Tech Lead Journal

“Soft skills are always going to be those ladders for you to climb in your career, whereas your tech skills can turn into snakes, meaning you’ve got to start again with another skill."

Jacqui Read, author of “Communication Patterns,” joins in this episode to discuss why strong communication skills are crucial for developers and technical leaders, often surpassing the importance of merely technical expertise. We delve into four key communication areas: visual communication, multimodal communication, communicating knowledge, and communicating remotely. During the discussion, Jacqui suggests several practical patterns you can immediately implement to level up your communication skills, such as knowing your audience, the big picture comes first, and perspective-driven documentation.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:01:40]
• Architecture Kata - [00:03:17]
• Writing Communication Patterns - [00:05:03]
• Importance of Soft Skills - [00:07:33]
• Visual Communication - [00:09:24]
• Visual Communication Essentials - [00:12:12]
• Visual Narrative - [00:17:46]
• Multimodal Communication - [00:21:09]
• Verbal & Non-Verbal Communication - [00:26:29]
• Encoding & Decoding - [00:29:58]
• Communicating Knowledge - [00:32:22]
• Tips for Capturing Knowledge - [00:40:14]
• Get Feedback Early & Just-in-Time - [00:43:05]
• Communicating Remotely - [00:48:59]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:54:23]

_____

Jacqui Read’s Bio
Jacqui Read is an internationally-recognised solution and enterprise architect, and author of Communication Patterns: A Guide for Developers and Architects. She teaches public and private workshops and speaks at international conferences on topics such as architecture practices, technical communication, and systems design. Jacqui specialises in untangling and extracting value from data and knowledge, helping businesses to determine direction in complex environments.

Her professional interests include collaborative modelling, knowledge management, Domain-Driven Design, sociotechnical architecture, and modernising enterprise architecture practices. Outside of work she enjoys gardening and strumming her ukulele while singing at the same time.

Follow Jacqui:

“As technology has become more and more pervasive, experience has become more and more important. And if companies don’t think of the experience, then users don’t think of the company."

Satyam Kantamneni is the CEO of UXReactor and the author of “User Experience Design”. In this episode, Satyam delves into the power of user experience design to drive business growth and value. Satyam explains why user experience design is paramount for success and reveals the common gaps that prevent companies from truly becoming user-centric. He dissects the concept of Experience Value Chain, illustrating the levels of UX (user experience), PX (product experience), and XT (experience transformation).

Satyam provides insights into how experience-driven organizations establish strong business moats and unlock incredible business values. He defines the concept of experience debt, urging organizations to prioritize a relentless pursuit of magical user experiences. Satyam also shares the PragmaticUX playbook and mindsets, providing a roadmap for organizations seeking to embark on the transformative journey towards XT.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:01:13]
• State of UX and Design - [00:02:35]
• The Gap for Being User-Centered - [00:04:51]
• Experience Value Chain - [00:09:09]
• Moving Beyond Just UI - [00:12:30]
• Trinity of Collaboration - [00:15:30]
• 3 Levels of Experience - [00:18:58]
• Experience Debt - [00:21:40]
• Experience Transformation (XT) - [00:24:16]
• XT & Business Moat - [00:28:04]
• PragmaticUX Playbook - [00:30:58]
• PragmaticUX Mindsets - [00:34:14]
• Organization’s Empathy - [00:40:14]
• Getting User’s Feedback - [00:43:24]
• Tips to Get Started - [00:45:04]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:47:10]

_____

Satyam Kantamneni’s Bio
Satyam is the Chief Experience Officer at UXReactor. In less than 7 years, UXReactor has become the fastest growing specialized experience design firm in the US, with a team of 50+ employees spread over three continents. Through UXReactor, Satyam demonstrated that UX can and should drive enterprise-wide innovation and business outcomes. UXReactor has enabled its clients-partners to generate hundreds of millions in additional revenue from user-centered innovation. Satyam is passionate about user-centered innovation, and he authored a book titled User Experience Playbook: A Practical to Fuel Business Growth.

Follow Satyam:

“If you can outsource it and if it’s not something that makes you different, you should use a service, because you’ll always be asked to do more things than you can build that are differentiated to your organization.”

Are you ever frustrated by your software development team getting bogged down doing undifferentiated tasks, leaving less time for innovation? In this episode, Joseph Emison, co-founder and CTO of Branch Insurance and author of “Serverless as a Game Changer,” suggests how serverless technology can streamline the way we do software development.

Joe starts by explaining the existing gap between the best and average software development teams, highlighting how teams often prioritize undifferentiated tasks instead of focusing on what truly sets them apart. He challenges the conventional wisdom that code is an asset and explains why it can be a liability.

Joe breaks down the definition of serverless technology and delves into the real costs of software development. He addresses a few of the most commonly raised objections to adopting serverless: lock-in, security, and uptime. You’ll also learn the Branch development principle and how they successfully implement serverless architecture and gain many benefits from the approach.

This episode is a must-listen for any developer or engineering leader looking to gain an understanding of serverless technology and revolutionize the way we approach software development.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:01:09]
• Writing “Serverless as a Game Changer” - [00:04:25]
• Software Development Teams Gap - [00:11:07]
• Differentiated vs Undifferentiated - [00:14:52]
• The Real Costs of Software Development - [00:19:57]
• The Serverless Mindset - [00:24:58]
• Code is a Liability - [00:27:44]
• Infrastructure as a Code - [00:31:06]
• Serverless Definition - [00:32:29]
• Serverless Security Objections - [00:36:22]
• Serverless Uptime Objections - [00:40:30]
• Branch Development Principle - [00:45:22]
• Hiring Junior Developers - [00:48:39]
• Branch’s Cloud Bill - [00:54:06]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:55:27]

_____

Joseph Emison’s Bio
Joe Emison is the co-founder and CTO of Branch Insurance, a B corporation and insurance carrier that makes it simple to bundle home and auto insurance. Previously, Joe founded BuildFax (acquired by Verisk), Spaceful (acquired by DMGT), and BluePrince (acquired by Harris Computer). Joe is also the author of “Serverless as a Game Changer: How to Get the Most out of the Cloud”.

Follow Joe:

“A blind spot is the gap between your intention and your impact. The more you can narrow the gap, the more you’re going to be able to be effective in your role and drive more performance."

Marisa Murray is the CEO of Leaderley and the author of “Blind Spots”. In this episode, Marisa delves into blind spots and explains why leaders must uncover them to become truly effective and great. She describes a blind spot as the gap between our intention and impact, and explains how it can be difficult for leaders to get feedback about their blind spots.

Marisa shares the 7 different blind spots from her book and dives deeper into three of them in this conversation: false assumptions, unhealthy detachments, and mismatched mindsets. Marisa also suggests how we can cultivate a culture to help us uncover our blind spots and also shares her practical tips for acknowledging positive intent.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:01:46]
• Writing “Blind Spots” - [00:07:05]
• Blind Spot - [00:10:08]
• Intention and Impact - [00:11:51]
• Strengths and Blind Spots - [00:14:48]
• Getting Feedback for Leaders - [00:18:45]
• 7 Blind Spots - [00:23:07]
• Bias and Blind Spot - [00:29:43]
• False Assumptions - [00:31:41]
• Unhealthy Detachment - [00:35:28]
• Mismatched Mindsets - [00:41:34]
• Uncovering Our Blind Spots - [00:45:05]
• The 3As of an Iteractive Leader - [00:48:12]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:49:33]

_____

Marisa Murray’s Bio
Marisa Murray P. Eng., MBA, PCC is a leadership development expert and the CEO of Leaderley International, an organization dedicated to helping executives become better leaders in today’s rapidly changing, highly complex world. Marisa leverages her over two decades of executive experience as a former Partner with Accenture and VP at Bell Canada in providing executive coaching, and leadership development services for organizations including Molson-Coors, Pratt & Whitney and Queen’s University.

Follow Marisa:

“Kanban is a strategy for optimizing the flow of value to your customers by focusing on three main goals: efficiency, effectiveness, and predictability."

Colleen Johnson is the CEO of ProKanban, and in this episode, we delve into the fundamentals of Kanban and how you can use it to optimize your workflow. We start by defining Kanban and exploring its core principles. You’ll learn why work item age is the single most important aspect you should track in Kanban. Colleen then explains the concept of Service Level Expectation (SLE) and how it can improve predictability and client satisfaction. We also discuss the importance of smaller batch sizes, defining workflow policies, handling blockers, and the benefits of completing already started work items to optimize flow.

We also touch on scaling Kanban beyond an individual team and discuss why Kanban is suitable for navigating unpredictable situations like the current economic climate. Towards the end, Colleen shares Women in Kanban, a community and scholarship programme to empower women to excel in Kanban.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:01:18]
• Kanban - [00:04:24]
• Work Item Age - [00:04:59]
• Calculating Work Item Age - [00:10:20]
• Small Batch Size - [00:13:08]
• Service Level Expectation (SLE) - [00:16:54]
• Managing Blockers - [00:21:05]
• Stop Pulling More, Finish Open Work Items - [00:24:46]
• Optimizing Flow - [00:28:14]
• Scaling Kanban Beyond a Team - [00:30:17]
• Kanban in the Current Tough Time - [00:34:37]
• Tools to Get Started - [00:37:21]
• Women in Kanban - [00:39:33]
• Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:41:45]

_____

Colleen Johnson’s Bio
Colleen is the CEO of ProKanban.org, an inclusive Kanban learning community. She is also co-founder of ScatterSpoke, a proud Atlassian Ventures Portfolio company driving actionable improvements through retrospective data. She has presented and taught agile to audiences around the world. As a coach, she has worked across a range of industries with clients like Wells Fargo, eTrade, Home Depot, Tanium, Gemini, and more. Colleen helps organizations apply a systems thinking approach to aligning agile methodologies end-to-end. She has served as a board member for Agile Denver, the Agile Uprising, and chair of the Mile High Agile Conference. She is happiest in the woods, camping with her three kids and very patient husband.

Follow Colleen:

“As software engineers, only a fraction of your time is spent coding. A lot of your time is spent thinking. And I’m not seeing LLMs taking that away from us anytime soon, at least, for now."

Can AI help you learn to code? Will AI take your developer job? Join me discussing these topics with Leo Porter and Daniel Zingaro, the co-authors of “Learning AI-Assisted Python Programming”.

In this episode, we discuss the impact of AI assistants on how we learn and approach programming, particularly for students and educators. We examine the shifting skillset of developers, emphasizing the importance of code reading, specification, testing, and problem decomposition over syntax and library semantics.

We also confront critical questions like the ethical implications of AI, the potential impact on developers’ job, and whether it can help lead us to a more equitable society.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:01:11]
• AI Assistant - [00:07:55]
• How AI Assistant Affect Student - [00:11:04]
• Problem Decomposition Skill - [00:16:46]
• How LLM Works - [00:19:47]
• Prompt Engineering - [00:23:36]
• Automating Tedious Tasks - [00:29:29]
• AI Ethical Issues - [00:33:30]
• AI Replacing Developers - [00:40:08]
• A More Equitable Society - [00:47:34]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:55:58]

_____

Leo Porter’s Bio
Leo Porter is a Teaching Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at UC San Diego. He is best known for his award-winning research on the impact of Peer Instruction in computing courses, the use of clicker data to predict student outcomes, and the development of the Basic Data Structures Concept Inventory. He co-wrote the first book on integrating LLMs into the instruction of programming with Daniel Zingaro, entitled “Learn AI-Assisted Python Programming: With GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT”. He also co-teaches popular Coursera and edX courses with over 500,000 enrolled learners. He is a Distinguished Member of the ACM.

