When Realtracs began offering our product in new markets, it meant more than servicing additional customers. It required being able to support a lot more listing data. Every new market brought listing data that our new customers expected to access on day one. At the same time, our existing platform already housed millions of listings.… Continue reading Designing for Scale: How We Re-Architected Our Listings Platform
Tag: engineering hub
Move Fast and Break Inertia
Building new things is exciting. It can also be tough to get started. In our case, we have an existing Listing Alerts feature that connects agents with buyers searching for properties. This highly valued tool needs some architectural changes to support our desired long-term vision including a user interface “glow-up” and new ways to keep… Continue reading Move Fast and Break Inertia
Your Product is Speaking. Do You Like What It’s Saying?
Part of creating a usable product is expressing the character of your brand through the user experience (both interaction and visual design). It includes the tone and voice of the text, the atmosphere conveyed through the use …
You Found the Right Fit; Now Start Them on the Right Foot: How Onboarding Can be Painful or Powerful
It’s your first day at your new job. You show up ready to conquer the world. You meet all the new people, get all the paperwork done and sit down at your new desk for the first …
7 Lean Principles at Realtracs
The Realtracs’ product development team applies the seven Lean principles to our software processes. These principles – based on the Toyota Production System and adapted for software by Mary and Tom Poppendieck in Lean Software Development – …
One Bad Apple Can Spoil the Bunch: Why Hiring For Culture is Critical
Most of us spend as many waking hours with our co-workers as we do our own spouses. Yet we are far more careful about the character and compatibility of a spouse than we are coworkers. Why is …
The Road to More Modern Technology
Deprecating the oldest part of the product – a part users have known and used for two decades – can be intimidating even when you have a brilliant team, and the benefits are clear. Did you know …
Feeling Misaligned with the Business? The problem lies in your code
Many engineering teams spend a lot of time building software to meet business needs, but not enough time trying to understand the business itself. Teams quickly start projects and rush to meet requirements. Early successes are quickly …
Demand Will Always Exceed Capacity: Your Architecture Must Design for It
For those who work in product development, it seems we can never move fast enough. There is always another feature to build, problem to solve, or opportunity to exploit. If you feel like you can’t keep up, …
SPA doesn’t mean Single Page Architecture; Building Micro Frontends
More often than not, our micro service architecture stops at the API layer. We meticulously build our backend architecture to align with our problem domains, ensure we don’t have data contagion, and pat ourselves on the back …