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Green Software Development - What Can You Do Now, and Where is the Industry Heading?
Making code more efficient often ends up saving carbon. Storing less information and compressing it can also lower your carbon footprint. There are open-source projects and standards and guides available that can be used to increase sustainability in software development. Measurement standardization is needed to compare the environmental impact of cloud suppliers.
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Improving Developer Experience in Non-Technical Organisations with BMK
BMK has recently written about the challenges and DevEx compromises faced by engineers within traditionally non-technical enterprises. McKinsey Digital also recently published a report which asserts that every company is a software company. We report on BMK and McKinsey's recommendations for non-technical firms to improve their delivery by adopting safer software cultures.
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Programming Foundations for Test Automation
Proper programming foundations can improve your test automation, making it easier to maintain testing code, and reduce stress. A foundation of the theory and basic principles of coding and programming can help to bring test automation to the next level. Object-oriented programming principles can help to overcome code smells.
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How the Hybrid and Remote Working Revolution Impacts Maintaining Mental Health
Whether working remotely or in a hybrid environment, the way in which we work with one another is changing, and can impact mental health and well-being. Personality characteristics can influence how we respond to remote or hybrid working environments. Organizations can foster psychological safety by focusing on culture, transparency, clarity, learning from failure, and supportive leadership.
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Developing Software to Manage Distributed Energy Systems at Scale
Functional programming techniques can make software more composable, reliable, and testable. For systems at scale, trade-offs in edge vs. cloud computing can impact speed and security.
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How to Lead and Manage in This Brave New Remote and Hybrid World
Hybrid working is a mindset of trusting people and providing opportunities to get the best from everyone regardless of place and time. Managers have the opportunity to make people feel empowered, motivated, and productive. Alternatively, they can squash creativity, fun and psychological safety.
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Sustainability for Development and Operations with DevSusOps
For a sustainability transformation, a business has to figure out how to measure its carbon footprint, come up with a plan to change the way it powers everything, and change the products they’re making, and even the markets that they operate in. Adrian Cockcroft spoke about sustainability in development and operations at QCon San Francisco 2022.
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How to Analyze Behavior and Influence Behavior Change with the ABC Model
Having an agile mindset is not enough; we need to change behavior for adopting agile. With the Antecedent Behavior Consequence (ABC) Model, you can analyze the behavior, figure out what triggers it, and think about strategies to drive behavioral change.
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Test Automation Requires a Strategy and Clean Code
Having a good strategy for test automation can make it easier to implement test automation and reduce test maintenance costs. The test automation pyramid and automation test wheel can be of help when formulating a test automation strategy and plan. Test automation code should be clean code, and treated similarly to production code.
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How to Assess Software Quality
The quality practices assessment model (QPAM) can be used to classify a team’s exhibited behavior into four dimensions: Beginning, Unifying, Practicing, and Innovating. It explores social and technical quality aspects like feedback loops, culture, code quality and technical debt, and deployment pipeline.
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Avoid Being an "Ivory Tower" Architect: the Relationship between Architects and Their Organisation
In a recently published episode of Armchair Architects, the speakers discussed the relationship between software architects and the rest of the organisation. They detail how a successful architect can impact others by switching between going into the trenches and zooming into a tree and then being able to zoom out and estimate if that tree still fits into the forest.
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Creating Environments High in Psychological Safety with a Combined Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approach
Leadership is critical for making psychological safety happen, but they need to lead by example and show that it’s safe for people to take interpersonal risks. Complementing leadership with team workshops in communication skills can enable people to speak up and feel safe to fail.
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Creating Great Psychologically Safe Teams with Sandy Mamoli
Sandy Mamoli, author and coach at Nomad8, recently appeared on the No Nonsense Agile Podcast to discuss her experience in creating safe, high-performing and self-selected teams. Keith Ferrazzi, author of Competing in the New World of Work, also recently wrote about his experience with using empowering social contracts to cultivate great teams. Both emphasized safety and candour.
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Improving Retrospective Effectiveness with End-of-Year and Focus Retrospectives
Doing end-of-year retrospectives can help to improve the effectiveness of agile retrospectives, by focusing on the actions done and the formats used. To increase the impact of retrospectives we can alternate between “global galactic” and focus retrospectives.
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Sustainability for Software Companies: Reducing Impact by Deciding What Not to Do
Small and medium-sized companies can contribute to sustainability with emissions reduction, mental health offerings and inclusion. To support sustainability, software engineers can think about “what not to do” to reduce complexity and make solutions smaller, resulting in a smaller carbon footprint.