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Right now, the start-up community is facing upheaval. Although shelter-in-place rules tend to affect some companies more than others and hopefully will be limited to the short-term, all of us will be in uncharted territory for the rest of the year, as we navigate chaotic capital markets and a possible recession. That is why every startup CEO is building a contingency plan right now, creatively considering how to extend runway as we wait to see how the next few weeks and months will unfold. For many, this will mean short-term layoffs. This post explains why you should embrace layoffs as a difficult but necessary step, how you should implement a layoff, and what you can do to rebuild morale down the road. Yes, Layoffs Hurt and No, Don’t Delay The first time I had to plan a layoff was for my first job out of business school at a speech recognition company. We were building a voice assistant product like Siri or Alexa, but in hindsight, we were too early. Our product was cool but not truly useful. When the product failed to sell, we were in trouble. We only had cash for another few months. Every night I would wake up at 3am, agonizing that the people who had trusted me enough to come join the company might lose their jobs. I tried everything and called anyone, looking for revenue. We dreamed up a major pivot, but it was too late. Finally the day came, and we laid off the team. To my surprise, many took it stoically, perhaps sadly or sympathetically, but very few were crying or mad. All had chosen to work at a startup. They understood that technology was risky and they had seen the writing on the wall from our poor sales numbers. Also to my surprise, after they left, many of the affected people flourished! A few programmers had a new job the same week, and even the last person had a new job within two months. The layoff also impacted me, and for me, being laid off let me start E Ink, a far more valuable company. I have since reflected that it was because of a layoff that the careers of these people advanced faster. If our speech company had somehow raised more capital to continue its old strategy, they still would have beavered away at a mediocre concept only that much longer. Ignore the Past and Don’t Waste Time on Blame It is easy to find yourself avoiding layoffs out of shame or guilt. Nobody likes to admit failure. You might fear that a layoff marks you as a poor CEO, when in fact a prompt layoff may be just the opposite: a sign of professional competence. The company’s current crisis may be caused by your past business decisions, or they may be caused by today’s unprecedented global health emergency. It really does not matter how you got here. You cannot waste time worrying about the past, because now your job is to make the best decisions for the future, and time is of the essence. As soon as the crisis becomes clear and you realize you do not have enough cash left to assure the next financing under your current plan, you must act swiftly to make a strategic change and revise the plan. The sooner you act, the more cash you have left. More cash means you have more options remaining. Accepting difficult truths and adapting to reality is a core skill for every CEO. Don’t delay the inevitable––be a decisive leader. Layoffs are the Last Step of a Strategic Change A layoff should be the logical result of adopting a new strategy (at a lower burn rate), and it’s important that you clearly communicate this change of plan to your team. Make sure they understand why it is achievable and will lead to success. How can you and your team change strategy and still win at a lower burn rate? First, keep the customer’s voice in your head. Narrow your goals to deliver a smaller product that still delivers high value, or find a way to grow slower with less cash burned and a lower cost of customer acquisition. Model how that would change the company’s budget. Then share your plan with your Board and your team, trusted advisors, perhaps a few key customers, and slowly expand the circle, gather feedback from many perspectives to make sure that the new plan is solid. At a bigger company, we sometimes see a CEO arbitrarily decree all departments need to cut the same percentage of heads. That CEO is not being thoughtful about the best changes needed to propel the business forward, and is clearly unsure what it takes to win. A CEO who has actually improved the strategy and reordered priorities will instead eliminate the majority of one group, perhaps even adding heads to another department, thus giving the new plan its best chance of success. Don’t take half measures. Every CEO I know who has been through a layoff offers this advice: “Cut deeper than you think you need.” As bad as one layoff may be, the second layoff is absolutely crushing to morale. You don’t want a second layoff. The best tactic is to cut so deep in the first round that you will have room to hire a few new people 3-4 months down the road. That gives you future freedom to adjust your organizational mix, and it will be a big boost to morale when the company starts hiring again. Preparing for Layoffs Two Weeks Before - Identifying Names and Preparing Documents With a specific recommendation to change the business plan, make sure you have Board approval on your layoff. Then bring an HR professional into the loop. If you are leading a bigger team, this person might already be on your team; if you are leading a smaller startup, look to an outside HR consultant for support. Work with each VP or group head to develop a list of people who will be included in the layoff. Prepare a formal severance letter for each. Prepare a last check for the final pay period and any vacation day balance ahead of time, so you can hand it to each person as they receive the news. How much severance? That’s a bit tricky. You want to treat people well, but must balance this with the need to save cash for the survival of the company. This is a company decision, but a typical severance policy I have used and have seen others use is a lump sum severance check for 2 weeks of pay, plus 1 week of additional pay for every year of service. If you can afford it, you can also offer a day of career counseling, or some period of outplacement support (many HR firms offer this service fairly inexpensively). While the employee may no longer be a fit for your company, there is certainly another role at another company in which they would thrive; if you are comfortable, offer to serve as a professional reference to help them find a soft landing. Determine which support you will offer to provide in advance, so you can spell this out clearly when you have the conversation. One Week Before  - Organizing for Conversations Prepare ahead for these difficult conversations. Work with your HR leader or employment attorney to understand the right language and approach for the discussion, and to make sure you understand language that could put you in a compromising situation legally. First and foremost, this is an honest conversation with a valued member of your team. Express that you are grateful for their work and that you know that this will be a challenging transition. Deliver the information in a respectful and empathetic way, so that your team member has their dignity intact at the end of the conversation. It is important to practice delivering the message, to ensure that you only include all the relevant information and exclude everything else that could be confusing or create a legal exposure. Focus on delivering the key facts during the conversation, and have the rest of the information available in writing for the team member to review later. Be concise –– this will be a challenging time for the person on the other end of the conversation to process what you are saying. If your company has more than 100 employees and the layoff is more than a third of your workforce, or in other circumstances depending on the state, you may be required to give 8 weeks prior notice to all affected workers. Check this well in advance so you can comply if necessary. If a substantial number of people are affected and you expect a big ripple of surprise to disrupt the company, then get ahead of this and face it squarely. Better that the employees hear from you and hear your message directly. So, announce an all-hands company-wide meeting the following Thursday morning at 9 am. If there is a bit of speculation about the purpose, that’s OK – that will make the announcement feel a bit less shocking. The Day Before (Wednesday night) - Keeping Key Players in the Loop The night before the meeting, each VP or team lead speaks with their Directors to explain what is happening and bring them into the loop. If there are 1 or 2 other key people – critical tech talent or peer leaders who are vital to the company – those people should also get the courtesy of a personal, confidential heads up. Then each VP should contact and set up a 15-minute 1:1 appointment in the morning with the affected people who will be laid off, without explaining the purpose of the meeting. If one department is being hit hard, then you as CEO can also step in and manage some of these conversations to share the work. The Day Of (Thursday) - Announcing the Big Change Time for the big announcement. Although we sometimes see CEOs address only the people who are staying, if you have a strong company culture then it is better to bring everyone together in the same room one last time, because it shows more respect to the affected individuals. Keep in mind that the people who are leaving also will need to explain what is happening at your company when they interview for new jobs and they will need to make sense of their own role in the company’s history and trajectory. So if you communicate the company’s new direction, they will benefit. You can also give them the round of applause they likely deserve. At the all-hands meeting, explain the new plan. Explain why this requires a layoff and state everyone who will be affected has already been asked to meet their department head. Be open about what severance and other benefits will be provided. Do take a few questions. Make sure to thank the affected people for their contribution. The VPs then go into their appointments, each accompanied by an HR professional or other experienced manager so that every conversation has a witness. They walk through the conversation and key information with each employee, sharing relevant papers. Employees are then asked to hand off their papers to coworkers, clear out and return their laptops, and return their keys and parking passes. Ideally everyone who is leaving is out of the building by lunch. Some VPs may wish to organize a goodbye department lunch, but keep in mind that may carry risk, especially if emotions are running high. Don’t take these types of decisions lightly, and evaluate them on a case by case basis. Because the layoff is an emotional time, you may want to let any employee who wishes to go home, go home. It is doubtful anyone will be too productive that afternoon. The Day After (Friday) - Small Group Discussion The next day, the VPs should hold department meetings to break down how the change in plans affects the department and to walk through the work ahead. Everyone then has the weekend to digest. The Next Week (Monday) - Rallying the Team Bright and early the next Monday, you should hold another all-hands meeting to walk through the company-wide strategic change. Take a few minutes to speak from the heart. The best story you can tell at this moment is your personal inspiration for “Why I Started This Company…” (or “Why I Took This CEO Job”) so you can remind everyone of the dream and reignite the vision. Then take a good long town-hall style Q&A so you let all the concerns come out into the open where you can deal with them. If necessary, promise a follow-up date to resolve open thorny issues. What next? Many CEOs ask, how can I rebuild morale after a layoff? The best cure for low morale is winning! If you do this right, then the company will be on a healthier track and the milestones you have set as short-term objectives will all be achievable. As the new, smaller company starts to successfully hit its goals, confidence will rise. We are operating in uncertain times right now, so keep in this mind as you calibrate achievable goals. Give yourself and your newly redirected team some extra weeks to figure out how to operate in this new normal. This is a time to over-communicate. Repeat the plan frequently like a megaphone to ensure that everyone is aligned and everyone understands the new vision. As the company gets smaller, you may actually pick up speed. If you’ve approached layoffs the right way, you have retained the best people and deployed them in a more effective way. With smaller meetings and fewer people who need help and oversight, your performers can do more work. Junior people who are asked to do more may actually skill up faster in this environment and enjoy their jobs more than before. You can more quickly teach this talent how to be seasoned professionals. Have faith that cutting more heads will not leave the company as anemic as you may fear. Another confidence builder for the team will occur when they see you hiring fresh employees again. Newly arrived people are sold into the new strategy and carry no baggage from past mistakes. They should be people who come in with new skills that were absent before and are better aligned to the forward needs of the business. And when you only have a few open headcounts, your team can afford to interview more widely and to be more selective. So the average quality goes up. The chance to hire exceptional new people and to rebuild morale is yet another reason why you want to cut extra deep. Keep in Mind Hundreds of CEOs may be grappling with the same tough scenario right now. Now more than ever, your employees need you to be a leader, whether or not they will be on your payroll tomorrow. Be decisive and act swiftly, so that everyone can find the best home for their talents going forward.

