Why great products need strong foundations

You've probably heard someone quote Norm Kerths' Prime Directive during a retrospective

Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.

In my experience, engineering teams doing their best at that time inevitably end up having to shoehorn features as requirements change or new information becomes available.

In this post, I'll discuss why great products need strong foundations.

Introducing Typescript at Cambridge University Press

Having worked with many clients who struggled to maintain Javascript projects, Typescript was a no brainer when choosing what to use for the project I was leading.

In this post, I'll share what and how I managed the challenges of introducing and using Typescript.

Introducing Tailwind at Cambridge University Press

Having used Tailwind in my personal projects, I was already a convert of the utility first approach. When I was given the opportunity to lead a new project at Cambridge University Press, Tailwind was the first tool I reached for.

In this post, I'll discuss why and how using Tailwind worked out for us.

Introducing Code-First GraphQL APIs at Cambridge University Press

Having experienced the pain of schema-first GraphQL projects, I wanted to use a different approach for a project I led at Cambridge University Press.

In this post, I'll describe what I used and how using code-first GraphQL worked out for us.

How To Use Tailwind Scoped Css Styles With Svelte

In this post I'll show why and how you can use scoped styles with Tailwind and Svelte.

How To Use Tailwind Scoped Css Styles With Next.js

In this post I'll show why and how you can use scoped styles with Tailwind and Next.js.

Using Tailwind? Consider adding a prefix

Tailwind is rightly receiving all the attention it deserves. Every developer I've introduced it to falls in love with working with CSS again!

On a recent Nuxt project, I noticed a potential issue when using Tailwind class names.

Suddenly 'bg-green-500' didn't behave as expected, as an external component also using the same class had set the color to something else.

How To Use Tailwind Scoped Css Styles With Vue

In this post I'll show why and how you can use scoped styles with Tailwind and Vue.

Creating Stencil Apps with Tailwind

Stencil is a compiler for creating web components that work alone or with web applications written in React, Vue, Angular, Svelte, Ember or anything else you can think of.

Tailwind CSS deserves all praise love it's getting right now as the developer experience is incredible.

In this post I'll show how to create a Stencil web app using Tailwind CSS.

How to fix: The request is not allowed by the user agent or the platform in the current context, possibly because the user denied permission

It's a good thing browsers don't allow sites to autoplay audio or videos without user interaction.

However, on iOS in particular, you might encounter the error

The request is not allowed by the user agent or the platform in the current context, possibly because the user denied permission.

when there is an async operation between the user interaction and playing of audio.

The good news is there's a workaround for it.

Getting people to believe in your vision

It can be a struggle, endlessly trying to convince your organisation to believe in your ideas and vision.

In this post, I'll share how I managed to do this.

How agile helped Cambridge Assessment to scale

In 2008 the media were reporting on mistakes and delays in marking examination scripts. To ensure they never made the front page of newspapers for the wrong reasons, Cambridge Assessment decided to rethink how they electronically marked examination scripts for millions of students worldwide.

Creating a product culture at Cambridge University Press

In 2015 I was hired by Cambridge University Press to develop a web application providing digital access to over 35,000 books and 1.5 million journal articles, consolidating several smaller sites. The application would go onto have over 2 million users a day and generate £65 million in revenue per year.

It was a fantastic technical learning opportunity, but it was our culture and approach to product development that would teach me the most important lesson of all.