up one level
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Final report for WooCommerce E-commerce Software Support and Development Work-project for weeks 21 & 22 (2017)
By author Morgan Jassen
I read dozens of e-commerce software support forum threads on wordpress.org/support/plugin/woocommerce. Also dozens of e-commerce software developer threads on github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce/issues.
I learned what issues some software users face with payment gateways and coupons.
I attend the 2017-05-23 dev chat on slack ( https://woocommercecommunity.slack.com/archives/C4TNYTR28/p1495555273011401 ), and learn that core features are indeed under active development including date handling, import/export functionality, and search functionality. I'm glad to have early knowledge of these sofware changes, before they make it into the stable release -- I am reminded of the value of listening in on a software development meeting.
I decide to switch back and forth, one week per each, on the (wordpress.org) user support forums and the (github.com) developer support issue queue. Thus I'll be switching back, and thus be learn about both, and doing both. (both Support and Development)
I read some on the github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce issue queue and discover that a developer is writing up a software bug fix request, including detailed steps to reproduce it, and including code designed to fix it, in the form of a pull request. Also I learn that this software developer team has a process in place to ask multiple team members to review code before it goes into the core codebase, and also that the code needs to pass some automated software tests (i.e. Travis etc.)
I message with a colleague, to set up an in-person meeting to collaborate on the WooCommerce software project. They have a background in Tech Support and Management.
I communicate with a second colleague, Dan Burns, who is interested in the DevOps / Sysadmin aspect of supporting a(/some) WooCommerce installation(s). They agree to meet me in person the next day. We sit down and talk about how to make a WooCommerce Dev server. I say that I want at least one WooCommerce Dev server for doing software testing related to my clients' issues. They initially recommend a cloud-based AWS server box with Ubuntu 16.04, Apache, PHP, MariaDB, and WordPress, with my WooCommerce dev install running on top of that. Furthermore, this colleague also tells me that they are planning to have a separate Jenkins server ready to automate, track, and report on any ongoing updates and changes to the server as they happen, and we talk about what value that setup can add to my workflow. We agree as an initial estimate that they will have this running by Tuesday, four days hence. I wrote my colleague an email to summarize my understanding of our session.
Then the next day, I work on this issue: ( "Icon font blurry in Firefox #15434" https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce/issues/15434#issuecomment-305987130 ) Next, I installed WooCommerce on Dev MAMP in order to do the next step, which was to attempt to reproduce the "Icon font blurry" issue on a dev environment. I couldn't, and thereupon it was decided that the next step was to tell the issue poster that, and ask them for more details about how to reproduce the issue.
Finally, something I have done on this two-week-long work-project is that have I failed to write my final report on time. (I wanted it done and published promptly on the last day of the project -- by the night of June 3rd or the morning of 4th -- and I am not publishing it until today (June 12th). However I'm once again learning that by writing the report, I'm reviewing what I learned, solidifying it, and learning additional points.
In summary, in this two-week sprint, I progressed some software support and development cases, collaborated in-person with a colleague on the software project to do so, and learned a lot about the WooCommerce software, e-commerce software, and software support and development in general. I'll be signing up for another two-week sprint immediately following this one!
For this project, my respective profiles are here: https://profiles.wordpress.org/mjjojo#content-activity, and https://github.com/mjassen, and https://woocommercecommunity.slack.com/team/mjassen
[2017-06-12 Update: Added minor edits after original publish, including profile links, typo fixes, colleague's name.]
[2017-06-27 Update: Heavy edits after original publish, removed parts of the blog post.]
[2019-03-11 edit: Moved to: https://i̶n̶v̶e̶s̶t̶o̶r̶w̶o̶r̶k̶e̶r̶.̶c̶o̶m̶/2017/... .html.]