You Owe Your Team Prompt Layoffs and a New Plan

The approach of the new year is always a great time to revisit all the awesome things your SMB has achieved and pat yourself in the back about how great things are running. However, if you take too much time to congratulate yourself on a job well done, odds are good that you’ll fall behind on preparing for 2020. Do that, and you’ll have to watch your peers at rival SMBs laughing at you all the way to the bank. Setting yourself apart in a crowded market as an SMB is a game of inches, not miles. Especially when you’re using the same tech and apps as your competitors, the way to set yourself apart is not by having the shiniest setup but knowing how to use the right tools and policies to optimize your work. Even when it seems like you’re getting the most out of your teams, you can still hack your team’s productivity with these six excellent tools. 1. Reason Antivirus for Cybersecurity Efficiency There are few things in the tech world that will leave your company with a bigger black eye than having to admit to the world that your network has been breached, or even worse, that you’ve “misplaced” your users’ data. Considering are now aimed at SMBs, it would make sense to put a little more thought into your security plan than “hope for the best.” almost half of all cyber-attacks Fortunately, can help address most of your concerns and do so without requiring you to raise a new round of funding. The suite includes a painless installation – which saves you money on expensive consulting and setup fees – and can be managed directly by you or another team member, without needing a full IT staff. Reason Antivirus’s business solution Image source: https://www.reasonsecurity.com/ Reason’s tools allow you to implement automated and real-time protection, which can even secure your peripheral devices like microphones and webcams, helping your team maintain online privacy. Most importantly, with an easy to use interface and automated tools, you can gain enterprise-level security without having to invest too much time managing it. 2. Google My Business for Reputation Management and Local SEO Most SMBs today have mission statements that aim at becoming the most popular brands in the universe, but really, you should start with a slightly smaller scope to get more out of your marketing, branding and SEO efforts. You can waste hundreds and thousands of dollars adding followers everywhere from Bangladesh to Managua, but if you don’t follow up with a strong, positive online presence in your closest markets, you’re likely just throwing money away. Image source: https://www.vendasta.com/blog/top-10-customer-review-websites puts your SMB on the map – quite literally – and helps you gain exposure on Google search when people seek out merchants and service providers in your area. For one, having a completed and verified profile on GMB significantly boosts your SEO efforts and helps improve your web visibility. Google My Business that nearly twice as many people read business reviews on GMB as Facebook and Amazon, making it your highest-value platform as a reputation management hub. One study recently found Additionally, you can set up a booking service directly through GMB, which has been shown to significantly increase transactions for your business, helping you create a more engaging top-of-funnel presence to draw in consumers. With 95 million people participating in GMB’s local guides program, and over three billion connections between users and sellers monthly (per Google), you’d be silly not to take advantage of a quick and powerful tool to improve your local – and most immediate – branding. 3. ContractZen for Contract and Meeting Management Acquiring new customers is obviously a key aspect of any company’s success, but as you scale up, things tend to become harder. Going from three clients to 50 means that the three-ring binder you’ve been using to store all their paperwork should probably go the way of the dodo. Not having a digital contract and document management tool today is downright negligent, and it can significantly slow your company down, allowing important deadlines to lapse and even potentially squandering opportunities to close deals. is designed to be your digital contract babysitter, with a full set of features that make managing your documents, meetings and important agreements a breeze. As you start to deal with a higher volume of customers, vendors, partners and other stakeholders, you’ll need to be more meticulous about contracts signed, important upcoming dates (extensions, expirations, payments), and even keep a clearer score of meetings and what’s been discussed. ContractZen Image source: https://www.contractzen.com/en/ The ContractZen suite offers contract management tools that use a smart meta-tagging system to store and sort your important agreements and documentation, use electronic signatures, plan meetings and even send confidential meeting materials, and more. The app’s virtual data rooms let you securely share quickly curated collections of files without endangering your entire network. For a small business, easy management of your important documentation is key to not falling behind. 4. SendFox for Email-Based Content Promotion In an ecosystem where texting, WhatsApping, Facebook Messaging, Telegramming, and virtually countless additional communication and social media channels reign supreme, it would be easy to think that poor old email has been left by the wayside of time. You’d be justified in your belief, but you would also be surprisingly and astonishingly wrong. Some still use email to distribute their content, and even the vaunted millennial generation, with their general disdain for “old-school” tech, still prefer to receive communications from businesses via email. 93% of B2B marketers Image source: https://appsumo.com/sendfox/ All of this is to say, you should definitely look into improving your email marketing, even if you don’t think you have the resources to do so. Using , the new email tool from Noah “OKDork” Kagan’s Sumo Group, can significantly reduce the amount of time you have to spend delivering your content to consumers by automating much of the process. SendFox You can quickly create unlimited customized email forms to send, as well as build the ancillary tools – landing pages, web forms, segmented lists, triggered drips – that get you the most value from every audience member. You also reduce the time it takes for your content to reach a critical mass of users by shifting from passive to active view acquisitions. Additionally, schedule posts while integrating other tracking and content apps to get the most out of your web content and reach more consumers than you could have imagined. 5. accessiBe for Automated Web Accessibility Compliance It’s taken far too long for the conversation around web design to focus on how to make them more accessible to everyone. This is a wonderful concept, but in practice it creates some hurdles for small businesses which likely need to overhaul their content to comply with ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) regulations and avoid potential lawsuits over websites that are deemed unusable by people with disabilities. This is doubly challenging because your content is hardly static – ideally, you’re always adding, modifying, tweaking, and replacing content and assets, which could impact accessibility settings. Even worse, it’s expensive (to the point of being prohibitive) to have someone constantly monitoring accessibility, especially if you’re relying on a small team that wears all the hats in the business. Image source: https://www.avon.com/#showacsb/ , then, is your website’s new accessibility best friend. The application uses AI to scan your site, page by page, to uncover areas that are non-compliant with regulations such as ADA, WCAG 21 and Section 508, ensuring that you’re able to meet any regulatory test within 48 hours of installation. Even better, since your website is always changing, accessiBe is always working, re-processing your compliance checks every 24 hours with an impressive 96% automatic success rate. Disabled users visiting your site can open the accessibility interface at the click of a button, which has everything needed to access and experience your site. accessiBe 6. Papaya Global for Easy Overseas Payroll Management One of the things you can easily forget about scaling your business is that more work usually requires more people to accomplish. In the endless quest to grow, it can be easy to agree to more than you can handle and find yourself struggling to either keep up with the work with the staff you have or find new employees to handle the work without impacting your bottom line. This dynamic has made outsourcing a popular alternative, and it can be a major game-changer – that is, provided you hire someone reliable who can deliver the quality you need at the proper price point. For SMBs, this last part is where it gets tricky, and it’s exactly where shines. The platform offers global payroll solutions for companies that have multiple locations, but you can also use it as a Professional Employer Organization (PEO), reducing the number of bureaucratic steps you need to take. This means that you don’t have to set up any local entities to handle payroll – both expensive and time-consuming – and have monthly payments handled automatically, as well as all the paperwork associated with it. Papaya Global Image source: https://support.papayaglobal.com/en/article/dashboard-tab-in-country-partners In addition to being your proxy “employer of record” (EoR), Papaya also offers onboarding services that quickly help your new staff integrate, and can even provide HR solutions and immigration solutions (obtaining work permits, residence permits, and more) to help you establish an international foothold even on an SMB budget. Get to Hacking Finding new advantages for your SMB goes far beyond hoping no one else will notice what you’re doing and wishing for a lucky break. You can actively take steps to help improve your team’s productivity, reduce obstacles in their way, and generally be the best version of your team they can be. Disclosure: The author does not have any vested interest in the projects mentioned.

