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Holden Rohrer
Ms Rosner
Hire Me
10 Mar 2021}

\centerline{7Factor Research Essay}

7Factor is a boutique software development and consulting firm.
Jeremy Duvall, the founder, created the company after working at other
consultancy companies because he saw a problem.
There was a lack of coordination between the sales team and the
programming team.
The programmers were being pushed into unreasonable deadlines based on
promises that couldn't be realistically fulfilled.
This wasn't just a bad work environment for engineers, though; it led to
poor outcomes for clients as well.
Over its existence, 7Factor has worked for many clients to create,
develop, and improve solutions for their unique problems.
7Factor employs their own DevOps (a mix of developing programs and
administering their use on a server or serverless platform) tools and
cloud-based solutions.
7Factor focuses on using modern technology instead of legacy tools so
that they can respond quickly and improve over time.

WellEntry is a product line that 7Factor has created and sold to
companies that need a COVIDtracking solution without wanting to build
one themselves.
This is the project that I'll be working on during my internship, and
I'm excited to see how it's been written and what I'll be able to
contribute to it.
Its entire ``stack'' (the software used to run the web application) is
based on JavaScript, which is a language that I've used before.
I, however, haven't worked with most of the frameworks that the
WellEntry team is using on top of the basic runtime, so I'll be
interested to learn these.
In addition, there are many coding practices that WellEntry uses that I
haven't yet had a chance to work with.
These include test-driven development (writing code based on
expectations from unit tests), cloud-based infrastructure, and Kanban.

Kanban is part of the principles that 7Factor uses in all of their
development projects.
It is a project management philosophy where work is organized into small
tasks that team members can work on individually to create new business
value without having to spend too much time on coordinating these
efforts.
Version control software, which I have worked with before, is also part
of this philosophy.
7Factor uses GitHub and a Continuous Deployment pipeline to manage
changes to the projects they work on and hosting them.
They also use Cloud-Native tooling like Amazon Web Services's EC2 and
database management software.
This makes 7Factor more able to use modern and efficient deployment
technology like Terraform, Ansible, Chef, etc.
During my internship, I hope to see some of these technologies in action
on the projects that I'm working with.
I've dabbled with some of this before, but I'm really interested in
seeing how they get fully used in a team setting.

7Factor also consults with various companies as long-term retainers or
shorter-term advice contracts and business software discovery.
7Factor defines seven key principles that it uses in all of its
contracts, whether they're continuous long-term projects or helping a
company migrate from one platform to another.
These seven factors start with ''force multiplication.''
The company and its staff want to ``teach, elevate, and strengthen''
each other to continuously improve.
This leads into the second aspect: automate and continuously improve
every piece of software that they work on.
This prevents legacy code or processes that get forgotten about.
It helps the team prevent unnecessary work on figuring out a problem
that's already been solved.
7Factor also has ethical commitments.
Similar to the Hippocratic Oath, they want to do no harm.
Within and without the team, 7Factor is ethical and responsible, focused
on doing the right thing over doing the easy thing.
Focusing on ways to help their team improve over time, 7Factor follows
the philosophy of Kaizen in their culture.
The teams at 7Factor work on continuously improving and learning from
themselves and others.
They ``embrace change and thrive in uncertainty,'' which is very
valuable for their consulting position.
7Factor also prioritizes equality and diversity.
Recently, 7Factor has also made a diversity push to increase the
diversity of their staff to be more inclusive of everyone's voices and
reach better solutions.
But above all of these is to Build Good Things.
Elegant architecture, rugged testing and implementation, cutting-edge
technology, and innovative services are very important to the 7Factor
Motus Operandi.
In the past, 7Factor has worked for Delta, Aveanna, Cox Automotive,
Welnys, iVita Financial, and others.
They've received glowing reviews because the company is focused on
helping their customers through the unique pains and problems of their
issues.

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