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Facilitating the Spread of Knowledge and Innovation in Professional Software Development

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  • How to Improve Software Team Performance with Experimentation

    According to Terhi Aho, experimentation is a way of thinking that guides action. By experimenting we can develop ways of working without a major change process. It can help software teams to solve problems in small steps, relieve their workload, and foster self-management.

  • Fostering High-performing Work Environments for Software Development

    According to Eb Ikonne, leaders should provide a motivating challenge or mission so that the software engineering team understands what success looks like. They can provide an enabling structure for effective teamwork, address things that negatively impact team success, and reduce or remove friction. Coaching can help people discover how to work effectively together.

  • LLMs and Agents as Team Enablers

    Eric Naiburg and Birgitta Böckeler published articles on the benefits and challenges of using AI as a multiplier in dev teams. We report on their insights for scenarios such as simplifying the germane cognitive load of a domain, automating code migrations, and coaching scrum masters on team facilitation. We also cover Böckeler's experiments with using LLMs to onboard onto a complex project.

  • How Tech-Enabled Networks of Software Teams Work

    To maintain agility at scale, software teams can use technological and organizational solutions to reduce dependencies and work autonomously. According to Fabrice Bernhard, collaboration technology can be leveraged to create a distributed network of teams. To empower their teams, leaders can support them with a systematic problem-solving culture aimed at delivering good products to customers.

  • Increasing Productivity by Becoming a Dual-Purpose Stream Aligned and Platform Software Team

    To manage their increased workload effectively and maintain quality and efficiency, a software team decided to become dual-purpose: stream-aligned and platform. They rewrote their main application to be API-first and implemented micro releases with their customer-facing products, to provide value to their end users quickly and maintain a steady flow of accomplishments for the team.

  • How Team Health Checks Help Software Teams to Deliver

    In healthy software teams, people feel psychologically safe to solve problems and contribute, Brittany Woods said in her talk at QCon London. She presented how they do team health checks and the benefits that it has brought them.

  • Transforming Software Product Teams into Tech Investors

    The key responsibility of an organisation lies in balancing user value with profitability. In a product organisation, software product teams invest their own time. According to Fabrice des Mazery, software developers are much more than stakeholders; they are the main investors as they are part of the product teams.

  • Transitioning from a Software Engineering Role into a Management Role

    Software engineers who want to become good at leading engineers can use everyday opportunities to practice management. Peter Gillard-Moss gave a talk at QCon London where he shared his experience with becoming a manager, and provided tips and ideas for engineers aiming to become a manager.

  • Fostering Healthy Tech Teams in a DevOps World

    Building healthy DevOps tech teams that are responsible for a broad area can be challenging. To measure the success of your team, several frameworks provide metrics indicating team health. Psychological safety matters for healthy teams to ensure each software engineer brings their own lived experiences to build better products and that they feel safe to do so.

  • Application Security Optimised for Engineering Productivity

    Laura Bell Main presented a webinar on 2024 trends in application security. She called out a shift from siloed DevSecOps initiatives to building an understanding of dev friction, and presenting solutions which optimise engineering productivity. Nikki Robinson also recently spoke about the importance of taking a developer experience targeted approach to security platform engineering.

  • Adopting Agile by Increasing Psychological Safety in a Software Team

    To test the agile way of thinking, a software team worked on their psychological safety with kick-off exercises, sharing coffee breaks, celebrating wins, a stand-up question, and 1-on-1 talks. This helped them to increase psychological safety in their software team.

  • QCon London: The Art, Science and Psychology of Decision-Making

    At QCon London 2024, Hannes Ricklefs, head of architecture at the BBC, gave a well-received talk on decision making. Ricklefs summarised the key reasons behind applying art, science and psychology to the discipline of decision-making, focusing on appropriate methodologies to use and the effects of biases on our ability to make good decisions in both a personal and business context.

  • Enabling Software Platform Adoption with Self-Service and User Engagement

    In order to scale a platform, it has to become a self-service product with software engineers and managers engaged, taking advantage of new technologies. A stakeholder engagement program was established with senior engineers and managers across the company, explaining how the new tools can increase developers' productivity and team velocity.

  • The Impact of Testing in Software Teams

    Communicating quality gaps, holding space for good testing, and writing automation are some of the ways that testers contribute to software teams. According to Maaret Pyhäjärvi, we need to think about testing, not testers. Collaboration and having conversations between team members can result in valuable impact that changes the product and the experiences of our users.

  • Fostering an Experimentation Culture in Software Development

    An experimental culture is a way of thinking; it is about trying new things and learning together, solving complex software problems, and creating value together. According to Terhi Aho, an experimental culture in software organizations requires strong management support and psychological safety.

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