Tech Lead Journal

“Platforms harmonize and standardize without restricting. By standardizing, they actually enable and allow people to do more things."

Gregor Hohpe is back again for the second episode with his latest book “Platform Strategy”. In this episode, Gregor discussed in-depth about building platforms with a proper platform strategy. He began by describing what a platform is from a few different perspectives, the benefits it brings, and what strategy we should think about when building a platform. Gregor also emphasized the opposite difference between platforms and IT services, with the key difference of how a platform thrives with more scale. We then had a few fun discussions discussing building a platform on top of a cloud platform, the key skillset we need to build a good platform, and how we should build a proper platform abstraction. Towards the end, Gregor also covered the recent trend of building developer platforms and business capability platforms. Also, do not miss Gregor’s fun analogy of fruit basket vs fruit salad when explaining a good platform strategy.  

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Gregor Hohpe’s Bio
Gregor Hohpe advises CTOs and senior IT executives on IT strategy, cloud architecture, and organizational transformation. He served as advisor to the Singapore government, chief architect at Allianz SE, and technical director at Google Cloud’s CTO Office. He is widely known as co-author of the seminal book “Enterprise Integration Patterns” and as frequent speaker at conferences around the world. His accessible, but technically accurate essays were republished in “97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know” and “Best Software Writing”. He is an active member of the IEEE Software editorial advisory board.

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“The five thieves of time are: too much work in progress, conflicting priorities, unplanned work, unknown dependencies, and neglected work."

Dominica DeGrandis is the author of “Making Work Visible”. In this episode, we discussed how we can optimize our workflow and reclaim control of our work and time. Dominica unveiled the concept of the five thieves of time that rob us of our productivity, that includes too much work-in-progress (WIP), conflicting priorities, unplanned work, unknown dependencies, and neglected work. She also shared actionable practices and tips on dealing with each of these thieves. Towards the end, Dominica emphasized the importance of bringing visibility to and measuring the flow of what leadership and customers care about - the delivery of customer value—big picture items that span end-to-end value streams.  

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Dominica DeGrandis’s Bio
A huge fan of using visual cues to inspire change, Dominica DeGrandis, author of Making Work Visible - Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Work & Flow, and Principal Flow Advisor at Planview, helps organizations make work visible to improve workflow. Obsessed with useful metrics & influencing change, Dominica advises customers on flow metrics, value stream management and how to effect change.

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Show notes & transcript: techleadjournal.dev/episodes/156

“Product driven means you understand what your customers’ problems are, but you don’t let yourself get held back by what your customers are saying. You’re not building your product for a customer that you’re already working with. You’re building a product for a customer that you haven’t yet met."

Ben Foster is the co-founder of Prodify and the co-author of “Build What Matters”. In this episode, we discussed how product driven and vision-led product management helps organizations deliver key customer outcomes and achieve business goals. Ben first began by describing the product management paradox and some of the common product management dysfunctions. Ben then dived deep into the three important aspects of a vision-led product management, which are key customer outcomes, customer journey vision, and product strategy.  

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Ben Foster’s Bio
Ben Foster has been working in product management in the tech scene for 25 years, and is co-founder and partner at Prodify, a product consulting and coaching firm he started 9 years ago. He cut his teeth at eBay during its heyday and was most recently the chief product officer at the wearable company Whoop. He has experience from startups to multi-billion dollar companies and everything in between. He’s spoken at several major tech events, has produced the definitive course on product leadership, and co-authored the Amazon bestseller Build What Matters. He lives in Arlington, VA with his wife and son.

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Show notes & transcript: techleadjournal.dev/episodes/155

“Lean is not about how we organize work, but how we think about it. It’s not a production system; it’s an education system."

Catherine Chabiron is a Lean expert and the co-author of “Learning to Scale at Theodo Group”. In this episode, Catherine and Fabrice–the co-founder and CTO of Theodo–shared their lessons learned from implementing Lean at a fast-growing scale-up company. Catherine and Fabrice first started by sharing the “big company disease” challenge and how Theodo started its Lean journey. We then discussed Lean essentials that include some of its principles, such as an obsession with customer value and lead time. We also talked about Lean practices adopted from the Toyota Production System, that include Gemba, Jidoka, Andon, and Kaizen. Along the way, Catherine and Fabrice also emphasized the importance of always building quality right the first time.  

