Listen Now

In this episode, our guest Trond Hjorteland is challenged with the heuristic “Complex systems evolve out of simple systems that worked” from Embedded Artistry repository (https://embeddedartistry.com/blog/2018/04/26/embedded-rules-of-thumb/). We discussed how communication is important, and moving from the big picture to code and back. He shares the techniques and practices to have crucial discussions with people with different perspectives involved in the creation of software. Trond recommends the following resources: Anything from Umberto Eco (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umberto_Eco) Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella H. Meadows Ackoff's Best: His Classic Writings on Management by Russell l. Ackoff The Infinite Monkey Cage podcast The Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast Trond (@trondhjort) is an IT architect and aspiring sociotechnical systems designer from the consulting firm Scienta.no and has many years experience with large, complex, and business-critical systems, primarily as a developer and architect on middleware and backend applications. His main interests are service-orientation, domain-driven design, event-driven architectures, and sociotechnical systems, working in industries like telecom, media, TV, and public sector. Mantra: Great products emerge from collaborative sensemaking and design.  

“Design for constant evolution” is the heuristic for our guest, Edzo Botjes. The heuristic is part of the Simon Wardley Doctrine repository (https://wardleypedia.org/mediawiki/index.php/Doctrine_Patterns#Design_for_constant_evolution). Edzo discusses resilient and antifragile systems as part of his research. We discuss how organisations are addressing these topics, and what are the current market needs, given that it is a complex topic. Edzo suggests: Foundations of Enterprise Governance and Enterprise Engineering from Jan A.P. Hoogervorst Rethinking the Fifth Discipline from Robert Louis Flood Edzo Botjes (@edzob) is an Enterprise Engineer with more than 15+ years’ experience. He believes that Enterprise Engineering covers Enterprise Architecture and the skills needed to implement innovation, governance, and architecture realistically. This implies that Group Psychology, IT Security Architecture, Technology Innovation, and Ethics are a few topics that should be included in the developing strategy and architecture.  In 2020 Edzo wrote his Master titled "Defining Antifragility and the application on Organisation Design” and graduated with the highest distinction. Edzo is currently working on the new version of DYA, a view on Enterprise Architecture. Edzo is since this year part of Xebia Security with specialisation on the resilient organisation.

New year, new episode. Mykola Gurov is the first guest of the year, and we challenge him with the heuristic “Diagnose before cure” from the Xebia Essentials repository (https://essentials.xebia.com/diagnose-before-cure/). Mykola shares his opinion about observability and the importance to challenge our assumptions and bias. Focus on the purpose of the software rather than the technical details. We discuss testing in production, the different techniques to be effective, reduce the feedback cycle, and do it safely. We end up talking about the differences between traditional approaches to testing software versus modern ones. Mykola recommends: Unit testing is overrated blog post by Alexey Gulob (https://tyrrrz.me/blog/unit-testing-is-overrated) Testing of Microservices blog post by André Schaffer (https://engineering.atspotify.com/2018/01/11/testing-of-microservices/) Mykola (@ngurov) is a software engineer. Working at bol.com since 2015. Mostly within “feature delivery” teams (logistics, supply chain) with occasional detours towards platform development. He is a proponent and adopter of rapid feedback techniques in software development: thorough functional testing in development; progressive feature delivery and trunk-based development; testing on production (shadow and live). On the technical side, he is a believer in micro-services; preference for higher-tier testing instead of heavy use of mocks.    

Today Laveena Ramchandani will share her experiences about the heuristic “Tests should be fast, reliable and independent” from the Xebia Essentials repository (https://essentials.xebia.com/independent-tests/). We discuss how to combine these 3 qualities to the test practices. We deep dive into the field of Data Science, and how test practices can be applied or re-think to deliver software with high levels of excellence. Laveena recommends the following resources: How to avoid the testing Swiss Cheese Syndrome by Marc Rambert (https://conference.eurostarsoftwaretesting.com/avoid-testing-swiss-cheese-syndrome/) The Tester's Pocketbook by Paul Gerrard Accelerating Software Quality: Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in the Age of DevOps by Eran Kinsbruner Laveena Ramchandani blogs (https://laveenaramchandani01.medium.com/)  Laveena (LinkedIn) is working in Tech for over 7 years now. Her expertise is in software testing and quality assurance, a good mix of both technical and business awareness. She has learnt a lot through her career and is looking forward to gaining more knowledge and at the same time inspiring more testers around the world.

