Software systems rule our world. My regular newsletter explores the human factors that make software engineering so unique, so difficult, so important and all consuming.
Software Delivery Club Newsletter 2023-01-13
Week 2 is the first real week of the year. It certainly felt like it to me.
I've been researching the idea of "engineering culture". The need for us to somehow achieve a state of excellence that means we can express ourselves joyfully through our work. This seems to be a satisfactory definition to me.
Expressing ourselves joyfully through work should be the point, right? to make sure that we can express ourselves through our solutions in as pleasing a way as possible.
To that end a few articles I wrote this week that link some interesting talks. Starting with a discussion about reducing complexity in software delivery between James Lewis (Thoughtworks) and Kelvin Henney. Yesterday I joined a discussion with Dave Farley (Continuous Delivery) and Nicole Fosgren (Accelerate) in the Google DORA community call to discuss measurement of DevOps culture (whether you can and whether you want to). I also consumed and reviewed an amazing talk by Dave Snowden covering complexity, the language of change and how leaders should (or shouldn't) act to make change happen.
In 2023, decide how you want your engineering organisation to be and then lead from the front. Lead with your behaviour and support it through your actions and the way that you communicate with your peers, your staff, your bosses. If we all become the change we want to be, we can make it happen.
Have a great weekend!
Richard
The Language of Change
Published on January 12, 2023
 |
Following on from the discussion about Creating a Devops Culture, here’s a wonderful talk by Dave Snowden of Cynefin in which he covers many incredible topics: This talk is well worth your time. It’s very amusing, serious and sober in equal parts. Watch it and think about how you can apply it to your organisation …
Creating a DevOps Culture?
Published on January 12, 2023
 |
A question recently arose in the excellent DORA community around changing and measuring your software development and DevOps culture. This brought to mind many experiences around attempts by those in charge to make things better by applying initiatives which, while well-intentioned, often have the opposite effect on the more technical population of a software organisation. …
Reducing Complexity in Software Configuration
Published on January 11, 2023
 |
Recording at GOTO 2022 Amsterdam, this is an excellent discussion between James Lewis of Thoughtworks and Kelvin Henney about the impact of complex systems on our software architecture and delivery. One thing this underlines for me is the importance of systems thinking and Conway’s Law in getting to the heart of the matter of software …
The Human Software
Software systems rule our world. My regular newsletter explores the human factors that make software engineering so unique, so difficult, so important and all consuming.
Three years ago, I started a podcast without much idea of its future. Before that, I'd started writing, wandering through automation, programming techniques, infrastructure, DevOps, and thoughts about management, leadership, and how companies are organised. Where was I going? While I'd read a few books, it was clear that I was searching for something. Was I just talking for the sake of it? It sometimes certainly seemed that way. And then, about eighteen months ago, I started writing a novel....
Happy Sunday and Happy International Women's Day for yesterday. All socially or culturally significant milestones are accompanied by an excruciating number of tone-deaf, tokenistic LinkedIn engagement attempts and yesterday was certainly no exception. LinkedIn is a strange place indeed but it's my primary social engagement platform. Because I take what I think is fair to say an organisationally cynical but deeply humanistic view of life in tech, I find it fascinating to see the (lack of)...
We can all finally breathe a sigh of relief that January is behind us and February moves on apace. Our northern hemisphere days get longer, and before you know it, let's hope we'll be stretching out in the sunshine and enjoying the fruits of our winter's work. I'm making the most of the dark months by keeping my head down and writing. Amsterdam with Moon and Venus, January 2025 Human Software is now in development edit. What does that mean? As a self-published author, I'm working with an...