Month: May 2017

We interview Robert Simpson about his life in the restaurant and hotel industries. He is the owner of the successful Coconuts and Back A Yard Jamaican restaurant chains in Silicon Valley. Robert explains why he feels self discipline and a love of your craft are essential for a career. Robert has also been a supporter of The Palisadoes Foundation from the its inception.

Reported by Collette Bailey: Palisadoes Student Volunteer

Rear (L-R): Luke Chen Shui, Jordan Jones, Omar McKenzie, Alex Leslie: Front(L-R): Che-Andre Gordon, Xavier Bryson, Shanielle Williams, Michael Dann

This week , Real Decoy in association with the Palisadoes Foundation hosted the first in a series of monthly meet ups scheduled for the last Friday in each month.

The meet up was held at the Real Decoy main office, at 34 Half Way Tree Road. It consisted of Micheal Dann (the presenter), other Real Decoy employees as well as the Calico participants and mentors.

The presentation was about the Agile Framework for software development, SCRUM methodologies and how they compared to the Waterfall model of building software. Micheal started by introducing himself and Real Decoy, who they were and their history in Jamaica.

After a light presentation on Real Decoy, Micheal then proceeded to present on the Agile Framework. The framework itself is quite different from that of the traditional and more widely known Waterfall Model. In the Waterfall model, discovery, research, design and documentation of the project all happen before any actual programming and testing occurs. The Waterfall model therefore produces a prototype at the very end of the process. This approach results in, as Micheal stated, a lot of bugs and in most cases client dissatisfaction. This is because, he explained, that in this type of model communication is limited with the client and more time and resources are spent.

In contrast to the above, the Agile Framework focuses in on getting working versions of the project until it’s completion. Micheal explained that in this framework, there are spans of development periods called “sprints”, where for some amount of time whether two weeks or two days developers focus in on getting a certain feature or story of the project to work. “For instance, let’s say that for this sprint we will work on user login, at the end of this sprint, that feature would’ve been done and review meeting would be held which would involve the client” Micheal said. The Agile framework fixes most problems brought on by the traditional Waterfall model, clients are kept up to date with each addition or updates to the project and can actually get to see where the project and what has been implemented. This saves on time and money, as with each passing sprint, the risk of failure is lowered.

After Micheal finished his presentation, the Calico participants were given a tour of Real Decoy facilities. The participants were particularly impressed with RealDecoy’s “teams” room where different functional teams of RealDecoy were stationed such as Human Resources, Development and Testing.

These presentations were followed by light refreshments and introductions to the RealDecoy team. Assistance was offered to Calico participants who were facing trouble contributing to their repositories. A charge was made to mentors to consider the use of this framework to help improve the likelihood of successful for the projects.

The next meet up is scheduled for June 30 (time to be announced). If you would like to join virtually or physically send an email to the Palisadoes Foundation through our Contact Us form.

About RealDecoy

RealDecoy is a business technology specialist that helps B2B and B2C organizations maximize their investments in e-commerce, site search and data insight – brands like American Greetings, Marriott and Office Depot.

It’s become a global authority on site search. In fact, Oracle trusts RealDecoy to deliver customized, end-to-end implementations of its entire Oracle Commerce suite.

RealDecoy applies proven best practices to help customers get their ducks in a row with Oracle Commerce On-Premise or Oracle Commerce Cloud, as well as Oracle Commerce Guided Search and Experience Manager (once known as Endeca).

We interview Crystian Ioppolo about her work as a Palisadoes Foundation volunteer leading our grant fundraising efforts. She discusses her role, experiences and career as a nuclear engineer.