1. 33 Software Development Tools
that Drive Dialexa’s Success
by Samer Fallouh
https://by.dialexa.com/33-software-development-tools-that-drive-dialexas-success

2. Dialexa
We are on a mission to make every
company a great technology company.
We work with organizations to define and
execute digital transformation strategies to
improve business operations and customer
experiences. Our services include:
• Multi-Year Technology Roadmap
• Platform Engineering
• User Experience Design
• Custom Software Development
• Hardware Prototyping /IoT

3. It would be helpful if there was a
definitive list of software
development tools that could lead
any team to successful execution.
But when you work at a services
company, every project is different
and requires a slightly different set
of tools.
Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE

4. The following tools
may not definitively
be “the best” options
collectively, but each
plays a critical role
across multiple teams
and projects within
our organization.
Check out these 33
software
development tools
and see which
combination will help
you execute to your
fullest potential.
Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE

5. EDITORS
Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
1. Visual Studio (and Visual Studio Code):
Microsoft’s Visual Studio is an integrated
development environment (IDE) that helps
you create websites, web apps and services
with Microsoft platforms like Windows API
and Microsoft Silverlight. Visual Studio Code
is a free open source text editor that is very
close to being an IDE and it runs across all
platforms. Some of the powerful tools it
comes with are IntelliSense code completion
and debugging.

6. EDITORS
Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
2. Atom: A fully-customizable text editor
made by GitHub. Similar to Sublime Text
2, Atom gives developers a dedicated
editor that is more approachable than
other options. It is open source and
widely adapted by the community that
built wide range of packages, Atom might
be the right choice for you.

7. HOSTING PROVIDERS
Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
3. Amazon Web Services: Choosing a
hosting provider goes beyond simple
access to virtual machines. AWS is our
favorite hosting provider because of the
depth of services available to
developers. For example, when RDS
released an adaptation of PostgreSQL a
couple of years ago, it made a huge
difference for our projects. Unless our
clients specifically need a different
provider or a specific GCP/Azure
service is necessary, AWS is our choice.

8. HOSTING PROVIDERS
Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
4. Google Cloud Platform: With all of
the basic features you’d expect from a
hosting provider today, we choose
Google Cloud Platform when Kubernetes
support is critical. Because the container
cluster manager was originally designed
by Google, GCP comes with built-in
support that can sometimes streamline
the DevOps process in a project.

9. HOSTING PROVIDERS
Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
5. Microsoft Azure: As is often
the case with Microsoft products/
services, Azure comes with
heavy support for the wide range
of additional Microsoft tools.
When a client relies on Microsoft,
Azure might be our best choice.

10. SOFTWARE PROJECT MANAGEMENT
AND AGILE BOARDS
Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
6. JIRA Software: Without a doubt, JIRA
is always the number one option for our
team. It’s favorite tool for scrum, Kanban
boards, and planning projects in general.
And with a deep library of useful plug-ins
for scoping, timelines, versioning,
releases and more, it’s hard to go wrong
with JIRA. As long as you’re not afraid of
tackling its complexity of course.

11. SOFTWARE PROJECT MANAGEMENT
AND AGILE BOARDS
Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
7. Waffle: When we’re looking
for a lightweight alternative to
JIRA for a certain project, Waffle
is a great (free) project
management option. It sits on top
of GitHub repos and issues and
lets you modify as if they’re
boards rather than dealing with
GitHub tags manually.

12. SOFTWARE PROJECT MANAGEMENT
AND AGILE BOARDS
Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
8. GitHub Projects: We love
GitHub (more on that later), so
when they recently released
built-in project management
boards for code repos, they had
our attention. This feature is still
in the early stages, but it might be
an alternative that works for you.

13. SOFTWARE PROJECT MANAGEMENT
AND AGILE BOARDS
Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
9. Trello: We wouldn’t necessarily use
Trello to track the stories of specific
projects. But as a means to track
personal tasks or task management
within a team related to a project, Trello
has served us well. We’re watching it
closely after the recent announcement
of Atlassian acquiring Trello for $425M.

