. The language's core philosophy is summarized in the document The Zen of Python (PEP 20), which includes aphorisms such as:
* Beautiful is better than ugly.
* Explicit is better than implicit.
* Simple is better than complex.
* Complex is better than complicated.
* Readability counts.
All well, but what do we do with it? What do we use it for?
In the earlier episode “How we tame Google Cloud resources with R2D2” we discussed the Deployment tool we built for our Software Engineers. This tool has been built in Python.
But we do more great stuff in bol.com with python, at least that’s what we heard in our tech community. We asked around and, not surprisingly, ended up in the Data Sc…
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Apr 8, 2020
Covid-19 Trilogy Part III - Adapting our way of working
Covid-19 rules the world, so it determines the subjects for our podcast. Just like others, we moved from studio recording to home recording. Basically working from home (WFH) and adapting our way of working.
_*What this episode covers*_
So we think it’s time to spent three smaller episodes on this subject as well and share our experiences.
We build up a trilogy which will cover the following subjects:
* Episode Office Automation: creating the prerequisites for WFH. A peek behind the screen of our Office Automation hero’s. Sharing how they prepared and showed their contribution in these uncertain times.
* Episode Season load: What are the Consequences of the Corona measurements on our e-commerce platform and IT systems.
* Episode Way of Working: How we moved from 1 office into 2000 offices and how our 600 people tech community adapted to this new reality.
As e-commerce player we are in the fortunate situation we can continue working and we can even contribute to helping p…
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Apr 6, 2020
Covid-19 Trilogy Part II - Season Load and season mindset
Covid-19 rules the world, so it determines the subjects for our podcast. Just like others, we moved from studio recording to home recording. Basically working from home (WFH).
_*What this episode covers*_
So we think it’s time to spent three smaller episodes on this subject as well and share our experiences.
We build up a trilogy which will cover the following subjects:
* Episode Office Automation: creating the prerequisites for WFH. A peek behind the screen of our Office Automation hero’s. Sharing how they prepared and showed their contribution in these uncertain times.
* Episode Season load: What are the Consequences of the Corona measurements on our e-commerce platform and IT systems.
* Episode Way of Working: How we moved from 1 office into 2000 offices and how our 600 people tech community adapted to this new reality.
In the second episode of our trilogy, we talk about season mindset. This period isn't a peak in a normal year. Being an online business we see people…
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Apr 2, 2020
Covid-19 Trilogy-part I - How Office Automation set the prerequisites for WFH
Covid-19 rules the world, so it determines the subjects for our podcast. Just like others, we moved from studio recording to home recording. Basically working from home (WFH).
_*What this episode covers*_
So we think it’s time to spent three smaller episodes on this subject as well and share our experiences.
We build up a trilogy which will cover the following subjects:
* Episode Office Automation: creating the prerequisites for WFH. A peek behind the screen of our Office Automation hero’s. Sharing how they prepared and showed their contribution in these uncertain times.
* Episode Season load: What are the Consequences of the Corona measurements on our e-commerce platform and IT systems.
* Episode Way of Working: How we moved from 1 office into 2000 offices and how our 600 people tech community adapted to this new reality
In this first part of the Corona Trilogy, we dive into the Office Automation area. All of sudden everybody who used to work in the office has to work f…
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Mar 4, 2020
Chaos Engineering - every incident is a missed experiment
Chaos engineering... mostly in IT we are focused on structure and order. So, what is it and what can it bring? We go over the steps: Start by defining ‘steady state’ as some measurable output of a system that indicates normal behaviour Hypothesize that this steady-state will continue in both the control group and the experimental group Introduce variables that reflect real-world events like servers that crash, hard drives that malfunction, network connections that are severed, etc. Try to disprove the hypothesis by looking for a difference in steady-state between the control group and the experimental group. .
_*Guests*_
Luc Kleeven – Software engineer mostly working in retail platform things.
_*Notes*_
The book that was referred to, Learning Chaos Engineering by Russ Miles
Prepare for the Unknown and the Unknowable, Crossfit podcast
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Feb 27, 2020
Crossfit - fit for life and fit for purpose
Like the Romans already said: Mens sana in corpore sano. A healthy mind in a healthy body. One sentence in an article from one of our colleagues triggered us: "Prepare for the unknown and unknowable". We really wondered, how does this help him in his daily job? We talk about crossfit.
_*What this episode covers*_
About ring musle-up or a handstand push-up. Of course we relate it to our daily practise. How do you benefit from it in your job and even in making career decisions. We talk about the value of the community and the role of the coach. Setting objectives and push limits when possible or de-load when needed. We thank our guests for their openness.
_*Guests*_
* Maarten Roosendaal; Agile IT Architect & Crossfit Level 1 Trainer and former professional basketball player
* Daniela Carbunaru; Team Manager IT at bol.com and passionate crossfitter
_*Notes*_
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Feb 19, 2020
Utrecht JUG - Test Architectures & Hacking into Java web apps
We take a sneak peek into the Utrecht JAVA User Group (JUG) Meetup next week, February 24th. Topics will be: are End-to-End test architectures a Dead End road? And there will be some live hacking: Breaking into your Java web app. This will really give a feel for the importance of security.
