Stability Roadmaps and AI Adventures: A Week in the Life
Holy optimization, Batman! đ This week has been quite the adventure - my first week on Lullabotâs Support and Maintenance team. And let me tell you, itâs been a blast.
New Team, Familiar Face
Thereâs something special about joining a new team, especially when your best friend happens to be running it. Thatâs right - David Burns, my long-time colleague and partner in code, is technically my boss now. If youâd told me this would happen back in high school when we first met, I probably wouldnât have believed you. But here we are, and it feels like a perfect fit.
The LSM (Lullabot Support and Maintenance) team has this incredibly well-oiled machine of processes and systems. Getting to understand their workflow has been fascinating - itâs like watching a master class in how to run a maintenance operation at scale. Daily Geekbot updates, LSM office hours, huddles⌠every piece has its purpose, all working together to keep our clientsâ sites running smoothly.
The Birth of a Stability Roadmap Tool
Ever have one of those moments where you realize youâre doing something manually thatâs just begging to be automated? That was me this week, neck-deep in stability roadmap spreadsheets. The challenge: normalizing and importing roadmap data into Jira. Instead of copying and pasting like a mere mortal, I crafted a script to handle the heavy lifting.
The real kicker? Our spreadsheets werenât normalized (a classic case of âhow did we let this happen?â). So instead of just writing an importer, I ended up creating a full-blown consolidation script. Because if youâre going to solve a problem, might as well solve it right.
AI/ML: Not Just Buzzwords Anymore
Between AI/ML working group meetings and diving into an exciting educational tech project, itâs becoming crystal clear that weâre not just playing with toys anymore. The conversations have shifted from âwouldnât it be cool ifâŚâ to âokay, but how do we implement this responsibly?â
Had a fascinating UI brainstorming session for a major research institutionâs AI initiative that really highlighted how far weâve come. Weâre not just slapping AI into products because we can - weâre thinking deeply about user interaction patterns and meaningful integration points. This is the future, folks, and itâs getting real.
The Maintenance Chronicles
Onboarded a new higher education client this week. Hereâs a pro tip: when inheriting a project, your first week is like being a detective. Youâre gathering clues, interviewing witnesses (aka team members), and trying to piece together the story of the codebase.
The kick-off call reminded me why I love this work - thereâs something deeply satisfying about taking a complex system and making it more stable, more efficient, and generally less likely to wake someone up at 3 AM.
Open Source: The Daily Vitamin
Managed to carve out time each day for open source contributions. Itâs like a technical palate cleanser - a way to stay sharp and give back to the community thatâs given us so much. Thereâs something magical about starting each day by pushing something useful into the world.
Looking Forward
Next weekâs mission: deploying that stability roadmap automation and seeing how it holds up in the wild. Because letâs be honest - the true test of any automation isnât in the writing, itâs in the surviving contact with reality.
Stay tuned, fellow code wranglers. The intersection of maintenance, automation, and AI is where the real magic happens. And from what I can see, weâre just getting started.
Got thoughts on stability roadmap automation? Drop a comment below - Iâd love to hear your war stories and automation wins.