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Catherine Chabiron’s Bio
Catherine Chabiron is an established expert in Lean management with a professional journey spanning over 40 years. Catherine is not only a Lean executive coach but also a renowned author. Her notable contribution, “Learning to Scale at Theodo Group: Growing a Fast and Resilient Company,” exemplifies her unique know-how and offers practical advice to leaders seeking growth without compromising on core values and employee engagement.

Fabrice Bernhard’s Bio
Fabrice co-founded Theodo in Paris in 2009, which has grown on average 50% a year for the last 8 years and generated 90M€ turnover in 2022. He is now based in London to help on the international expansion of Theodo.

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Show notes & transcript: techleadjournal.dev/episodes/154

“Architecture touches on the software, the business, and the team organization. Modernization updates something that has some outdated thinking, e.g. technologies, ideas, business models."

Nick Tune is a principal consultant and the author of “Architecture Modernization”. In this episode, we discussed how organizations can successfully go through an architecture modernization journey. Nick began by defining architecture modernization and discussing the socio-technical aspects involved. He then introduced the concept of an independent value stream and its four key characteristics: domain alignment, business outcome driven, empowered teams, and software alignment. Nick also shared tips on how to get buy in for a modernization journey, why it is beneficial to do it collaboratively, and explained in-depth the Wardley Mapping technique. Towards the end, Nick described the idea of Architecture Modernization Enabling Team and gave advice on creating an architecture modernization roadmap.  

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Nick Tune’s Bio
Nick works with product and technology leaders to map strategy, model domains, design architecture and build continuous delivery teams while helping to deliver successful business outcomes. He is the author of Architecture Modernization (Manning), and Principles and Practices of Domain-Driven Design (Wrox).

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Show notes & transcript: techleadjournal.dev/episodes/153

“We need to change our ways of working to give importance to the work quality that we deliver, ensure we keep raising our bar, and pass it on to the next generation of developers."

Srihari Sridharan is a software architect and the author of “Craft Your Code”. In this episode, we discussed software craftsmanship and how to become better software engineers. Srihari first began by sharing the relationship between software craftsmanship and high-quality code. He described some practices for improving code quality, such as establishing coding standards, improving code readability, doing effective code review, and managing technical debt. He also explained the importance of software engineers understanding different architectural styles and domain knowledge. Srihari also shared strategies for creating high-performing teams by establishing psychological safety and trust.  

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Srihari Sridharan’s Bio
Srihari Sridharan is a Software Architect and Engineer with a hands-on approach. He is a speaker, conducting courses and delivering talks on software craftsmanship and writing clean code. Srihari’s areas of expertise encompass refactoring, design patterns, enterprise application architectural patterns, integration patterns, and cloud-native design patterns.

Srihari is also a reviewer and a senior technical proof-reader for Manning Publications Co, and he serves as a member of the ‘Board of Studies - Department of Information Technology’ at B.S Abdur Rahman Crescent Institute of Science & Technology. Residing in Chennai with his wife Swathy and son Advaith, Srihari enjoys spending quality time with his family. In his leisure time, he loves playing cricket, writing blogs, reading books, and cooking.

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Show notes & transcript: techleadjournal.dev/episodes/152

“Leading change is high stakes, but we don’t spend a great deal of time focusing on conversation and creating space to engage in real conversation."

Marsha Acker is the author of “Build Your Model for Leading Change” and the host of “Defining Moments of Leadership” podcast. In this episode, we discussed building our own model for leadership and leading change. Marsha first started by sharing the concept of a model and some of the common challenges for organizations in making changes. Then we discussed David Kantor’s theories on structural dynamics and functional awareness for understanding behavioral model, which include the concepts of leadership range and communicative competence. Marsha outlined what makes communication so challenging and what we can do to achieve a more effective communication. Towards the end, she shared the three different models that leaders need to think about, i.e. model for leadership, model for living, and model for leading change.  

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Marsha Acker’s Bio
Marsha Acker is the founder and CEO of TeamCatapult, an executive & leadership team coach, author, speaker, facilitator, and the host of Defining Moments of Leadership Podcast. Marsha’s unparalleled at helping leaders identify and break through stuck patterns of communication that get in their way of high performance. She is known internationally as a facilitator of meaningful conversations, a host of dialogue and a passionate agilest. She is the author of The Art and Science of Facilitation: How to Lead Effective Collaboration with Agile Teams and Build Your Model for Leading Change: A guided workbook to catalyze clarity and confidence in leading yourself and others.