_*What this episode covers*_
Besides that, we discuss with one of the founders of the Utrecht JUG why it's so great to be part of a community. He explains the great initiatives like for instance the Speaker Incubator the JUG offers.
_*Guests*_
* Roy Braam; a Software Craftsman at JPoint. He loves Java, DevOps, and everything that comes with developing good solutions.
* Thodoris Bais; Utrecht Java User Group Founder & Leader, Scrum Master @ABN Amro, Coach.
_*Notes*_
The Meetup
Utrecht Java User Group
Previous podcast on testing
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Feb 12, 2020
Performance testing the chat app
With only a few weeks to go to our peak season, we wanted to ensure that the chat app on our webshop was performing up to par. An important part of our customers' questions is answered via this chat app. You can feel the importance of it to be able to handle a load of questions during our peak season.
_*What this episode covers*_
Both our customers and our customer service experts couldn't be let down.
Given the short notice, we asked Ymor to help us with their knowledge and experience to perform a performance test together with us and the supplier of the chat software. The aim was to access if we could handle the predicted peak load. The team from Ymor was on stage to share the case. A great opportunity for us as well to sit down with them and share in the podcast as well. Why? Because we became really curious. In our perception, we have an environment in which we validate performance so what did we miss and what did Ymor bring to the table.
_*Guests*_
* Marcel Wigman; Technisc…
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Feb 5, 2020
PostgreSQL - Migration and Performance
This episode has 2 subjects: PostgreSQL migration and performance. The two guests of our show will present during the PostgreSQL User group meetup at bol.com which started shortly after this recording. The topic of the meetup is introduced as PG ConfEU - The Dutch talks..
_*Guests*_
* Martijn Dashorst – a software engineer for over 20 years and has worked with various databases over the years, including DB2, Oracle, Sqlserver, SABDB and PostgreSQL. As a Java (enterprise) developer, he has worked in the education sector for over 12 years and developed student information systems for each of the Dutch levels of education. During those years he has worked on the open-source Java web framework Apache Wicket and given numerous presentations on that and other subjects on international conferences and meetups. Senior Software Engineer at Topicus.
* Sebastiaan Mannem – Technically driven database, container and cloud specialist. Earned his stripes and was battle-hardened by the Dutch…
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Jan 29, 2020
Experimentation - it starts with courage and curiosity
The two guests of our show work in our experimentation team. They set a target at the beginning of 2019: Our goal is to help hundreds of people at bol.com to run experiments (more effectively). So after a year of experimenting, we are very curious about what they learned and achieved.
_*What this episode covers*_
Let’s find out!
_*Guests*_
* Denise Visser; Product Manager and Experiment evangelist
* Maarten Zwart; Software Architect and data enthusiast
_*Notes*_
* Measuring 2.0 podcast
* Measuring 2.0 at Berlin Buzzwords
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Jan 23, 2020
The Spaces Championship - our code competition
It was briefly mentioned in our episode on Advent of Code. We also started an internal Coding Championship. Spaces Championship.
_*What this episode covers*_
Let’s dive into this and find out what it is all about.
From our personal experience, we know that is easier to train and improve when we are in a competition. Could it be that the same mechanism is here at work too?
Let us know when you think we should open-up this competition externally as well, goto Linkedin, mailto: techlab@bol.com or twitter us: @bol_com_Techlab
_*Guests*_
* Harmen Prins – Software Engineer in our Forecasting DS team. Has been here before in our feature of forecasting and DS, way back in May last year.
* Harsh Khandelwal – Software engineer - Sharing data with our Supplier and other partners
_*Notes*_
hackerrank.com the platform we used for the Spaces Championship
Dynamic Programming
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Jan 17, 2020
Everybody is a UX Researcher
In this episode, we talk to Marieke and Tadeusz since we were intrigued by the title of their meetup presentation: Everybody is a UX Researcher. Since we didn't consider ourselves a UX Researcher before we wanted to know more about the subject. And we wanted to find out if being a UX Researcher could also improve our daily professional lives.
_*What this episode covers*_
And in the end, we actually think it can. Hope you enjoy the talk too.
_*Guests*_
In an earlier episode, we talked with Marieke Linssen about the future of voice and it is great to have her back.
And we have Tadeusz Siudak with him we talked about UX and the benefits of failing in an earlier episode.
_*Notes*_
Lean UX
GOOB - Getting Out Of the Building
Speed dating in Design Research
Empathy - Brene Brown, Simon Sinek
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Jan 8, 2020
10 takeaways from KotlinConf
A group of Kotlin enthusiast joined KotlinConf back in December last year in Copenhagen. We invited this group to share their learnings for this conference. Two of the participants are sharing their takeaways from KotlinConf with you. Our first podcast was about the adoption of Kotlin at bol.com.