6 Tools to Help SMBs Hack Productivity in 2020

So, let’s start! Tell us a bit about yourself. For example, name, profession, and personal interests. My name is Daria Leshchenko; I am the CEO and Managing Partner at SupportYourApp — a Support-as-a-Service company that provides technical and customer support to global startups and businesses. I am also a co-founder of our two spinoff companies — Label Your Data — which deals with data labeling for AI and ML, and Outstaff Your Team, which takes care of the outstaffing services for global tech businesses. In whatever time I can spare, I love doing sports (squash, for example, is my latest activity of choice), studying (management, coaching, latest technologies — whatever it is, I’m in), and traveling. For example, I have just returned from Lisbon, where I attended this year’s Web Summit. Interesting! What was your latest Hackernoon Top story about? The latest one that made it to the HackerNoon TOP list was “Founders, Do You Have a Plan for the End of the World?”. My team and I kept on working and developing through COVID-19, lockdowns, and every other crisis global businesses faced over the last decade. In the article, I wanted to share my thoughts and experiences on withstanding even the biggest shakes and turmoils. I think it is especially important now when the world around us is so unstable and uncertain. Do you usually write on similar topics? If not, what do you usually write about? I usually write about the challenges that I have as a founder, mistakes I have made earlier in my career, advice I would love to share with others, and so on. Something that is near and dear to my heart. I believe this is the best approach for any writer. Great! What is your usual writing routine like (if you have one?) As soon as I narrow the topic down, I just start writing and perfecting the text to make sure it is as engaging as it can be. I also make it as short as I can because I like to be on point and precise. Why waste time writing 10 words, when a thought can be expressed in 5? This is my golden rule of writing. Being a writer in tech can be a challenge. It’s not often our main role, but an addition to another one. What is the biggest challenge you have when it comes to writing? I would say time is my biggest constraint. Writing helps me structure my thoughts and experiences. Almost relive it. And I hope every piece I write helps someone make the correct decision or find the right solutions. As every top-tier and C-suite manager knows, our schedules can get quite hectic, so time is a crucial factor in our ability to share our knowledge with our peers and teams. What is the next thing you hope to achieve in your career? The next step for SupportYourApp and me (because, in my mind, we are inseparable) is implementing more AI solutions into our support services. We also keep on adding more value to our core services and offering complex solutions. The progress we are seeing now is not going to slow down, so it is important for businesses and leaders to not follow it, but actually get ahead of it. I would love to concentrate my attention on creating an ecosystem that will unite people and technology. That is something we have already been doing, but as time and progress go by, I think we need to dive deeper and deeper into the process. The business world sees a slowdown, so I would like to keep the pace up even despite the economic crisis the world is facing right now. I want us to keep on growing despite it all. Wow, that’s admirable. Now, something more casual: What is your guilty pleasure of choice? Interesting question. Now that I think about it, if something brings me pleasure, I do not feel guilty about it. It is as simple as that. So, I guess I can say I don’t have one. Do you have a non-tech-related hobby? If yes, what is it? Sports and reading. These are something my team and I share — a lot of us love running, doing yoga, and generally taking care of ourselves. Only in 2023, we took part in two races in our hometown of Kyiv and our Colombian team took part in the Intercontinental Cali 10K De La Luz run. I run and play squash. It keeps my head clear and relaxes me. As for reading — my team and I are on our 11th book of the year right now. In 2023, we tackled books like The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (which is my favorite this year) and Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update by Donella H. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows. What can the Hacker Noon community expect to read from you next? It will depend on the challenges we will be facing at that particular moment and the evolution of my interests. What’s your opinion on HackerNoon as a platform for writers? It gives us the possibility to open up about things that worry us, as well as find people who share our interests and can discuss these topics with us. It helps us create and grow a community of peers. HackerNoon is also a good resource for those who are seeking knowledge and want to learn more about complicated matters, but in simple words. Thanks for taking time to join our “ ” series. It was a pleasure. Do you have any closing words? Meet the writer Stay curious and follow the flow, everybody.

Meet the Writer: HackerNoon's Contributor Daria Leshchenko, the CEO of SupportYourApp

Howdy Hackers! I’m Daria and I’m the CEO of . SupportYourApp First off, I’d like to express my gratitude to the staff, and all other beautiful humans of HackerNoon, for nominating me for a 2022 Noonies award! I’ve been nominated for the following categories and if you think my writing offers good value, please take some time to check out these award pages and vote for me: CONTRIBUTOR OF THE YEAR — CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE: https://www.noonies.tech/2022/internet-heroes/2022-hackernoon-contributor-of-the-year-customer-experience CONTRIBUTOR OF THE YEAR — CUSTOMER SUCCESS: https://www.noonies.tech/2022/internet-heroes/2022-hackernoon-contributor-of-the-year-customer-success Learn more about my journey in the tech industry via the interview below. 1. What do you currently do and what’s your favorite part about it? As a CEO, my main focus lies in mentoring my team and optimizing business processes. And I love every minute and aspect of it. 2. How did you get started with your Tech Career? When I was working as a customer support representative myself, I saw that small startups and tech businesses needed a reliable partner to outsource their support to. I took an opportunity and grew SupportYourApp out of the customer support department with a single client. 3. If Utopia were a color what color do you think it’d be and why? White. It is the calmest and purest color. And I think this is exactly the way being in utopia would feel — calm, pure, and pleasant. 4. If everything about HackerNoon changed drastically, what is one detail you’d like to keep exactly the same?  OR What’s your favorite thing to do with HackerNoon and why? I would keep the direction and the topic of the article presented at the website. They are always very informative and give me a lot of information about the industry and the direction it may take in the future. Keeps me prepared, so to speak. 5. Tell us more about the things you write/make/manage/build! The best way to describe them is probably all-things-tech. I am fascinated by state-of-the-art technology and want to learn as much about it as I can. And want is the best way to learn about things than to write about them or build them with the help of other professionals, of course. 6. What’s your favorite thing about the internet? As a life-long learner, it is the possibility to quickly access new knowledge and unlimited possibilities to discover new things and learn almost everything about them. 7. It’s an apocalypse of ‘walking dead’ proportions and you can only own a singular piece of technology, what would it be? Probably my phone. With it, I can stay connected with the world, read books, listen to podcasts and seminars, and take pictures of my adorable kitten. It will also give me the possibility to keep notes and describe everything that may happen to me. Like a digital diary. 8. What is your least favorite thing about the internet? The lack of information hygiene. And I would love to do something about it, too. 9. If you were given $10 million to invest in something today what would you invest in and why? Probably something to do with information, as I said in the previous question. I would love to give people an easy way to get to the truth without having to comb through fake and altered information. I would also invest into various eco-initiatives. I never forget about the importance of keeping our planet clean, and I would love to promote the importance of eco-approach for everyone. 10. What’s something you’re currently learning or excited to learn? Right now, I pay most of my attention to learning more about emotional intelligence, business strategy, and building business in VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) reality. 11. Would you rather travel 10 years into the past or 10 years into the future? Give reasons for your answer. Definitely the future. I am so excited about it in general and the technology it can give us in part. And I also would not want to alter them,  as all the experiences I have had along the way made me who I am today.

SupportYourApp CEO Daria on Startups, Tech Businesses, and #Noonies 2022 Nomination