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Show notes & transcript: techleadjournal.dev/episodes/151

“A CTO gives the business the technology it needs to drive success by delivering a roadmap to grow and scale at a level and speed where technology never holds up their growth."

Alan Williamson is the author of “Think Like a CTO”. In this episode, we discussed in-depth how to become a great CTO. Alan first described what a CTO role is, how the role differs at different company stages, and the attributes of a good CTO. Alan then explained the importance of a CTO coming up with a vision and how we can improve ourselves in visionary thinking. He then touched on how a CTO should work together and understand the expectations of the CEO. Alan also gave his tips on how to build engineering teams that can produce high-quality results. Towards the end, Alan gave his personal advice on how a CTO can deal with imposter syndrome and the importance of a CTO doing a personal review.  

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Alan Williamson’s Bio
Alan was the first U.K. Java Champion and has contributed much to open source, including OpenBD, a Java based CFML runtime engine, that once powered MySpace.com, as well as many other blue-chip CFML sites.

Alan has published a number of books in the Java space covering Enterprise Java, Servlets, JavaMail and database access. He also served in the role of Editor-in-Chief for Java Developers Journal. His recent book, ‘ Think like a CTO ’ aimed at the new and upcoming CTO. Filled with real-world actionable items, including case studies and interviews.

Alan is currently a partner with New Harbor Capital, heading up their Portfolio Operations Group, providing interim and executive CTO services to New Harbor’s portfolios, advising on all levels on how to maximize technology for the growth of the business.

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Show notes & transcript: techleadjournal.dev/episodes/150

“A lot of the traditional wisdom said the best teams are the ones that stay stable or the same; you need long-lived stable teams. The fact is, team change is inevitable. So let’s get better at it."

Heidi Helfand is the author of “Dynamic Reteaming”. In this episode, we discussed dynamic reteaming concept, or team changes in simple words. Heidi explained how her experience working in various startups and scaleups led to her coming up with the dynamic reteaming idea. She also explained how dynamic reteaming differs from the common advice of having long-lived teams. We then discussed the five patterns of dynamic reteaming as outlined by Heidi in her book. Our discussion also covered various other topics, such as onboarding, offboarding, maintaining company culture, ideal team size, and leadership role in dynamic teams.  

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Heidi Helfand’s Bio
Heidi Helfand is author of the book Dynamic Reteaming and SVP of Strategy & Innovation at Artium. She’s passionate about helping companies build great products and high-performing teams, and she’s particularly interested in the people side of engineering. With over 20 years of experience in the tech industry, including roles at AppFolio, Procore and Expertcity/GoToMeeting, Heidi has gained a deep understanding of how to help organizations successfully navigate change and scale their teams. She lives in Southern California, where she enjoys spending time with her family and exploring the outdoors.

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Show notes & transcript: techleadjournal.dev/episodes/149

“BDD is about helping you collaborate with the different parties involved in software delivery to understand what’s actually required of your system, why you need to deliver it, and then find the best possible way to automate your requirements."

John Smart and Jan Molak are the co-authors of “BDD in Action: Second Edition”. In this episode, we discussed in-depth behavior-driven development (BDD) and its essentials. Jan and John first began by introducing what BDD is, the benefits of using BDD, and the Gherkin language with its given-when-then syntax. They gave advice on how to introduce and apply BDD, especially for legacy software, and how to manage the BDD specifications effectively. Jan and John then shared several BDD techniques, such as feature mapping, example mapping, impact mapping; and went deep into the screenplay pattern and the Serenity projects they both create to implement screenplay pattern. Towards the end, Jan and John shared their insights on which testing layers we should apply BDD and some anti-patterns we should avoid.  

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Jan Molak’s Bio
Jan Molak is a consulting software engineer and trainer who specialises in enhancing team collaboration and optimising software development processes for global organisations. Jan is the author of the Serenity/JS acceptance testing framework, a contributor to the Screenplay Pattern, and a co-author of a renowned book “BDD in Action, Second Edition”.

John Ferguson Smart’s Bio
John Ferguson Smart is a specialist in BDD, automated testing, and software lifecycle development optimization. He is the founder of the Serenity Dojo, an online training platform for testers who want to become world-class Agile Test Automation Engineers, and the creator of the Serenity BDD test automation framework.

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Show notes & transcript: techleadjournal.dev/episodes/148