_*What this episode covers*_
Hope you will also enjoy this episode and our second season.
_*Guests*_
* Cas Plattel; Software Engineer in the Fintech domain
* Oscar Spruit; Software Engineer in the Apps domain
_*Notes*_
KotlinConf
KotlinConf 2019 on youtube
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Dec 19, 2019
Advent of Code 2019
The subject of this podcast episode is totally in line with the holiday season. Time for the advent calendars in many different formats. One of these formats is the Advent of Code 2019! The bol.com Tech Community is participating in this event.
_*What this episode covers*_
In this episode, we talk with 2 participants and discover what it is all about. We explore what it could do. Our software engineers see it as a good way to sharpen their problem solving and a good exercise for the upcoming bol.com spaces programming championship. Some become really competitive.
_*Guests*_
* Erik Tillema; Software Engineer in the logistics domain.
* Carst Tankink; Software engineer, in our webshop. And both the driving force behind the bol.com community participating in this Advent of Code edition.
_*Notes*_
The Advent of Code 2019
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Dec 10, 2019
Dealing with Technical Debt - an experiment
One of the aspects that keep popping up in software development: Technical Debt. Some created on purpose, for example, to get features into production fast. Some just came into existence... So, what is Technical Debt? And how to fight it. According to the definition* it can be compared to monetary debt.
_*What this episode covers*_
If technical debt is not repaid, it can accumulate 'interest', making it harder to implement changes later on.
A couple of weeks ago George approached us and said, it might be an interesting topic to discuss because in my team an approach to technical debt is experimented with. So, listen to this episode to find out with our guests.
_*Guests*_
* George Katsikopoulos; Young Professional and Software Engineer in the team focusing on Collection Processing, Fraud & Risk.
* Sietse Dols; Product Owner of this team 4E.
_*Notes*_
*definition according to Wikipedia.
Boys scout rule
Other thoughts on refactoring code.
By zooming out and thinking we take…
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Dec 4, 2019
How we tame Google Cloud resources with R2D2
How we tame Google Cloud resources with R2D2. We had some episodes on the cloud already. Now it’s time to discuss how bol.com combines the promises of the cloud and their requirements for Reproducibility and Reliability.
_*What this episode covers*_
For instance, balance infinite resources and ultimate autonomy with security.
Within bol.com we developed R2D2. R2D2 stands for our Reproducible Resource Deployment Definition tool which combines the functions of Terraform, Cloud SDK and Puppet Labs.
It helps us to ensure Recovery, Security, Self-service, Stability and Scalability in our move to the cloud.The reason we think we need to secure these aspects: Bol.com has over 100 scrum teams innovating our IT-landscape with over 500 services. We must secure our 10 million customers' data and the data of our 23.000 sellers.
_*Guests*_
* Jeroen Schutrup; Site Reliability Engineer in the team that develops the R2D2.
* Quiran Storey; Site Reliability Engineer - just like Jeroen solvin…
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Nov 27, 2019
Hackathon
The angle for this episode of our podcast is hackathons. At the time of the recording, there was one going on in our headquarters in Utrecht. What is a hackathon? Why do we organise them? And we talk about some of the initiatives at the current hackathon. The results of the hackathon were showed during the demotime a week after the hackathon.
_*What this episode covers*_
Out of the 20 projects the jury came up with a top 3 and handed over the cup.
Demo Time - Jury handing over the First Price!(Image: https://cdn.sanity.io/images/qxrxmo3r/techlab-prd/cc56dca8eb2deb92c953014c004e8f2a5bbcdc7a-507x380.jpg)
_*Guests*_
* Kardelen Hatun - Software engineer in the Retails Platform Space and organiser of this edition of the hackathon.
* Edith Kanters - One of our robotics enthusiasts. So, guess what her project is about....
* Anastasija Efremovska - Software Engineer for our Tech Platform.
* Andras Herczeg - Software engineer, one of our Young Professionals.
_*Notes*_
Some of our…
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Nov 20, 2019
Young Professional Program
In this episode, we talk about growing talent. We dive into how we approach this as bol.com in our Young Professional Program. Also called YPs.
_*What this episode covers*_
On our recruitment web site, we call this “the IT journey of a lifetime”. Is that just marketing or is there more to it?
_*Guests*_
* Bojan Filipovic; software engineer in team Bond, in the content fleet. Just graduated from the young professional program.
* Martin Cekodhima; software engineer in 4B – financial processing – even sexier than Bond. It's FinTech in an e-commerce company, need we say more?
* Remco Snelders; Had several roles in bol.com both in Tech and other parts like Business Development. He is currently the lead for the Young Professional Program.
_*Notes*_
Our next Tech Talent Night to explore our IT Young Professional Program – an unforgettable 2-year journey at the largest online retailer of the Netherlands & Belgium.
Online interview with one of our Young Professionals.
