Testing in autonomous teams – speed is everything

By Peter Brouwers on 14-08-2019
Category: Culture, Cloud, Podcast, Development, Testing, Events Tags: Testing Culture Engineering Culture Test automation Podcast

Testing in autonomous teams – speed is everything The role of testers has evolved in the last decade. Test automation has become the norm. So, testers have grown more towards developers. What are the skills they need to succeed? With the rise of autonomous teams and product teams, more and more tasks of testers moved to other roles like developers. What knowledge must be spread over these roles to ensure that we can release to PRO without fearing what will happen? And there have been other evolutions like the one…

Cloud as Enabler to become more data driven

By Peter Brouwers on 7-08-2019
Category: Blog, Data Science & AI, Cloud, Podcast, Business Intelligence, Development Tags: BigData DataScience cloud Podcast Business Intelligence

Cloud as Enabler to become more data driven. The adjective data driven means that progress in an activity is compelled by data, rather than by intuition, personal experience or a gut feeling. Googling data driven gives you over 637 mln. results so time to add an extra result to this with this episode. But we wanted to make it more specific. We moved or big data into the cloud and we had some nice insights that we want to share. We asked our two guests of this episode to do…

‘OK Google…..’ – the future of voice is here

By Peter Brouwers on 31-07-2019
Category: Architecture, Cloud, Podcast, Interaction Design, Interaction Design, Development Tags: cloud Podcast Interaction Design Voice Google

‘OK Google…..’ – the future of voice is here. Everybody with a Google Assistant on their phone or with Google Speakers installed uses this command more and more. It’s even used by radio DJ’s to make fun and just shout out commands to see what’s happening. And you know when people start making jokes with it, it’s becoming a success. There is a future for interaction by voice. Time to talk about this success with our two guests who were part of the team that introduced the future of voice…

Performance boost the pick algorithm in the warehouse

By Peter Brouwers on 29-05-2019
Category: Data Science & AI, Cloud, Podcast, Infrastructure, Development, Testing Tags: cloud Algorithms Warehouse scaling performance flexibility

In this episode we dive into the world were e-commerce becomes physical. We talk about the bol.com Fulfilment Center (BFC). Within these centres, we have several challenges and one of these challenges has to do with the picking algorithm. The pick algorithm determines the route in a warehouse that is performed to pick all the products for a set of customers. As bol.com we have very high volumes of products that we must send from our warehouses to customers every day. So, it makes sense to optimize the distance that…

Performance boost the pick algorithm in the warehouse

Meetup: René Feiner (MessageBird) & Maarten Dirkse (bol.com) – Migrating to the cloud

By Leon van Tegelen on 9-05-2019
Category: Cloud, Development, Events Tags: Meetup Event cloud Migration

On Wednesday the 15th of May bol.com will host a meetup about migrating from on-prem to the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). After dinner is served, René Feiner, director of engineering at MessageBird will kick off the evening and talk about how and why they moved from their datacenter to GCP. Then, after a short break, Maarten Dirkse, cloud advocate at bol.com, will discuss bol.com’s ongoing migration to GCP and what lessons they have learned along the way. So if you’re interested in why companies migrate to the cloud and how…

Meetup: Maarten Dirkse & Tariq Ettaji – CI/CD @ bol.com & Xebia

By Sjors van Berkel on 16-01-2019
Category: Cloud, Events Tags: Meetup Event cloud CI/CD

During this meetup we will focus on modern CI/CD practices! Maarten Dirkse, cloud advocate at bol.com, will update us on the migration of bol.com from their in-house data center to the cloud. After a short break, we will continue with the next part of the evening, in which Tariq Ettaji will show us how to run a CI/CD stack using CloudFormation completely free of charge!

Part 1: Talks Spaces Summit v2.0

By Sjors van Berkel on 8-07-2018
Category: Blog, Architecture, Culture, Cloud, Development Tags: Event cloud

Last June, Spaces Summit was organized by and for bol.com employees. At Techlab, we want to celebrate this event by highlighting two presentations every month. This month, we will look at the challenges of moving our server infrastructure to the cloud, and, also important, how to use the cloud for pouring cold beer. Talk #1: Going to the cloud: Forget EVERYTHING you know! Speaker: Maarten Dirkse Genre: Way of working Slides Abstract: bol.com is moving to the cloud. When you’re doing so, what should you care about? Can you handle the…

Software Circus Interview – The move to the public cloud

By Maarten Dirkse on 13-09-2017
Category: Architecture, Culture, Cloud, Development Tags: Event Architecture Software Cloudbusting cloud

IT infrastructure transitions can be hard. Obviously there are technical challenges to overcome. But what do you do when internal disagreement about the way forward leads to a halt in innovation?