OmbuLabs Blog

At OmbuLabs our goal is always to smooth processes, and make work easier. Isn’t that what software engineering is really all about in the first place?

When we are getting ready to do a project or to make a proposal one of the questions that we are always asked by clients is “how long will it take”? To come up with an estimate on timing we like to use a system of points and blind estimates by multiple team members to find an average of how complex the project will be. We can then use this information, together with our database of delivered projects, to estimate how long the project will take.

To accomplish this, and make the process smoother we built a tool called Points and now we have moved it to open source in case it can be of use to any other teams out there!

Open Source is one of the things that we value as a company. Our philosophy is that “everything we do should be open by default”. This is why in the past few months we decided to open source two of our internal projects. We built Dash and Points to make our daily processes smoother, and then we thought “hey, why not share them with everyone?”. Now we also want to share the process of how we turned them from private to open source.

At OmbuLabs we are always trying to find or create tools to help our processes and workdays run as smoothly and efficiently as possible. For the past few months we have been developing just such a tool, and recently we made it open source. Dash is a dashboard application written in Ruby on Rails that integrates open pull requests and issues from GitHub with Pivotal Tracker stories.

Since starting at OmbuLabs as the Junior Developer I have had the incredible opportunity to pair with my teammates. A lot. Over the months we have begun to develop better practices and routines to make the most of our pairing sessions, and now I would like to share some of our practices and tips for making a pairing session successful. At OmbuLabs we are a fully remote company so all of our pairing sessions are done through Tuple or Zoom, but this advice could translate easily to in person sessions as well.

Becoming the Apprentice, and then Junior Developer at OmbuLabs was both exciting and nerve racking. Learning a new company can be challenging, especially when the skills are new and the work is remote.

Fortunately OmbuLabs made the journey a smooth and easy process. Here are some of the things that have been working.