Ch…
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Nov 14, 2019
The state of Reactive Streams
The state of Reactive Streams - watch the presentation and listen to the podcast. International Keynote speaker Oleh Dokuka gave a presentation on the state of Reactive Streams at bol.com. We took advantage of this opportunity and interviewed him for the podcast.
_*What this episode covers*_
The Reactive Streams specification is state of the art for asynchronous, non-blocking data streams with the fine-grained flow control. Clearly, that was done for a good future... but, does it have any future nowadays? How other programming ecosystems reacted to the appearance of the reactive-streams standard and did they adopted that standard?
(Video: https://youtu.be/8iRea_qwOC8)
presentation starts at 6:25.
_*Guests*_
Oleh Dokuka is a senior software engineer at Netifi and co-author of the book, “Hands-On Reactive Programming in Spring 5”. He is an active committer to Project Reactor and RSocket, as well as a contributor to Reactive GRPC. In 2019, he was a finalist in the Oracle Groundb…
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Nov 7, 2019
Women in Tech
This episode is on women in tech. Our guests are two speakers at the upcoming European Women in Tech Conference later this month in Amsterdam. To be honest, if we look at the hosts of this podcast and if we look at our guest list of the past episodes...
_*What this episode covers*_
It is still a subject that requires attention.
In an earlier episode we talked about diversity in terms of cultural aspects and in this episode we might find out what the women/men diversity brings into tech. At least that was the idea when we started. It turned into an interesting talk about among other things feedback, personal leadership and vulnerability. So not necessarily the women in tech episode. Interesting for all of of us. Hope you enjoy it.
_*Guests*_
* Petra Heesink; Started as a test engineer in development and became an Agile Coach in the Content and Marketing domain in 2018.
* Linda Viksne; Software Engineer in bol.com joined in July. Latvian-born Scotland-bred biomedical scientist t…
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Nov 1, 2019
UX Research to support the partners on our platform
In this episode, we talk about User Interfaces (UI) and User Experience(UX). Since this is a very visible topic, everybody has an opinion on it. Even though I’m not working on our webshop I get unsolicited feedback on a regular basis. Where a lot of the UX Design discussion focuses on our webshop.
_*What this episode covers*_
We choose another focus for this episode. The UI that is not common to most of our users but is very much needed for a large part of our 23.000 plaza partners. The Seller DashboarD or SDD in short. The User Interface for other retailers that sell on our platform. This is a substantial part of the turnover that starts here. So, let’s talk about UX Research focused on the platform.
The Seller Dashboard is implemented in the SWAPS that we discussed in an earlier episode of the podcast. We have looked at UX for the webshop before and discussed voice interaction patterns.
_*Guests*_
* Koen Olijve; UX designer at bol.com - special focus on the user interface…
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Oct 23, 2019
The Road to Devoxx
In this episode, we talk about a way to be inspired and inspiring others, learn from each other and grow your network: Conferences! And more in detail our colleague's road to Devoxx Belgium 2019. At bol.com we are challenged to present our stories inside and outside bol.com. Inside bol.com we have our great Spaces Summit and meetups, Outside we speak at several conferences. That seems more challenging to a lot of colleagues.
_*What this episode covers*_
Especially if it is a conference of 5 days, over 200 speakers and sessions and over 3200 attendees. And our three guests present there. They share their road to Devoxx Belgium.
_*Guests*_
* Tom Stoepker, Software Engineer and with his second presence friend of the show. Presenting "Scaling Sustainable Innovation through Team Autonomy”.
* Raul Leal, designer of the backend systems and presenting “Bol.com and the Accelerated Legacy Challenge”.
* Rene Kroon, Software Engineer and with his second presence also a friend of th…
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Oct 16, 2019
Prepare for the most wonderful time of the year - Season Readiness
In this episode we dive deeper into the IT aspects of a business topic. How to prepare for the peak load of the season – Black Friday, Sinterklaas, Christmas and even Singles Day is included. That is traditional a period where the load of basically everything increases dramatically.
_*What this episode covers*_
The slogan of the Season Readiness project that is preparing for all this is “Deliver careless holidays for our customer”.
During this period every piece of the puzzle must fit. When load triples items like scaling, reliability, page load-times, predictability, up-times and service dependencies come together. The webshop connects with appr. 60 services and downstream that amount counts up to over 600. How do we ensure that the experience of the customer is what they expect from the bol.com retail platform? And maybe even more important, how do we ensure that Sinterklaas and the Santa Claus have their presents in time avoiding this disappointed faces of kids?
_*Guests*_…
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Oct 10, 2019
Small Web Apps
Our Small Web Apps or SWAPs, in short, are something like the SOA for Front-End. We aim for separate deployable parts of the Front-End we have available for our Plaza partners, suppliers and internal users. In the Front-End we also encountered that we had teams waiting for each other before they could bring functionality to Pro. Basically, because the Front-End became a monolith. Besides that, people realized that we needed to deliver the same functionality in different Front-Ends.
_*What this episode covers*_
For instance content management for our internal product managers and for our external sellers (Plaza partners).
