InfoQ Homepage Culture Content on InfoQ
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How to Shape the Engineering Culture in Software Companies
You can find your way through an organization by figuring out what artifacts people leave behind, David Grizzanti mentioned at InfoQ Dev Summit Boston. He compared culture to anthropology, suggested studying behaviors, power dynamics, and decisions first, and then patiently model and reward new norms, build allies, and use influence and leading by example, to shift engineering culture over time.
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Decentralizing Architectural Decisions with the Architecture Advice Process
Our system architectures have changed as technology and development practices have evolved, but the way we practice architecture hasn’t kept up. According to Andrew Harmel-Law, architecture needs to be decentralized, similar to how we have decentralized our systems. The alternative to having an architect take and communicate decisions is to “let anyone make the decisions” using the advice process.
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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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How a Small Enablement Team Supported Adopting a Single Environment for Distributed Testing
Po Linn Chia presented how they re-used a single development environment to deploy multiple service versions for testing their distributed system in her presentation "No QA Environment? No Problem" at Dev Summit Boston. A small enablement team, cultural buy-in, and gradual learning helped teams collaborate, reduce cognitive load, and scale testing practices.
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What Testers Can Do to Ensure Software Security
A secure software development life cycle means baking security into plan, design, build, test, and maintenance, rather than sprinkling it on at the end, Sara Martinez said in her talk Ensuring Software Security. Testers aren’t bug finders but early defenders, building security and quality in from the first sprint. Culture first, automation second, continuous testing and monitoring all the way.
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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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The Decisions You Don't Know You're Making: QCon Keynote Explores Hidden Choices in Engineering
Engineering teams make their most consequential decisions not in architecture reviews or sprint planning, but through invisible choices embedded in metrics, defaults, and everyday behaviors. In their QCon San Francisco 2025 keynote, Shawna Martell and Dan Fike challenged the industry's focus on documented decision-making while the decisions that truly shape systems and culture go unrecognized.
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How Software Engineers Can Grow into Staff Plus Roles
Software engineers can boost their impact by helping other teams, focusing on business-driven work, and building strong relationships, David Grizzanti mentioned at InfoQ Dev Summit Boston. Growth can come from mentoring, setting cultural norms, thinking strategically, and designing a career path based on what motivates you.
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DevSummit Boston: Humans in the Loop: Engineering Leadership in a Chaotic Industry
At the InfoQ Dev Summit, Google’s Engineering Director Michelle Brush addressed software leaders, emphasizing the evolving landscape of software engineering amidst rising automation. She championed a shift toward higher-level cognitive skills, systems thinking, and foundational knowledge, urging engineers to embrace complexity for enhanced resilience and decision-making in their work.
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How to Develop Your Skills to Become a Principal Engineer
Becoming a principal engineer requires more than technical skill, it’s about influence, communication, and strategy. Success means enabling teams by shaping culture, Sophie Weston said. She suggested developing deep skills in multiple domains, with collaborative skills. Skills from life outside work, like sports, volunteering, or gaming, can add valuable perspective and build leadership potential.
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Cultivating a Culture of Resilience in Software Organizations
Resilience helps individuals and organizations respond to challenges. Personal resilience is built through adapting, technical resilience by mastering a variety of tools, and organizational resilience through flexibility and strong networks. In fast-changing software industries, recognizing tech shifts and fostering learning, flexibility, and collaboration, enhances resilience.
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How to Foster a Continuous Improvement and Learning Mindset in Software Development
According to Ramya Sriram, individuals and teams must embrace a continuous improvement and continuous learning mindset to stay competitive and relevant. She spoke about continuous improvement and learning, where she explored how her company fosters a culture of innovation through programs that support experimentation, providing employees with the time and space to explore new approaches and adapt.
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2024 Accelerate State of DevOps Report Shows Pros and Cons of AI
The DORA research group has published its 2024 report, its tenth year of publication. Based on a global survey of over 39,000 professionals and supplemented by some in-depth interviews, the annual Accelerate State of DevOps report gives a broad and detailed look at the factors influencing team productivity, job satisfaction, and organisational success.
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Making Agile Software Development Work for Multicultural Teams
While equality provides team members with the same opportunities and allowances, equity is about creating an environment where individual and unique needs can be met. According to ElMohanned Mohamed, communication in multicultural teams should be precise and clear with low dependence on the context.
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How Technology Can Drive Culture Change in Software Organisations
Technological improvements like containers, VMs, infrastructure-as-code, software-defined-networking, collaborative version control, and CI/CD can make it possible to fix cultural issues around organisational dynamics and bad product delivery. According to Nigel Kersten, software leaders should leverage tech to create positive changes in organisational dynamics and relationships between teams.