Daniel Zingaro’s Bio
Dr. Daniel Zingaro is an award-winning Associate Teaching Professor of Mathematical and Computational Sciences at the University of Toronto Mississauga. He is well known for his uniquely interactive approach to teaching and internationally recognized for his expertise in active learning. He is the co-author of “Learn AI-Assisted Python Programming” (Manning Publications, 2023), author of “Algorithmic Thinking” 2/e (No Starch Press, 2024), co-author of “Start Competitive Programming!” (self-published, 2024), and author of Learn to Code by Solving Problems (No Starch Press, 2021).

Follow Leo & Daniel:

“The number one result of a good lead is reduced technical debt. Seeing technical debt just melts away and then stops occurring in the future. If you are a good lead, your systems will be stable all the time.”

Are you a developer ready to step up and lead? Join us as we explore the world of lead development with Shelley Benhoff, author of “Lead Developer Career Guide”.

In this episode, Shelley sheds light on the core responsibilities of a lead developer, clarifying the distinctions between different leadership titles within the field. We discuss the must-have leadership and mentoring skills you need to transform you into an inspiring leader. Shelley defines key success metrics and provides a self-assessment checklist to gauge your readiness for this exciting role. Shelley also covers the importance of a lead developer in optimizing development processes and fostering strong collaborations with stakeholders.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:00:59]
• Tips for Building Courses - [00:02:20]
• Writing “Lead Developer Career Guide” - [00:04:28]
• The Different Lead Developer Titles - [00:06:45]
• Leadership Skills - [00:08:43]
• Main Responsibilities - [00:10:28]
• Mentoring - [00:12:42]
• Success Measure - [00:14:22]
• Getting Appreciated - [00:16:19]
• Career Trajectory - [00:18:13]
• Readiness Check - [00:21:42]
• Leadership Styles - [00:24:12]
• Development Standards - [00:27:50]
• Optimizing The Development Process - [00:30:02]
• Learning from Different Stakeholders - [00:31:29]
• Writing Technical Documentation - [00:33:36]
• Preventive Measures - [00:36:55]
• Providing Estimates - [00:39:44]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:41:50]

_____

Shelley Benhoff’s Bio
Shelley has 20+ years of experience in IT as a Business Owner, Author, Speaker, Docker Community Leader, and Sitecore Technology MVP. She has a passion for tiaras, technology, gaming, and general nerdery. She loves to learn new things as well as mentor and teach others. She teaches content creation, content marketing, leadership, communication, Docker, and Sitecore development. Shelley is currently a Co-Owner of HoffsTech, LLC, an organization that she started with her family to provide online courses and digital media production.

Follow Shelley:

“The whole idea of being intentional is instead of being reactive or unintentional and just letting your life come to you, we have this opportunity to choose what we want to do and who we want to become."

Are you tired of feeling uninspired and disengaged in your engineering career? If so, this episode is for you!

Jeff Perry is back again for a second episode with his latest book, “The Intentional Engineer”. In this episode, Jeff uncovers the keys to building a meaningful, fulfilling career by cultivating more intentionality. We dive into the ‘quiet quitting’ phenomenon happening worldwide, and Jeff shares his personal story of disengagement during a particular stage in his career.

Learn Jeff’s Intentional Engineer model to assess your current situation and start becoming more intentional toward your lives and career. You will also learn the importance of identifying your core values, the power of mindsets, getting your career clarity, finding your genius zones, and a few core skills you should learn for living more intentionally!  

Listen out for:

• Writing “The Intentional Engineer” - [00:03:31]
• Jeff’s Story of Becoming Intentional - [00:08:33]
• Quiet Quitting Phenomenon - [00:11:17]
• Being Intentional - [00:14:41]
• Intentional Engineer Model - [00:17:50]
• Going Beyond the Tipping Point - [00:21:25]
• Identifying Core Values - [00:25:01]
• The Power of Mindsets - [00:28:00]
• Outwards vs Inward Mindsets - [00:33:10]
• Getting Career Clarity - [00:36:42]
• Genius Zone - [00:39:57]
• Getting More Into Genius Zone - [00:42:54]
• Skills to Support Your Intentions - [00:45:42]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:48:44]

_____

Jeff Perry’s Bio
Jeff Perry is a leadership and career expert known for helping individuals, teams, and organizations unlock their potential in all facets of life. Given his background in engineering, business, and leadership, he specializes in working with engineering and technical professionals, but the principles he shares are universal.

Jeff received a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Brigham Young University, and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Washington.

Follow Jeff:

“The People Playbook: First, be clear about your goals and communicate with massive clarity to your team what you’re trying to accomplish. Second, be brilliant at the basics."

Andrew Bartlow is the co-founder of the People Leader Accelerator and the co-author of “Scaling for Success”. In this episode, Andrew discusses the common challenges faced by high-growth organizations and offers strategies for successful scaling.

He emphasizes the significance of organizations creating a unique people’s playbook and cautions against blindly adopting best practices from other companies. Andrew highlights 7 essential people practices organizations should prioritize, which includes organizational structure, learning & development, and culture & engagement.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:03:55]
• Writing “Scaling for Success” - [00:06:56]
• High-Growth Organization Challenges - [00:08:52]
• Goldilocks Zone - [00:11:11]
• People Playbook - [00:12:52]
• The Danger of Best Practices - [00:15:13]
• Crisis of Leadership & Autonomy - [00:17:29]
• Lack of Role Clarity - [00:21:34]
• 7 Key People Practices - [00:25:45]
• Key Practice: Organizational Structure - [00:30:44]
• Politics & Power Dynamics - [00:37:49]
• Key Practice: Learning & Development - [00:40:30]
• Key Practice: Culture, Engagement & Communications - [00:46:22]
• Sensing Employee Engagement - [00:52:17]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:55:14]

_____

Andrew Bartlow’s Bio
Andrew Bartlow has almost 25 years of experience as a thought leader in organizational effectiveness, and as a practical operator linking business strategy to HR priorities inside corporations. In addition to advisory and mentoring activities through Series B Consulting, Andrew serves as an Operating Partner & Senior Advisor for Altamont Capital Partners, the cofounder and Network Director for WiseGrowth Networks, the cofounder and Managing Partner of People Leader Accelerator, and an HR Venture Advisor for SemperVirens Venture Capital.

Follow Andrew:

“Why are some software developers average and some others great? After a few years, I noticed that creativity is an important aspect of problem-solving and software development.”

Wouter Groeneveld is a software engineer, computer science education researcher, and the author of “The Creative Programmer”. In this episode, Wouter dives deep into what makes good engineers truly exceptional: creativity!

Wouter describes his definition of creativity and shares the 7 key dimensions of a creative programmer - from technical mastery to embracing constraints and being curious.

Listen to the episode to take your coding to the next level and unleash your inner creativity as a software engineer!  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:03:35]
• Reasons Software Projects Fail - [00:06:10]
• The Creative Programmer - [00:08:29]
• Social Approval & Seniority Aspects - [00:14:06]
• Technical Knowledge: Getting More Inputs - [00:17:39]
• Personal Knowledge Management - [00:20:22]
• Creativity Begets Creativity - [00:23:37]
• Collaboration & Communication - [00:25:37]
• Collective Creativity - [00:29:05]
• Constraints - [00:30:55]
• Critical Thinking - [00:35:33]
• Creative State of Mind - [00:39:42]
• Virtual Interruptions - [00:41:56]
• Well-Rested - [00:44:36]
• Curiosity & Perseverance - [00:47:11]
• 2 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:49:04]

_____

“If we want to deliver better results, we need to change the system and our way of working."

Gil Broza is an Agile leadership expert and the author of the latest book “Deliver Better Results”. In this episode, Gil discusses ways to level up our value delivery system to deliver better results.

We first delve into the fundamental concept of systems thinking and cause-effect relationships, which are exemplified by reinforcing and balancing loops. Gil also explains the importance of ways of working, particularly on shifting mindset and focusing on people first before the process.

Gil then explains the SQUARE Model detailed in his book, and how the model helps us understand and assess our system’s fitness for purpose easily. He also shares some of the 10 strategies from his book that we can use to enhance our fitness level and deliver better results.
 

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [03:43]
• Deliver Better Results - [06:25]
• Systems Thinking - [11:15]
• Reinforcing & Balancing Loop - [14:15]
• Ways of Working - [16:24]
• Mindset: Values, Beliefs, Principles - [19:08]
• People First vs Process First - [23:22]
• SQUARE Model - [27:08]
• What Matters Most - [34:36]
• Clear Decision Making - [40:48]
• How to Get Started - [45:58]
• The Danger of Metrics - [47:07]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [50:52]

_____

Gil Broza’s Bio
Gil Broza specializes in helping tech leaders deliver far better results by upgrading their Agile ways of working. He also supports their non-software colleagues in creating real business agility in their teams. Gil has helped over 100 organizations achieve real, sustainable improvements by working with their unique value delivery contexts and focusing on mindset, culture, and leadership. Companies also invite Gil for specialized support, such as strategic mapping of their improvement journey, facilitation of organizational mindset workshops, and keynotes for internal conferences. He is the author of four highly acclaimed books: Deliver Better Results, The Agile Mind-Set, The Human Side of Agile, and Agile for Non-Software Teams. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

Follow Gil:

“A lot of developers tie their self-worth to their code. Being able to let go of your ego and understanding the feedback is based on the code, and it has nothing to do with anything about me. It’s just the code.”

Adrienne Tacke is a software engineer, keynote speaker, and the author of the upcoming book “Looks Good To Me”.

In this episode, we discuss code reviews and why it is an essential part of the software development process. Adrienne discusses the importance and benefits of code review, the common code review workflow and the different roles involved, how to provide effective code review comments, and why we should leverage on code review tools and automation. She also provides tips on how to speed up our code review turnaround time.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:03:31]
• Looks Good to Me (LGTM) - [00:09:05]
• Code Review Story - [00:12:24]
• Importance of Code Review - [00:15:38]
• Code Review Benefits - [00:20:27]
• Code Review Role: Author - [00:25:50]
• Code Review Role: Reviewer - [00:32:42]
• Code Review Role: The Team - [00:38:41]
• Code Review Tools & Automation - [00:45:53]
• Effective Code Review Comments - [00:51:44]
• Code Review Turnaround - [00:57:45]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [01:04:56]

_____

Adrienne Tacke’s Bio
Adrienne is a Filipina software engineer, keynote speaker, author of the best-selling book Coding for Kids: Python, and a LinkedIn Learning instructor who’s reached over 65,000 learners with her courses (a number she’ll likely surpass when you read this). She is writing Looks Good To Me: Constructive Code Reviews, a labor of love that she hopes will improve code reviews everywhere. Perhaps most important, however, is that she spends way too much money on desserts and ungodly amounts of time playing Age of Empires II.

Follow Adrienne:

“Every organization has a mission, a vision, and a set of values. As a leader, your number one task is to live those values and talk about them at every opportunity with your team to create alignment."

