Welcome, July, and thank you for taking the time to share. Let’s start our sharing.

1. In the process of building new products and getting familiar with new technologies, what has helped you maintain high productivity and quality of work?

To maintain high productivity and quality when working with new technologies, I utilize a three-pronged approach.

Firstly, I prioritize active learning by starting with official documentation and tutorials, then seeking out appropriate and quality online courses from platforms like Coursera and Udemy. I solidify my understanding by actively engaging with exercises from the lessons.

July (far-left and colleagues)

Secondly, I ensure quality through several methods. This includes writing tests early in the development process and conducting manual testing for new features. I also actively investigate the complexity of responses from Evora, conduct regular code reviews, and use AI for analysis and bug detection.

Finally, I emphasize collaboration by actively participating in team discussions and seeking feedback from experienced team members.

2. Can you share a specific situation where you had to adapt to an unexpected change in a project (e.g. new requirement, technical issue) and how you handled it to ensure schedule and quality?

Because I (and my team) have to depend on a third-party logic, which is Evora, we don't frequently confront complex cases of the financial business.

However, there was a time when business requirements were very confusing, so it was a huge duty of mine to proactively investigate the valid logic. Then, I reported back to the team with my solution ideas, which helped to clarify the specification before starting the development.

3. What were the challenges for you in migrating to Kotlin and Spring Boot? How did you overcome those challenges to excel in your backend development role?

Just like you asked.

I have been in touch with Ruby on Rails for years, but after a few years in MFV, I have taken on new challenges with Kotlin/Springboot. This, inevitably, posed several challenges, including learning Kotlin's type system for entity mapping, adapting to Spring Data's repository pattern, moving from Bundler/Gems to Gradle, understanding dependency management, and learning coroutines for handling threads.

To overcome these challenges, I adopted a multi-faceted approach: dedicating focused study time to Kotlin's type system and Spring Boot fundamentals, investigating complex features to gain hands-on experience, asking for advice and reviews from experienced colleagues, and leveraging my Rails background to identify conceptual parallels.

These are challenge-induced growth opportunities.

4. Can you share the testing process you followed to ensure the first release went smoothly and without any bugs? Why does July think that careful testing is important?

We have a QA engineer in our team. However, I must be responsible first for my code lines.

For testing progress, I always add unit tests that cover > 80% of new feature development. Manual testing is also very important, even though it may take time. I check the acceptance criteria carefully and raise questions whenever there's any unclear point or concern.

Careful testing can help prevent production issues, ensure business logic correctness, reduce support costs, and improve team quality.

5. How has proactively learning about Evora APIs helped July improve problem-solving and team performance? What motivates July to learn and share new knowledge?

Proactively learning about Evora APIs has helped me give more valuable support to my team when we define the business logic. When we understand it clearly, we propose solutions to the Japan team and ask for the final decision, which helps speed up the product development.

I was lucky to be involved in a task related to the api logic and had to investigate first before starting to implement. At the same time, my team had many things on our plate that could slow us down from researching new APIs. So I took that chance to get used to the logic in the new APIs and shared back the knowledge to discuss with my team.

6. How does July think about building a strong team culture that encourages knowledge sharing and collaboration? What has July done to foster and promote this within the team?

I think a team works best when everyone feels psychologically safe. They are comfortable asking questions, admitting they are stuck, and sharing what they know without feeling judged. It's also about making sure everyone's on the same page so we can develop the product smoothly.

I ask "dumb" questions myself, share cool stuff I find, and own up when I mess up or don't know something.

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Thank you, July, for your dedication and passion. Let's move forward, together!

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