From a Java perspective, I’ve been the beneficiary of some pretty amazing features over the years: Generics (Java 5)
Streams and Lambda Expressions (Java 8)
Enhanced Collection Functionality (Java 9)
Sealed Classes (Java 17) As key features become available, I’ve been able to reduce development time as I implement features, while also seeing benefits in performance and supportability. However, one area that seems to have lagged behind is the adoption of a key internet protocol: HTTP/2. While the second major release has been around for over nine years, migration from the 1.x version has been slower than expected. I wanted to explore HTTP/2 to understand not only the benefits but also what it looks like to adopt this new version. In this article, we’ll look at my anecdotal experience, plus some challenges I found too. About HTTP/2 HTTP/2 was released in May 2015 and included the following improvements over the prior version of HTTP: Multiplexing: Allows multiple requests and responses to be sent over a single connection.
Header compression: Reduces the overhead of HTTP headers by using compression.
Server push: Enables servers to send resources to a client proactively.
Resource prioritization: Allows consumers to specify the importance of given resources, affecting the order in which they’re loaded.
Binary protocol: Provides an alternative to the text-based format of HTTP/1.x Additionally, HTTP/2 is backward compatible with HTTP/1.x. Common Use Cases for HTTP/2 Below are just some of the strong use cases for HTTP/2: A full-stack application that contains a chatty consumer, consistently communicating with the service tier.
An application that relies heavily on content being stored inside the HTTP headers.
A solution that is dependent on server-initiated events to broadcast updates to consumers.
A client application that can benefit from providing prioritization instructions to the underlying service.
A web client which requires large amounts of data to be retrieved from the service tier. Migrating to HTTP/2 for any of these use cases could provide noticeable improvements from a consumer perspective. What’s Involved with HTTP/2 Adoption? When I think about a lower-than-expected adoption rate of 45%-50% (as noted in this Cloudflare blog), I wonder if developers believe the upgrade to HTTP/2 won’t be easy. But I don’t get why they feel that way. After all, HTTP/2 is backward compatible with HTTP/1.x. Using Spring Boot 3.x (which requires Java 17+ and uses the default Jetty server) as an example, upgrading to HTTP/2 is actually kind of easy. The biggest hurdle is making sure you are using SSL/TLS — which is honestly a good idea for your services anyway. server.port=8443
server.ssl.key-store=classpath:keystore.p12
server.ssl.key-store-password=<your_password_goes_here>
server.ssl.key-store-type=PKCS12
server.ssl.key-alias=<your_alias_goes_here> With SSL/TLS in place, you just need to enable HTTP/2 via this property: server.http2.enabled=true At this point, your service will start and utilize HTTP/2. By default, all of the features noted above will be ready for use. Is that all there is to it? But Wait … There’s More to the Story Depending on where your service is running, the effort to upgrade to HTTP/2 might not yield the results you were expecting. This is because network infrastructure often stands between your service and the consumers wanting to take advantage of HTTP/2 greatness. That layer needs to fully support HTTP/2 as well. What does this mean? It means your service could receive the request and provide an HTTP/2 response, only for a router to downgrade the protocol to HTTP/1.1. Here’s the big takeaway: before you get all excited about using HTTP/2 and spend time upgrading your services, you should confirm that your network layer supports it. Recently, Heroku announced support of HTTP/2 at the router level. They’re addressing this exact scenario, and HTTP/2 is now available in a public beta. The illustration below demonstrates how they make HTTP/2 service responses available to consumers: This initial push from Heroku makes it possible for service developers like me to build applications that can take advantage of HTTP/2 features like header compression and multiplexing. This means faster delivery to consumers while potentially reducing compute and network loads. If your cloud provider doesn’t have infrastructure that supports HTTP/2, requests to your HTTP/2-enabled service will result in an HTTP/1.x response. As a result, you won’t get the HTTP/2 benefits you’re looking for. Challenges With HTTP/2 While my own experience of upgrading my Spring Boot services to leverage HTTP/2 hasn’t run up against any significant challenges—especially with support now at the cloud provider network level—I am reading more about others who’ve struggled with the adoption. Based on some of the customer experiences I’ve found, here are some items to be aware of during your journey to HTTP/2: Increase in compute cost: These features can lead to more processing power than what you may have needed for HTTP/1.x.
Impact on other portions of the response: After adding SSL/TLS to your service, expect that more time will be required to perform this layer of processing.
Advanced features can be misconfigured: You’ll want to understand concepts like multiplexing, stream prioritization, flow control, and header compression, as these items can impact performance in a negative manner if not configured correctly. If your path to production includes dev, QA, and staging environments, you should be able to identify and mitigate any of these hurdles long before your code reaches production. Conclusion My readers may recall my personal mission statement, which I feel can apply to any IT professional: “Focus your time on delivering features/functionality that extends the value of your intellectual property. Leverage frameworks, products, and services for everything else.” — J. Vester Upgrading to HTTP/2 certainly adheres to my mission statement by giving service owners features like multiplexing, header compression, resource prioritization, and binary responses—all of which can impact the overall performance of a service or the consuming application. At the same time, cloud providers who support HTTP/2—like Heroku—also get credit for adhering to my mission statement. Without this layer of support, applications that interact with these services wouldn’t be able to take advantage of these benefits. When I reflect on my personal experience with Java, I can’t imagine a world where I am writing Java code without using generics, streams, lambdas, enhanced collections, and sealed classes. All of these features are possible because I took the time to see the benefits and perform the upgrade. The question really isn’t if you should upgrade to HTTP/2, but rather which upcoming development iteration will cover this enhancement. Have a really great day! From a Java perspective, I’ve been the beneficiary of some pretty amazing features over the years: Generics (Java 5) Streams and Lambda Expressions (Java 8) Enhanced Collection Functionality (Java 9) Sealed Classes (Java 17) Generics (Java 5) Generics Streams and Lambda Expressions (Java 8) Streams and Lambda Expressions Enhanced Collection Functionality (Java 9) Enhanced Collection Functionality Sealed Classes (Java 17) Sealed Classes As key features become available, I’ve been able to reduce development time as I implement features, while also seeing benefits in performance and supportability. However, one area that seems to have lagged behind is the adoption of a key internet protocol: HTTP/2. While the second major release has been around for over nine years, migration from the 1.x version has been slower than expected. I wanted to explore HTTP/2 to understand not only the benefits but also what it looks like to adopt this new version. In this article, we’ll look at my anecdotal experience, plus some challenges I found too. About HTTP/2 HTTP/2 was released in May 2015 and included the following improvements over the prior version of HTTP: Multiplexing: Allows multiple requests and responses to be sent over a single connection. Header compression: Reduces the overhead of HTTP headers by using compression. Server push: Enables servers to send resources to a client proactively. Resource prioritization: Allows consumers to specify the importance of given resources, affecting the order in which they’re loaded. Binary protocol: Provides an alternative to the text-based format of HTTP/1.x Multiplexing: Allows multiple requests and responses to be sent over a single connection. Multiplexing: Header compression: Reduces the overhead of HTTP headers by using compression. Header compression: Server push: Enables servers to send resources to a client proactively. Server push: Resource prioritization: Allows consumers to specify the importance of given resources, affecting the order in which they’re loaded. Resource prioritization: Binary protocol: Provides an alternative to the text-based format of HTTP/1.x Binary protocol: Additionally, HTTP/2 is backward compatible with HTTP/1.x. Common Use Cases for HTTP/2 Below are just some of the strong use cases for HTTP/2: A full-stack application that contains a chatty consumer, consistently communicating with the service tier. An application that relies heavily on content being stored inside the HTTP headers. A solution that is dependent on server-initiated events to broadcast updates to consumers. A client application that can benefit from providing prioritization instructions to the underlying service. A web client which requires large amounts of data to be retrieved from the service tier. A full-stack application that contains a chatty consumer, consistently communicating with the service tier. An application that relies heavily on content being stored inside the HTTP headers. A solution that is dependent on server-initiated events to broadcast updates to consumers. A client application that can benefit from providing prioritization instructions to the underlying service. A web client which requires large amounts of data to be retrieved from the service tier. Migrating to HTTP/2 for any of these use cases could provide noticeable improvements from a consumer perspective. What’s Involved with HTTP/2 Adoption? When I think about a lower-than-expected adoption rate of 45%-50% (as noted in this Cloudflare blog ), I wonder if developers believe the upgrade to HTTP/2 won’t be easy. But I don’t get why they feel that way. After all, HTTP/2 is backward compatible with HTTP/1.x. this Cloudflare blog Using Spring Boot 3.x (which requires Java 17+ and uses the default Jetty server) as an example, upgrading to HTTP/2 is actually kind of easy. The biggest hurdle is making sure you are using SSL/TLS — which is honestly a good idea for your services anyway. server.port=8443
server.ssl.key-store=classpath:keystore.p12
server.ssl.key-store-password=<your_password_goes_here>
server.ssl.key-store-type=PKCS12
server.ssl.key-alias=<your_alias_goes_here> server.port=8443
server.ssl.key-store=classpath:keystore.p12
server.ssl.key-store-password=<your_password_goes_here>
server.ssl.key-store-type=PKCS12
server.ssl.key-alias=<your_alias_goes_here> With SSL/TLS in place, you just need to enable HTTP/2 via this property: server.http2.enabled=true server.http2.enabled=true At this point, your service will start and utilize HTTP/2. By default, all of the features noted above will be ready for use. Is that all there is to it? But Wait … There’s More to the Story Depending on where your service is running, the effort to upgrade to HTTP/2 might not yield the results you were expecting. This is because network infrastructure often stands between your service and the consumers wanting to take advantage of HTTP/2 greatness . That layer needs to fully support HTTP/2 as well. network infrastructure often stands between your service and the consumers wanting to take advantage of HTTP/2 greatness What does this mean? It means your service could receive the request and provide an HTTP/2 response, only for a router to downgrade the protocol to HTTP/1.1. Here’s the big takeaway: before you get all excited about using HTTP/2 and spend time upgrading your services, you should confirm that your network layer supports it. Recently, Heroku announced support of HTTP/2 at the router level. They’re addressing this exact scenario, and HTTP/2 is now available in a public beta. The illustration below demonstrates how they make HTTP/2 service responses available to consumers: announced This initial push from Heroku makes it possible for service developers like me to build applications that can take advantage of HTTP/2 features like header compression and multiplexing. This means faster delivery to consumers while potentially reducing compute and network loads. If your cloud provider doesn’t have infrastructure that supports HTTP/2, requests to your HTTP/2-enabled service will result in an HTTP/1.x response. As a result, you won’t get the HTTP/2 benefits you’re looking for. Challenges With HTTP/2 While my own experience of upgrading my Spring Boot services to leverage HTTP/2 hasn’t run up against any significant challenges—especially with support now at the cloud provider network level—I am reading more about others who’ve struggled with the adoption. Based on some of the customer experiences I’ve found, here are some items to be aware of during your journey to HTTP/2: Increase in compute cost: These features can lead to more processing power than what you may have needed for HTTP/1.x. Impact on other portions of the response: After adding SSL/TLS to your service, expect that more time will be required to perform this layer of processing. Advanced features can be misconfigured: You’ll want to understand concepts like multiplexing, stream prioritization, flow control, and header compression, as these items can impact performance in a negative manner if not configured correctly. Increase in compute cost: These features can lead to more processing power than what you may have needed for HTTP/1.x. Increase in compute cost: Impact on other portions of the response: After adding SSL/TLS to your service, expect that more time will be required to perform this layer of processing. Impact on other portions of the response: Advanced features can be misconfigured: You’ll want to understand concepts like multiplexing, stream prioritization, flow control, and header compression, as these items can impact performance in a negative manner if not configured correctly. Advanced features can be misconfigured: If your path to production includes dev, QA, and staging environments, you should be able to identify and mitigate any of these hurdles long before your code reaches production. Conclusion My readers may recall my personal mission statement, which I feel can apply to any IT professional: “Focus your time on delivering features/functionality that extends the value of your intellectual property. Leverage frameworks, products, and services for everything else.” — J. Vester “Focus your time on delivering features/functionality that extends the value of your intellectual property. Leverage frameworks, products, and services for everything else.” — J. Vester Upgrading to HTTP/2 certainly adheres to my mission statement by giving service owners features like multiplexing, header compression, resource prioritization, and binary responses—all of which can impact the overall performance of a service or the consuming application. At the same time, cloud providers who support HTTP/2—like Heroku—also get credit for adhering to my mission statement. Without this layer of support, applications that interact with these services wouldn’t be able to take advantage of these benefits. When I reflect on my personal experience with Java, I can’t imagine a world where I am writing Java code without using generics, streams, lambdas, enhanced collections, and sealed classes. All of these features are possible because I took the time to see the benefits and perform the upgrade. The question really isn’t if you should upgrade to HTTP/2, but rather which upcoming development iteration will cover this enhancement. Have a really great day!