This week we feature Melissa Benua as our guest. She will share her experiences and opinion about the heuristic “Distribute power and decision making” from the Simon Wardley Doctrine (https://wardleypedia.org/mediawiki/index.php/Doctrine_Patterns#Distribute_power_and_decision_making). She will share her heuristics to move between different leadership styles, such as Command and Control and Misson Command. We discuss the merits of the different styles, as well as how a manager can sense and discuss it with the people and the teams. We end up with the differences between an enterprise and a scale-up, and the trade-offs for a manager.  Melissa recommends: State of DevOps report - https://cloud.google.com/devops  Accelerate book from Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble and Gene Kim Melissa Benua (@queenofcode) has worked in nearly every software development role—dev, test, DevOps, and program management—at companies big and small and somewhere in-between. She's created and run high availability, high-quality services for PlayFab, Bing, Cortana, and Xbox One, and now for mParticle's enormous data platform. Melissa discovered her love of massively-scaled systems while growing the Bing backend, where she honed the art of keeping highly-available complex systems up while undergoing significant code churn. Now a director of engineering with mParticle, she’s passionate not only about maximizing efficiency both in her product code and in her developer tools but also about sharing best practices among colleagues and the tech world at large. 

Gitte Klitgaard is our guest. She will tell us her experiences and practices with the pattern “Blameless inquiry” for the Cloud Native Patterns repository (https://www.cnpatterns.org/organization-culture/blameless-inquiry). We will explore the different behaviours at a team and individual level, and how we can nurture a healthy culture. We discuss some tabu topics, such as mental health; what should organisations pay attention to, and how to act in order to protect people. Gitte recommends: Amy Edmonson - Building a psychologically safe workplace (https://diversity.lbl.gov/2019/09/24/tedx-talk-on-psychological-safety/) Brené Brown - The power of vulnerability (https://brenebrown.com/videos/ted-talk-the-power-of-vulnerability/) The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler  Gitte (@nativewired) has been an agile coach at leading companies like Spotify, LEGO and IBM for more than a decade and has been independent since 2013. Her main focus in the last years have been communication and implementing psychological safety as well as responsibility and accountability. It is essential for Gitte to be authentic, to cut to the chase, and help people become themselves, so they can succeed at work and outside. She also spends time being a speaker, mentor, and trainer and have so far keynoted on three continents - often about the things that we forget to talk about. Gitte describes herself as “curious, hippie, friend, hugger, geek and learner”

This week Manuel Pais is our guest. We challenge him with the pattern “Internal Evangelism” from the Cloud Native Patterns repository (https://www.cnpatterns.org/organization-culture/internal-evangelism). How the different Team Topologies archetypes and their relationship with this pattern. Our conversation goes into the necessary skills to be an influential evangelist, what a team should do from an evangelism point of view, and also to the management traits.  Manuel recommends: Team Topologies Book: https://teamtopologies.com/book  Thoughtworks enabling team case study: Chapter 5, Page 88 IBM enabling team case study: Chapter 7, Page 146 Platform internal "evangelism" at HelloFresh: https://engineering.hellofresh.com/advocating-for-a-product-mindset-within-platform-teams-and-how-we-do-it-at-hellotech-part-1-fc1fbf8ae015 Platform branding example from NAV's platform team: https://nais.io/ Manuel Pais (@manupaisable) is co-author of Team Topologies: organising business and technology teams for fast flow. Recognised by TechBeacon as a DevOps thought leader, Manuel is an independent IT organisational consultant and trainer, focused on team interactions, delivery practices and accelerating flow. Manuel is also a LinkedIn instructor on Accelerating Continuous Delivery in the Enterprise.

