Cutting the maintenance strings on Puppet::Syntax
Today we’re handing over the maintenance of our Puppet::Syntax tool to an open source community group.
Tools
Easing the process of pull request reviews
On the GOV.UK team, all our changes are peer reviewed using Github's pull request system. If a developer wants to make a change to one of our projects, they need another developer’s approval before the change is accepted into the …
Our top 12 mob programming tips and thoughts
Over the past few months, us developers on the GOV.UK Custom Formats team have been trying out a new approach to software development called mob programming. Instead of individual developers working on stories separately, mob programming involves a group of …
A roundup of our GOV.UK search tools
One of the GDS design principles is to do the hard work to make things simple. As part of the work we’ve been doing to migrate our publishing platforms, we’ve been simplifying the infrastructure of our search system. Lots of …
How we use Git at the Government Digital Service
There's an important difference in how we use Git at GDS compared to lots of other organisations. We're very thorough when using version control because we don't want to waste the effort we've put into writing code. If our code …
Assessing documentation tools for GOV.UK Pay
As you may know we’ve recently been trying to improve how we write and display our developer documentation. We’ve done lots of user research with technical architects, developers and service managers so we have an idea of what good documentation …
Our approach to frontend and backend development
We thought we’d try and explain the approach we’ve adopted to hiring and nurturing the right development skills. We realise it may not be clear to those not part of GDS why we solely advertise for full stack developers but …
Testing JSON Web Tokens on Notify
At GDS we often use REST application programming interfaces (APIs) as a core part of application design. These REST based APIs have data and services that can be accessed by authenticated users. On GOV.UK Notify we’ve decided to authenticate API …
Reporting back on the Documenting APIs mini-conference
Last month we hosted our first mini-conference for technical writers, bringing the community together to discuss best practice and tooling. Attendees came from a mix of government departments and agencies, as well as from the private sector. We held the …
Applying the concept of Class Responsibility Cards to microservice architectures
On GOV.UK Verify, we’ve adopted a micro-services approach to our architecture
Related content and links
Work with us
If you’re interested in jobs in this field, check out all open opportunities on the GDS careers site.