IT technologies evolution allowed to control huge data flows. Business has a lot of IT solutions: CRM, ERP, BPM, accounting systems or at least just Excel and Word. Companies are different too. Some of companies are composed of plenty branches. Let’s name such as “Pyramid”. Pyramids have data synchronization issue for pile of IT systems. Software vendors and versions differ for branches significantly. In addition management company continuously modify reporting requirements that causes frustration assaults in the branches. This is a story about the project I happened to encounter chaos that needed to be systematized and automated. Low budget and tight deadlines limited the use of most existing industrial solutions but opened up scope for creativity.

I actively help companies from all over the world to prepare promotional content for English language resources. Today we will talk about common mistakes that are made by startups when working in this area and the erroneous expectations of their directors.

There are a lot of posts about what a typical coding interview at Google looks like. But, while not as widely described and discussed, there is also quite often a system design interview. For an SRE position it’s NALSD: non-abstract large system design. The key difference between SWE and SRE interviews consists in these two letters: NA.

So, what is the difference? How to be prepared for this interview? Let’s be non-abstract, and use an example. To be more non-abstract, let’s take something from the material world, such that you won’t be asked the exact same thing at the real interview (at least, not at the Google interview) :)

So, let’s design a public library system. For the paper books, like you have seen everywhere around. The whole text below was written all at once within around one hour, to roughly show you the areas that you should be able to cover / touch during the interview. Please excuse some disorder, that’s how I think (therefore I am).

In 2017, the media heard a very interesting story about a startup that robotizes milking cows on industrial dairy farms. The company is called R-SEPT, and back then it received 10 million rubles of investment. But a year has passed, and there's still no news on what happened further. We contacted Aleksey Khakhunov (AlexeiHahunov), the founder of the startup, and discussed the development. It turns out that the whole year his team was getting the prototype of the robot into shape, and just a week ago they conducted their first field test on the farm.

Under the cut there's a story about a robotics student who grew up on his parents' farm, turned the University diploma into an industrial startup, as he collected the first manipulators with his friends, and then scaled up to the level of state programs for the robotization of agriculture. And the most important is how the iron hand of the robot and the machine vision are better than a living milkmaid.

Иногда молодые команды разработки охватывает неразбериха.

Это случается в тот момент, когда они ещё не до конца разобрались, что такое эджайл; проджект и продакт спорят, кто из них кто, а задачи каждый ведёт сам по себе. Или все уже всё знают, но планировать спринты не получается — задачи не прорабатываются, демо и ретро проходят нерегулярно.

У нас тоже была похожая история, но мы нашли свой путь.

Это рассказ от команды личного кабинета Яндекс.Кассы, и подробнейшая инструкция для тех, кто хочет улучшить своё планирование.

Как всё было