SBO used prior + Java Packet Flashcards
Give me an example of a time that you were the first to identify a significant problem or issues that needed to be addressed
Analyze issues and make decisions: –E3
S - In P&C Data analytics there is a framework created called E3. This framework used a specific setup of a Scripts and Configuration folder and it looked for this specific configuration fill which then exported various variables and other things into the path and looked for items in the Script folder and it was very staticy. No one could work outside the folder where the folder was located because of all the hardcoding of paths and working with E3.
B - This led to developers stepping on other developers toes. Gitlab merge request issues, etc…
Well, I discovered a way that you could use some various commands within bash/linux that would find folder path no matter where it was executed, like dirname and a small amount of other commands. By doing this we could customize the configuration files to then be more robust and we did.
O - now all the developers working with the super user could change, and modifying their code, as well as test properly in the various environments under their own folder. This was a unique capability that the pricing teams started to use which helped with development of scripts in the linux server and reduced the issues experienced prior.
Tell me about a recent problem you addressed that required you to evaluate a wide range of issues, symptoms or alternatives.
Analyze issues and make decisions: –CORS Issues
S - CORs issue comes to mind. I had just returned from paternity leave and one of our 3p developers was trying to solve this CORs issue. She had been working on it for about 3-5 weeks. As such, the business was using the application only in IE because it didn’t do the check that chrome and other browsers do. I was asked to look into the issue, and did, now I must say, this may have been easier for someone in Java a lot, maybe not, because it was a little tricky, but I hadn’t used java for 4 years, and last time was in my teamfit class.
B - I first had to understand what CORs was to help resolve the issue. I don’t know how you solve something without knowing and understanding the problem better.
2nd) I had to understand the tools USAA had that might have addressed this issue, like API portal where you can add origins to help resolve issues like this. 3rd) when that didn't work I had reached out to some POCs that might have a little more understanding 4th) I started deploying my own solutions in test, trying various annotations, and calling out origins and testing the code through postman, to print statements, etc.. all this to get a better understanding of the issue, where it was happening and how it was happening. 5th) I dug into the error more intently and noticed something I didn't notice at the very beginning of all this and that was seeing multiple origins. One with the origin I was coming from, in this case beta.usaa.com and the other with an *. I started looking at the code, and I noticed something in the return function of every function in the controllers. I removed the suspected issue.
O - And it worked
Tell me about the last time your collaborative efforts with other individuals or teams paid off
Collaborate: —Snowflake API
S - started to create a snowflake api, and I started to research it, and got a lot of the initial research done and started getting the setup going in the configurations but was being pulled in other directions and didn’t know that I could continue to work on this further and it was taking me longer to do it.
B - as such, I brought in a couple of colleagues and showed them what I had discovered, where I was at with things, the setup I did with the access with the warehouse/db/schema stuff and what have you. We all started to work on it together bouncing ideas, thoughts, and discoveries off each other.
O - in the end, we completed the work faster than I would have done on my own especially with the competing tsks and we were able to successfully role out our first snowflake API on time
Tell me about the last time you took the initiative to bring a team together and encouraged the members to work collaboratively
Collaborate: —RTB/BTB
S - We are working on moving our applications over to the contract since they all sort of fall under the RTB. And many are nervous about finding a new home and don’t like it because of the team dynamic we had and the work we did, and so the FTEs have been kind of in the dumps a little. However, we still need to setup our 3p guys up for success.
B - As such, I had to get everyone on the same page, the DPO, Scrum master, FTEs and even the 3P and explain the situation, and come up with a game plan as to the best way to get our 3p individuals ready to take the reigns and run with it. We all came up with ideas they were are implementing. Now in meetings, we are trying to take a lesser role. Continue to ask the 3p for insight while remaining quiet so that they can add to the conversation more vs taking a backseat like they have been doing.
O - While FTEs still a little iffy about things, they are totally on board and helping to make this happen. 3p developers are stepping up and doing more of a role. They are handling one brand new feature completely on their own with a tiny bit of oversight from me and so forth.
Describe the most difficult project that you had to compete within a short time frame
Manage Execution (Prioritize and make decisions): —OCP3 Conversion
S - I do not know why we were not on the mailing lists or information, but we go word about OCP3 retiring and movement to 4 a little late in the game. I had jumped on the how to make this happen as soon as we found out about it. And started researching wikis/slack/other projects etc.
B - Found out the UIs were migrating to aws and the APIs were moving to OCP4 and what configurations were needed. I started with one application and was able to successfully get it deployed to both areas. I ran into some bugs, but got them worked out quickly. Once we got an application in place to work off of as a template, we were ready to go. I was quickly able to make the changes, I focused on the bigger most troublesome applications first, and progressed to the smallest application and one that wasn’t even being used in production yet. Once we did that I was able to pull down all the pods of the applications that were moved over. We kept being pinged about pods running which was interesting, but after a little research we discovered some that were deployed prior under an old gitlab group before we even were an agile team that needed to be pulled down and some with a prefix sent out to ocp land on accident, with v2, i think happened with the testing of one application.
O - however, we were able to remove all the pods that were no longer needed and able to migrate the others to ocp4 before the deadline and didn’t show up on any naughty lists.
Tell me about the biggest challenge in effectively handling several competing demands
Manage Execution (Prioritize and make decisions): —OCP3 Conversion
S - I do not know why we were not on the mailing lists or information, but we got word about OCP3 retiring and movement to 4 a little late in the game. I had jumped on the how to make this happen as soon as we found out about it. And started researching wikis/slack/other projects etc.
On top of all this, we were working through vulnerabilities, we were working on hitting our PI objectives, boss server migration, and a high level defect that popped up on us.
B - So I just had to prioritize things for us to do and knock them out in order of most pressing. I quickly put OCP retirement to the top because if server retired and we didn’t move our application components we wouldn’t have an application.
Then we knocked out the high level defect, or rather, I got a strong developer on the high level to knock it out quickly. while the rest of the team knocked out vulnerabilities in the application.
And last we knocked out the PI objectives
O - At the end of the day, we moved all components on time, still knocked out the defect and vulnerabilities and hit our PI objective. Sometimes it doesn’t workout that way but at least if it didn’t the only thing we would have had left is a PI objective that would have been able to be carried over to the next PI. Luckily i didn’t have to worry about that.
Tell me about a time you had to shift priorities or adjust plans to respond to a crisis situation
Demonstrate adaptability: —PNCRCT and spring boot
S - First we were migrating 9 APIs from SB 2 to 3, during that conversion something was tweaked on one of our applications, unfortunately it was not caught in testing and made itself to production. The business had a deadline for the rate filings and really needed this application to avoid a large amount of manual work. We had about two days to figure this out and get it to production.
B - I jumped into help and discovered the issue and we were able to get to production, in about 1.5 days. However, we ran into yet another issue that was discovered. Again, I discovered the issue looking at the code and figured out it was a simple annotation taken out preventing the @post method to work. We quickly added it and began to try to deploy our code. However, the issue was that this DB has been a pain in the past and decided to be a pain again this particular time. The pain is that we have a hard time connecting to it, despite working and connecting to it in multiple environments (not just this API) and working with DB. So there was nothing wrong with our configuration. We just have a difficult time connecting to this ONE DB, as such we were having issues deploy our pod to production. I was able to get start getting the team to help out, and between three of us, we re-ran that job for almost 2.5 days. I know this doesn’t seem ideal and we have made tweaks to configurations that help somewhat since, but this is what we had to deal with, this particular weekend.
O - At any rate, we made the deadline, got the code deployed the Monday they needed it and the app on springboot 3.2 using java 17 and some updated configurations. Lastly that week we wrapped up the conversion of the other applications.
Tell me about the changes in your organization that have been most difficult for you to accept
Demonstrate adaptability: —RTB/BTB
S -
B -
O -
Tell me about the last time you had to convince others of the value of a product or service in the face of significant resistance
Influence others: —Migrate off stored procs to python
S -
B -
O -
Describe a recent idea or proposal you suggested where you needed to gain support of multiple stakeholders with competing demands
Influence others: —Migrate off stored procs to python
S -
B -
O -
Describe a recent situation when you went beyond the requirements of your job to accomplish a goal or objective
Drive for results: — DB connectivity issue
S - Issue connecting via runsql
B - Ended up researching the issue,
Reviewed error messages, used api to connect and it didn’t have an issue
analyzed our other aliases and played around with configurations. Determined it was not how we set up the alias or anything with our conjur accounts.
So reached out to the team and explained what I was seeing and figured it was due to to something on their end.
Then met with that team, and we did some troubleshooting together
O - at the end, we discovered it had to do how the kerberos ticket was being grabbed and then they made some changes on their end to clear the kerberos ticket so a new one could be fixed and then we were able to start using the our alias to connect to DB through their framework.
Tell me about a recent project that you successfully completed despite running into obstacles
Drive for results: —PNCRCT and spring boot
S - First we were migrating 9 APIs from SB 2 to 3, during that conversion something was tweaked on one of our applications, unfortunately it was not caught in testing and made itself to production. The business had a deadline for the rate filings and really needed this application to avoid a large amount of manual work. We had about two days to figure this out and get it to production.
B - I jumped into help and discovered the issue and we were able to get to production, in about 1.5 days. However, we ran into yet another issue that was discovered. Again, I discovered the issue looking at the code and figured out it was a simple annotation taken out preventing the @post method to work. We quickly added it and began to try to deploy our code. However, the issue was that this DB has been a pain in the past and decided to be a pain again this particular time. The pain is that we have a hard time connecting to it, despite working and connecting to it in multiple environments (not just this API) and working with DB. So there was nothing wrong with our configuration. We just have a difficult time connecting to this ONE DB, as such we were having issues deploy our pod to production. I was able to get start getting the team to help out, and between three of us, we re-ran that job for almost 2.5 days. I know this doesn’t seem ideal and we have made tweaks to configurations that help somewhat since, but this is what we had to deal with, this particular weekend.
