InfoQ Homepage Agile Conferences Content on InfoQ
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Things We Tend to Overlook Going from Architecture to Release
People tend to overlook things when developing a new software product or service because they don’t have to think about them on a daily basis. Companies should create an environment where everyone can express their opinion and concerns and encourage bringing up questions to explore different angles and increase understanding.
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How Good Companies Can Leverage Agile to Fight Civilizational Debt
Growth, profit, and shareholder value are the cornerstones of today’s economic system, which according to Piotr Trojanowski have proven outdated, reductionistic and not sustainable. He proposes taking the cost of growth into account by using the concept of civilizational debt in agile transformations, and applying agile to realizing humankind's mission through our work.
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Ethical Machine Learning with Explainable AI and Impact Analysis
As more decisions are made or influenced by machines, there’s a growing need for a code of ethics for artificial intelligence. The main question is, “I can build it, but should I?” Explainable AI can provide checks and balances for fairness and explainability, and engineers can analyze the systems' impact on people's lives and mental health.
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Sustainable Product Development Using Agile and Value Stream Mapping
Sustainable product development can be done by combining agile with concepts from the circular economy in our daily work. Value stream mapping can be extended to incorporate circular economy principles to optimize the flow of materials, information, and energy usage.
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Benefits of Doing Remote Mob Programming in a High Stakes Environment
A new team that needed to work remotely in a high-stakes environment decided to try out mob programming. It helped them to quickly go through forming-storming-norming-performing. With mobbing, the team learned new technologies, found solutions for dealing with others in stressful situations, and discovered how to work effectively together remotely.
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The Challenges of Producing Quality Code When Using AI-Based Generalistic Models
Using AI with generalistic models to do very specific things like generating code can cause problems. Producing code with AI is like using code from someone else who you don’t know which may not match your standards and quality. Creating specialised or dedicated models can be a way out.
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A Collaborative Approach to Web Applications Accessibility
Developers and designers can work together to share knowledge and experience when working on creating accessible applications. Accessibility issues can be treated as any other bug, something that needs to be solved first. Accessibility should be embraced as something very serious and important to society, and approached as a business opportunity.
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How to Create a UI That's Both Robust and User Friendly
The key challenge in building UIs is balancing ease of use and maintainability, with scale and complexity. It requires thoughtful component design and an understanding of common usage paths to create a UI that's both robust and user-friendly. Automation can be a game-changer when it comes to improving efficiency and consistency in your codebase.
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Handling Conflicts by Dealing with Emotions
Emotions are at the heart of conflicts, influencing their initiation, escalation and dynamics. Effectively managing your own emotions and understanding those of others can greatly impact the outcome of a conflict. Two steps to be taken are to label emotions, and take control and determine which emotion you want to focus on.
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Navigating Open Source Integration through a DevOps Lens
Taking a DevOps perspective on open source can help to incorporate an OSS project into your environment. DevOps engineers are comfortable with using third-party integrations, and they align with the open source mindset of breaking down barriers between different groups and promoting teamwork.
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How Big Tech Lost its Way - Accountability and Leadership
Accountability in big tech companies seems to be lacking; it’s rare for people in senior positions to be held accountable. Engineers should be conscious of the culture they want to work in and watch out for their well-being, whereas companies should invest in their leaders to support people’s best work. Andy Walker gave a talk about how big tech lost its way at QCon London 2023.
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Embracing Complexity and Emergence in Organisations
Focusing on the actual emerging organisation and the work people are doing can make a difference in embracing complexity and dealing with it a bit better. Psychological safety is critical for people giving feedback without fearing retribution or negative consequences. Fred Hebert spoke about embracing complexity at QCon New York 2023.
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A Ruthless Approach for Better Security by Identifying Key Risks and Ignoring Others
Risk management techniques can be used to decide which security and privacy aspects are important. You can simplify the risk impact calculations by identifying low, medium and high and critical losses, and by taking likelihoods from the industry to do likelihood calculations. This helps you to identify a few key risks, and ruthlessly ignore the rest.
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The Challenges of AI Product Development
Developing artificial intelligence (AI) products involves creating models and feeding data to train them, testing the models, and deploying them. Software engineers can support the adoption of AI and machine learning (ML) in companies by building an understanding of the technologies, encouraging experimentation, and ensuring compliance with regulations and ethical standards.
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Building a Lifelong Technical Career in Software Development
Technical experience matters because it adds to the value chain. In engineering companies, the technical knowledge accumulated by people over many years can provide the basis for the next generation of products and projects. Sven Reimers spoke about building a lifelong technical career in software development at QCon London 2023.