Building software the Swarmia way
Blog post from Swarmia
Swarmia shares its web development workflow, emphasizing a flexible approach tailored to team needs, rather than a one-size-fits-all solution. Their teams consist of T-shaped developers who can handle full-stack development but have specific strengths, operating in empowered units with decision-making authority. Swarmia uses Kanban for task management, preferring it over Scrum for its flexibility, and maintains a culture of kindness, trust, and open communication. Developers have autonomy in task selection and work remotely, with meetings held online to accommodate this. They advocate for splitting work into small, manageable chunks to improve predictability and value delivery, while maintaining slack to prevent burnout. The workflow includes a focus on product discovery, planning, and balance between new features and refactoring, with RFCs facilitating discussion on larger projects. Swarmia uses trunk-based development with feature flags, integrates testing into development, and deploys directly to production, emphasizing security and using a design system for UI consistency. They prioritize "boring" technologies to streamline scaling and onboarding, using a stack that includes Node.js, React, PostgreSQL, and Kubernetes. The overall approach fosters rapid iteration, customer connection, and technical soundness, positioning Swarmia to move swiftly in the competitive tech landscape.