Today's clip is from Tech Lead Journal episode 115 with Manoj Awasthi, the CTO at JULO and previously the SVP of Engineering at Tokopedia.

In this clip, Manoj described the role of a senior engineering leader before then explaining some important aspects of engineering leadership, such as scaling up engineering team, hiring engineers and engineering managers, and creating culture alignment.  

Listen out for:

• Role of Senior Engineering Leader - [00:00:26]
• Scaling Engineering Team - [00:06:55]
• Hiring Engineers - [00:09:51]
• Hiring Engineering Managers/Leaders - [00:12:29]
• Aligning Culture - [00:14:11]

_____

Manoj Awasthi’s Bio
Manoj Awasthi is the CTO at JULO, a fintech startup based in Jakarta. Prior to JULO, Manoj spent more than six years leading technology teams at Tokopedia wearing multiple hats during the growth years of Tokopedia from 2016 until 2022 as it scaled. During this time, he witnessed the tech team growing from 80 people to 2000+. He is a techie at heart, has a natural empathy for people and believes that wonders can happen through the alignment of teams towards a clear goal. When he is not working, he can be found either reading a book (almost every day) or having quality time with his family.

Follow Manoj:

“An effective developer is an effective software tester. As a developer, it’s your responsibility to make sure what you do works. And automated testing is such an easy and cheap way of doing it."

Today's clip is from Tech Lead Journal episode 139 with Mauricio Aniche, the author of “Effective Software Testing”.

In this clip, Mauricio explained how to become a more effective software developer by using effective and systematic software testing approaches. We discussed several such testing techniques, such as testing pyramid, specification-based testing, and behavior-driven design.

Listen out for:

• An Effective Developer is an Effective Tester - [00:00:26]
• Reasons for Writing Automated Tests - [00:01:35]
• Systematic Tester - [00:04:38]
• Testing Pyramid - [00:08:43]
• Unit vs Integration Test - [00:11:18]
• Specification-Based Testing - [00:13:48]
• Behavior-Driven Design - [00:16:27]

_____

Mauricio Aniche’s Bio
Dr. Maurício Aniche’s life mission is to help software engineers to become better and more productive. Maurício is a Tech Lead at Adyen, where he heads the Tech Academy team and leads different engineering enablement initiatives. Maurício is also an assistant professor of software engineering at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. His teaching efforts in software testing gave him the Computer Science Teacher of the Year 2021 award and the TU Delft Education Fellowship, a prestigious fellowship given to innovative lecturers. He is the author of the “Effective Software Testing: A Developer’s Guide”, published by Manning in 2022. He’s currently working on a new book entitled “Simple Object-Oriented Design” which should be on the market soon.

Follow Mauricio:

“The three core dimensions of developer experience are feedback loops, cognitive load, and flow state."

Today's clip is from Tech Lead Journal episode 134 with Margaret-Anne (Peggy) Storey and Abi Noda, the coauthors of the ACM paper “DevEx: What Actually Drives Productivity”.

In this clip, they shared their view on the well-known SPACE and DORA metrics, and pointed out the danger of misusing and abusing the DORA metrics. Peggy and Abi then explained the three core dimensions of developer experience from their latest paper, which are feedback loops, cognitive load, and flow state.

Listen out for:

• SPACE & DORA Metrics - [00:00:26]
• Misuse and Abuse of DORA Metrics - [00:05:43]
• New Developer Experience Paper - [00:09:20]
• Developer Experience - [00:11:46]
• 3 Core Dimensions - [00:15:03]

_____

Margaret-Anne Storey’s Bio
Margaret-Anne (Peggy) Storey is a professor of computer science at the University of Victoria and holds a Canada Research Chair in human and social aspects of software engineering. Her research focuses on improving processes, tools, communication, and collaboration in software engineering. She serves as chief scientist at DX and consults with Microsoft to improve developer productivity.

Abi Noda’s Bio
Abi Noda is the founder and CEO at DX, where he leads the company’s strategic direction and R&D efforts. His work focuses on developing measurement methods to help organizations improve developer experience and productivity. Before joining DX, Noda held engineering leadership roles at various companies and founded Pull Panda, which was acquired by GitHub in 2019. For more information, visit his website at abinoda.com.

Follow Margaret:

“Developer experience is an approach to thinking about engineering excellence and maximizing engineering performance by increasing the capacity and performance of the individuals and the team as a whole."

Today's clip is from Tech Lead Journal episode 112 with Abi Noda, the CEO & co-founder of DX.

In this clip, Abi shared what developer experience is, why it is becoming an industry trend nowadays, and the different ways of how it is being implemented in the industry. Abi explained why the traditional metrics normally used to measure developer productivity do not really work and can even provide perverse incentives. Abi then touched on the two popular researches widely known in the industry, i.e. the DORA report and SPACE framework.  

Listen out for:

• Developer Productivity Industry Trend - [00:00:26]
• Developer Experience for Developers - [00:02:40]
• Different Names of Developer Experience - [00:04:42]
• Traditional Metrics - [00:08:27]
• DORA & SPACE - [00:12:28]

_____

Abi Noda’s Bio
Abi is the founder and CEO of getdx.com, which helps engineering leaders measure and improve developer experience. Abi formerly founded Pull Panda, which was acquired by GitHub.

Follow Abi:

“A good API doesn’t expose the internal data models or internal logic too much. And the more your clients are not under your control, the less you want to do that."

Today's clip is from Tech Lead Journal episode 125 with Daniel Luebke, a software architect and the co-author of “Patterns for API Design”.

In this clip, we discussed some API design patterns and best practices taken from his book. Daniel shared the importance of understanding domain requirements for building APIs and several API and message best practices. 

Listen out for:

• Writing API Design Book - [00:00:26]
• Loosely Coupled Message Exchanges - [00:04:29]
• API Design Best Practices - [00:07:07]
• Message Best Practices - [00:12:24]

_____

Daniel Luebke’s Bio
Daniel Lübke is an independent coding and consulting software architect with a focus on business process automation and digitization projects. His interests are software architecture, business process design, and system integration, which inherently require APIs to develop solutions. He received his PhD at the Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany, in 2007 and has worked in many industry projects in different domains since then. Daniel is author and editor of several books, articles, and research papers; gives training; and regularly presents at conferences on topics of APIs and software architecture.

Follow Daniel:

“A team has to be able to go fast if they have to. But they should always choose to go at a steady pace, most of the time. In the long run, what we emphasize is for each team to find their own space and pace."

Balazs Barna is the Head of US Engineering at Wise. In this episode, we delved into his insights on building sustainable engineering from scaling up Wise. Balazs started by touching on the engineering management role and described the traits of good and bad engineering management. We then went to discuss two different aspects of sustainable engineering, which are sustainable tech and sustainable teams. Throughout the discussion, Balazs outlined several key practices, such as weak code ownership, microservice strategy, stable pace, and building a bench.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:03:42]
• Building on Strengths - [00:05:52]
• Traits of a Good Engineering Management - [00:07:11]
• Limiting Work in Progress - [00:09:51]
• Traits of a Bad Engineering Management - [00:12:33]
• Sustainable Tech - [00:14:17]
• Weak Code Ownership - [00:19:25]
• Transitioning to Weak Code Ownership - [00:24:04]
• Microservice per Integration - [00:26:57]
• Managing Change Coupling - [00:30:12]
• Sustainable Team - [00:32:46]
• Dealing With Technical Debt - [00:35:57]
• Steady Pace - [00:37:41]
• Building a Bench - [00:39:59]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:44:51]

_____

Balazs Barna’s Bio
Balazs Barna is the Head of Austin Operations & US Engineering at Wise. At Wise, Balazs oversees the newly formed Austin office and the global engineering team, building the tech and infrastructure needed to facilitate instant, convenient and affordable cross border transactions. Balazs led and helped his team build the company’s historic direct access integration to the Hungarian banking sector’s instant payment system, the first of its kind for a company with a payment service license. He also oversaw and built Wise’s core infrastructure that enables the company’s European operations. Prior to joining Wise, Balazs worked at MSCI and Morgan Stanley. He graduated from Corvinus University of Budapest in Business Information Systems (BSc), and Computer Engineering (MSc) from Pannon University.

Follow Balazs:

“In a world that runs on software, when we develop and deploy software, we are part of a larger system where our failures are no longer about us, they are also about other people."

Today's clip is from Tech Lead Journal episode 122 with Kevlin Henney, a consultant, writer, and speaker on software development and has written and edited several popular books.

In this clip, Kevlin brought up some timeless software development concepts developers should learn from the past on cohesion, coupling, and code quality. He also explained why he becomes associated with public software failures widely known as KevlinHenney screens and how the trend started in the beginning.

Listen out for:

• Learning From the Past - [00:00:26]
• KevlinHenney Screens - [00:13:18]

_____

Kevlin Henney’s Bio
Kevlin Henney is an independent consultant, trainer, writer and speaker. His interests cover what happens on both sides of the keyboard, and everything from the detail of code to the bigger picture of software architecture. Kevlin is co–author of two volumes in the Pattern–Oriented Software Architecture series, editor of 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know and co-editor of 97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know.

Follow Kevlin:

“Everything in software architecture is a trade-off, and the why is more important than how."

Today's clip is from Tech Lead Journal episode 120 with Neal Ford, a Director and software architect at ThoughtWorks.

In this clip, we discussed the definition of software architecture and how it relates to software design. Neal then described the two important laws of software architecture related to trade-offs and the why. Neal then explained why software architecture is difficult and discussed the hard parts.  

Listen out for:

• Definition of Software Architecture - [00:00:26]
• Software Architecture vs Design - [00:04:06]
• Laws of Software Architecture - [00:06:01]
• The Hard Parts of Software Architecture - [00:10:33]

_____

Neal Ford’s Bio
Neal Ford is Director, Software Architect, and Meme Wrangler at ThoughtWorks. He is also the designer and developer of applications, articles, video presentations, and author and/or editor of an increasingly large number of books spanning a variety of subjects and technologies, including the two most recent Fundamentals of Software Architecture and Building Evolutionary Architectures. His professional focus includes designing and building of large-scale enterprise applications. He is also an internationally acclaimed speaker, speaking at over 700 developer conferences worldwide, delivering more than 3000 presentations.

Follow Neal:

“Platforms harmonize and standardize without restricting. By standardizing, they actually enable and allow people to do more things."

Gregor Hohpe is back again for the second episode with his latest book “Platform Strategy”. In this episode, Gregor discussed in-depth about building platforms with a proper platform strategy. He began by describing what a platform is from a few different perspectives, the benefits it brings, and what strategy we should think about when building a platform. Gregor also emphasized the opposite difference between platforms and IT services, with the key difference of how a platform thrives with more scale. We then had a few fun discussions discussing building a platform on top of a cloud platform, the key skillset we need to build a good platform, and how we should build a proper platform abstraction. Towards the end, Gregor also covered the recent trend of building developer platforms and business capability platforms. Also, do not miss Gregor’s fun analogy of fruit basket vs fruit salad when explaining a good platform strategy.  