We had to fix both these issues and came up with what we call Small Web Apps. That can be separately deployed and work together in a portal. At the same time, they can be used in the portal that faces the plaza partners and the internal users.
_*Guests*_
Elinor Bakker; IT Architect responsible for the introduction of SWAPS back in 2015.
Stefan Nieuwenhuis; Softwa…
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Oct 3, 2019
API development for the retail platform
In this episode of the podcast, we talk about API development for the retail platform. A very important subject for a retail platform like bol.com. Given that we are a platform we have a lot of partners to interact with.
_*What this episode covers*_
To do that in a neat way we need APIs. And as a platform, we are multi-sided so we have to offer different APIs for different groups of users. So a lot of interesting aspects to cover.
_*Guests*_
Jarno Walgemoed; Owner at Sourcelabs; Software engineer with a strong focus on partner API’s at bol.com;
Willem van Schieveen; Team lead in the shopping platform; former PO of the app API, partner APIs & API Gateway. API advocate.
_*Notes*_
More about the Retailer API
More about the Open API (or Partner API)
The barcode scanner example which uses the open API functionality that is now also available in the bol.com App.
Inside in the evolution of services and autonomy and the rise of API's
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Sep 26, 2019
Redesign for the cloud – horizontal scaling
We think "the Cloud" is to broad a subject to handle in one episode of the podcast. That is why we break down our cloud journey in small pieces and go over them in separate episodes. This time we dive into "Redesign for the cloud – horizontal scaling".
_*What this episode covers*_
In an earlier episode we discussed how we moved our Big Data to the Cloud, in the Cloud as an enabler to becoming more data-driven.
When moving applications and services to the Cloud we think about redesigning them, like in this case to enable non-functionals that weren't possible in our data centre. Horizontal scaling and especially auto-scaling has enormous advantages for some of our services. Together with Rogier and Rene, we talk about new possibilities and especially about design for the cloud – horizontal scaling.
_*Guests*_
Rogier Lommers - Friend of the show and Software Architect.
Rene Kroon - Software Engineer in our Platform Space. Where we deliver the building blocks that development tea…
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Sep 11, 2019
Coaching - more impact with Human Systems Engineering
In this podcast, we talk with two of our coaches in tech about making an impact on the performance of teams and people. The reference they use to do this is called Human System Engineering. In bol.com we have different types of coaches with different focus areas. Outside tech, or bol.com wide so to say, we have coaches for careers, personal coaches and SPARK coaches.
_*What this episode covers*_
SPARK is our holocracy/network way of working.
Burgert joined bol.com recently and was asked to reflect on what he encountered during his first months. We preach autonomy which brings a lot, but all good things have a 'dark side' so he says. Suzanne and Burgert share great examples of how they are looking at people and teams. The approach they use is Human Systems Engineering. They share some insights and how to impact the performance.
_*Guests*_
Suzanne Heerschop; Coach in Tech focusing on the Shopping area and fanatic sketch noter. Using drawing as a second language to create a better un…
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Sep 6, 2019
Measuring 2.0 - Streaming measurements
The big question in this episode is “How can we create 10 million personalized webshops? Tailormade for every one of our customers so it suites their needs best?” In short, the answering is Measuring 2.0. This enables us to measure more accurately how customers are behaving in our webshop. This enables to give them a more personalized experience.
_*What this episode covers*_
We are aiming for a feedback loop of 1 second. So 1 second after and action was performed by a customer in our webshop the data is available for service that handles personalization and recommendations. These services, in turn, provide data to the webshop to create a personalized experience for every customer.
_*Guests*_
* Niels Basjes - IT Architect and international keynote speaker giving lectures about this and other subjects.
* Oscar Westra van Holte Kind - Software Engineer in the Measuring 2.0 team
_*Notes*_
Niels Basjes on Measuring at Berlin Buzz words 2019
Measuring 2.0 at Spaces Summit
Nie…
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Aug 29, 2019
Formule X - Accelerate your organisation
In this episode of the podcast, we talk about accelerating organisations. We invited Jurriaan Kamer and Rini van Solingen to our studio. They recently launched their book - Formule X - Hoe zorg je voor extreme versnelling in je organisatie - at bol.com. The English version, How to reach extreme acceleration in your organization, will be available before the holiday season.
_*What this episode covers*_
The subject of the book how to accelerate your organization is closely related to many subjects we talked about in our podcast series. For instance Agile at Scale and Speeding up by Testing.
Jurriaan and Rini are both very experienced in this field. They come up with great examples around themes like how to simplify and power to the people that do the work.
_*Guests*_
* Jurriaan Kamer; Partner of The Ready focusing on Organizational Design and Transformation Consultant, Speaker and Author;
* Rini van Solingen; Professor in global software engineering. CTO @ Prowareness. Expert in…
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Aug 21, 2019
Interaction Design - Celebrate Failure
Where do we learn most in our lives? When things that we do succeed, or when we do stuff and they don't turn out how we expected? They "fail". Exactly, we can learn a lot from our failures. How does this relate to Tech? Or, to be more precise, how does that relate to the design of the webshop? And how do we know if we succeed or fail, is it a gut feeling or do we learn through structured research? In this episode, we explore the theme of success, failure and learning together with Tadéusz Siudak.
