InfoQ Homepage QCon Software Development Conference Content on InfoQ
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Making Retrospectives Effective with Small Concrete Actions and Rotating Facilitators
Teams can run regular retrospectives that focus on 1–2 concrete weekly actions to avoid complaint circles, Natan Žabkar Nordberg mentioned at QCon London. You can rotate facilitators to build ownership, with each one bringing their own unique perspective. He suggested framing bigger changes as 4–6 week experiments, then vote to keep, tweak, or revert, ensuring learning and continuous improvement.
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QCon AI Boston’s Early Program Focuses on the Engineering Work behind Production AI
As teams move AI from pilots to production, the hard problems shift from demos to dependability. The first confirmed talks for QCon AI Boston (June 1–2) focus on context engineering, agent explainability, reasoning beyond basic RAG, evaluation, governance, and platform infrastructure needed to run AI reliably under real-world constraints.
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Lessons from Growing a Software Leadership Team
Thiago Ghisi explained how he guided managers and senior ICs to build a resilient leadership group beneath him in his talk Lessons from Growing Engineering Organizations at QCon London. Regular syncs, expectation calibration, and alignment on broader goals made leaders multipliers of culture and performance. Culture is what you do, not what you say.
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Creating Impactful Teams through Diversity Using Session 0
Diverse and empowered teams are impactful teams, Natan Žabkar Nordberg mentioned in his talk on creating impactful software teams at QCon London. A session 0 helps set expectations and ensures that everyone is approaching the team in a compatible way.
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QCon Previews 20th Anniversary Conferences: Production AI, Resilience, and Staff+ Engineering
Celebrating its 20th anniversary, QCon’s 2026 conferences in London and San Francisco will focus on the engineering realities of agentic AI, resilient architectures, and platform ROI. The programs continue the series' two-decade tradition of practitioner-led content, curated by senior engineers from companies like Zoox, UBS, and LinkedIn.
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Getting Feedback from Test-Driven Development and Testing in Production
Teams rely on strong unit and integration tests instead of end-to-end tests. Using TDD, pair programming, and good design, they ship small changes often, test in production for real feedback, and use feature toggles to reduce risk, Ola Hast and Asgaut Mjølne Söderbom mentioned in their talk about continuous delivery with pair programming.
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Building Software Organisations Where People Can Thrive
Continuous learning, adaptability, and strong support networks are the foundations for thriving teams, Matthew Card mentioned. Trust is built through consistent, fair leadership and addressing toxic behaviour, bias, and microaggressions early. By fostering growth, psychological safety, and accountability, people-first leadership drives resilience, collaboration, and performance.
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QCon London 2026: Practitioner-Led Tracks on Connectivity & Production AI Engineering
QCon London 2026 returns March 16–19 with 15 tracks for senior leads. Key sessions cover system integration via MCP, AI engineering, and debugging distributed systems. Explore modern security, Staff+ insights, and performance optimization with peer-led and practical discussions.
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QCon AI New York 2025: Moving Mountains: Migrating Legacy Code in Weeks instead of Years
David Stein, principal AI engineer at ServiceTitan, presented “Moving Mountains: Migrating Legacy Code in Weeks instead of Years” at QCon AI New York 2025. Stein demonstrated how migrations don’t have to be synonymous to “moving mountains” and introduced the concepts of the Principle of Acceleration and the Assembly Line Pattern.
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OpenAI at QCon AI NYC: Fine Tuning the Enterprise
At QCon AI NYC 2025, Will Hang from OpenAI unveiled Agent RFT—a cutting-edge reinforcement fine-tuning approach for tool-using agents. By optimizing prompts and tasks before model adjustments, Hang showcased effective strategies to enhance decision-making and efficiency, emphasizing a balanced grading system. The session revealed a future where smarter agents reduce latency and improve outcomes.
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Growing Yourself as a Software Engineer, Using AI to Develop Software
Sharing your work as a software engineer inspires others, invites feedback, and fosters personal growth, Suhail Patel said at QCon London. Normalizing and owning incidents builds trust, and it supports understanding the complexities. AI enables automation but needs proper guidance, context, and security guardrails.
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Creating Impactful Software Teams That Continuously Improve
Culture shapes how we feel, work, and succeed, says Natan Žabkar Nordberg. People thrive in different environments—some need autonomy, others structure. Trust must be given first, not earned. Leaders should guide, not control, fostering autonomy and safety.
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QCon London 2026 Announces Tracks: AI Engineering, Building Teams, Tech of Finance, and More
The QCon London 2026 tracks are live: 15 practitioner-curated deep dives on AI adoption, resilient architectures, distributed systems, performance, modern languages, data, security, and Staff+ leadership, rooted in real production lessons.
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Inside the Architectures Powering Modern AI Systems: QCon San Francisco 2025
Senior engineers face fast-moving AI adoption without clear patterns. QCon SF 2025 brings real-world lessons from teams at Netflix, Meta, Intuit, Anthropic & more, showing how to build reliable AI systems at scale. Early bird ends Nov 11.
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10 AI-Related Standout Sessions at QCon San Francisco 2025
Join us at QCon San Francisco 2025 (Nov 17–21) for a three-day deep dive into the future of software development, exploring AI’s transformative impact. As a program committee member, I’m excited to showcase tracks that tackle real-world challenges, featuring industry leaders and sessions on AI, LLMs, and engineering mindsets. Don’t miss out!