Listen out for:

• Strategy Book Series - [00:05:39]
• Definition of Platform - [00:07:58]
• Platform Benefits - [00:12:09]
• Platform Strategy - [00:17:25]
• Platform vs IT Service - [00:20:47]
• Platform Thrives With Scale - [00:25:39]
• Cloud Platform-Based Platform - [00:29:36]
• Skillset for Building Platform - [00:36:44]
• Abstraction, Not an Illusion - [00:44:19]
• Fruit Salad vs Fruit Basket - [00:47:32]
• Developer Platform - [00:51:34]
• Business Capability Platform - [00:55:48]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:59:31]

_____

Gregor Hohpe’s Bio
Gregor Hohpe advises CTOs and senior IT executives on IT strategy, cloud architecture, and organizational transformation. He served as advisor to the Singapore government, chief architect at Allianz SE, and technical director at Google Cloud’s CTO Office. He is widely known as co-author of the seminal book “Enterprise Integration Patterns” and as frequent speaker at conferences around the world. His accessible, but technically accurate essays were republished in “97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know” and “Best Software Writing”. He is an active member of the IEEE Software editorial advisory board.

Follow Gregor:

“The five thieves of time are: too much work in progress, conflicting priorities, unplanned work, unknown dependencies, and neglected work."

Dominica DeGrandis is the author of “Making Work Visible”. In this episode, we discussed how we can optimize our workflow and reclaim control of our work and time. Dominica unveiled the concept of the five thieves of time that rob us of our productivity, that includes too much work-in-progress (WIP), conflicting priorities, unplanned work, unknown dependencies, and neglected work. She also shared actionable practices and tips on dealing with each of these thieves. Towards the end, Dominica emphasized the importance of bringing visibility to and measuring the flow of what leadership and customers care about - the delivery of customer value—big picture items that span end-to-end value streams.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:03:47]
• Making Work Visible & Five Thieves of Time - [00:08:45]
• Thief: Too Much WIP - [00:15:31]
• WIP is a Leading Indicator - [00:18:33]
• Thief: Unplanned Work - [00:20:45]
• Making Sense of WIP - [00:23:04]
• Thief: Conflicting Priorities - [00:24:38]
• Thief: Unknown Dependencies - [00:29:17]
• Managing Dependencies - [00:32:53]
• Thief: Neglected Work - [00:36:40]
• Make Organization Work Visible - [00:41:21]
• Measuring Flow - [00:50:19]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:55:11]

_____

Dominica DeGrandis’s Bio
A huge fan of using visual cues to inspire change, Dominica DeGrandis, author of Making Work Visible - Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Work & Flow, and Principal Flow Advisor at Planview, helps organizations make work visible to improve workflow. Obsessed with useful metrics & influencing change, Dominica advises customers on flow metrics, value stream management and how to effect change.

Follow Dominica:

“Product driven means you understand what your customers’ problems are, but you don’t let yourself get held back by what your customers are saying. You’re not building your product for a customer that you’re already working with. You’re building a product for a customer that you haven’t yet met."

Ben Foster is the co-founder of Prodify and the co-author of “Build What Matters”. In this episode, we discussed how product driven and vision-led product management helps organizations deliver key customer outcomes and achieve business goals. Ben first began by describing the product management paradox and some of the common product management dysfunctions. Ben then dived deep into the three important aspects of a vision-led product management, which are key customer outcomes, customer journey vision, and product strategy.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:03:31]
• Product Management Paradox - [00:05:59]
• The Role of Product Manager - [00:08:10]
• Product Dysfunctions - [00:09:50]
• Product Driven - [00:14:25]
• Vision-Led Product Management - [00:18:40]
• Key Outcomes - [00:22:52]
• Key Outcomes Pyramid - [00:28:52]
• Customer Journey Vision - [00:33:12]
• Customer Experience Stages - [00:35:36]
• Product Vision - [00:40:04]
• Product Strategy - [00:43:43]
• Product Roadmap - [00:47:49]
• Product Roadmap Duration - [00:55:50]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:58:51]

_____

Ben Foster’s Bio
Ben Foster has been working in product management in the tech scene for 25 years, and is co-founder and partner at Prodify, a product consulting and coaching firm he started 9 years ago. He cut his teeth at eBay during its heyday and was most recently the chief product officer at the wearable company Whoop. He has experience from startups to multi-billion dollar companies and everything in between. He’s spoken at several major tech events, has produced the definitive course on product leadership, and co-authored the Amazon bestseller Build What Matters. He lives in Arlington, VA with his wife and son.

Follow Ben:

“Lean is not about how we organize work, but how we think about it. It’s not a production system; it’s an education system."

Catherine Chabiron is a Lean expert and the co-author of “Learning to Scale at Theodo Group”. In this episode, Catherine and Fabrice–the co-founder and CTO of Theodo–shared their lessons learned from implementing Lean at a fast-growing scale-up company. Catherine and Fabrice first started by sharing the “big company disease” challenge and how Theodo started its Lean journey. We then discussed Lean essentials that include some of its principles, such as an obsession with customer value and lead time. We also talked about Lean practices adopted from the Toyota Production System, that include Gemba, Jidoka, Andon, and Kaizen. Along the way, Catherine and Fabrice also emphasized the importance of always building quality right the first time.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:03:41]
• Big Company Disease - [00:07:26]
• Theodo’s Lean Journey - [00:10:19]
• Implementing Agile at Scale - [00:14:35]
• The Essence of Lean - [00:18:41]
• Gemba - [00:23:16]
• Normal vs Not Normal - [00:26:26]
• Doing More Gemba Walks - [00:29:40]
• Obsession With Customer Value - [00:32:59]
• Obsession With Lead Time - [00:37:07]
• Jidoka & Andon - [00:40:25]
• Built-in Quality Right First Time - [00:44:16]
• Kaizen - [00:46:39]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:52:19]

_____

Catherine Chabiron’s Bio
Catherine Chabiron is an established expert in Lean management with a professional journey spanning over 40 years. Catherine is not only a Lean executive coach but also a renowned author. Her notable contribution, “Learning to Scale at Theodo Group: Growing a Fast and Resilient Company,” exemplifies her unique know-how and offers practical advice to leaders seeking growth without compromising on core values and employee engagement.

Fabrice Bernhard’s Bio
Fabrice co-founded Theodo in Paris in 2009, which has grown on average 50% a year for the last 8 years and generated 90M€ turnover in 2022. He is now based in London to help on the international expansion of Theodo.

Follow Catherine:

“Architecture touches on the software, the business, and the team organization. Modernization updates something that has some outdated thinking, e.g. technologies, ideas, business models."

Nick Tune is a principal consultant and the author of “Architecture Modernization”. In this episode, we discussed how organizations can successfully go through an architecture modernization journey. Nick began by defining architecture modernization and discussing the socio-technical aspects involved. He then introduced the concept of an independent value stream and its four key characteristics: domain alignment, business outcome driven, empowered teams, and software alignment. Nick also shared tips on how to get buy in for a modernization journey, why it is beneficial to do it collaboratively, and explained in-depth the Wardley Mapping technique. Towards the end, Nick described the idea of Architecture Modernization Enabling Team and gave advice on creating an architecture modernization roadmap.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:03:31]
• Writing Architecture Modernization Book - [00:09:51]
• Architecture Modernization - [00:11:18]
• Socio-Technical Architecture - [00:13:35]
• Independent Value Stream - [00:17:47]
• Domain Aligned & Change Coupling - [00:19:32]
• Business Outcome Driven - [00:24:11]
• Owned by Empowered Teams - [00:27:02]
• Software Aligned - [00:28:34]
• Getting Buy In - [00:31:00]
• Collaborative Modernization Journey - [00:35:28]
• Wardley Mapping - [00:38:59]
• Product Taxonomy - [00:45:06]
• Architecture Modernization Enabling Team - [00:47:13]
• Modernization Roadmap - [00:53:51]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:58:35]

_____

Nick Tune’s Bio
Nick works with product and technology leaders to map strategy, model domains, design architecture and build continuous delivery teams while helping to deliver successful business outcomes. He is the author of Architecture Modernization (Manning), and Principles and Practices of Domain-Driven Design (Wrox).

Follow Nick:

“We need to change our ways of working to give importance to the work quality that we deliver, ensure we keep raising our bar, and pass it on to the next generation of developers."

Srihari Sridharan is a software architect and the author of “Craft Your Code”. In this episode, we discussed software craftsmanship and how to become better software engineers. Srihari first began by sharing the relationship between software craftsmanship and high-quality code. He described some practices for improving code quality, such as establishing coding standards, improving code readability, doing effective code review, and managing technical debt. He also explained the importance of software engineers understanding different architectural styles and domain knowledge. Srihari also shared strategies for creating high-performing teams by establishing psychological safety and trust.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:03:08]
• Bridging the Students Gap with Industry - [00:06:11]
• Writing “Craft Your Code” - [00:09:36]
• Software Craftsmanship and High Quality Code - [00:12:18]
• Root Causes of Low Quality Code - [00:15:26]
• Coding Standards - [00:20:15]
• Code Aesthetics - [00:24:17]
• Code Readability - [00:28:09]
• Tabs vs Spaces - [00:32:31]
• Code Review - [00:34:12]
• Managing Technical Debt - [00:39:36]
• Psychological Safety & Trust - [00:46:23]
• Mind Maps - [00:52:09]
• Architecture & Domain Knowledge - [00:54:00]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [01:02:33]

_____

Srihari Sridharan’s Bio
Srihari Sridharan is a Software Architect and Engineer with a hands-on approach. He is a speaker, conducting courses and delivering talks on software craftsmanship and writing clean code. Srihari’s areas of expertise encompass refactoring, design patterns, enterprise application architectural patterns, integration patterns, and cloud-native design patterns.

Srihari is also a reviewer and a senior technical proof-reader for Manning Publications Co, and he serves as a member of the ‘Board of Studies - Department of Information Technology’ at B.S Abdur Rahman Crescent Institute of Science & Technology. Residing in Chennai with his wife Swathy and son Advaith, Srihari enjoys spending quality time with his family. In his leisure time, he loves playing cricket, writing blogs, reading books, and cooking.

Follow Srihari:

“Leading change is high stakes, but we don’t spend a great deal of time focusing on conversation and creating space to engage in real conversation."

Marsha Acker is the author of “Build Your Model for Leading Change” and the host of “Defining Moments of Leadership” podcast. In this episode, we discussed building our own model for leadership and leading change. Marsha first started by sharing the concept of a model and some of the common challenges for organizations in making changes. Then we discussed David Kantor’s theories on structural dynamics and functional awareness for understanding behavioral model, which include the concepts of leadership range and communicative competence. Marsha outlined what makes communication so challenging and what we can do to achieve a more effective communication. Towards the end, she shared the three different models that leaders need to think about, i.e. model for leadership, model for living, and model for leading change.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:03:54]
• Defining Moments of Leadership Podcast - [00:10:14]
• Building Our Model - [00:14:11]
• Challenges for Making Organization Change - [00:19:48]
• Behavioral Model - [00:23:57]
• Structural Dynamics - [00:27:30]
• Functional Awareness - [00:33:01]
• Communication Challenges - [00:38:12]
• Model for Leadership - [00:40:55]
• Model for Living - [00:44:12]
• Model for Leading Change - [00:46:10]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:54:44]

_____

Marsha Acker’s Bio
Marsha Acker is the founder and CEO of TeamCatapult, an executive & leadership team coach, author, speaker, facilitator, and the host of Defining Moments of Leadership Podcast. Marsha’s unparalleled at helping leaders identify and break through stuck patterns of communication that get in their way of high performance. She is known internationally as a facilitator of meaningful conversations, a host of dialogue and a passionate agilest. She is the author of The Art and Science of Facilitation: How to Lead Effective Collaboration with Agile Teams and Build Your Model for Leading Change: A guided workbook to catalyze clarity and confidence in leading yourself and others.

