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Internship Learning Portfolio

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Mariah Jacobs

August 21, 2020

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Role: Technical Program Management &

Software Development Intern

Company: Akamai Technologies

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Agenda

  • Introduction
  • Project: CHAPI/Cristal Integration
    • Technologies + Terms
    • Background, Problem Statement, & Project Overview
    • Key Features
  • Focus + Skills
  • Impact
    • Company
    • Personal

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Introduction

Mariah Jacobs

Role: Technical Program Management & Software

Development Intern

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School: University of Michigan - School of Information

Graduation: May 2021

Focus: Human-Computer Interaction/UX Agile Development

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Prior Academic Experience: B.S. in Computer Science,

minors in Psychology and Philosophy

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Prior Internship Experience:

Software Engineering Intern @ Intel (Hillsboro, OR)

Software Architecture Intern @ Intel (Hillsboro, OR)

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Career Goal: UX/UI Engineer

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Technologies + Terms

Cristal: a Flask web application that system engineers use when installing a software release on Akamai networks

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Template: a blueprint from which one or more checklists are created in Cristal

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Checklist: a procedure for running some portion of the install process in Cristal

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Release: a bundle of software and configuration specifications to be rolled out to a network

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CHAPI: Key Performance Indicator (KPI) checks API for monitoring network and alerting to degradation of health

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Background + Problem Statement

Background:

  • Problem: Lessen the severity of incidents occurring during installs

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  • Solution: Track KPIs (via CHAPI) and use them in install process

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New Problem:

  • No existing integration of CHAPI in Cristal

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  • Manual intervention required

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  • Costs time, risks human error

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Project Overview

Reduced manual intervention

Improves installation workflow, reduces risk of error/incidents and reduces time spent on install

Demonstrated

end-to-end workflow

From CHAPI template creation, to checklist creation, to schedule/fetch response cycle through Cristal UI

Integrated CHAPI into Cristal

Allows engineers to schedule, run, and fetch KPI checks via API calls on CHAPI-supported networks

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Key Features

  • Front-end:
    • Editor UI for CHAPI steps
      • Two new step types
      • Linking CHAPI schedule and fetch steps

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Key Features

  • Front-end:
    • View checklist UI with CHAPI steps
      • ‘Schedule Tests’ button triggers schedule API call
      • CHAPI responses populate textboxes

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Key Features

  • Back-end:
    • Updates to postgresql database
    • Routing in Flask
    • Schedule and fetch controller functions
    • Cron job to manage CHAPI requests

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Overview: Changes & Improvements

  • User has ability to select “CHAPI Schedule” or “CHAPI Fetch” when creating steps for a checklist

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  • To schedule a CHAPI request during a release or install, a user clicks a button which triggers the API call to CHAPI

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  • Automatically fetches KPI data and drops it into appropriate text box in the checklist

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Focus + Skills

Focus:

  • Technical Program Management: documentation, requirements
  • Software Development: primarily front-end

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Skills:

  • JavaScript/jQuery and AJAX: interactivity and transfer of data
  • HTML, Handlebars: structure of pages
  • CSS: styling
  • Flask/Python: framework, back-end

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Impact

Company:

  • Successful integration of CHAPI scheduling and fetching into Cristal templates and checklists via API endpoints

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Personal:

  • Increased familiarity with navigating, designing, and developing an application within a full-stack, production-scale codebase
  • Improved understanding of technical documentation process and collaboration between TPgMs and SWEs
  • Gained experience with remote-only work environment

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