_*What this episode covers*_
Tadéusz is one of our Interaction Designers working on the webshop. Like all our employees he is aiming to improve every day. Making the lives of our customers easier.
To give a good perspective on the context we also elaborate on how interaction design is performed at bol.com. In the episode, we also take some sidetracks looking into thinks like guerilla testing.
_*Guests*_
Tadéusz Siudak
_*Notes*_
Learn more on voice interaction.
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Aug 14, 2019
Testing in autonomous teams - speed is everything
Testing in autonomous teams - speed is everything The role of testers has evolved in the last decade. Test automation has become the norm. So, testers have grown more towards developers.
_*What this episode covers*_
What are the skills they need to succeed? With the rise of autonomous teams and product teams, more and more tasks of testers moved to other roles like developers. What knowledge must be spread over these roles to ensure that we can release to PRO without fearing what will happen?
And there have been other evolutions like the one to more micro-service-oriented architectures and companies moving to the cloud. Both coming with their own challenges. What is the impact on testing and testers?
_*Guests*_
* Joost van Wollingen; Consultant Quality and Test Automation at Xebia and former colleague at bol.com in a test role. The lead of the test guild. Who has grown really close to a software engineer? We have worked together in several settings here;
* Ivo de Bruijn; Softw…
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Aug 7, 2019
Cloud as Enabler to become more data driven
Cloud as Enabler to become more data-driven. The adjective data-driven means that progress in an activity is compelled by data, rather than by intuition, personal experience or a gut feeling. Googling data-driven gives you over 637 mln. results so time to add an extra result to this with this episode. But we wanted to make it more specific.
_*What this episode covers*_
We moved our big data into the cloud and we got some nice insights that we wanted to share. We asked our two guests of this episode to do so.
It turned out to be an interesting talk about data quality but also about 'data wrestling'. About how to migrate your older data platform into an up to date data platform. About training your business consumers in their mind-shift from 'resource-aware' to 'cost-aware'. And about how to explore all the new opportunities that come with this new setup.
_*Guests*_
Anne van den Brink; Manager Business Intelligence Platform & Support
Arthur Hansen; Business Analyst in Finance – C…
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Jul 31, 2019
'OK Google.....' - the future of voice is here
'OK Google.....' - the future of voice is here. Everybody with a Google Assistant on their phone or with Google Speakers installed uses this command more and more. It’s even used by radio DJ’s to make fun and just shout out commands to see what’s happening.
_*What this episode covers*_
And you know when people start making jokes with it, it’s becoming a success. There is a future for interaction by voice. Time to talk about this success with our two guests who were part of the team that introduced the future of voice in bol.com.
'OK Google...., talk to bol.com'
_*Guests*_
* Marieke Linssen; Interaction Designer with a focus on conversation design.
* Marvin Zwolsman; Software Engineer in our Young Professional program He participated in the voice project.
_*Notes*_
Google Home en Google Nest Hub - see our description on tech.bol.com here
Google Voice Interaction
Intent Recognition explained by Daniel Heres
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Jul 24, 2019
Agile at Scale - Reality is complex, don't expect simple solutions
Agile at Scale. Ever since we started our journey into Agile and scrum, we have been wondering whether we were on the right path for business and IT agility. Way back when we were with 7 scrum teams scaling wasn’t the most important issue.
_*What this episode covers*_
With our growth came challenges for scaling our agile way of working. We have been on a few plateaus where we were searching for the next step, as have been other companies on the same venture. Today we talk about some of the things we learned along the way of scaling agile and we look into where we stand today and what could be our next leap. Our guests of today are deep into this. They are part of the “transformation team”.
_*Guests*_
* Jorien Brangert; Performed in many roles in the webshop. Got involved in agile at scale. Currently the lead in the “flight level stream”;
* Hessel de Gelder; Has worked a lot on the supply chain side. Always has been interested in strategy and innovation. Currently the lead in the “product team stream”;
_*Notes*_
Business Agility
The introduction of Microservices and the Man on the Moon project
Klaus Leopold - Flight Levels presentation at Bol.com
Output vs Outcome driven
OGSM process (Objectives/Goals/Strategies/Measurements)
OKR format (objectives and key results)
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Jul 17, 2019
Audiobooks - How to introduce the Netflix for reading?
As podcast makers, we are very happy that we can talk about a subject that is very close to ours. In this episode, we talk about one of the recent product launches. The launch of audiobooks.
_*What this episode covers*_
Besides the already existing “all you can read subscription” we developed an Audiobook subscription together with Rakuten Kobo.