Follow Marsha:

“A CTO gives the business the technology it needs to drive success by delivering a roadmap to grow and scale at a level and speed where technology never holds up their growth."

Alan Williamson is the author of “Think Like a CTO”. In this episode, we discussed in-depth how to become a great CTO. Alan first described what a CTO role is, how the role differs at different company stages, and the attributes of a good CTO. Alan then explained the importance of a CTO coming up with a vision and how we can improve ourselves in visionary thinking. He then touched on how a CTO should work together and understand the expectations of the CEO. Alan also gave his tips on how to build engineering teams that can produce high-quality results. Towards the end, Alan gave his personal advice on how a CTO can deal with imposter syndrome and the importance of a CTO doing a personal review.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:03:28]
• The CTO Role - [00:07:47]
• Different Flavors of CTO Role - [00:12:47]
• CTO at Different Company Stage - [00:13:42]
• What Makes a Good CTO - [00:17:04]
• Visionary Planning - [00:19:40]
• Learning How to Create a Vision - [00:23:40]
• Working with the CEO - [00:30:54]
• Building Engineering Teams - [00:36:47]
• Building Quality In - [00:39:58]
• Dealing with Imposter Syndrome - [00:45:36]
• Reviewing Yourself - [00:52:11]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:59:09]

_____

Alan Williamson’s Bio
Alan was the first U.K. Java Champion and has contributed much to open source, including OpenBD, a Java based CFML runtime engine, that once powered MySpace.com, as well as many other blue-chip CFML sites.

“A lot of the traditional wisdom said the best teams are the ones that stay stable or the same; you need long-lived stable teams. The fact is, team change is inevitable. So let’s get better at it."

Heidi Helfand is the author of “Dynamic Reteaming”. In this episode, we discussed dynamic reteaming concept, or team changes in simple words. Heidi explained how her experience working in various startups and scaleups led to her coming up with the dynamic reteaming idea. She also explained how dynamic reteaming differs from the common advice of having long-lived teams. We then discussed the five patterns of dynamic reteaming as outlined by Heidi in her book. Our discussion also covered various other topics, such as onboarding, offboarding, maintaining company culture, ideal team size, and leadership role in dynamic teams.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:03:34]
• How Dynamic Reteaming Idea Came About - [00:08:30]
• Dynamic Reteaming - [00:12:08]
• Social Dynamics - [00:13:51]
• Dynamic Reteaming vs Long-Lived - [00:18:14]
• One by One - [00:26:19]
• Onboarding New Joiners - [00:27:42]
• People Leaving - [00:30:54]
• Maintaining Culture - [00:37:18]
• Grow & Split And Merging Patterns - [00:42:42]
• Ideal Team Size - [00:45:51]
• Isolation Pattern - [00:51:43]
• Role of Leader/Manager - [00:54:56]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:57:47]

_____

Heidi Helfand’s Bio
Heidi Helfand is author of the book Dynamic Reteaming and SVP of Strategy & Innovation at Artium. She’s passionate about helping companies build great products and high-performing teams, and she’s particularly interested in the people side of engineering. With over 20 years of experience in the tech industry, including roles at AppFolio, Procore and Expertcity/GoToMeeting, Heidi has gained a deep understanding of how to help organizations successfully navigate change and scale their teams. She lives in Southern California, where she enjoys spending time with her family and exploring the outdoors.

Follow Heidi:

“BDD is about helping you collaborate with the different parties involved in software delivery to understand what’s actually required of your system, why you need to deliver it, and then find the best possible way to automate your requirements."

John Smart and Jan Molak are the co-authors of “BDD in Action: Second Edition”. In this episode, we discussed in-depth behavior-driven development (BDD) and its essentials. Jan and John first began by introducing what BDD is, the benefits of using BDD, and the Gherkin language with its given-when-then syntax. They gave advice on how to introduce and apply BDD, especially for legacy software, and how to manage the BDD specifications effectively. Jan and John then shared several BDD techniques, such as feature mapping, example mapping, impact mapping; and went deep into the screenplay pattern and the Serenity projects they both create to implement screenplay pattern. Towards the end, Jan and John shared their insights on which testing layers we should apply BDD and some anti-patterns we should avoid.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:04:49]
• Challenges Before BDD - [00:11:30]
• Behavior Driven Development (BDD) - [00:15:24]
• Benefits of BDD - [00:22:33]
• Gherkin - [00:27:39]
• Introducing BDD - [00:32:24]
• BDD for Legacy Software - [00:38:41]
• Managing BDD Specifications - [00:43:15]
• Screenplay Pattern - [00:47:09]
• Serenity Project - [00:58:42]
• Other BDD Techniques - [01:11:33]
• Testing Layers to Apply BDD - [01:14:13]
• BDD Anti-Patterns - [01:18:28]
• 4 Tech Lead Wisdom - [01:23:01]

_____

Jan Molak’s Bio
Jan Molak is a consulting software engineer and trainer who specialises in enhancing team collaboration and optimising software development processes for global organisations. Jan is the author of the Serenity/JS acceptance testing framework, a contributor to the Screenplay Pattern, and a co-author of a renowned book “BDD in Action, Second Edition”.

John Ferguson Smart’s Bio
John Ferguson Smart is a specialist in BDD, automated testing, and software lifecycle development optimization. He is the founder of the Serenity Dojo, an online training platform for testers who want to become world-class Agile Test Automation Engineers, and the creator of the Serenity BDD test automation framework.

Follow Jan:

“Collaborative modeling is getting the relevant people into a room to solve a problem or get on the same page about what it is you’re solving and getting some directions for that solution."

Evelyn and Gien are the co-authors of “Collaborative Software Design: How to Facilitate Domain Modeling Decisions”. In this episode, we discussed collaborative software design and why we need it in software development. Evelyn and Gien started by explaining the Cynefin framework in software development and the importance of having heuristics for making quick decisions. We then dived deep into discussing what collaborative modeling is, how to get people involved to collaborate, and the important role of a facilitator. We also talked about the socio-technical aspects and skills required in collaborative modeling, in particular, understanding the influence of cognitive bias and ranking. Towards the end, we discussed when we should do a collaborative modeling exercise, how to structure it, and tips for doing it remotely.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:06:53]
• Collaborative Software Design - [00:09:28]
• Complicated vs Complex Problems - [00:12:24]
• Heuristics - [00:15:07]
• Collaborating Modeling - [00:19:03]

• The Facilitator Role - [00:24:55]
• Socio Technical Skills - [00:30:10]
• Cognitive Bias - [00:33:10]
• The Influence of Ranking - [00:38:51]
• Collaborative Modelling Structure - [00:47:00]
• When to do Collaborative Modeling - [00:51:38]
• Remote Collaborative Modeling - [00:55:34]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:58:45]

_____

Evelyn van Kelle’s Bio
Evelyn van Kelle is a strategic software delivery consultant, with experience in coaching, advising, facilitating, and guiding organizations and teams in designing and maintaining socio-technical systems. She blends different techniques, tools and approaches from behavioral and social sciences, collaborative modeling and Domain-Driven Design, to help leadership teams achieve sustainable transformations. Evelyn loves to share her knowledge by speaking at international conferences and meetups.

Gien Verschatse’s Bio
Gien Verschatse is an experienced consultant and software engineer that specializes in domain modelling and software architecture. As a Domain-Driven Design practitioner, she always looks to bridge the gaps between experts, users, and engineers. As a side interest, she’s researching the science of decision-making strategies, to help teams improve how they make technical and organizational decisions. She shares her knowledge by speaking and teaching at international conferences. When she is not doing all that, you’ll find her on the sofa, reading a book and sipping coffee.

Follow Evelyn:

• LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/evelynvankell
• X – @EvelynvanKell

Follow Gien:

• LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/gien-verschatse
• X – @selketjah

_____

Our Sponsors

Miro is your team's visual workspace to connect, collaborate, and create innovations together, from anywhere.
Sign up today at miro.com/podcast and get your first 3 Miro boards free forever.

Like this episode?

“Do not start a job search by looking for jobs. Start a job search by understanding at a deeper level who you are, what you value, how you like to work, and what are you solving for."

Andre Martin is an organizational psychologist and the author of “Wrong Fit, Right Fit”. In this episode, he shared the importance of finding the right fit company for us in our work. Andre used the analogy of writing with a non-dominant hand to explain working in a wrong fit company. He shared some of the common misalignments, such as the modern hiring practices, infinite browsing, and company culture deck trend. Andre then explained how we can work towards finding our right fit company by doing more self reflection using some fit excursions shared in his book. He also touched on the important concept of buffers and the role of leaders and managers in the workplace. Towards the end, Andre shared some practical tips on how companies can create a better right fit culture in the organizations.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:03:53]
• Wrong Fit, Right Fit - [00:05:28]
• Writing with Our Non-Dominant Hand - [00:07:27]
• Common Wrong Fit Misalignments - [00:10:25]
• Way of Working - [00:14:50]
• The Danger of Culture Deck - [00:22:04]
• The Danger of Infinite Browsing - [00:23:51]
• Finding the Right Fit - [00:26:18]
• Fit Excursions - [00:28:31]
• Interviewing and Onboarding + Right Fit - [00:33:07]
• Buffers + Right Fit - [00:37:52]
• The Role of the Leader & Manager - [00:40:04]
• Company + Right Fit - [00:43:46]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:47:39]

_____

Andre Martin’s Bio
Andre Martin is an organizational psychologist and talent management executive with 20+ years of experience in talent development, executive team development, employee engagement, culture change, c-suite assessment & succession planning, innovation/design thinking, strategy development, and employee experience design. He is also a father, a husband, and a wildly curious learner who is dedicated to ensuring iconic brands become iconic companies.

Follow Andre:

“Lifestyle engineering is about taking the idea we have within us to create a different reality in our own lives. It’s amazing what’s possible when you get in the driver’s seat and engineer your lifestyle."

Zachary White is a career coach for engineering leadership and the host of the Happy Engineer Podcast. In this episode, Zach shared how engineers can become happier in their work and life through the lifestyle engineering approach. He discussed what lifestyle engineering entails, such as debunking the myth of work-life balance, getting out of comfort zone, mastering mindset, building our own blueprint, and doing less. Zach also opened up and shared his personal story of getting burned out and gave great insights on how we can manage burnout before it happens. Towards the end, Zach explained the importance of coaching for engineering leaders to reach their full potential.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:03:40]
• Lifestyle Engineering - [00:07:22]
• The Happy Engineer Podcast - [00:10:09]
• Forget Work-Life Balance - [00:13:20]
• Getting Out of Comfort Zone - [00:17:42]
• Examples of Stepping Out of Comfort Zone - [00:21:19]
• Mastering Mindset - [00:25:37]
• Building Our Own Blueprint - [00:30:40]
• Doing Less - [00:34:10]
• Burnout - [00:38:02]
• Coaches for Engineering Leaders - [00:46:13]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:50:53]

_____

Zachary White’s Bio
Zach White is known as the premier career coach for engineering leadership. He has worked with hundreds of leaders at top companies worldwide to achieve breakthrough results and avoid burnout.