Why Haven’t You Upgraded to HTTP/2?

Your Architecture Cheat Sheet to API Design Styles

What’s one of the most underrated feelings of the modern day? Feeling happy with where and who you are. People today are constantly being pushed to be more successful, effective, and productive. It is not even tied to our work anymore. Thanks to social media, this mindset has seeped into our personal lives. Have we gone too far, or can we still do something to deal with the issue of toxic productivity? What Is Toxic Productivity, and Where Are Its Roots? Toxic productivity is an uncontainable desire to stay productive no matter what and at what price. Its roots have been deeply hidden in the modern hustle culture. It gets even worse for those who spend hours on social media. Influencers can create an idolized image of their day, making their subscribers feel miserable for not having a “perfect productive life.” A heightened need to be productive can also emerge during times of uncertainty. As was explained by clinical psychologist Kathryn Esquer, “When our environment presents us with stressors or threats that are well beyond our control, often we find ourselves focusing on small things within our immediate environment in which we can control ― such as cleaning our house or excelling at work projects.” The Most Common Tell-Tale Signs of Toxic Productivity There are 7 main signs of toxic productivity: Neglecting self-care like proper sleep, taking breaks, and personal time. Feeling guilty when taking time off work, even if it is for a few hours. Constantly feeling burnt out, even after a vacation. Feeling irritated when taking care of routine tasks. Shaming others for having some downtime. Being restless and obsessive over productivity metrics. Losing track of what’s really important, like mental or physical health. Toxic Productivity — Shake it Off I myself used to believe that being productive and connected to work at all times was one of my main tasks. With time, as the SupportYourApp team grew and added members all around the world, I understood that my outlook on productivity needed to evolve further. Setting Clear and Unshakable Work-Life Boundaries Work is like water — if not obstructed, it can seep into every little nook and cranny. And we have to be careful not to drown in our tasks. Here’s what can be done to limit contact with work after business hours. Separate work and personal devices. Laptops, tablets, or even phones if necessary. This will make checking work emails, task boards, and Slack chats tougher. With time, not checking them outside of business hours will become a habit. If work accounts are tied to a personal device, it is better to put it as far away as possible. This is what I myself practice. I leave my phone in another room a couple of hours before I go to sleep to make sure this time truly belongs to me — I read, study, and dedicate time to my own well-being. Set-in-stone boundaries are a necessity for anyone who wants to both be productive and have a healthy relationship with their work. Building a Schedule With Built-in Breaks Calendars are ruling our lives. Meetings, appointments, calls, reminders, and so on. But rarely can one see a reminder to “Relax” in their calendars. Because no one told us that we could put it in our schedule. What’s even worse, the modern hustle culture almost teaches us that taking breaks during the day is not productive, hence they should not be taken at all. After all, how can there be a period of time when one does nothing? Appalling. In reality, scheduling time for breaks and actually taking them is more productive than the alternative. Choosing to stay put and working through breaks buys us a one-way ticket to burning out and resenting our task boards. Doing Nothing I know, I know. Doing nothing is a thought that often shocks people. We can’t imagine what it’s like and most importantly why we should waste our time like that. But those who have tried it at least once know — that doing absolutely nothing is, arguably, one of the toughest tasks we can face. That is why meditation is so difficult to master. Setting time aside to be free of tasks and do nothing can reboot our minds and show us that being, as we think, unproductive, is completely normal. It is ok to dedicate time to just being with our thoughts. It is also ok to watch some Netflix, go away for a weekend, be one with nature, and simply relax. Making this a habit is especially useful for those who think they are obligated to be productive all the time — the epitome of a toxic productivity outlook. Getting Rid of Unimportant Tasks and Communications I am sure everyone has experienced this at least once. That feeling of “this call could have been an email.” It has been following us around ever since the pandemic hit and Zoom and Google Meets have become one of the most important and frequently used work tools. Today, when the amount of daily tasks is, mostly, unregulated, it is critical to prioritize responsibilities. Getting rid of calls that are unimportant or can be turned into quick messages and emails is also crucial. Those who refuse to do this and take on everything thrown their way just for the sake of being productive only waste their time and resources, leaving themselves vulnerable to burnout. Sorting through my calls and making sure I am only present where I need to be is the art I have been mastering for years. I ask myself, “Will I be able to add anything to the call? Will I learn anything new?” If the answers are “No”, then I simply do not hit that “Join the call” button and get on with my other responsibilities. This is one of the best skills I learned as a CEO and Managing Partner. The issue with productivity is that it is next to impossible to distinguish between simply a productive week and a timetable becoming toxic. It is important to pause and ask oneself: is this a busy week, or do I just want to be productive, because everywhere I look, I am being told so? If the second is the answer, then the whole approach to work needs to be reviewed and adjusted to lead a more healthy and balanced life. What’s one of the most underrated feelings of the modern day? Feeling happy with where and who you are. People today are constantly being pushed to be more successful, effective, and productive. It is not even tied to our work anymore. Thanks to social media, this mindset has seeped into our personal lives. Have we gone too far, or can we still do something to deal with the issue of toxic productivity? What Is Toxic Productivity, and Where Are Its Roots? What Is Toxic Productivity, and Where Are Its Roots? Toxic productivity is an uncontainable desire to stay productive no matter what and at what price. Its roots have been deeply hidden in the modern hustle culture. It gets even worse for those who spend hours on social media. Influencers can create an idolized image of their day, making their subscribers feel miserable for not having a “perfect productive life.” A heightened need to be productive can also emerge during times of uncertainty. As was explained by clinical psychologist Kathryn Esquer, “When our environment presents us with stressors or threats that are well beyond our control, often we find ourselves focusing on small things within our immediate environment in which we can control ― such as cleaning our house or excelling at work projects.” The Most Common Tell-Tale Signs of Toxic Productivity The Most Common Tell-Tale Signs of Toxic Productivity There are 7 main signs of toxic productivity: Neglecting self-care like proper sleep, taking breaks, and personal time. Neglecting self-care like proper sleep, taking breaks, and personal time. Feeling guilty when taking time off work, even if it is for a few hours. Feeling guilty when taking time off work, even if it is for a few hours. Constantly feeling burnt out, even after a vacation. Constantly feeling burnt out, even after a vacation. Feeling irritated when taking care of routine tasks. Feeling irritated when taking care of routine tasks. Shaming others for having some downtime. Shaming others for having some downtime. Being restless and obsessive over productivity metrics. Being restless and obsessive over productivity metrics. Losing track of what’s really important, like mental or physical health. Losing track of what’s really important, like mental or physical health. Toxic Productivity — Shake it Off Toxic Productivity — Shake it Off I myself used to believe that being productive and connected to work at all times was one of my main tasks. With time, as the SupportYourApp team grew and added members all around the world, I understood that my outlook on productivity needed to evolve further. Setting Clear and Unshakable Work-Life Boundaries Setting Clear and Unshakable Work-Life Boundaries Work is like water — if not obstructed, it can seep into every little nook and cranny. And we have to be careful not to drown in our tasks. Here’s what can be done to limit contact with work after business hours. Separate work and personal devices. Laptops, tablets, or even phones if necessary. This will make checking work emails, task boards, and Slack chats tougher. With time, not checking them outside of business hours will become a habit. If work accounts are tied to a personal device, it is better to put it as far away as possible. This is what I myself practice. I leave my phone in another room a couple of hours before I go to sleep to make sure this time truly belongs to me — I read, study, and dedicate time to my own well-being. Set-in-stone boundaries are a necessity for anyone who wants to both be productive and have a healthy relationship with their work. Building a Schedule With Built-in Breaks Building a Schedule With Built-in Breaks Calendars are ruling our lives. Meetings, appointments, calls, reminders, and so on. But rarely can one see a reminder to “Relax” in their calendars. Because no one told us that we could put it in our schedule. What’s even worse, the modern hustle culture almost teaches us that taking breaks during the day is not productive, hence they should not be taken at all. After all, how can there be a period of time when one does nothing? Appalling. In reality, scheduling time for breaks and actually taking them is more productive than the alternative. Choosing to stay put and working through breaks buys us a one-way ticket to burning out and resenting our task boards. more productive Doing Nothing Doing Nothing I know, I know. Doing nothing is a thought that often shocks people. We can’t imagine what it’s like and most importantly why we should waste our time like that. But those who have tried it at least once know — that doing absolutely nothing is, arguably, one of the toughest tasks we can face. That is why meditation is so difficult to master. Setting time aside to be free of tasks and do nothing can reboot our minds and show us that being, as we think, unproductive, is completely normal. It is ok to dedicate time to just being with our thoughts. It is also ok to watch some Netflix, go away for a weekend, be one with nature, and simply relax. Making this a habit is especially useful for those who think they are obligated to be productive all the time — the epitome of a toxic productivity outlook. Getting Rid of Unimportant Tasks and Communications Getting Rid of Unimportant Tasks and Communications I am sure everyone has experienced this at least once. That feeling of “this call could have been an email.” It has been following us around ever since the pandemic hit and Zoom and Google Meets have become one of the most important and frequently used work tools. Today, when the amount of daily tasks is, mostly, unregulated, it is critical to prioritize responsibilities. Getting rid of calls that are unimportant or can be turned into quick messages and emails is also crucial. Those who refuse to do this and take on everything thrown their way just for the sake of being productive only waste their time and resources, leaving themselves vulnerable to burnout. Sorting through my calls and making sure I am only present where I need to be is the art I have been mastering for years. I ask myself, “Will I be able to add anything to the call? Will I learn anything new?” If the answers are “No”, then I simply do not hit that “Join the call” button and get on with my other responsibilities. This is one of the best skills I learned as a CEO and Managing Partner. The issue with productivity is that it is next to impossible to distinguish between simply a productive week and a timetable becoming toxic. It is important to pause and ask oneself: is this a busy week, or do I just want to be productive, because everywhere I look, I am being told so? If the second is the answer, then the whole approach to work needs to be reviewed and adjusted to lead a more healthy and balanced life.

