Month: December 2018

Hello to every one from amazing London!  Sad to say that though London is awesome, I do miss LA as I consider that my home.   The main aspect I miss not having to bundle up even in December. 😉

I wanted to share some new things I am learning at this moment.  Every project and role that you play, you tend to look at things from  a different lens and perspective.  Leadership and Architecture go hand in hand for the most part, but, Architect is known to look at things from a very high level to make decisions that are very important for a successful implementation.  

One such aspect of project development that needs such kind of initial research, series of gathering sessions to excavate both business and technology requirements is so much fun as it unveils things that were never thought of while we are in life cycle of  website development.    To be honest,  I get nervous when I can not visualize full picture and I strive to calm myself down by erasing some of the clouds that block my vision by being organized and asking lot of questions in  general.   When I see the picture (though not perfect or clean) I am then more confident and relaxed.  I wanted to share with you all my first hand experience as I learn a  new game being in sweet, yet, challenging place. 🙂 

1.  Document a list of every single third party integration that you would need.  This should include big, medium, small.  Usually, the big ones are actual integrations with API of some sort.  Medium ones could still involve some template and module building on Sitecore, but, usually some third party script.  SOLR or Search you would use would also come under either medium or big based on level of implementation.  Small ones are typically just JS script injections in to either head section or body section based on specific requirements of the third party. 
2. I like to call this step Identification path.  On each of the big ones noted above think about data you would like to be shown on your website.  When you merely start doing this step you might encounter questions that you never thought before.  I LOVE THIS step.  I urge every one to definitely do this. 
3. Now, we are only talking about data because in my case data was utmost importance than any acquired functionality for instance.  Now, if your use case is more on functionality, you could pursue in that direction.  In this step, based on identified areas we determine if we need to consume the data we need by directly calling the API or by adding these data elements as actual Sitecore items.  The decision typically revolves around latency, performance of API and Search-ability.   Noting all this aspects and vision along side of good collaboration with needed parties you can land on decisions that make sense for your project. 

Having these decisions made before implementation is very critical in understanding the complexity, clear breakdown of base tasks that are needed to pull your implementation together and most importantly for me is the ability to be in my calm state is priceless. lol

If any of you need more information on any of the steps I listed or decisions you need to make based on outcomes, reach out to me and I can help you.  It was fun exercise for me and hoping you all will have some fun around this as well when you play the role of Technical Archaeologist.  Could this be a new role you think?