Zach is the founder and CEO of Oasis of Courage, a fast-growing company with unique and proven coaching programs exclusively for engineering and technology professionals. He also hosts a top-rated show, “The Happy Engineer Podcast.”

As a coach for engineering leaders, Zach understands the journey firsthand, holding both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in mechanical engineering, and spending over a decade building his career in the Fortune 200.

Follow Zachary:

“The goal is not Agile. The goal is not DevOps. The goal is not Cloud. The goal is value, time to value, safety, happiness, and quality."

Jonathan Smart and Simon Rohrer are the co-authors of “Sooner Safer Happier”. In this episode, Jon and Simon shared how we can deliver better outcomes in a more humane way of working, by delivering better value sooner, safer, and happier. They shared several principles, patterns, and anti-patterns described in the book, such as focusing on outcomes, the leadership as team number one, intelligent flow, creating alignment, and having the ability to unlearn and relearn.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:03:41]
• The Age of Digital - [00:06:29]
• Patterns & Anti-Patterns - [00:11:15]
• Better Value Sooner Safer Happier (BVSSH) - [00:13:18]
• Focus on Outcomes - [00:17:06]
• Empower the How - [00:19:28]
• Role of Leadership - [00:23:30]
• Leadership Team is Team #1 - [00:26:41]
• Intelligent Flow - [00:31:28]
• Stop Starting, Start Finishing - [00:34:43]
• Building Alignment - [00:36:48]
• Limited Velocity to Unlearn and Relearn - [00:40:10]
• 4 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:43:41]

_____

Jonathan Smart’s Bio
Jonathan Smart is co-founder and CEO of Sooner Safer Happier, a thought leader and a coach. He has been an agile and lean practitioner since the early 1990s and the lead author of the award winning and bestselling ‘Sooner Safer Happier: Patterns and Antipatterns for Business Agility’. He is also the founder of the Enterprise Agility Leaders Network, a member of the Programming Committee for the DevOps Enterprise Summit, a member of the Business Agility Institute Advisory Council, a guest speaker at London Business School, and speaks at numerous conferences a year.

Simon Rohrer’s Bio
Simon Rohrer has been a hands on practitioner across both software engineering and enterprise architecture for over twenty-six years, and has had a passion for agile software development since picking up the eXtreme Programming white book in 1999. He’s passionate about an eclectic and pragmatic approach to modern ways of working, incorporating lean, agile, systems thinking, DevOps and other principles and practices at the right pace and in a human context in enterprises, typically with a legacy of existing technology and a drive to do things better.

Follow Jonathan and Simon:

• Jonathan Smart’s LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/jonathansmart
• Simon Rohrer’s LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/simonrohrer
• Website – soonersaferhappier.com
• Slack – soonersaferhappier.com/community

_____

Our Sponsors

“Think about delegation as more of a coaching mindset instead of the doer mentality. It’s not about looking at the immediate task at hand, it’s about teaching that to others."

Akanksha Gupta is the author of “Think Like a Software Engineering Manager”. In this episode, Akanksha described the role of an engineering manager and the key traits of being a good engineering manager. She gave advice on how one can transition to the EM role and talked about the difference between an engineering management and leadership. Akanksha then walked us through the three key pillars of engineering management, which are people, process, and projects. We discussed topics, such as delegation, performance management, cross functional collaboration, and time management. Akanksha also shared her practical advice for women in technology who are also interested in becoming an engineering manager.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:03:38]
• Writing the Book - [00:05:54]
• Engineering Manager (EM) Role - [00:08:25]
• Transitioning to an EM Role - [00:10:48]
• Traits of a Good EM - [00:14:17]
• Engineering Manager vs Engineering Leader - [00:18:31]
• Boss Mindset - [00:20:01]
• Advice for Women to Become EMs - [00:21:56]
• Delegation - Learn to Let Go - [00:24:30]
• Managing Performance - [00:27:33]
• Cross-Functional Collaboration - [00:33:27]
• Setting Up Processes - [00:37:20]
• Managing Up - [00:40:00]
• Time Management - [00:42:02]
• A Growing Todo List - [00:45:50]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:47:28]

_____

Akanksha Gupta’s Bio
Akanksha Gupta is an experienced Engineering Manager at AWS. Prior to joining Amazon, she was an engineering manager with Robinhood, Audible and Microsoft. She completed her Masters in Computer Science at Columbia University. She is also part of the IADAS (The International Academy of Digital Arts and Science) and was awarded the Fellowship by the British Computer Society and the RSA.

Akanksha is also a huge advocate in Women in Technology. She is an Amazon Bar Raiser at Amazon and is an active mentor at PlatoHq, GrowthMentor and FastTrack mentorship programs. She has served as the jury member for several esteemed awards such as Stevie Awards, SIIA Codie, GraceHopper and the Webby awards. She has also been part of the Grace Hopper committee review for Software Engineering track and has served as a Track chair for Global WomenInTech conference.

Follow Akanksha:

• LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/akankshaguptamgr
• Plato HQ – platohq.com/@akanksha-gupta-1364542759
• Growth Mentor – app.growthmentor.com/mentors/akanksha-gupta

_____

Our Sponsors

“To build trust, you need to do the right thing, do the best you can, and show people you care. And when you do that, it builds commitment. Trust and commitment are how teams do best and win the most."

Michael Foss is a leadership coach and the founder of CoachFoss LLC. In this episode, we discussed the power of leadership principles and positive leadership. Michael started by sharing the important principle of building trust and creating a shared commitment with the people we work with. He then shared what he learned from his time at Amazon and explained why creating leadership principles is important for any company to thrive. Michael also explained the powerful techniques for leading a successful process improvement: creating standard work and using Andon from the Toyota Production System. Towards the end, as a certified trainer, Michael summarized leadership essence of both John Maxwell’s Leadership and John Gordon’s Power of Positive Leadership. So many leadership insights you can learn just from this summary alone!  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:04:04]
• Building Trust - [00:15:35]
• Creating Standard Work - [00:23:00]
• Pulling an Andon - [00:26:18]
• Power of Principles - [00:30:19]
• Building Shared Commitment - [00:33:18]
• John Maxwell & Positive Leadership - [00:38:58]
• Mental Health & Wellbeing - [00:48:34]
• 4 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:53:30]

_____

Michael Foss’s Bio
Michael is the Founder & CEO for CoachFoss LLC. As a speaker, trainer, and consultant, he is passionate about Finding Optimal Solutions for Success and thrives on inspiring and motivating leaders, teams, and individuals to achieve and sustain transformational success. Michael is certified to train The Power of Positive Leadership & The Power of a Positive Team by Jon Gordon and is an active Executive Program Director John Maxwell Leadership Certified Speaker, Trainer, and Coach.

Michael has extensive global experience and success as a logistics and supply chain operations leader, having worked for companies including Walmart, Flexport, CloudSort, Caterpillar, Amazon, Cameron, Weir, and FedEx. Michael is a Fellow, Past President, & IAB chairman of the Institute of Industrial & Systems Engineers (IISE). He earnt his Lean / Six Sigma Black Belt from the University of Villanova and he was awarded the Texas Tech Whitacre College of Engineering Distinguished Engineer’s award, one of only 27 industrial engineers ever awarded.

Follow Michael:

• Website – coachfoss.com
• LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/coachfoss
• Instagram – instagram.com/coachfoss11
• Linktree – linktr.ee/CoachFoss

_____

Our Sponsors

“You should never do something just because the auditors want you to do it. They should be able to explain the risk and controls in accordance with your risk appetite and tolerance."

Clarissa Lucas is an audit and risk management leader and the author of “Beyond Agile Auditing”. In this episode, Clarissa shared a novel approach to internal auditing called auditing with agility. She shared this concept at the DevOps Enterprise Summit 2022, which drew some parallels to the revolutionary birth of the DevOps movement. Clarissa explained the three core components of auditing with agility, which are value-driven auditing, integrated auditing 2.0, and adaptable auditing.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:04:27]
• Purpose of Internal Audit - [00:08:38]
• Challenges with Traditional Auditing - [00:11:01]
• How Auditing with Agility Started - [00:16:48]
• Parallels with the Birth of DevOps - [00:22:02]
• Segregation of Duty - [00:25:04]
• Auditing with Agility & Value-Driven Auditing - [00:30:21]
• Integrated Auditing 2.0 - [00:33:52]
• Adaptable Auditing - [00:41:33]
• Extending to External Auditing - [00:45:32]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:47:26]

_____

Clarissa Lucas’s Bio
Clarissa Lucas is an experienced audit and risk management leader with over 15 years of experience. As a thought leader on Auditing with Agility, she has written articles on the topic published by both the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) and IT Revolution press, as well as her first book, Beyond Agile Auditing: Three Core Components to Revolutionize Your Internal Audit Practices. Clarissa has spoken at a number of IIA, ISACA, and IT Revolution conferences, as well as local IIA chapter events and various podcasts, on this topic. Clarissa is a Certified Internal Auditor, Certified Information Systems Auditor and a Certified Investments and Derivatives Auditor.

Follow Clarissa:

“It’s so important to start with a problem and make sure you understand it is a big market. Many tech founding teams end up building a technology that is still in search of a problem."

Jothy Rosenberg is a serial entrepreneur who has founded 9 startups with exits of over $100 million. He is the author of an upcoming book “Think Like a Tech Founder: Anecdotes of an Incorrigible Entrepreneur”. In this episode, Jothy shared his valuable lessons learned on founding and managing a startup, such as why and when you should decide to startup, valuable advice for founders (including letting go founders who don’t work out), dealing with failures, being the CEO of your own startup, and traits of a bad CEO we should avoid. Towards the end, Jothy shared inspiring message about his story overcoming physical disability that resulted in a foundation “Who Says I Can’t”, and described his formula why people with physical disability so often overachieve.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:04:48]
• Jumping into Startup - [00:12:34]
• When to Start a Startup - [00:16:36]
• Definition of Founders - [00:19:01]
• Advice for Founders - [00:21:44]
• Letting Founders Go - [00:24:20]
• Dealing with Failure - [00:26:47]
• Lessons from Big Companies - [00:30:20]
• Being a Startup CEO - [00:34:16]
• Bad CEOs - [00:38:18]
• Who Says I Can’t Foundation - [00:44:31]
• Who Says I Can’t Formula - [00:49:10]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:54:00]

_____

Jothy Rosenberg’s Bio
Jothy Rosenberg has been an entrepreneur since 1988, and has founded and run nine technology startups—two of which had exits of over $100 million. He was the general manager of Borland’s Developer Division from 1992-1997, where he led Borland’s Languages division, including Delphi, C++Builder, and JBuilder. He has a PhD in computer science, and has authored two technical books, a business book, memoir, and childrens book. Jothy is the creator of the series Who Says I Can’t on YouTube, and established and runs the The Who Says I Can’t Foundation.

Follow Jothy:

“An effective developer is an effective software tester. As a developer, it’s your responsibility to make sure what you do works. And automated testing is such an easy and cheap way of doing it."