How to Deal With the Issue of Toxic Productivity

I feel like there’s always been a love-hate relationship with the concept of testing. Without a doubt, the benefits of testing whatever you are building help avoid customers reporting those same discoveries. That’s the love part of the relationship. The hate part is when project timelines cause testing to become a lower priority … often to the point where it becomes a backlog wishlist item that rarely surfaces in a current sprint. This almost guarantees customers will contact you with unexpected outcomes. As software development lifecycles (SDLCs) have matured, the testing has become easier, allowing developers to create unit tests that fully cover the aspect being validated. The use of ChatGPT or GitHub Co-Pilot has matured to the point where such unit tests can be auto-generated. Continuous integration (CI) tooling solutions have improved to enforce high levels of code coverage before any pull request (PR) can be merged. Doing so allows teams to shift left with their development – forcing problems to be addressed during the development phase and cutting down the cost of features along the way. This approach has worked great for traditional APIs and web frameworks, but testing mobile applications often requires teams to perform manual testing—executing from a published list of steps across as many different device types as can be managed. I wanted to see if I could identify a way mobile development and testing could employ the shift-left concept. What’s Missing in Mobile Testing At a high level, the mobile application space must have the ability to test features and functionality in the same way APIs and web frameworks are testing today. This means getting out of the business of performing tests manually using an inventory of physical devices or emulators. This ideal state of mobile testing would be UI-driven to avoid writing cryptic tests focused on user activity. This approach could expand the tooling to internal consumers or product owners who want to validate their vision as a reality. Just like traditional unit or integration tests, the ability to introduce modules can validate small aspects of the mobile application and be used as building blocks for larger flows. In doing this, teams will be able to stay “dry” (don’t repeat yourself) and avoid duplicate work. Finally, these tests will need to be able to become part of the CI/CD pipeline, despite being driven by a graphical UI. In this ideal state, mobile software engineers can effectively shift left for their mobile development and testing. What is “Shift Left” Anyway? It’s a good idea to clarify what I mean when I say “shift left” for mobile testing. Wikipedia defines shift left for testing as noted below: “Shift-left testing is an approach to software testing and system testing in which testing is performed earlier in the lifecycle (i.e. moved left on the project timeline). It is the first half of the maxim ‘test early and often’. It was coined by Larry Smith in 2001.” Simply embracing shift left allows defects to be identified during the development phase. This is important since the issue can be addressed while the feature is fresh in the mind of the engineer(s) focused on the source. Here are some of the benefits of adopting shift left: Cost reduction to deliver features by finding and fixing issues at development time.
Higher efficiency due to a reduced amount of time required to revisit solutions long after delivery.
Higher quality due to being forced to fully cover and validate during the development phase. Ultimately, the shift left concept will lead to a competitive advantage when solutions reach consumers that are validated and working as expected. About Tosca Last year, I explored the use of Tricentis Testim in my “Improving Customer-Facing App Quality Using Tricentis Testim” article. I was impressed at how easy it was to validate my Magic 8 Ball solution using a GO-based RESTful API and Vue.js web-based client. I wanted to see if Tricentis had a solution that would allow teams to shift left for mobile testing. Turns out, they have a product called Tosca. The Tosca product provides codeless test generation, allowing the creation of small modules that can be reused and automated. These modules can be thought of as Lego blocks that can be connected where needed due to the employment of a standardized contract between them. Tosca takes things a step closer to more traditional development lifecycles by providing the ability to leverage AI to help generate mobile tests for your features. Tosca also leverages the power of the open source Appium project without a heavy learning curve via the Tricentis Mobile Agent. This allows all the power provided in my prior article to be included in the shift left journey with mobile development. As a result, Tosca allows testing of native, hybrid, and web mobile apps across real iPhone, Android, mobile phone, and tablet devices without maintaining and possessing these devices. Just like the Testim product, the Tosca solution provides the ability for tests to be executed as part of CI/CD pipelines, allowing for the enforcement of shift left adoption. You can use Tosca to test on an iOS or Android phone directly, as well as through emulators or simulators available through an IDE like Android Studio. Using Tosca, you can scan your application and have it create test cases: Once Tosca has created the test cases, you can also create test cases of your own. One of the advantages of Tosca is that it allows you to write tests without having to write code. This is made possible through its library of modules that can simulate most every action, including opening a browser or filling out a form. In this example, we’ve used three modules for our Tosca mobile test case. We test: Opening a browser and hitting our app’s endpoint
Selecting a particular type of vehicle
Filling up a form about that particular vehicle Notice that all we had to do is provide sample inputs (in the screenshot, we’re doing so for step 3 highlighted above). Once the test is complete, you’ll receive a diagnostics report on Tosca. Shift left for Mobile Testing By leveraging a product like Tosca, software engineers focused on mobile development can put their teams at a competitive advantage by employing shit left for mobile testing: Mobile features are validated during the development phase, similar to services and web frameworks.
Tests are driven by a UI that can be expanded to internal consumers and product owners to help solidify their vision.
The test suite can be built from a collection of “dry” modules that are structured to fully cover new features and functionality.
Tests can be executed against an exhaustive inventory of mobile devices without owning and maintaining such devices.
Before introducing new features to the primary code branch, the associated PR would have called the UI-generated tests in the same way unit or integration tests are executed in API or web framework CI/CD pipelines. Conclusion My readers may recall that I have been focused on the following mission statement, which I feel can apply to any IT professional: “Focus your time on delivering features/functionality that extends the value of your intellectual property. Leverage frameworks, products, and services for everything else.” - J. Vester To reach peak productivity, software engineers focused on mobile development need to adopt shift left for mobile testing. However, the ideal choice should consider any associated learning curve and supportability when searching for solutions. The Tosca product adheres to my personal mission statement by allowing teams to reach the shift-left state without additional source code to support and maintain. The product also allows non-engineers to participate in the test development, giving teams an advantage in ensuring designs match expectations. I’ve personally employed the shift left approach for several years and appreciate the experience every time a defect is avoided due to simply following the process. It’s time for mobile development to employ the concept of shift left. Have a really great day! I feel like there’s always been a love-hate relationship with the concept of testing. Without a doubt, the benefits of testing whatever you are building help avoid customers reporting those same discoveries. That’s the love part of the relationship. love The hate part is when project timelines cause testing to become a lower priority … often to the point where it becomes a backlog wishlist item that rarely surfaces in a current sprint. This almost guarantees customers will contact you with unexpected outcomes. hate As software development lifecycles (SDLCs) have matured, the testing has become easier, allowing developers to create unit tests that fully cover the aspect being validated. The use of ChatGPT or GitHub Co-Pilot has matured to the point where such unit tests can be auto-generated. Continuous integration (CI) tooling solutions have improved to enforce high levels of code coverage before any pull request (PR) can be merged. Doing so allows teams to shift left with their development – forcing problems to be addressed during the development phase and cutting down the cost of features along the way. This approach has worked great for traditional APIs and