14. To read more you can find the full article at
https://by.dialexa.com/33-software-development-tools-
that-drive-dialexas-success

15. CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION
Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
10. CircleCI: This tools gives you the
features necessary to integrate your
entire stack with support for a wide
range of build tools and multiple
compilers built right into the platform.
We started using CircleCI specifically
for its support for iOS builds. You
commit your CI configurations to your
project repos in YAML files and extend
it with scripts referenced in the YAML.

16. Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
11. TeamCity: Another full-feature CI
tool, we rely heavily on TeamCity when
we need Windows support. Unlike
CircleCI, TeamCity lets us configure
builds within the tool itself. There are
many other CI tools, but CircleCI and
TeamCity are by far our most used.
CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION

17. Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
12.Contentful: This API-driven content
management system is a pretty
awesome step forward from traditional
CMS tools. It lets us communicate with
it as an API to build standalone front
ends and add data from there. We use
Contentful because it fits nicely with our
RESTful API positioning.
CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

18. Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
13.Statamic: Rather that
competing as just another full-
fledged CMS, Statamic started off
as a bare bones, minimalist
option. While it has continued to
add more features, sometimes all
we need is a flat file CMS and
Statamic gives us just that.
CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

19. Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
14.Quay: As you’d expect, this Docker Repository
tools builds, analyzes and distributes your container
images. It’s our preferred option because it gives us
immediate security scanning and an ability to dig into
details for image uploading.
DOCKER REPOSITORIES

20. Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
15.Docker Hub (Official): It’s often best
to use the software vendor’s tools for
support, but in this case we’re still sticking
to Quay. Docker understandably focused
more on the tech behind Docker Hub
rather than the front end, which meant we
missed features like basic crowd
functionality. Docker Hub is gaining
ground for our repository needs, but for
now we’ll stick to Quay when possible.
DOCKER REPOSITORIES

21. Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
16.Selenium: Industry standard for
automating web applications. It runs
across many browsers and operating
systems, and has the flexibility to be
controlled by a variety of languages
and frameworks.
TESTING

22. Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
17.Nightwatch.js: Testing solution that allows you
to write end-to-end tests in Node.js that quickly
run against a Selenium/WebDriver server.
TESTING

23. Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
18.Sketch: If you’ve read anything of ours,
you know that design is a critical aspect of
every software development project at Dialexa.
To that end, we often rely on Sketch as a
lightweight tool to visualize our user interface
as we go through our agile approach.
DESIGN

24. Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
19.InVision: Another tool we use in
conjunction with our designers, InVision is a
bit more full-featured and acts as a powerful
prototyping, collaboration, and workflow
platform as we work through UI. Our design
team uses InVision for interaction design
and passing it to the rest of the team.
DESIGN

25. If you want to learn more about what it takes to
leverage technology properly in your business…
Download our free eBook:
Enterprise Technology for Business Outcomes

26. Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
20. GitHub: You can’t get by in software
development without knowing GitHub—it’s
just that important. Anything from repos to
wiki pages, open source and everything in
between, we rely on GitHub across almost
all projects. It doesn’t really fit into one of
our specific categories in this post, but we
can’t talk about software development tools
without mentioning GitHub specifically.
HONORARY MENTIONS IN OUR
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TOOL BELT

27. Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
21.Todoist: This task management
app certainly wouldn’t replace JIRA,
but it can be a powerful tool when
managing organizational tasks. Todoist
is great for one-to-one feedback and
acknowledgement between people like
project leads and engineers.
HONORARY MENTIONS IN OUR
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TOOL BELT

28. Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
22. Paw: This API testing tool makes
our lives easier when we have
complicated schemes within a project.
Rather than repeating API calls, you can
save them and store the sequence for
quicker access. And it has a powerful
sharing tool for teams.
HONORARY MENTIONS IN OUR
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TOOL BELT

29. Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
23. Bear: Bear isn’t your average notetaking
tool. It quickly overtook other options and
became my favorite because it’s markdown
driven. I wrote code for 10 years so I’m just
not used to relying on a mouse for work—if I
can do something on my keyboard, I’ll do it
faster that way. Bear is a new tool, but if you
love markdown it might work for you as well
as it does for me.
HONORARY MENTIONS IN OUR
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TOOL BELT

30. Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
24. Apiary/Dredd: At Dialexa, we’re all
about a documentation-first approach to
API design. We list these two tools
together because as a team, they allow
us to collaborate and visualize projects
and give us a powerful testing
framework to ensure parity between
documentation and functionality.
HONORARY MENTIONS IN OUR
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TOOL BELT

31. Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
25. Docker: The leading software
containerization platform might not need
much of an introduction. It’s an obvious item
in our list of software development tools and
we rely on it across a wide range of client
projects because it standardizes application
packaging. Docker helped us revolutionize our
Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery,
and Continuous Deployment workflows.
HONORARY MENTIONS IN OUR
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TOOL BELT

32. Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
26. Slack: Slack seems to be taking over
the business world as a means of team
communication. One of the biggest reasons
is the wide range of useful integrations
included in this platform. I don’t love Slack
personally, but it’s admittedly a great way
to unify key notifications in project-specific
groups.
HONORARY MENTIONS IN OUR
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TOOL BELT

33. Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
27. SourceTree: This Git client gives you
built-in visualization of branches
and Gitflow workflow (releases, features,
hotfixes, etc.)—all in a well-done, nicely
visualized package. We especially
appreciate the feature that doesn’t let
you work with blank commits, a problem
that has broken other Git user tools.
HONORARY MENTIONS IN OUR
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TOOL BELT

34. Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
28. Postico: PostgreSQL has been
around for a long time and it’s incredibly
powerful. Postico is a PostgreSQL client
that connects to the database, saving
schema for your team to make things
more approachable.
HONORARY MENTIONS IN OUR
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TOOL BELT

35. Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
29. iTerm2: This Terminal emulator comes
with a lot of fancy features for those that
aren’t quite happy with the standard
Terminal. This isn’t really a project-specific
tool—more like a personal choice for some
of those on our team.
HONORARY MENTIONS IN OUR
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TOOL BELT

36. Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
30. Bees with Machine Guns:
A utility that helps you validate your
loadbalancing and autoscaling rules in
a platform. You basically unleash these
“Bees” to fire requests against your
servers to see how much they can
handle before they go down.
HONORARY MENTIONS IN OUR
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TOOL BELT

37. Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
31.VMware: If you’re working with
desktop or server virtualization and
need to switch operating systems
without changing hardware,
VMware is your tool.
HONORARY MENTIONS IN OUR
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TOOL BELT

38. Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
32. Loggly: Logs are getting increasingly
complex as cloud services become more
essential to our projects. But with
Loggly, we can get a bird’s-eye view of
our logs and see the data/insights that
really matter to produce great software.
HONORARY MENTIONS IN OUR
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TOOL BELT

39. Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE
33. New Relic: The Digital Intelligence
Platform helps us get the most out of our
software development tools and processes
when we use it on certain projects. With
the ability to monitor the entire technology
stack, we can validate performance as we
move through agile development.
HONORARY MENTIONS IN OUR
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TOOL BELT

40. We hope some of these tools will
help you as much as they help us
with our client projects. But if
you’re a products business, you
might be overwhelmed by the
sheer length of this list (especially
if you aren’t already using some
of these tools yourself).
Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE

41. Software development tools will help you get
out ahead of digital disruption and create
better products faster—but only if they are
implemented correctly and are aligned with
your whole technology organization.
Get the full write up of
this slideshare HERE

42. PROPERTY OF DIALEXA LLC ©2017 - CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY
Thank You
Doug Platts
VP of Marketing
marketing@dialexa.com
If you are looking to undertake a
digital transformation initiative,
contact Dialexa today and see how
we can help make your company a
great technology company.
Get the full write up of this slideshare at https://
by.dialexa.com/33-software-development-tools-that-drive-
dialexas-success