Mauricio Aniche is the author of “Effective Software Testing”. In this episode, Mauricio explained how to become a more effective software developer by using effective and systematic software testing approaches. We discussed several such testing techniques, such as testing pyramid, specification-based testing, boundary testing, structural testing, mutation testing, and property testing. Mauricio also shared his interesting view about test-driven development (TDD) and suggested the one area we can do to improve our test maintainability.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:03:43]
• Winning Teacher of the Year - [00:06:07]
• An Effective Developer is an Effective Tester - [00:09:33]
• Reasons for Writing Automated Tests - [00:10:43]
• Systematic Tester - [00:13:45]
• Testing Pyramid - [00:17:50]
• Unit vs Integration Test - [00:20:25]
• Specification-Based Testing - [00:22:55]
• Behavior-Driven Design - [00:25:34]
• Boundary Testing - [00:27:01]
• Structural Testing & Code Coverage - [00:30:16]
• Mutation Testing - [00:35:31]
• Property Testing - [00:38:45]
• Test-Driven Development - [00:42:00]
• Test Maintainability - [00:46:03]
• Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests - [00:48:07]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:49:24]

_____

Mauricio Aniche’s Bio
Dr. Maurício Aniche’s life mission is to help software engineers to become better and more productive. Maurício is a Tech Lead at Adyen, where he heads the Tech Academy team and leads different engineering enablement initiatives. Maurício is also an assistant professor of software engineering at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. His teaching efforts in software testing gave him the Computer Science Teacher of the Year 2021 award and the TU Delft Education Fellowship, a prestigious fellowship given to innovative lecturers. He is the author of the “Effective Software Testing: A Developer’s Guide”, published by Manning in 2022. He’s currently working on a new book entitled “Simple Object-Oriented Design” which should be on the market soon.

Follow Mauricio:

• LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/mauricioaniche
• Twitter – @mauricioaniche
• Website – effective-software-testing.com
• Newsletter – effectivesoftwaretesting.substack.com

_____

Our Sponsors

“Building an application security program is about ensuring security is built into the software development lifecycle and how to respond to vulnerabilities."

Derek Fisher is the author of “Application Security Program Handbook”. In this episode, Derek shared about building an application security program and how to implement it in our organization. First, we discussed some security fundamental concepts, such as shift-left, CIA triad, and threat modeling. Derek then outlined how to start an application security program and measure the program’s success. Derek also touched on the security program maturity model and gave his tips on how to build and hire application security teams. Towards the end, Derek also gave his insights on how to address zero-day vulnerabilities when it becomes prominent.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:03:51]
• Building Application Security Program - [00:06:56]
• Shifting Left - [00:11:58]
• CIA Triad - [00:16:30]
• Threat Modeling - [00:19:04]
• Threat Classification - [00:22:49]
• Starting Application Security Program - [00:27:04]
• Security Program Maturity Model - [00:32:45]
• Building Security Teams - [00:35:27]
• Measuring the Program’s Success - [00:40:19]
• Zero Day Vulnerabilities - [00:42:48]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:44:59]

_____

Derek Fisher’s Bio
Derek is an award winning author of a children’s book series in cybersecurity as well as the author of “The Application Security Handbook.” He is a university instructor at Temple University where he teaches software development security to undergraduate and graduate students. He is a speaker on topics in the cybersecurity space and has led teams, large and small, at organizations in the healthcare and financial industries. He has built and matured information security teams as well as implemented organizational information security strategies to reduce the organizations risk. His focus has been to raise the security awareness of the engineering organization while maintaining a practice of secure code development, delivery, and operations.

Follow Derek Fisher:

“It’s not about the tools or processes. Most important is you understand the target outcomes for your customers and establish the right level of shared situational awareness across the teams."

Robert Benefield is the author of “Lean DevOps: A Practical Guide to On Demand Service Delivery”. In this episode, Robert shared insights on how we can apply the Lean DevOps mindset for building successful IT delivery organizations. Robert started by sharing what initiated him writing the book and how it differs from the other available DevOps books. Robert described the concept of on-demand service delivery and important concepts, such as knowing the target outcomes, building situational awareness, and making effective and timely decisions based on the OODA loop. Robert also shared a few practices and techniques he outlined in the book, such as mission command, workflow board, queue master, service engineering lead, value stream mapping, and Einheit.
 

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:03:58]
• Writing a DevOps Book - [00:14:14]
• On Demand Service Delivery - [00:18:58]
• Mission Command - [00:21:42]
• OODA Loop - [00:26:56]
• Building Situational Awareness - [00:33:16]
• Workflow Management - [00:39:43]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:49:41]

_____

Robert Benefield’s Bio
Robert Benefield is an experienced technical leader who has decades of experience delivering robust on-demand services to solve hard problems in demanding ecosystems including banking and securities trading, medical and pharmaceutical, energy, telecom, government, and Internet services. His continual eagerness to learn and work with others to make a difference has taken him from building computers and writing code in the early days of the Internet at Silicon Valley startups to the executive suite in large multinational companies. He shares his unique experience in the hopes that others can continue to build on it without having to collect quite as many scars along the way.

Follow Robert:

“Privacy is about handling data in a way that builds for both compliance and trust, maturity and transparency."

Nishant Bhajaria is cybersecurity and data privacy executive and the author of “Data Privacy: A Runbook for Engineers”. In this episode, we discussed the importance of data privacy and privacy engineering. Nishant described his definition of data privacy and why it is becoming a key concern for users, companies, and regulators. He explained why doing data privacy is hard and how companies can build a privacy-first culture. Nishant also covered other data privacy topics, including data classification, data sharing, data consent, and data privacy applied to machine learning.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:03:29]
• Writing “Data Privacy” Book - [00:05:45]
• Building a Course - [00:10:04]
• Data Privacy Definition - [00:13:43]
• Data Privacy Concerns - [00:16:03]
• Data Privacy Regulations - [00:22:07]
• Data Privacy is Hard - [00:26:23]
• Privacy & Security - [00:31:22]
• Privacy-First Culture - [00:35:23]
• Data for Machine Learning - [00:39:23]
• Data Privacy Tooling - [00:42:45]
• Data Sharing - [00:45:45]
• Data Consent - [00:49:27]
• Data Classification - [00:52:10]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:55:46]

_____

Nishant Bhajaria’s Bio
Nishant Bhajaria is an executive in the cybersecurity and data privacy industry. Having started out as an engineer with a second act as a product manager, he pivoted to data protection before it became a high-visibility topic. Besides building and leading teams at Nike, Netflix, Google and Uber, Nishant has also authored the recently released Data Privacy: A Runbook for Engineers - a deep dive into strategies on effectively identifying, communicating and addressing privacy risks using technical strategies. He also teaches courses on LinkedIn Learning on cybersecurity, career development and building inclusive teams.

Follow Nishant:

“Spend some time looking at the system in which you work. Understand how the work is working. Understand how flow is for your organization. And then you can work to optimize that."

James Lewis is a Director at ThoughtWorks and a pioneer of microservice architecture. In this episode, we went back memory lane to the time when James first coined and popularized the microservice architecture. James described his definition of a microservice and its important characteristics. He also shared the recent microservice evolution, including the swing between microservice and monolith. In the second half, James shared his insights from complexity science related to different scaling patterns. Particularly, he explained how different hierarchy types can affect an organization’s growth rate. Towards the end, James gave some tips on how organization can detect signs of suboptimal growth and what we can do to maintain organizational agility.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:03:48]
• Coining Microservices - [00:07:25]
• Definition of Microservices - [00:14:13]
• Microservices Swing - [00:18:42]
• Scaling Law and Complexity Science - [00:24:05]
• Complex and Adaptive System - [00:40:01]
• Examining Sublinear Growth - [00:43:47]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:51:19]

_____

James Lewis’s Bio
James is a Software Architect and Director at Thoughtworks based in the UK. He’s proud to have been a part of Thoughtworks’ journey for fourteen years and it’s ongoing mission of delivering technical excellence for its clients and in amplifying positive social change for an equitable future. As a member of the Thoughtworks Technical Advisory Board, the group that creates the Technology Radar, he contributes to industry adoption of open source and other tools, techniques, platforms and languages.

He is an internationally recognised expert on software architecture and design and on its intersection with organisational design and lean product development. After defining what was the newly emerging Microservices architectural style back in 2014, James’ primary consulting focus these days is helping organisations with technology strategy, distributed systems design and adoption of SOA.

Follow James Lewis:

“The three core dimensions of developer experience are feedback loops, cognitive load, and flow state."

Margaret-Anne (Peggy) Storey and Abi Noda are the coauthors of the recently published ACM paper “DevEx: What Actually Drives Productivity”. In this episode, we discussed how we can better measure and improve developer productivity using a developer-centric approach. Peggy and Abi first began by explaining the importance of socio-technical factors in software development. They also shared their view on the well-known SPACE and DORA metrics, and pointed out the danger of misusing and abusing the DORA metrics. Peggy and Abi then explained the three core dimensions of developer experience from their latest paper, which are feedback loops, cognitive load, and flow state. Towards the end, Peggy and Abi shared tips on how we can start measuring developer experience, including how to conduct developer surveys properly.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:04:09]
• First Developer Experience Paper - [00:06:19]
• Socio-Technical Factors - [00:07:37]
• SPACE & DORA Metrics - [00:13:35]
• Misuse and Abuse of DORA Metrics - [00:18:52]
• New Developer Experience Paper - [00:22:29]
• Developer Experience - [00:24:55]
• 3 Core Dimensions - [00:28:11]
• Optimizing Feedback Loops - [00:32:44]
• Cognitive Load - [00:37:06]
• Flow State - [00:40:32]
• Importance of Culture - [00:46:25]
• Measuring Developer Experience - [00:50:27]
• Conducting Survey - [00:54:29]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [01:00:10]

_____

Margaret-Anne Storey’s Bio
Margaret-Anne (Peggy) Storey is a professor of computer science at the University of Victoria and holds a Canada Research Chair in human and social aspects of software engineering. Her research focuses on improving processes, tools, communication, and collaboration in software engineering. She serves as chief scientist at DX and consults with Microsoft to improve developer productivity.

Abi Noda’s Bio
Abi Noda is the founder and CEO at DX, where he leads the company’s strategic direction and R&D efforts. His work focuses on developing measurement methods to help organizations improve developer experience and productivity. Before joining DX, Noda held engineering leadership roles at various companies and founded Pull Panda, which was acquired by GitHub in 2019. For more information, visit his website at abinoda.com.

Follow Margaret:

• LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/margaret-anne-storey-8419462
• Twitter – @margaretstorey

Follow Abi:

• LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/abinoda
• Twitter – @abinoda
• Newsletter – newsletter.abinoda.com

_____

Our Sponsors

Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags available by visiting techleadjournal.dev/shop. And don't forget to brag yourself once you receive any of those swags.

Like this episode?

“The goal of requirements development is clear and effective communication. Thus, it has to be done in an incremental and iterative fashion."

Karl Wiegers is the coauthor of “Software Requirements Essentials” and has previously appeared in our episode #103. In this episode, we discussed 6 essential practices for software requirements out of the 20 core practices specified in his book. Karl also explained the importance of having a clear and effective communication in developing software requirements, his view on doing software requirements for Agile teams, and the importance of having good software requirements for becoming an effective software development team and for avoiding unnecessary rework.  