web frameworks, but testing mobile applications often requires teams to perform manual testing—executing from a published list of steps across as many different device types as can be managed. I wanted to see if I could identify a way mobile development and testing could employ the shift-left concept. I wanted to see if I could identify a way mobile development and testing could employ the shift-left concept. What’s Missing in Mobile Testing At a high level, the mobile application space must have the ability to test features and functionality in the same way APIs and web frameworks are testing today. This means getting out of the business of performing tests manually using an inventory of physical devices or emulators. This ideal state of mobile testing would be UI-driven to avoid writing cryptic tests focused on user activity. This approach could expand the tooling to internal consumers or product owners who want to validate their vision as a reality. Just like traditional unit or integration tests, the ability to introduce modules can validate small aspects of the mobile application and be used as building blocks for larger flows. In doing this, teams will be able to stay “dry” (don’t repeat yourself) and avoid duplicate work. Finally, these tests will need to be able to become part of the CI/CD pipeline, despite being driven by a graphical UI. In this ideal state, mobile software engineers can effectively shift left for their mobile development and testing. What is “Shift Left” Anyway? It’s a good idea to clarify what I mean when I say “shift left” for mobile testing. Wikipedia defines shift left for testing as noted below: shift left for testing “Shift-left testing is an approach to software testing and system testing in which testing is performed earlier in the lifecycle (i.e. moved left on the project timeline). It is the first half of the maxim ‘test early and often’. It was coined by Larry Smith in 2001.” “Shift-left testing is an approach to software testing and system testing in which testing is performed earlier in the lifecycle (i.e. moved left on the project timeline). It is the first half of the maxim ‘test early and often’. It was coined by Larry Smith in 2001 .” Larry Smith in 2001 Simply embracing shift left allows defects to be identified during the development phase. This is important since the issue can be addressed while the feature is fresh in the mind of the engineer(s) focused on the source. Here are some of the benefits of adopting shift left: Cost reduction to deliver features by finding and fixing issues at development time. Higher efficiency due to a reduced amount of time required to revisit solutions long after delivery. Higher quality due to being forced to fully cover and validate during the development phase. Cost reduction to deliver features by finding and fixing issues at development time. Higher efficiency due to a reduced amount of time required to revisit solutions long after delivery. Higher quality due to being forced to fully cover and validate during the development phase. Ultimately, the shift left concept will lead to a competitive advantage when solutions reach consumers that are validated and working as expected. About Tosca Last year, I explored the use of Tricentis Testim in my “ Improving Customer-Facing App Quality Using Tricentis Testim ” article. I was impressed at how easy it was to validate my Magic 8 Ball solution using a GO-based RESTful API and Vue.js web-based client. I wanted to see if Tricentis had a solution that would allow teams to shift left for mobile testing. Improving Customer-Facing App Quality Using Tricentis Testim Turns out, they have a product called Tosca . Tosca The Tosca product provides codeless test generation, allowing the creation of small modules that can be reused and automated. These modules can be thought of as Lego blocks that can be connected where needed due to the employment of a standardized contract between them. Tosca takes things a step closer to more traditional development lifecycles by providing the ability to leverage AI to help generate mobile tests for your features. Tosca also leverages the power of the open source Appium project without a heavy learning curve via the Tricentis Mobile Agent. This allows all the power provided in my prior article to be included in the shift left journey with mobile development. Appium As a result, Tosca allows testing of native, hybrid, and web mobile apps across real iPhone, Android, mobile phone, and tablet devices without maintaining and possessing these devices. Just like the Testim product, the Tosca solution provides the ability for tests to be executed as part of CI/CD pipelines, allowing for the enforcement of shift left adoption. You can use Tosca to test on an iOS or Android phone directly, as well as through emulators or simulators available through an IDE like Android Studio. Using Tosca, you can scan your application and have it create test cases: Once Tosca has created the test cases, you can also create test cases of your own. One of the advantages of Tosca is that it allows you to write tests without having to write code. This is made possible through its library of modules that can simulate most every action, including opening a browser or filling out a form. In this example, we’ve used three modules for our Tosca mobile test case. We test: Opening a browser and hitting our app’s endpoint Selecting a particular type of vehicle Filling up a form about that particular vehicle Opening a browser and hitting our app’s endpoint Selecting a particular type of vehicle Filling up a form about that particular vehicle Notice that all we had to do is provide sample inputs (in the screenshot, we’re doing so for step 3 highlighted above). Once the test is complete, you’ll receive a diagnostics report on Tosca. Shift left for Mobile Testing By leveraging a product like Tosca, software engineers focused on mobile development can put their teams at a competitive advantage by employing shit left for mobile testing: Mobile features are validated during the development phase, similar to services and web frameworks. Tests are driven by a UI that can be expanded to internal consumers and product owners to help solidify their vision. The test suite can be built from a collection of “dry” modules that are structured to fully cover new features and functionality. Tests can be executed against an exhaustive inventory of mobile devices without owning and maintaining such devices. Before introducing new features to the primary code branch, the associated PR would have called the UI-generated tests in the same way unit or integration tests are executed in API or web framework CI/CD pipelines. Mobile features are validated during the development phase, similar to services and web frameworks. Tests are driven by a UI that can be expanded to internal consumers and product owners to help solidify their vision. The test suite can be built from a collection of “dry” modules that are structured to fully cover new features and functionality. Tests can be executed against an exhaustive inventory of mobile devices without owning and maintaining such devices. Before introducing new features to the primary code branch, the associated PR would have called the UI-generated tests in the same way unit or integration tests are executed in API or web framework CI/CD pipelines. Conclusion My readers may recall that I have been focused on the following mission statement, which I feel can apply to any IT professional: “Focus your time on delivering features/functionality that extends the value of your intellectual property. Leverage frameworks, products, and services for everything else.” - J. Vester “Focus your time on delivering features/functionality that extends the value of your intellectual property. Leverage frameworks, products, and services for everything else.” - J. Vester To reach peak productivity, software engineers focused on mobile development need to adopt shift left for mobile testing . However, the ideal choice should consider any associated learning curve and supportability when searching for solutions. mobile testing The Tosca product adheres to my personal mission statement by allowing teams to reach the shift-left state without additional source code to support and maintain. The product also allows non-engineers to participate in the test development, giving teams an advantage in ensuring designs match expectations. I’ve personally employed the shift left approach for several years and appreciate the experience every time a defect is avoided due to simply following the process. It’s time for mobile development to employ the concept of shift left. Have a really great day!

Why You Need to Shift-left with Mobile Testing

কেন আপনাকে মোবাইল টেস্টিংয়ের সাথে বামে স্থানান্তর করতে হবে

Warum Sie beim Testen mobiler Geräte den Shift-Left-Ansatz verfolgen müssen

Por qué necesita desplazarse hacia la izquierda con las pruebas móviles

Pourquoi vous devez passer à gauche avec les tests mobiles

मोबाइल परीक्षण के साथ आपको शिफ्ट-लेफ्ट की आवश्यकता क्यों है

モバイルテストでシフトレフトが必要な理由

모바일 테스트에서 왼쪽으로 이동해야 하는 이유

Por que você precisa mudar para a esquerda com testes móveis

Почему вам нужно сдвинуться влево при мобильном тестировании

Mobil Testle Neden Sola Kaymanız Gerekiyor?

