Non-Technical

Context and Introduction Recently, I wrote my very first technology strategy. Overall I’d say the process went pretty well. Of course writing the strategy is intimidating to begin with, but once I started I quickly realised that the much more intimidating thing is actually working to implement the strategy after it’s written. I felt and still at times feel like fleeing to the woods to live as a wolf as a result of this realisation but I’m pretty sure my life insurance has exclusions for fleeing to the woods in order to live as a wolf....

What if the role of the software developer is not actually about writing software? What if the most important thing I can do today isn’t to write a sweet recursive function that delights and confuses the next human that reads it in equal measure? As our industry has matured, the roles of technical staff in an organisation have changed. Increasingly, companies require that technical folk interact with customers. Some people like this....

1-day sprints are a fantastic way of turning the traditional time pressures a team might face from negative to positive. They act as a time constraint on the team and force clarity, agility and feedback into your work system in far more significant amounts than you might already have. They can act as circuit breakers for teams struggling to meet sprint goals. They can create momentum in and outside of the team and encourage teams to focus on producing the smallest impact possible for your users....

Any organisation that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organisation’s communication structure. — Melvin E. Conway Introduction Team topologies are a concept created and popularised by Manuel Pais and Matthew Skelton. They describe a way of reforming your organisation shape in such a way that improves the architecture of your software while reducing cognitive load and directing more energy and focus towards the streams of value that flow through your organisation....

One thing the Army is good at is teaching you how to function under immense pressure, for extended periods. Speaking briefly about my credentials in this area, I’ve spent just under five years in the Army, nine months of which were in Afghanistan as part of a NATO mission with the New Zealand Defence Force. As with everything, there are folk out there with more experience than me, who have done it harder, for longer....

Digital Transformation, Digital Experience, Digital Thought Leader, Digital Coffee Table, Digital DevOps Team, Digital Dystopia Some of these things are not like the others. Have you heard the phrase ‘digital’ so many times it loses all meaning? Try saying it a hundred times and see if the word still sticks in your brain. If you’re like me, it’ll slide right away like a fried egg off a bald head. Now imagine baldy over there is your company....

Digital transformations don’t work. Everyone wants to talk about digital-led businesses. Every business is a software business, even when they aren’t, people will tell you. But the focus on big bang, project managed, change agent-driven initiatives tend to leave sour tastes in the mouths of long-standing staff. Naive technologists or agilists or product people for that matter exacerbate this when they perform the business strategy equivalent of the ‘seagull’. Discontent frequently morphs into outright opposition, and emotion becomes the dominant decision-making force rather than observation and planning....

I build teams. I build teams good. Good teams that do well, and they also do good. Technical teams mainly, but I’m branching out. It’s good. That’s all well and good, but what is the point? The point is that good teams are rare. That is to say, a team that you can leave alone, with the trust that they can self-regulate, self-correct and grow without you is very difficult to find, such that the effort to grow one (if you can) is a far simpler thing by comparison....

On Friday 30th September, a colleague and I spoke at Devops Days 2016 in Wellington. It was an awesome experience, and the first time I’ve spoken on technical and non-technical topics at an industry conference. The talk I gave is available on Speakerdeck. I’ve also embedded it below: I think that the one thing that I took away from Devops Days NZ 2016 was this. It’s very easy to get wrapped up in your own problems in this industry....

Casey Gerald is an amazing speaker. He spoke at Webstock about belief, and doubt. He spoke about how each time he became invested in a belief of something greater than himself, he was inevitably dissapointed. Each time he entered a different phase in his life, he believed in something new, and each time that belief was broken. He began to believe in doubt, he believed it might not be possible to believe in anything at all....