Building Teams

I have recently been thinking about the importance of humility for software developers. I feel that the more I learn about building software the humbler I become, knowing I do not have all the answers. This attitude helped me a lot in my life as a software developer… I was OOP expert after 3 years of study or so I thought… I remember thinking that I knew Java and Object Oriented Programming pretty well when I was finishing my Bachelor degree. Why would I not think that? I had great marks, aced all the classes, read a couple of books and in general thought like I had a good handle on this Java and OOP thinking. ...

Every now and then you read a book that completely changes how you understand something. “The Phoenix Project” (Amazon) changed how I understand DevOps and driving positive transformations in companies. Keep reading to see why I think everyone working in the software industry should read this book. The DevOps revolution I believe that as of 2018 the whole software industry is going through a DevOps revolution, similar to the Agile revolution that already took place. ...

On the 14th of March 2018, I had a pleasure of speaking at the While42 – French Tech Engineers Network event. I want to thank my friend Cesar Tron-Lozai and the group for the invitation. I am a Lead Developer at Scott Logic – a job that I am passionate about and proud of. During this event, I had a chance to share my passion for that role and share some advice based on my experiences. ...

When talking about microservices (or agile development), the idea of self-managed, independent teams often comes up. What is not emphasized enough is how vital this idea is to the successful adoption of such highly decoupled architecture. In this article, I will share my experiences about working with independent teams and being part of them. Most successful projects that I was either part of, or had a pleasure of working with had one thing in common. They were delivered by either one or a multiple of high-performing, self-managed, independent teams. You may say: every sizable project nowadays is delivered by a team! I disagree, most medium and large projects are delivered by groups of people, but in many cases, I would not call them teams. In my opinion, it takes more than grouping a few people together and slapping a name on them to make a team… ...

For these teams already using pull requests (or merge requests as they are sometimes known), this advice seems trivial. For the teams that do not use them- it may not be so simple. Let me explain why you need and how to get started. What is a Pull Request Pull requests is effectively a request to get your code merged with the rest of the source code. If you are using git via Github, Bitbucket, Gitlab- you have an automatic support for them. If you are using something else, maybe even different version control system than git- you may need to do some research for an equivalent process. ...

I love working as a part of a great software development team. Thanks to my job, I also have a chance to lead such teams. In this series of blog posts titled Helping your teamI would like to explore different ideas and techniques to make sure that the team you are part of is performing at its best! Before going into specific topic, it is important to realize that you do not have to be a team lead or a senior member of the team to incite change! Introducing good ideas and championing best practices can be done by anyone. As a lead, this is your responsibility. ...