Tại sao bạn cần Shift-left với thử nghiệm trên thiết bị di động

为什么你需要通过移动测试进行左移

Minimal Knowledge PT-AE Attacks on Black-Box Speaker Recognition Models

The fight for privacy is reaching its peak. Social networks like Meta, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok are under heavy fire. The companies have to prove they are not gathering their users’ personal information, sell the data to governments around the globe, and have no intent to harm their users’ privacy and security. People all around are getting tired of worrying about the safety of their private information and taking extreme measures to protect themselves online. Online Security. So Hot Right Now. Why? One of the most fascinating processes to watch has been the United States’ fight against TikTok. The platform that is used by 170 million Americans is going to be completely banned in the United States unless its parent company, ByteDance, sells it to an American entity. In her statement, Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell, the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee says “Congress is acting to prevent foreign adversaries from conducting espionage, surveillance, maligned operations, harming vulnerable Americans, our servicemen and women, and our U.S. government personnel”. Facebook is also in a risk zone. Cybercriminals there can take over poorly protected user accounts to spread links to fake AI applications, making the app even more unsafe, especially for vulnerable user groups. People are driven by the desire to protect themselves, their close ones, and their own data and private information. And some of us go to extreme ways to make sure it happens. Here are only a few things people do to protect themselves. Going Low Tech Not so long ago, phones had buttons. I know. Blows my mind too. What doesn’t blow it is when I see people still using them and shops still selling them. A lot of them are purchased by people who want to go off the grid, even if just for a little while. Not having any social media applications, constant push notifications, and messages with memes can, for example, save a huge amount of time. Plus, modern cool-looking, button-less phones are prone to being breached. Smishing attacks (hackers getting sensitive information via text messages), break-ins via Bluetooth, malware attacks, social engineering attacks, and so on. And people who do not want to suffer from such breaches go to extreme measures and are saying a definitive “No” to smart gadgets — phones, laptops, tablets. Rejecting the use of smart devices in the modern world is one of the toughest decisions one can take. Our lives, for better or worse, are tied to them to the extent that some people become addicted to their phones. When people start fearing for their privacy so much, they choose to toss their phones away. That is the exact time to stop and think — are we sure we are going the right way? Going low-tech is not an option for me, so I take extra care to set up two-factor authentication on my devices and make sure that sensitive data is secure or even encrypted if need be. This is true for both my personal and professional lives. A great practice for everyone who is not ready to say goodbye to their smart devices but still wants to retain their online privacy and security. Double-Checking Online Contacts In the world of global interactions, we all have online friends. People we connected with over our love for cooking, watching particular TV shows, or sharing an interest in crocheting or running. But are we sure those are all real people with good intentions? Being sure about the real personalities of people we meet online is impossible, so verifying people’s personalities is one of the best approaches to internet friendships. Here’s how to do it: Checking the consistency of communication patterns — this is one of the most popular and important tell-tales of a real person behind the profile picture. Constantly changing spelling, grammar, and communication style can actually be signs of fraud and risk. Setting up video calls — communicating with an online friend eye-to-eye with the help of video calls and building on that communication later on will not only help protect the data but will also serve as a catalyst for a relationship. Cross-platform verification — checking whether a person’s information, data, and photos on different platforms can help establish whether the connection is legitimate or fake and actually dangerous. Double-checking online contacts is a practice the SupportYourApp team implemented long ago. We make sure to not expose our information to unsuitable people and run background checks on our contacts and potential partners. Taking this extra step does take time and resources, but it also ensures that we are remaining breach- and leak-proof. Using Disposable Emails Those who have taken a “Which kind of onion are you” online test know the pain of having to enter an email address to find out whether they are a shallot. It is simply frustrating. On a more serious note, there are plenty of times when we need to enter our emails to download e-books, register on a website where we want to make a one-time purchase or keep on reading an interesting article. This makes internet users vulnerable to leaks and breaches, where their email addresses can get into the wrong hands. It is also a way to open ourselves up to one of the most annoying things on the internet — spam emails. This is where services like 10- and 15-minute-mail (not an ad) come into play. They allow users to get generic email addresses to enter whenever needed without exposing themselves to online danger. It is also a good way to spare one’s inbox from unnecessary messages — believe me, I get over 100 emails per day and these tools have been saving me from receiving thousands of spam emails over the years. A lot of people still do not recognize the importance of online security and privacy. But the further into the internet era we go, the more important these questions will become. While going off the grid and checking the legitimacy of absolutely every online connection may still be considered “going too far”, it is likely they will become standard practices for keeping our data safe. The fight for privacy is reaching its peak. Social networks like Meta, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok are under heavy fire. The companies have to prove they are not gathering their users’ personal information, sell the data to governments around the globe, and have no intent to harm their users’ privacy and security. The fight for privacy is reaching its peak. Social networks like Meta, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok are under heavy fire. The companies have to prove they are not gathering their users’ personal information, sell the data to governments around the globe, and have no intent to harm their users’ privacy and security. TikTok TikTok People all around are getting tired of worrying about the safety of their private information and taking extreme measures to protect themselves online. People all around are getting tired of worrying about the safety of their private information and taking extreme measures to protect themselves online. Online Security. So Hot Right Now. Why? One of the most fascinating processes to watch has been the United States’ fight against TikTok. The platform that is used by 170 million Americans is going to be completely banned in the United States unless its parent company, ByteDance, sells it to an American entity. In her statement, Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell, the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee says “Congress is acting to prevent foreign adversaries from conducting espionage, surveillance, maligned operations, harming vulnerable Americans, our servicemen and women, and our U.S. government personnel”. Facebook is also in a risk zone. Cybercriminals there can take over poorly protected user accounts to spread links to fake AI applications, making the app even more unsafe, especially for vulnerable user groups. People are driven by the desire to protect themselves, their close ones, and their own data and private information. And some of us go to extreme ways to make sure it happens. Here are only a few things people do to protect themselves. Going Low Tech Not so long ago, phones had buttons. I know. Blows my mind too. What doesn’t blow it is when I see people still using them and shops still selling them. A lot of them are purchased by people who want to go off the grid, even if just for a little while. Not having any social media applications, constant push notifications, and messages with memes can, for example, save a huge amount of time. Plus, modern cool-looking, button-less phones are prone to being breached. Smishing attacks (hackers getting sensitive information via text messages), break-ins via Bluetooth, malware attacks, social engineering attacks, and so on. And people who do not want to suffer from such breaches go to extreme measures and are saying a definitive “No” to smart gadgets — phones, laptops, tablets. Rejecting the use of smart devices in the modern world is one of the toughest decisions one can take. Our lives, for better or worse, are tied to them to the extent that some people become addicted to their phones. When people start fearing for their privacy so much, they choose to toss their phones away. That is the exact time to stop and think — are we sure we are going the right way? Going low-tech is not an option for me, so I take extra care to set up two-factor authentication on my devices and make sure that sensitive data is secure or even encrypted if need be. This is true for both my personal and professional lives. A great practice for everyone who is not ready to say goodbye to their smart devices but still wants to retain their online privacy and security. Double-Checking Online Contacts In the world of global interactions, we all have online friends. People we connected with over our love for cooking, watching particular TV shows, or sharing an interest in crocheting or running. But are we sure those are all real people with good intentions? Being sure about the real personalities of people we meet online is impossible, so verifying people’s personalities is one of the best approaches to internet friendships. Here’s how to do it: Checking the consistency of communication patterns — this is one of the most popular and important tell-tales of a real person behind the profile picture. Constantly changing spelling, grammar, and communication style can actually be signs of fraud and risk. Checking the consistency of communication patterns — this is one of the most popular and important tell-tales of a real person behind the profile picture. Constantly changing spelling, grammar, and communication style can actually be signs of fraud and risk. Setting up video calls — communicating with an online friend eye-to-eye with the help of video calls and building on that communication later on will not only help protect the data but will also serve as a catalyst for a relationship. Setting up video calls — communicating with an online friend eye-to-eye with the help of video calls and building on that communication later on will not only help protect the data but will also serve as a catalyst for a relationship. Cross-platform verification — checking whether a person’s information, data, and photos on different platforms can help establish whether the connection is legitimate or fake and actually dangerous. Cross-platform verification — checking whether a person’s information, data, and photos on different platforms can help establish whether the connection is legitimate or fake and actually dangerous. Cross-platform verification — checking whether a person’s information, data, and photos on different platforms can help establish whether the connection is legitimate or fake and actually dangerous. Double-checking online contacts is a practice the SupportYourApp team implemented long ago. We make sure to not expose our information to unsuitable people and run background checks on our contacts and potential partners. Taking this extra step does take time and resources, but it also ensures that we are remaining breach- and leak-proof. Using Disposable Emails Those who have taken a “Which kind of onion are you” online test know the pain of having to enter an email address to find out whether they are a shallot. It is simply frustrating. On a more serious note, there are plenty of times when we need to enter our emails to download e-books, register on a website where we want to make a one-time purchase or keep on reading an interesting article. This makes internet users vulnerable to leaks and breaches, where their email addresses can get into the wrong hands. It is also a way to open ourselves up to one of the most annoying things on the internet — spam emails. This is where services like 10- and 15-minute-mail (not an ad) come into play. They allow users to get generic email addresses to enter whenever needed without exposing themselves to online danger. It is also a good way to spare one’s inbox from unnecessary messages — believe me, I get over 100 emails per day and these tools have been saving me from receiving thousands of spam emails over the years. over 100 emails per day over 100 emails per day A lot of people still do not recognize the importance of online security and privacy. But the further into the internet era we go, the more important these questions will become. While going off the grid and checking the legitimacy of absolutely every online connection may still be considered “going too far”, it is likely they will become standard practices for keeping our data safe.

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