O - At any rate, we made the deadline, got the code deployed the Monday they needed it and the app on springboot 3.2 using java 17 and some updated configurations. Lastly that week we wrapped up the conversion of the other applications.
Tell me about the last time someone discussed a highly technical and complex issue with you?
Listen Effectively: –always, pncrct dates.
S - I think this is crucial almost always, especially when we have our meetings with business and so forth. One of the recent times was on one of our applications that track rates. The business has a lot of logic built into the renewal date, new biz dates, and other the other various dates. Basically, when the renewal data is one thing, then this other date has to be another and so forth. On top of that, more logic is built into changing plan or forecast date.
B - So very effective note taking was needed and very effective listening skills too to make sure I was understanding what was being said correctly so that we could deploy this logic correctly into the code and not have so much rework involved. Of course when its this complex, questions too will be asked.
O - So I ended up capturing the notes into box, we also added the information to our wiki. This helps with recording the business requirements, but also for future developers. I am not sure you can always get away from all future questions, but there was minimum amount of questions asked as we started to introduce the logic into the code which helps to show we were listening and just needed some minor clarification on some items. Bottom line, its just important to listen to make sure you get it right and that is what was accomplished when being explained these complex details
Describe a time when it was critical for you to clearly understand exactly what someone was telling you
Listen Effectively: –always, pncrct dates.
S - I think this is crucial almost always, especially when we have our meetings with business and so forth. One of the recent times was on one of our applications that track rates. The business has a lot of logic built into the renewal date, new biz dates, and other the other various dates. Basically, when the renewal data is one thing, then this other date has to be another and so forth. On top of that, more logic is built into changing plan or forecast date.
B - So very effective note taking was needed and very effective listening skills too to make sure I was understanding what was being said correctly so that we could deploy this logic correctly into the code and not have so much rework involved. Of course when its this complex, questions too will be asked.
O - So I ended up capturing the notes into box, we also added the information to our wiki. This helps with recording the business requirements, but also for future developers. I am not sure you can always get away from all future questions, but there was minimum amount of questions asked as we started to introduce the logic into the code which helps to show we were listening and just needed some minor clarification on some items. Bottom line, its just important to listen to make sure you get it right and that is what was accomplished when being explained these complex details
Tell me about the last time you had to deal with a very difficult or dissatisfied customer.
Focus on the Customers: —Feature refinement on this last PI
S - This last PI planning when we were doing some feature refinement. So, we are in the middle of transitioning our application over to the contract and as such, we are trying to ramp up the 3rd party individuals on our team to be able to take over. I had already discussed with my manager one of the features we could tie them to and provide little help and see how they do.
B - Well we already had mapped out all the features to be worked and just kind of making sure everything was good. However, someone on the team thought a new feature should be brought in. They were very animated or upset about this because of stress and other factors. I continued to make my points and objections, and so did they. As I could see this was not getting anywhere, I decided we should take this offline. And we did and had a pleasant conversation even though you could still sense they wanted this particular feature.
O - While discussing this though, a thought came to me that would work for everyone. We could keep the feature planned for our 3rd party, move a whole different feature down the road because I realized we were dependent on another team and probably wouldn’t be able to finish because by the time we got this work it would be too late in the PI and we could still bring in the feature the other individual wanted. I ran that by our DPO, Scrum master, the individual on team and all parties were pleased and we had a better plan going into the next PI.
Tell me about the situation that best demonstrated your commitment to meeting customer needs
Focus on the Customers: —Feature refinement on this last PI
S - This last PI planning when we were doing some feature refinement. So, we are in the middle of transitioning our application over to the contract and as such, we are trying to ramp up the 3rd party individuals on our team to be able to take over. I had already discussed with my manager one of the features we could tie them to and provide little help and see how they do.
B - Well we already had mapped out all the features to be worked and just kind of making sure everything was good. However, someone on the team thought a new feature should be brought in. They were very animated or upset about this because of stress and other factors. I continued to make my points and objections, and so did they. As I could see this was not getting anywhere, I decided we should take this offline. And we did and had a pleasant conversation even though you could still sense they wanted this particular feature.
O - While discussing this though, a thought came to me that would work for everyone. We could keep the feature planned for our 3rd party, move a whole different feature down the road because I realized we were dependent on another team and probably wouldn’t be able to finish because by the time we got this work it would be too late in the PI and we could still bring in the feature the other individual wanted. I ran that by our DPO, Scrum master, the individual on team and all parties were pleased and we had a better plan going into the next PI.
Do you have hands-on experience with Linux containers and/or related tools? If so, please describe how you utilized the technology.
A little bit of linux container usage in my teamfit class. Mostly just used our informatica linux servers.
Have had some usage with Docker containers, again in class mostly, we would run our pods in local docker instances.
Used podman outside of class similarly to how I used Docker outside of class when I was troubleshooting something that wasn’t working in openshift, but did work in local. Was seeing if I had same issue in pod man.
Our deployments through talon pipeline also use docker.