In the world that is dominated by pictures and movies the book itself and reading are under pressure. But we also see that the audience for listening on demand is growing if you look at the Spotifies of this world. People get used to the concept of all you can watch, listen, etc. based on the success of the Netflixes of this world. Again Tech is driving this also for the launch of the Audiobook subscription and our guests of today's show know everything about this.
_*Guests*_
Emilie Osinga - responsible for subscriptions in our Reading and Learning shop.
Hicham Mzyati – Test Engineer in the team responsible for the delivery of all the Digital Goods – e-books; games, and the launch of audiobooks.
_*Notes*_
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Jul 10, 2019
Software Parade; the fun way to create an overview of hundreds of applications in Neo4J
One of the challenges in a (micro-)service landscape is to keep track of all capabilities in the services. Another is to keep track of the consumers of your service and the consumers beyond. Taking our IT landscape as an example: we work with over 120 teams on over 850 different applications varying from services, GUI’s, services, data builders and other types of applications. In an environment like ours, it’s crucial to understand what applications we have, what functionality they offer and who are working on them.
_*What this episode covers*_
In the past, the list of applications was maintained on our confluence pages, by hand. Later, engineers integrated properties data to become more accurate and recently a team stood up to make it ‘spot on’. One single source of truth. It’s called Software Parade.
To keep track of these we use our Software Parade. It is created and maintained with a level of fun and enthusiasm that is contagious. If you listen to this episode, you can…
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Jul 3, 2019
Scary close to fully autonomous teams at Onefootball
This is a special episode of the bol.com Techlab Podcast. It’s recorded on at our own Tech Conference the bol.com spaces summit. Directly after Jim gave his presentation about 'scary close to fully autonomous teams at Onefootball' we interviewed him. We had a great presentation at Spaces Summit with the Title: “scary close to fully autonomous teams”.
_*What this episode covers*_
Within bol.com we strive for autonomous teams because we believe that we will go faster, are more agile and we have more fun. But it is also great to hear from people outside bol.com how they perceive this. So, we are happy to introduce our external guest to you. As he worked in bol.com for 5 years but went over to another company end 2018 he is the person to ask for reflection. Time to introduce him to you.
Please bear with us, we set-up our mobile studio equipment the best we could, but as we were on this great location, you might hear some background noise and disturbance.
Happy Listening and let u…
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Jun 27, 2019
Spaces Summit 2019 - Part II
Three years ago, a group of enthusiastic engineers gathered together during the Friday drinks. They wanted to interact more in the growing organization. Learn more from each other by sharing cool stories.
_*What this episode covers*_
The plan for a bol.com tech summit was born, they called it Spaces Summit.
Three years later the 3rd edition in succession is organized by a dedicated team of committed engineers. It’s the 13th of June and the Techlab Podcast team is on the Spaces Summit 2019 location to give you an impression of the Spaces Summit.
In the previous episode of the podcast we interviewed one of the committee members to tell you the What, Why and Who and had small interviews with some of the presenters.
In part II of the spaces summit, we interview three presenters to give you an impression and to share the key takeaways with you. To add to the impression, we share quotes from the audience with you.
Please bear with us, we set-up our mobile studio equipment the best we…
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Jun 20, 2019
Spaces Summit 2019 - Part I
Three years ago a group of enthusiastic engineers gathered together during the Friday drinks. They wanted to interact more in the growing organization. Learn more from each other by sharing cool stories.
_*What this episode covers*_
The plan for a bol.com tech summit was born, they called it Spaces Summit.
Three years later the 3rd edition in succession is organized by a dedicated team of committed engineers. It’s the 13th of June and the Techlab Podcast team is on the Spaces Summit location to give you an impression of the Spaces Summit.
We interviewed one of the committee members to tell you the What, Why and Who. More important we had small interviews with some of the presenters to give you an impression and to share the key takeaways with you. To add to the impression, we share quotes from the audience with you. There were so many interesting things to share that we decided to create 2 podcasts for you. One for this week and one for next week.
Please bear with us, we set up…
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Jun 12, 2019
Cultural Diversity - It all starts with yourself
In this episode, we touch upon a cultural aspect of Tech within bol.com, Cultural Diversity. Over the last couple of years, our international community especially in IT in bol.com grew from 5 in 2014 to 120 in 2019 out of a total of 450 people in Tech. As a former Dutch company, you can imagine that this brings a lot of potential and it also has its challenges. In the week of the 21st of May, the World Day of Cultural Diversity, bol.com celebrated this with Cultural Diversity Week.
_*What this episode covers*_
For us a great occasion to have this topic discussed in our podcast.
We touch upon a lot of different aspects. It starts with the onboarding. The language barrier discussed a couple of times and is a red line in this talk. Our guests explain in a passionate way what ‘live-translation’ and ‘headphones’ do with the feeling of ex- and inclusion. What we liked most was the way they explained what they had to overcome to really feel included. Realizing that to become more v…
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Jun 6, 2019
Axle the opinionated support for bol.com scrum teams
In this episode, we talk about Axle. Axle is our internal framework for building Java-based applications. Well actually as you will learn in this episode it is not a framework.
