The Technology of Websites

When the suggestion of starting a technology blog to share our Engineering and Web Ops experiences started getting traction on the team, my first reaction was "sounds great, how do we control the message appropriately." Despite having just read Open Leadership, by Charlene Li, the salty instincts of HR, legal and intellectual property risks were at the forefront. Fortunately, I was using my inside voice and avoided dampening the obvious passion behind the request to "go public."

I heard from a surprisingly large contingent of our 150-person Technology team about why they felt it was important to have a technology specific blog. In the end, the perspective that was needed is that this blog is about building relationships. Just as we have built a relationship with automotive consumers, we need to do the same with a technology community from which we have benefited greatly.

So what are we trying to accomplish with a technology blog? In short, we want to share our successes, failures and lessons learned. We also hope to learn a lot more in the process. Coming off of a two-year full site redesign initiative, there is a lot to talk about. New methodologies, legacy migrations, experimental paths, and outright frustration with how some things were done will be fodder for our contributors.

This will be an active blog with a healthy stable of topics already in the queue. Below are just some of the subject areas that will receive focus in upcoming posts:

New Architectures

Big Data, page performance, MPP, data flows, service layers, and real-time anything are top of mind architecture challenges at Edmunds. We love operating in this realm and love the pioneers in these spaces that paved a road for our use.

Product Development

Are we Agile? We are Agile, and have been for a few years now. Just don't ask too many people here that question, because you'll likely get several different responses. Our path is one shared by many other development teams, and some of our best Agile breakthroughs have been achieved by employing new approaches observed from outside teams willing to share.

Partly Cloudy

This is really an obligatory topic given the current level of attention being given to whatever definition of The Cloud fits your liking. Hype aversion aside, we have been working for a few years on what would now be characterized as internal Cloud capabilities, with a current eye on how best to extend those capabilities to external provider platforms.

Tools

There is no tool or process that is sacred at Edmunds if it's speed or reliability is in question. In the fast moving and rapidly evolving world of web operations, system reviews and RFPs are no longer a prerequisite for displacement. Some of our most widely adopted internal tools have been the result of shared frustration, a motivated engineer and a successful prototype.

Testing

Under valued in many organizations, the Software Testing group at Edmunds has steadily built a comprehensive framework of test driven development practices as well as a killer toolset. Their transformation is a great story and they are eager to share their work!

Data

"The business of APIs" (attribution to well-known vendor) has dominated our efforts in leveraging data for our web apps and creating a mobile experience for consumers. Opening our vast repositories of automotive data directly to partners and other interested parties is the next frontier.

Open Source

Edmunds followed the path of many other tech firms by developing a competency for utilizing and extending open source software projects. Initially this was a response to the scalability limits and financial burden of enterprise software licensing. Valuable outcomes of this approach have been a greater comfort level in building more of our own tools, and using open source development principles as a positive constraint in our own tooling. We hope to begin a process to open source some of our internal tools very soon.


Philip Potloff

CIO, Edmunds.com