Lessons Learned
- Whiteboards are amazing and everyone should have one
- Planning ahead allows you to identify potential roadblocks early
- Asking for help is important, but you need to try solving it yourself first
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This project taught me a TON. I didn't know what a Jenkins Pipeline was, and I definitely
hadn't heard of Groovy (aside from Austin Powers), but after a couple of meetings with
coworkers who were familiar with these things, I felt like I had a pretty good handle on
what needed to be done and started organizing the system.
This is also where I fully understood how amazing whiteboards are.
I drew a lot of diagrams on the whiteboard next to my desk, and it saved me a lot of time. In the past,
I've found myself doing a lot more coding than planning, but that's the opposite of what
I learned at Deere. Planning ahead allowed me to identify potential roadblocks early.
When I encountered them, I would spend roughly an hour trying to solve the issue on my own before asking for help. This approach
helped me avoid asking for assistance with things I was capable of doing on my own and
led to much more informed questions when I did seek help. While getting help is vital for learning,
you have to be willing to try to help yourself first.
The project itself was a dance of automation in a Jenkins Pipeline using Groovy, JavaScript, and Python.
The pipline integrated data from tools used by different teams in the department to dynamically generate
web content, controlled through GitHub. Previously, these reports were made manually by each team lead,
but by automating this process it saved each team lead roughly 4 hours of work each week.
The generated reports were then automatically distributed to enhance transparency and facilitate better communication across teams.
Through this I learned how to create a website using GitHub such as this one!