This week Xin Yao is our guest. She will share her opinion about the heuristic “Think Fast, Inexpensive, Restrained, and Elegant (FIRE)” from the Simon Wardley Doctrine (https://wardleypedia.org/mediawiki/index.php/Doctrine_Patterns#Think_Fast.2C_Inexpensive.2C_Restrained.2C_and_Elegant_.28FIRE.29). We navigate between the four principles and Xin’s experience as a sociotechnical architect. She shares her experiences within a sociotechnical system, and what is changing in the role of a software architect. Xin recommends the following resources: The Simplicity Cycle: A Field Guide to Making Things Better Without Making Them Worse by Dan Ward Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships (Nonviolent Communication Guides) by Marshall B. Rosenberg Learn Wardley Mapping (https://learnwardleymapping.com/)  Virtual DDD (https://virtualddd.com/)  Xin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/xinxin/ and @xin_yy)  is a sociotechnical software architect in Danske Bank. She explores Domain-Driven Design in her organisation's IT modernisation journey from a mainframe-centric landscape to cloud-based services.  She regularly facilitates collaborative domain modelling workshops, using visual discovery techniques such as event storming and Wardley Mapping to co-create shared domain understanding and link to customer value. She is particularly curious of whether blending DDD into her org's current agile transformation initiative can give its habitual top-down architecture gestation culture a gentle nudge toward a democratic metamorphosis. Xin dreams of and works on elevating software architecture to a communication tool cross disciplines, owned and evolved by agile teams organically.

New week, new episode. And the guest is Khaled Souf, and I challenge him with the heuristic “Split functionality into small units” from the Xebia Essentials repository (https://essentials.xebia.com/thirty-minute-methods/). Khaled will explain how he approaches software, and what are the tools, practices and techniques that he uses to deliver value. We also discuss inclusion and diversity as a critical aspect for organisations to strive! Khaled recommends: Test Driven Development: By Example by Kent Beck Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests by Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software by Eric Evans Patterns, Principles, and Practices of Domain-Driven Design by Scott Millett and Nick Tune DDD Crew GitHub repo (https://github.com/ddd-crew) The Software Craftsman: Professionalism, Pragmatism, Pride by Sandro Mancuso The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey Khaled (@khaledsouf) is a passionate Senior dev/trainer/coach/DDD Distiller based in Montréal. He has been working for several years in Paris (France). He is also an organiser of the Software Crafters Montréal Meetup and the Unconference SOCRATES Canada. Currently, he works at Zenika Montréal as a senior consultant.

Sander is the guest of this week. We will share his experiences with the pattern “Reproducible development environments” from the Cloud Native Patterns repository (https://www.cnpatterns.org/development-design/reproducible-dev-environments). Sander will teel his experience from software engineer to tech director, and his path to be pragmatic. We discuss the benefits of automation to onboard new people into teams, where they can feel included, and contribute to the product. Sander recommends the following resources: Talking with Tech Leads: From Novices to Practitioners from Pat Kua Follow Pat Kua on Twitter Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders from L. David Marquet Sander (@codenizer) is Tech Director for Jedlix. Over the last decade, he worked in different countries, ranging from banking to e-commerce industries. Sander is also public speaker, blogger and amateur athlete.

Parveen Khan is our guest! This episode she will give her opinion and experiences about the heuristic “You get what you measure” from the Xebia Essentials repository (https://essentials.xebia.com/what-you-measure/). She will share how she measures her goals to drive her career, and how she fell in love with Observability. We discuss how the role of a tester changed across the last decade, and how siloed communities started to pivot to join efforts around common concerns for teams that create software. Parveen recommends: O11y Cast (https://www.heavybit.com/library/podcasts/o11ycast/)  Ministry of Testing (https://www.ministryoftesting.com/) Test Automation University (https://testautomationu.applitools.com/)  Parveen (@Parveen_Khan10) is a Senior Test Engineer at Square Marble Technology. Being a quality advocate, she believes delivering high-quality products is everyone's responsibility. She loves collaborating with teams and optimising processes, tools and methodologies to enable the creation of high-quality products. She is also an international speaker sharing her stories and experiences in testing to inspire other people around the globe. In her spare time, she plays the role of wonder woman for her two lovely kids. You can connect with her on Twitter - @Parveen_Khan10 and read her stories at https://www.parveenkhans.com/.