Listen out for:

• What Karl is Up To Lately - [00:04:08]
• Writing “Software Requirements Essentials” - [00:05:20]
• Software Requirements - [00:10:19]
• Clear & Effective Communication - [00:13:20]
• Importance of Requirement Details - [00:16:19]
• Practice #1 - Understand the Problem Before Converging on a Solution - [00:22:05]
• Practice #3 - Define the Solution’s Boundaries - [00:26:26]
• Requirements Elicitation vs Requirements Gathering - [00:30:47]
• Practice #6 - Understand What Users Need to Do With the Solution - [00:33:01]
• Software Requirements in Agile - [00:37:06]
• Requirements & Effective Software Development - [00:40:59]
• Rework - [00:44:39]
• Practice #19 - Establish and Manage Requirement Baselines - [00:46:20]
• Practice #13 - Prioritize the Requirements - [00:49:17]
• Practice #20 - Manage Changes to Requirements Effectively - [00:52:22]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:55:54]

_____

Karl Wiegers’s Bio
Karl Wiegers is Principal Consultant with Process Impact. He has a PhD in organic chemistry. Karl is the author of 14 books, including Software Requirements Essentials (with Candase Hokanson), Software Requirements (with Joy Beatty), Software Development Pearls, The Thoughtless Design of Everyday Things, Successful Business Analysis Consulting, and a forensic mystery novel titled The Reconstruction. Karl has delivered more than 650 training courses, webinars, and conference presentations worldwide. You can reach him at ProcessImpact.com or KarlWiegers.com, where you can also hear more than 50 songs he has recorded just for fun, including 18 originals that he wrote.

Follow Karl:

• LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/karlwiegers
• Website – karlwiegers.com
• Software Requirements Essentials – softwarereqs.com
• Process Impact – processimpact.com
• Medium – karlwiegers.medium.com

_____

Our Sponsors

Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags available by visiting techleadjournal.dev/shop. And don't forget to brag yourself once you receive any of those swags.

Like this episode?

“Speak about topics you are passionate about, because if you are passionate about something, you can easily find the story and the motivation that will lead you to success."

Oscar Santolalla is the author of “Rock the Tech Stage” and the host of the “Time to Shine” podcast. In this episode, we discussed techniques on how to deliver a successful tech presentation and demo. Oscar broke down the elements of a successful tech presentation, in particular, explaining in-depth the three essential elements of passion, storytelling, and interaction. Oscar also shared some practical tips on how to deliver a killer product demo, some presentation slides hacks, and insights on how we can use our voice more effectively when delivering talks.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:03:47]
• Writing Public Demo and Public Speaking Books - [00:08:40]
• Elements of a Successful Public Speaking - [00:12:52]
• Passion - [00:23:10]
• Storytelling - [00:25:20]
• Delivering Product Demos - [00:28:55]
• Presentation Slides - [00:34:56]
• Importance of Voice - [00:38:31]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:42:09]

_____

Oscar Santolalla’s Bio
After a decade and a half in the technology arena, Oscar embarked on a mission to help people in technology companies present better, inspire others, and sell more. He is author of “Rock the Tech Stage” (Apress, 2020) and “Create and Deliver a Killer Product Demo” (Apress, 2018). Oscar helps professionals in the technology industry rediscover the power of sharing their best ideas onstage.

Since 2014, Oscar hosts Time to Shine, the pioneer podcast show in public speaking. He works as a Senior Sales Engineer at Ubisecure, in which he hosts the podcast “Let’s Talk About Digital Identity” and leads the company’s product training program. He has also contributed as speaking coach in several TEDx events. Oscar lives in Helsinki, Finland.

Follow Oscar:

“The notion of transaction, consistency, and ACID compliance are many times tech imposed. It should be the business that makes the decision. We as technologists should not make that decision."

Pramod Sadalage is a Director at ThoughtWorks and the co-author of the Jolt Award winning “Refactoring Databases”. In this episode, we discussed data essentials in software architecture. Pramod started by explaining why dealing with data is hard in software architecture and some data related concerns we should think about when making architecture decisions. He then shared the thought process of how we can choose the right database for our purpose and shared insights on data modeling differences between SQL and NoSQL. Pramod also touched on the important considerations in managing transactions and the trade-offs between ACID and eventual consistency. Towards the end, Pramod shared practical advice on the step-by-step how we can split a monolithic database through database refactoring.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:04:23]
• Data is Hard - [00:15:57]
• Data Related Architecture Concerns - [00:18:36]
• Choosing the Right Database - [00:24:19]
• Data Modeling in SQL vs NoSQL - [00:30:28]
• Managing Transactions - [00:37:31]
• Tradeoff Between ACID & Eventual Consistency - [00:44:06]
• Refactoring Database - [00:46:58]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:54:58]

_____

Pramod Sadalage’s Bio
Pramod Sadalage is Director at ThoughtWorks where he enjoys the rare role of bridging the divide between database professionals and application developers. In the early 00’s he developed techniques to allow relational databases to be designed in an evolutionary manner based on version-controlled schema migrations. He is co-author of Software Architecture: The Hard Parts: Modern Trade-Off Analyses for Distributed Architectures, co-author for Building Evolutionary Architectures - Automated Software Governance, co-author of Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design, co-author of NoSQL Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Emerging World of Polyglot Persistence, author of Recipes for Continuous Database Integration and continues to speak and write about the insights he and his clients learn.

Follow Pramod Sadalage:

• Twitter – @pramodsadalage
• LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/pramodsadalage
• Website – sadalage.com
• Database Refactoring – databaserefactoring.com
• DevOps for DBA – devopsfordba.com
• Agile Data – agiledata.org

_____

Our Sponsors

“Understand the stage of your company and the kind of risks you face at that stage, make decisions that are appropriate, and remind other people about that all the time."

Sarah Milstein is the VP of Engineering at Daily and has run remote teams for 25 years. In this episode, Sarah started by sharing some remote work insights we may not have heard before, such as why remote distributed teams often have higher propensity of trust, how remote work could help make difficult conversations easier, and how leaders can establish swift trust by having more intentional communications. In the second half of our conversation, Sarah shared about her experience of leading engineers as someone from a non-tech background. She explained why a lack of technical expertise can sometimes be useful and pointed out some leadership qualities an engineering leader should have to balance out the need for technical acumen. Sarah also shared her few tips on how to upskill herself in technical stuffs and her perspective on whether a company should consider having non-tech engineering leaders.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:03:49]
• Remote Work Insights - [00:08:04]
• Propensity of Trust - [00:12:26]
• Working Back in Office - [00:15:39]
• Other Remote Work Insights - [00:17:36]
• Ingroup Bias - [00:20:47]
• Swift Trust & Intentional Communication - [00:23:21]
• Accountability - [00:28:28]
• Being an Engineering Leader from a Non-Tech Background - [00:30:50]
• Leadership Qualities - [00:33:31]
• Benefits of Non-Tech Background - [00:35:15]
• Self-Learning Technical Stuffs - [00:39:23]
• Company Accepting Non-Tech Engineering Leaders - [00:41:51]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:45:14]

_____

Sarah Milstein’s Bio
Sarah Milstein is VP of Engineering at Daily, which lets developers add real-time video and audio to any app or website. Before Daily, Sarah held executive roles at ConvertKit, Mailchimp,18F.gov, and indie.vc. She was also CEO and co-founder of Lean Startup Productions and co-author of The Twitter Book. Earlier, she was a freelance journalist writing regularly for The New York Times. She holds an MBA from UC Berkeley and has run remote teams for 25 years.

Follow Sarah:

“The difference of why some companies are so much more successful at producing high value, high-impact products than others comes to 4 areas of GIST (Goals, Ideas, Steps, Tasks)."

Itamar Gilad is a coach and author with over 20 years of experience in product management, strategy, and growth, and was previously a product manager at Google and the head of Gmail’s growth team. In this episode, we discussed all things about product management and how to build high-value products. Itamar first shared his journey at Google growing Gmail to 1 billion MAUs and some of his lessons learnt on managing large-scale product changes, getting users feedback, and dogfooding. Itamar then explained in-depth his GIST framework as an alternative to the product roadmap, a collection of methods and best practices for producing high-value and impactful products. He shared some challenges working with product roadmap and how teams can create better alignment instead. He also shared how we can do product prioritization better by using the ICE technique and his Confidence Meter. Towards the end, Itamar shared the different ways of how companies can conduct product experimentation and how to use the GIST board to improve the way we execute product development.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:04:17]
• Growing Gmail - [00:06:06]
• Managing Large Scale Product Changes - [00:07:26]
• Getting Feedback from a Major Product Change - [00:10:48]
• Dogfooding - [00:15:21]
• GIST - [00:19:10]
• Problem with Product Roadmap - [00:27:17]
• Creating Alignment - [00:34:22]
• Prioritization and ICE - [00:38:02]
• Doing Product Experimentation - [00:43:59]
• Project & Task Management - [00:48:43]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:54:39]

_____

Itamar Gilad’s Bio
Itamar is a coach, author and speaker specializing in product management, strategy, and growth. For over two decades, he held senior product management and engineering roles at Google, Microsoft and a number of startups. At Google, Itamar led parts of Gmail and was the head of Gmail’s growth team (resulting in 1Bn MAUs).

Itamar publishes a popular product management newsletter and is the creator of a number of product management methodologies including GIST Framework and The Confidence Meter. Itamar is based in Barcelona, Spain.

Follow Itamar:

“The core of threshold leadership is a set of four pathways of cultivating stillness, embodying intelligence, thinking independently, and maturing consciousness."

Nick Chatrath is a leadership and organizational transformation expert and the author of “The Threshold: Leading in the Age of AI”. In this episode, Nick shared the concept of threshold leadership and explained its importance in the wake of recent AI advancements. Nick first shared some impact AI has made in our lives, both the good and the bad, and pointed out the importance of leaders taking accountability for those AI impact. Nick then shared in-depth the threshold leadership and its four pathways to help leaders be more responsible in the development and use of AI, which are cultivating stillness, thinking independently, embodying intelligence, and maturing consciousness. For each pathway, Nick shared a few tips on what we can do to improve ourselves, both at the personal level and the organization level. Towards the end, Nick closed our conversation by reminding us not to forget the two best human qualities we have compared to AI, which are love and wisdom.  

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:05:17]
• Writing a Book About AI & Leadership - [00:08:20]
• Impact of AI - [00:10:07]
• Leadership Responsibility - [00:15:34]
• Threshold Leadership - [00:18:02]
• Cultivating Stillness - [00:21:17]
• Knowing What Matters Most - [00:24:28]
• Organization Stillness - [00:28:01]
• Improving Stillness - [00:30:53]
• Thinking Independently - [00:34:00]
• Cultivating Independent Thinking - [00:39:48]
• Embodying Intelligence - [00:42:46]
• Importance of Recovery - [00:45:30]
• Organization’s Embodied Intelligence - [00:47:55]
• Maturing Consciousness - [00:50:22]
• Love & Wisdom - [00:53:05]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:57:29]

_____

Nick Chatrath’s Bio
Dr. Nick Chatrath is an expert in leadership and organizational transformation. A former McKinsey & Co. consultant, he now serves as managing director of the Oxford-based executive leadership firm Artesian Transformational Leadership. He holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford, and a dozen training certifications from organizations like The Leadership Circle and Hogan Assessment Systems. Previously, he co-founded the tech startup Coachify and the social reform advocacy group The Shaftsbury Partnership Ltd. A bestselling author, his most recent book is The Threshold: Leading in the Age of AI. He is an avid cook and triathlete.

Follow Nick: