{"alias":"blogEntry","byline":"By James Calmus","standfirst":"\u201CIt\u2019s great to see Scouts fully invested in the agile delivery approach and willing to experiment with handing more control over to the team.\u201D David Weston, Head of Project Management at Reason Digital, delivery partner.","content":{"layouts":[{"type":"singleColumn","areas":[{"items":[{"gridType":"gridImageBlock","gtmId":"gtmId","gtmClass":"gtmClass","image":"/media/7440/firebreak.jpg","width":1920,"height":1080,"altText":"","caption":"","link":null},{"gridType":"RichTextBlock","content":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003C!-- wp:paragraph --\u003E\u003C/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EAt\u0026nbsp;the beginning of \u003Ca href=\u0022/news/2019/july/planning-a-firebreak-beta-website-development/\u0022 title=\u0022Planning a \u0027firebreak\u0027 \u2013 beta website development\u0022\u003Eour first firebreak\u003C/a\u003E,\u0026nbsp;our development and technical teams decided on the activities\u0026nbsp;they were going to\u0026nbsp;work\u0026nbsp;on. Some of those ideas included:\u003C/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003C!-- /wp:paragraph --\u003E \u003C!-- wp:list --\u003E\u003C/p\u003E\n\u003Cul\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003Eresearching new technology;\u0026nbsp;\u003C/li\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003Ea proof of concept with new technologies;\u0026nbsp;\u003C/li\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003Ea series of bug fixes and \u2018tidy up\u2019 activity;\u0026nbsp;\u003C/li\u003E\n\u003Cli\u003Ecreating guides and updating documentation.\u003C/li\u003E\n\u003C/ul\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003C!-- /wp:list --\u003E \u003C!-- wp:paragraph --\u003E\u003C/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EThe team then took two weeks to carry out their ideas and presented their work in a team meeting.\u003C/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003C!-- /wp:paragraph --\u003E \u003C!-- wp:paragraph --\u003E\u003C/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EOne of the ideas\u0026nbsp;\u2013 the proof of concept of new technologies \u2013\u0026nbsp;involved creating a\u0026nbsp;GraphQL\u0026nbsp;implementation of the new group finder and its API.\u003C/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003C!-- /wp:paragraph --\u003E \u003C!-- wp:paragraph --\u003E\u003C/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EGraphQL\u0026nbsp;was created by Facebook as a way of improving communication between systems. Typically, a developer defines what data can be retrieved from a system that is then built as a fixed interface. If different data needs to be retrieved\u0026nbsp;at a later date\u0026nbsp;or by another system, a new interface would be created or the first one updated, creating extra work, testing, and the possibility of breaking parts of the system already using the interface.\u0026nbsp;\u003C/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003C!-- /wp:paragraph --\u003E \u003C!-- wp:paragraph --\u003E\u003C/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EThe approach pioneered by Facebook is to allow the system fetching the data to specify what it needs. By providing one flexible interface capable of retrieving all the data in a system, we can reduce the changes needed and greatly speed up development of new features and tools on the website. Using this approach, we were able to produce a prototype that implemented Graph QL to flexibly display our group finder data.\u003C/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003C!-- /wp:paragraph --\u003E \u003C!-- wp:paragraph --\u003E\u003C/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EOne of our frontend developers commented, \u201CThe firebreak was great for taking a step back and looking at the wider impacts of decisions we\u2019ve made around the fundamental architecture of our applications. Finding the time to reassess and question these approaches is often\u0026nbsp;difficult, but\u0026nbsp;can provide a huge amount of value in the long term.\u201D\u003C/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003C!-- /wp:paragraph --\u003E \u003C!-- wp:paragraph --\u003E\u003C/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EAlthough we won\u0027t be releasing the work produced during the firebreak, we are continuing this work by looking at ways of tying together data from Badges, Activities, Groups and more through a single interface.\u003C/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003C!-- /wp:paragraph --\u003E \u003C!-- wp:paragraph --\u003E\u003C/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EWe can\u2019t wait to see what the next firebreak produces.\u003C/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003C!-- /wp:paragraph --\u003E\u003C/p\u003E","gtmId":"","gtmClass":""}]}],"config":null}]},"searchDescription":null,"pageType":null,"location":null,"versionDate":"29 July 2019","reviewDate":null,"furtherReading":[],"relatedLinks":[],"id":48489,"nodeName":"Our first firebreak","title":"Our first firebreak","type":"blogEntry","image":{"url":"/media/7440/firebreak.jpg?width=800\u0026height=450\u0026v=1d9becd3397cda0","caption":"Firebreak","type":"jpg","size":1570069,"width":1920,"height":1080,"altText":""},"assets":null,"headerOptions":{"headerTitle":"Our first firebreak","headerSubTitle":null,"headerCta":null,"headerCtaText":null,"headerCtaLink":null,"headerBackgroundColour":null,"showSEOImage":false,"headerBackgroundImage":null,"quickLinks":null},"subHeader":"Outcomes of the Scouts first firebreak in the digital transformation team.","browserTitle":null,"silktide":"eyJjbXMiOiJVbWJyYWNvIiwiZWRpdG9yVXJsIjoiaHR0cHM6Ly9wcm9kLWNtcy5zY291dHMub3JnLnVrLy91bWJyYWNvIy9jb250ZW50L2NvbnRlbnQvZWRpdC80ODQ4OSJ9","canonicalUrl":"https://www.scouts.org.uk/news/2019/july/our-first-firebreak/"}