_*What this episode covers*_
It is an opinionated approach to building Java applications like Spring Boot is an opinionated view of the Spring platform and third-party libraries so you can get started with a minimum of hassle.
Since internally we use the same thing for cross-cutting concerns like logging and metrics these all come out of the box when using Axle. Besides that, it simplifies setting up common application features like messaging integration, Quartz scheduling and Hystrix resilience. In addition to that, it provides standardised REST support. Think in terms of Swagger support, the configuration of data conversion defaults and providing problem handling.
Listen and check if something like Axle could help you or your organisation.
_*Guests*_
Maurice Zeijen
Roy Jacobs
_*Notes*_
* Springboot
* Swagger UI
* Cloud Pub/Sub
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May 29, 2019
Performance boost the pick algorithm in the warehouse
In this episode we dive into the world were e-commerce becomes physical. We talk about the bol.com Fulfilment Center (BFC). Within these centres, we have several challenges and one of these challenges has to do with the picking algorithm.
_*What this episode covers*_
The pick algorithm determines the route in a warehouse that is performed to pick all the products for a set of customers.
As bol.com we have very high volumes of products that we must send from our warehouses to customers every day. So, it makes sense to optimize the distance that has to be walked to get those products from the racks. Besides the distance, it is also key that no waiting times occur, so the operators should be able to walk around and not wait for others. That is the reason that when you have a look inside the fulfilment centres you see the same goods spread over different places. Especially the fast moving ones. If we bring down the time needed to pick a product, we can pick more products per person per…
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May 23, 2019
Improve the customer journey with Intent Recognition and Conversational Analytics
In this episode, we talk with Daniel and Emiel, software engineer and product owner in the customer support domain. In this domain, the focus is to help our customers in the best way possible. But what if we can prevent the customer to feel the need to contact bol.com in the first place, they asked themselves.
_*What this episode covers*_
They realized this can be possible using the analyses of the various customer interactions we have via the Chatbot "Billie", live chat, phone and email.
For these analyses, they introduced techniques from the Data Science and Machine Learning domain. Natural Language Processing is needed as well as Comprehender Techniques. As a team, they investigated models available in the open source community. In the podcast, we talk about how we adapted them for this purpose followed by the training of these models.
We talk about the four steps to get from idea to the usable information for the product specialists. The product specialist can use the informati…
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May 7, 2019
From zero to PRO: Using GO @ bol.com
In this episode we talk about GO. Go is not a language that is used the most at bol.com. That’s is Java, together with Kotlin.
_*What this episode covers*_
In 2014 it was introduced for the first time and reached a steady but not so big user group. Recently, along with the move to the cloud, we experience a second wave of adoption. When you listen to the stories our two enthusiastic guests share in this episode, you might even believe Go is the future.
_*Guests*_
Rogier Lommers
Tom Stoepker
_*Notes*_
The starting point for Gohttps://golang.org
Learn go by diving into the library of exampleshttps://gobyexample.com/
The github library with the opensource code from uber referred tohttps://github.com/uber-go
How to learn Go? Take the tour and you are ready to gohttps://tour.golang.org/
The funny project mentioned to improve the imageshttps://techlab.bol.com/from-a-crazy-hackathon-idea-to-an-empty-queue/.
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May 7, 2019
No more crystal ball for forecasting, data science it is
As long as retail exists, people tried to predict the future. An accurate forecast makes it much easier to buy the correct amount of products from suppliers, know what you need to keep on stock and even know what the sales will do with specific promotions. Over the last couple of years, this domain changed dramatically because of the introduction of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. In this episode, we chat about this changing playing field to share our experiences with you. .
_*Guests*_
Harmen Prins
Erick Webbe
_*Notes*_
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May 2, 2019
Our Kotlin adoption journey
Kotlin was first used by our teams a couple of years ago. It had an interesting start that shows how we adopt technology in general. In different feature teams a group of software engineers explored their own use cases for Kotlin.
_*What this episode covers*_
Some very enthusiastic, some a bit more skeptical and eventually they found each other. A new community in bol.com was born, the Kotlin community. In this episode we talk about this journey, the use cases, the adaption and the impact on frameworks that we use in our feature teams.
_*Guests*_
Anastasija Efremovska
Mykola Gurov
_*Notes*_
The survey mentioned is the Stack Overflow Survey 2019, In particular this section: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology
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May 1, 2019
Introduction to our upcoming bol.com Techlab podcast episodes
"Welcome to the bol.com Tech Podcast. In this podcast we share our experience with you to learn and entertain. Peeking behind the screens of IT and Tech in general at bol.com. Showing you our approach to IT, e-commerce and retail platforms." This is our opening sentence of the upcoming episodes of the bol.com Tech podcast.In this introduction episode we like to share with you:What is this podcast about, why did we start it and why should you listen to it? We hope that you enjoy the podcasts as much as we enjoy the creation of it.
_*What this episode covers*_
We love to hear your comments, so leave them behind for us and share your ideas.
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