And a new episode is out. This week our guest is Ben Mosior, and we will ramble about the heuristic “Prefer rich modes of communication” from the Xebia Essentials repository (https://essentials.xebia.com/rich-communication/). Our discussion will be centre on communication, from synchronous to asynchronous, from visual to verbal. Ben will share his opinion on the effects on bad communication in sociotechnical systems, and how good communication, such as Wardley Maps, can have a positive effect to get focus, from individual to organisation level. Ben recommends: Learn Wardley Mapping (https://learnwardleymapping.com/) Working with Stories in Your Community Or Organization: Participatory Narrative Inquiry from Cynthia Kurtz (https://www.workingwithstories.org/)  Ben (@hiredthought) is an indie consultant who teaches Wardley Mapping and other ways to do stuff on purpose. Creator of the Learn Wardley Mapping (https://learnwardleymapping.com/)  website, he is also a blogger, podcaster, trainer and public speaker!

Pat Kua is our guest for this episode. He will share his thoughts on the pattern “Decide Closest to the Action” from the Cloud Native Patterns repository (https://www.cnpatterns.org/organization-culture/decide-closest-to-the-action). We will discuss technical leadership and management. What that means for a technical management role, and what are the pitfalls, and how to create a healthy environment. Pat recommends “Thinking in System” by Donella Meadows. Patrick Kua (@patkua) is a seasoned technology leader with almost 20 years of experience. His personal passion is accelerating the growth and success of tech organisations and technical leaders. He has had many years of hands-on experience, leading, managing and improving complex organisations and software systems as the CTO and Chief Scientist of N26 (Berlin, Germany) and as a Technical Principal Consultant at ThoughtWorks. He is a frequent keynote and conference speaker, author of three books including The Retrospective Handbook, Talking with Tech Leads and Building Evolutionary Architectures and runs the free popular newsletter for leaders in tech, “Level Up” (http://levelup.patkua.com) and the Tech Lead Academy, offering online training for technical leaders. You can find him online on twitter as @patkua or running his very popular “Shortcut to Tech Leadership” workshop.

In this week’s episode, we have Nick Tune as our guest. He will rumble about the heuristic “The ability to improve a design occurs primarily at the interfaces. This is also the prime location for screwing it up.” from the Embedded Artistry repository (https://embeddedartistry.com/blog/2018/04/26/embedded-rules-of-thumb/). We discuss how software design is affected by the environment, and how can we cope with that pressure. He also shares his heuristics to improve collaboration, and how silver bullets can damage our culture. Nick recommends: Follow Ruth Malan on Twitter (@ruthmalan) Team Topologies from Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais Wardley Mapping (https://medium.com/wardleymaps) Nick (@ntcoding) is The Connector of Dots. Keynote speaker, author of several books, and community leader, he is involved with the Domain-Driven Design community.

Jessy Halison is our guest for episode 18. She will share her experiences about the pattern "Manage for Creativity from Cloud Native Patterns repository (https://www.cnpatterns.org/organization-culture/manage-for-creativity). We will discuss organisational models, and how psychology safety is key for teams and individuals to grow. She also describes how inclusion and diversity are key to a creative environment. Jessy recommends: Non-violent communication: https://www.nonviolentcommunication.com  Bunch.ai: https://bunch.ai/ (access to their "Teams@Work" community: https://bunch.ai/slack-community)  Radical Candor, by Kim Scott: https://www.radicalcandor.com/the-book/  Ecosia: https://www.ecosia.org/  Jessy (@JessyFanja) is a QA Engineer with more than 10 years turned Engineering Manager, with people well-being at heart. She works for a socially conscious company: Ecosia, the search engine which plants trees.

In this episode, Tobias Goeschel shares his experiences with the pattern “Strangle Monolith Application” from Cloud Native Patterns repository (https://www.cnpatterns.org/development-design/strangle-monolithic-application). From the software crafting practices to his own bias, we chat about how he learns, and how we can advance our profession. Tobias recommends: Domain-Driven Design community Software Crafting community DDD Europe conference - https://dddeurope.com/  KanDDDisnky conference - https://kandddinsky.de/  SoCraTes conferences - https://www.socrates-conference.de/home   Mob Programming Collaborative modelling EventStorming - https://www.eventstorming.com/  Virtual DDD - https://virtualddd.com/  Tobias (@w3ltraumpirat) a Principal Consultant at codecentric, specialising in all things Software Crafting,  Domain-Driven Design and DevOps. He is older than he looks.

In this episode, Lisa Crispin shares her experiences with the pattern “Delayed Automation” from the Cloud Native Patterns repository (https://www.cnpatterns.org/development-design/delayed-automation). We discuss the different trade-offs of applying it, based on different contexts. I also ask a long-time question: What can we learn from donkeys? If you are curious why, donkeys are Lisa’s brand! Lisa recommends: Quality Coaching Roadshow podcast from Anne-Marie Charrett Accelerate book from Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble and Gene Kim Leading Quality book from Ronald Cummings-John and Owais Peer Lisa Crispin (@lisacrispin) is the co-author, with Janet Gregory, of three books: Agile Testing Condensed: A Brief Introduction, More Agile Testing: Learning Journeys for the Whole Team, Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams; the LiveLessons Agile Testing Essentials video course, and “The Whole Team Approach to Agile Testing” 3-day training course offered through the Agile Testing Fellowship. Lisa was voted by her peers as the Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Person at Agile Testing Days in 2012. She is co-founder with Janet of Agile Testing Fellowship, Inc.  Please visit www.lisacrispin.com, www.agiletestingfellow.com, and www.agiletester.ca for more. Lisa is currently a Fellow Quality Owner at OutSystems, helping with the observability practice.

In this week episode, Andra Sonea is telling us when she focuses on the specific problem or distils the general solution. She will share her experiences based on the heuristic “Solve the specific problem, not the general case” from the Embedded Artistry repository (https://embeddedartistry.com/blog/2018/04/26/embedded-rules-of-thumb/). We will discuss how-to share mental models with a team, even during pandemic times. From her experience in finance, we will dive into the patterns in an organisation change, with the different pitfalls. She will end up describing her unconventional approach to tech! Andra recommends the 99% invisible podcast (https://99percentinvisible.org/). For the past twenty years, Andra (@andrasonea) found herself working with banking and insurance technology. It was not called Fintech then, and it was not so cool as it is now. During this time she built systems, maintained systems made by others, worked on many so-called "transformations", advised start-ups and C-level executives of large banks on "next steps" & strategy. Left by herself, she likes to untangle complicated stuff. She spends her time between FintechOS, a scale-up she joined this year and her PhD in Urban Science at the University of Warwick.

In this episode, Julius Gamanyi is the guest. We will discuss the longest heuristic so far: “Past experience is excellent for providing a reality check. Too much reality can doom an otherwise worthwhile design, though” from Embedded Artistry repository (https://embeddedartistry.com/blog/2018/04/26/embedded-rules-of-thumb/). We discuss how we can balance our experiences, from a personal, team and organisational point of view. We deep dive into the way that an IT architect supports teams into the decision-making process, balancing the trade-offs. Julius recommends: Wardley Maps - http://wardleymaps.com Wardley Maps book - https://medium.com/wardleymaps Julius (@juliusgb2k) is a Technology Architect at Accenture, having started there ten years ago as a Software Developer. He's still developing Software, mainly with Java. He's been wearing the Security Champion's hat too. As for the industry, he's currently working in Payments. Before that, he was in Public Services, Retail, and Transportation. He enjoys a good book and is a fan of Wardley Mapping with all it entails. He blogs about once a month on his website (https://juliusgamanyi.com) and tweets at https://twitter.com/juliusgb2k.

In this week episode, we have Paul de Raaij as our guest. He distils the heuristic “Strategy is iterative, not linear” from the Simon Wardley Doctrine (http://wardleypedia.org/mediawiki/index.php/Doctrine_Patterns#Strategy_is_iterative.2C_not_linear). From strategy we discuss the role of a manager in tech, and how it is changing towards a facilitator rather than a traditional pusher. Paul also gives his wish for the future of organisations. Paul recommends the following resources: Reflection as a tool Team Topologies from Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People from Stephen Covey Robin van Persie life lesson to his 13-year son (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K6Fb7C6njY)  Paul (@pderaaij) is a believer in organisation missions, rather than IT and business alignment. He is a consultant specialised in helping organisations to change their operating model, to achieve better flow, fostering a healthy working environment. He started his career as a developer, but soon find the people and processes challenge interesting. He is fond of music and technology, and he doesn’t miss his workouts!