Combining Design Thinking, Lean Startup, and Agile for Project Success

Zakaria Beji — Sat, 04 Mar 2023 23:31:51 +0000

How Uber Utilized These Three Methodologies to Create a Winning Cycle 🏆

Are you torn between choosing the best methodology for your project? Fear not! According to the consultancy firm Gartner, it's possible to combine Design Thinking, Lean Startup, and Agile to create a cohesive project cycle. 💡

The first three stages of Design Thinking focus on analyzing the user's problem, followed by Lean Startup and Agile methodologies working together on prototyping.

This is precisely what Uber did to solve the problem of finding a taxi quickly. By using Design Thinking, they identified the issue and then envisioned an application that could detect nearby drivers. 🚕

To test their potential business model, Uber launched a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) called UBERX to assess the market's viability. Then, they delved into Agile methods to meet their customers' expectations and continuously develop their business. They did this by alternating short cycles and adding new features like UBER Pool, UBER Van, and ride-sharing. 🚗

This concrete example shows the possibility of combining all three methodologies without having to choose one over the other. By combining them, you can have a comprehensive approach that provides a better understanding of your users, reduces risks, and allows for quicker iterations to meet your customers' needs. 🤝

So, don't get stuck on choosing just one method. Instead, consider combining Design Thinking, Lean Startup, and Agile for a winning project cycle like Uber did. 💪

Design vs Engineering: Making the Right Choices for Your Project

Zakaria Beji — Sat, 04 Mar 2023 19:31:10 +0000

Hey there! 😃

Do you ever get confused between design and engineering? 😕
It happens to the best of us! But it's super important to know the difference between the two, so you can make the right choices for your project.

Engineering vs Design

👷‍♀️ Engineering is all about solving a problem when you've got all the input data and there's one optimal solution that meets the criteria. Meanwhile, design is all about working with lots of uncertainties, where you just know what you want to achieve, but there are a bunch of different options to get there.

For example, let's say you want to let users buy products on your site. An engineer might immediately start thinking about integrating Stripe or Paypal. But a designer might consider whether a phone number to call to place an order would work better.

🚫 One big trap that developers fall into is skipping the design phase and jumping straight into engineering. This can lead to bad choices and prevent short iterations. To avoid this, always ask yourself: "What problem am I trying to solve with this?"

👉 Here are some examples of how asking the right questions can help you make better decisions:

❌ Task	✅ Better Question
We need ElasticSearch	What searches does the user want to do?
We need Redux	What's holding us back in the frontend code when we want to evolve the UI?
We need Kafka	How do we organize our monolith to speed up developments?
We need NEXT.js	What benefits do we get with server-side rendering?
We need AWS	How does the user perceive the level of availability and performance of our SaaS?
We need GraphQL	How can we optimize the user experience by reducing the number of API requests and improving data fetching?

By asking the right questions, you can make sure you're making decisions that will benefit your users and your project. So don't skip the design phase, and take the time to consider all the possibilities before diving into engineering! 🚀

How to "Google-it" like a Senior Software Engineer

Zakaria Beji — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 05:10:16 +0000

They say a Software Engineer is just a “professional google
searcher” and that is 100% accurate. Learn how to use Google
like a 10x developer to get the information you need faster.

Introduction

Ok, You would like to be able to directly target answers to your bugs on Stackoverflow.

Or freely source LinkedIn profiles with salesnavigator?

Unfortunately, your activity does not justify subscribing to such a subscription.

The solution exists, and it's free! 🤩

Okay, it's clear that in terms of interface, we've seen better... 😒

But once you acquire these skills, you can finally live the expression "surf 🏄 the web."

And you will save a lot of time in your searches!

The company that offers this service is part of the Alphabet group 🤔

I named it:

🥁

Google 🤯

This "method" is called OSINT, the subject is vast... You can start your research... 😩

If you're feeling lazy, I'll help you a bit in the comments. 😀👍

It's not just about looking for bug solutions or sourcing profiles..

You can absolutely search for everything more efficiently with this method.

Thanks to Benoit Bliard with whom I was able to exchange on the subject. (it's his area of expertise)

As well as to Fahime Hassani who raised the issue in his latest post, and thus was the cause of a solution appearing in it.

Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)

Open-source intelligence is not strictly cyber: the term simply refers to the exploitation of information sources accessible to everyone (newspapers, websites, conferences, etc.) for intelligence purposes.

Let's begin with LinkedIn:

We just want to target profiles that interest us in a Free & Lazy way.

It's legal, but be careful not to send too many requests at once. 😁

When I discovered the tool, a little excited, I started launching searches in all directions ⌨🐒

Even LinkedIn thought I was a bot... 🤖 (Be smart, don't click everywhere like fools.)

So, how to do it? 🤔

Let's say you're looking for a profile containing in its title

"Software engineer"

Then you have to type in the Google search bar:

site:fr.linkedin.com/in intitle:software engineer

(be careful with spaces, there should not be any after intitle:)

You hit enter and 💥 Google will give you plenty of profiles.

Then you can learn to refine your search with the examples below:

Let's put this knowledge to work.

Dork	Description	Example	Tips & Tricks
`site:`	Searches for a specific word on a particular website or domain.	`site:stackoverflow.com "python"`	You can also use this dork to exclude a specific website or domain by adding a minus sign (-) before the word, like `site:stackoverflow.com -"python"` to exclude results containing the word "python".
`intitle:`	Searches for a specific word in the title of a webpage.	`intitle:"bug fix" "python"`	Use quotes to search for an exact phrase, like `intitle:"best practices" "web development"` to find web development best practices.
`inurl:`	Searches for a specific word in the URL of a webpage.	`inurl:"machine learning" github.com`	Combine with other dorks to refine your search results. For example, `inurl:"python" site:stackoverflow.com` searches for pages on StackOverflow that contain the word "python" in their URL.
`filetype:`	Searches for a specific file type (e.g. PDF, DOCX) on the internet.	`filetype:pdf "web development" tutorial`	Use this dork to find resources in a specific file format, like PDF or DOCX. You can also exclude certain file types using a minus sign (-), like `-filetype:pdf` to exclude PDF files from your search results.
`related:`	Searches for webpages related to a specific webpage.	`related:stackoverflow.com`	Use this dork to find related resources, like related pages or forums, to a particular website or webpage.
`cache:`	Displays the cached version of a webpage that Google has indexed.	`cache:linkedin.com/in/john-doe`	Use this dork to access a cached version of a webpage if the original page is unavailable or if you want to see a previous version of the page.
`link:`	Searches for webpages that link to a specific webpage.	`link:github.com/johndoe`	Use this dork to find pages that link to a particular website or webpage. This can be useful for finding similar resources or for backlink research.
`intext:`	Searches for a specific word or phrase in the body of a webpage.	`intext:"macbook pro" amazon.com`	Use quotes to search for an exact phrase, like `intext:"web development" tutorial` to find tutorials with the phrase "web development" in their content.
`allintitle:`	Searches for pages that contain all of the words in the title.	`allintitle:"best practices" "web development"`	Use this dork to find pages with titles that contain multiple keywords or phrases.
`intext:`	Searches for a specific word or phrase in the body of a webpage.	`intext:"macbook pro" amazon.com`	Use quotes to search for an exact phrase, like `intext:"web development" tutorial` to find tutorials with the phrase "web development" in their content.
`info:`	Displays information about a specific website or webpage.	`info:google.com`	Use this dork to find information about a particular website or webpage, like its cached version, pages that link to it, and related resources.
`inanchor:`	Searches for a specific word or phrase in the anchor text of a webpage's links.	`inanchor:"web development" tutorial`	Use this dork to find pages that link to resources related to a particular topic or keyword.
`daterange:`	Searches for pages that were indexed within a specific date range.	`daterange:2458959-2458969 "python" site:stackoverflow.com`	Use Julian dates to specify the date range, like `daterange:2458959-2458969` for a date range of March 1 to March 10, 2023\. This dork can be useful for finding recent pages or for historical research.

This operator searches for the exact phrase within speech marks only. This is ideal when the phrase you are using to search is ambiguous and could be easily confused with something else, or when you’re not quite getting relevant enough results back. For example:

"Tinned Sandwiches"

OR

This self explanatory operator searches for a given search term OR an equivalent term.

site:facebook.com | site:twitter.com

AND

site:facebook.com & site:twitter.com

Operators combinaison

(site:facebook.com | site:twitter.com) & intext:"login"
(site:facebook.com | site:twitter.com) (intext:"login")

Include results

This will order results by the number of occurrence of the keyword.

-site:facebook.com +site:facebook.*

Exclude results

site:facebook.* -site:facebook.com

Synonyms

Adding a tilde to a search word tells Google that you want it to bring back synonyms for the term as well. For example, entering “~set” will bring back results that include words like “configure”, “collection” and “change” which are all synonyms of “set”. Fun fact: “set” has the most definitions of any word in the dictionary.

~set

Glob pattern (*)

Putting an asterisk in a search tells Google ‘I don’t know what goes here’. Basically, it’s really good for finding half remembered song lyrics or names of things.

site:*.com

Conclusion

Google search is particularly effective for business prospecting and searching for profiles or resumes. But you can also use this technique to find the best price for your next purchase on the net. 🙂 If you have any other tips, I'm curious to hear about them in the comments.

Bonus: The Big OSINT Map 🗺️

It's an online tree of selected useful tools made for OSINT purposes, made to help you during your investigations. 👀

DEV Community: Zakaria Beji