Snowflake (new name needed)

This is our ladder tool. It is to help us support and grow our collective capabilities. It has been forked and modified from "Snowflake", which was Medium's tool for planning and supporting their engineers' career development.

Installation

Get yarn if you don’t have it already:

npm install -g yarn

Install dependencies:

yarn

Running the dev server

yarn dev

Building

yarn export

This will put a static version of the site in out/.

How it works

This version is fed by JSON files. One for each role. A role may be Platform Engineering, Quality Engineer, Scrum Mastering, anything you like.

Each role exists as a root JSON file in static/roles. The files needed here are:

<role-name>.json
<role-name>-titles.json

`<role-name>.json`

This it the main file and describes which "tracks" make up this role. It is strongly recommended that you include the same set of "mandatory" components as most other roles - these are skills, behaviours and customer understanding we believe are fundamental to our success. Everyone should be trying to improve in these areas, from the newest joiner to the most experienced CTO.

This file looks a bit like this:

{
    "OWNERSHIP":{
        "location":"/static/tracks/mandatory/ownership.json"
    },
    "CLOUD":{
        "location":"/static/tracks/mandatory/cloud.json"
    },
    "EXTREME":{
        "location":"/static/tracks/mandatory/extreme.json"
    },

    "PLATFORM_ENGINEERING":{
        "location":"/static/tracks/platform-engineering/platform-engineering.json"
    }
}

Notice that each "track" consists of a key and a location.

key: must be unique across all roles
location: must point to a file inside the static/tracks/ directory tree.

It is recommended that we group track files logically, those pertinent to everyone in the "mandatory" folder, those pertinent to only Platform Engineering in the platform-engineering folder, those pertinent to all engineers (Quality, Platform, etc) in their own folder, etc. This aids us in reviewing changes as it helps to know which people to pull in to review.

`<role-name>-titles.json`

This file describes how the tool should tie tracks to role titles in terms of points and the number required to progress. It also describes the maximum possible points for this role.

This file is structured like so, description inline:

{
    // Must be unique across all roles
    "CLOUD":{
        "displayName":"Cloud",

        // This can be the same as other tracks - tracks with identical categories will use the same colour
        "category":"MANDATORY",
        "description":"Understands the relevance of Cloud",
        "milestones":[

            // Repeated up to 5 times for a total of 5 milestones
            {
                "summary":"Summary of this milestone",
                "signals":[

                    // No limit to the number of lines but be sensible
                    "Things that one must show to achieve this milestone"
                ],
                "examples":[

                  // No limit to the number of lines but be sensible
                  "Example behaviours, achievements, understandings"
                ]
            },
        ]
    }
}

Future work

Update logo
Tests!
Add function to export as a table - to clipboard? Generate XLS? - Need to understand use case
Add function to export to a central location e.g. DynamoDB or similar - Need to understand use case

faceleg/snowflake