Tech Lead Journal

“Instead of being given a roadmap of features, an empowered team is given a problem to solve and they get to figure out the best way to solve that problem."

Marty Cagan is the founder of the Silicon Valley Product Group and the author of “Inspired” and “Empowered”. In this episode, we discussed how companies ought to build great products by learning from the best product companies. Marty explained the importance of building the right product and shared the two inconvenient truths about building products. Marty then elaborated on the traits a good product team has and how to create an empowered product team by ensuring ownership and alignment and by having clear product vision, strategy, and focus. Towards the end, Marty shared the importance of coaching and nurturing people, how to hire better, and how to structure product team topologies.

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Marty Cagan’s Bio

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DevTernity 2022 (devternity.com) is the top international software development conference with an emphasis on coding, architecture, and tech leadership skills. The lineup is truly stellar and features many legends of software development like Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin, Kent Beck, Scott Hanselman, Venkat Subramaniam, Kevlin Henney, and many others! The conference takes place online, and we have the 10% discount code for you: AWSM_TLJ.

Skills Matter is the global community and events platform for software professionals. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones.

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“As a servant leader, your number one job is to serve the people around you. You succeed together with your people, and that’s why serving them first would give you the best opportunity to succeed together."

Henry Suryawirawan is the host of your beloved podcast. In this episode, hosted by Jerome Poudevigne, we uncovered lessons from Henry’s career journey and from running the Tech Lead Journal podcast. Henry shared his career turning points that included multiple transitions between individual contributor (IC) and management, being part of retrenchment, working in a failed startup, and his decision to leave Google and join a scaleup. Henry then shared how he prepared and grew himself into his current leadership position by being a problem solver, exercising the servant leadership mindset, building culture intentionally, and a few tips on doing remote work effectively. In the second half of the conversation, Henry shared why and how he first started the Tech Lead Journal podcast, as well as sharing moments and lessons he learned from releasing 100 episodes in the last 2 years.

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Henry Suryawirawan’s Bio

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DevTernity 2022 (devternity.com) is the top international software development conference with an emphasis on coding, architecture, and tech leadership skills. The lineup is truly stellar and features many legends of software development like Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin, Kent Beck, Scott Hanselman, Venkat Subramaniam, Kevlin Henney, and many others! The conference takes place online, and we have the 10% discount code for you: AWSM_TLJ.

Skills Matter is the global community and events platform for software professionals. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones.

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🎙️ CELEBRATE the 100th EPISODE by submitting your story/message at techleadjournal.dev/celebrate-100 🎉

“Engineering discipline is the most effective, efficient way of doing high-quality work. If our software development practices do not allow us to build better software faster, we should really change them because they are not engineering."

Dave Farley is the co-author of the Jolt award-winning book “Continuous Delivery” and runs the popular “Continuous Delivery” YouTube channel on software engineering topics. In this episode, we discussed Dave’s latest book, “Modern Software Engineering”. Dave started by explaining his view on modern software engineering and why it emphasizes on practices for building better software faster. Dave described the foundations of the software engineering discipline and explained the core competencies we need to succeed by becoming experts at both learning and managing complexity. Dave also explained the importance of understanding technology fundamentals, improving software readability, and handling software complexity by managing concurrency and coupling. Towards the end, Dave shared some other tools in the modern software engineering toolkit that include Continuous Delivery.

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Dave Farley’s Bio

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DevTernity 2022 (devternity.com) is the top international software development conference with an emphasis on coding, architecture, and tech leadership skills. The lineup is truly stellar and features many legends of software development like Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin, Kent Beck, Scott Hanselman, Venkat Subramaniam, Kevlin Henney, and many others! The conference takes place online, and we have the 10% discount code for you: AWSM_TLJ.

Skills Matter is the global community and events platform for software professionals. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones.

Like this episode?

🎙️ CELEBRATE the 100th EPISODE by submitting your story/message at techleadjournal.dev/celebrate-100 🎉

“Acceptance test is any test that a system must pass in order to be accepted. If you can’t ship a system without passing a test, then it is an acceptance test."

Kenneth Pugh is an acclaimed author and thought leader in acceptance-test driven development (ATDD) and behavior-driven development (BDD). His works include the 2006 Jolt award winner “Prefactoring” followed by “Lean-Agile Acceptance Test-Driven Development”. In this episode, Ken explained in-depth the concept of acceptance tests and ATDD. He first described what an acceptance test is, why it is beneficial to deliver better software, and why we should invest our effort to automate it. Ken also touched on a few other important concepts, such as the testing triad, test pyramid, user acceptance test, and table-driven specifications. Towards the end, Ken shared some advice on how we can start implementing ATDD.

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Kenneth Pugh’s Bio

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DevTernity 2022 (devternity.com) is the top international software development conference with an emphasis on coding, architecture, and tech leadership skills. The lineup is truly stellar and features many legends of software development like Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin, Kent Beck, Scott Hanselman, Venkat Subramaniam, Kevlin Henney, and many others! The conference takes place online, and we have the 10% discount code for you: AWSM_TLJ.

Skills Matter is the global community and events platform for software professionals. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones.

Like this episode?

“Empiricism is at the heart of agility. The fundamental foundation of agility starts with some assertion about value. Every sprint or iteration is really an experiment about value."

Kurt Bittner is the author and editor of many books on agile product development, including co-authoring the recent “Professional Agile Leader” book. In this episode, we started our conversation discussing the common misconception of Agile in the modern day and Kurt emphasized that empiricism should be at the heart of agility, especially for solving complex problems. Kurt then explained the importance of aligning company’s direction and goals using outcomes instead of using activities or outputs. In the latter half of the episode, we discussed the concept of a self-managing team, what characteristics and attributes it has, and the important role of catalytic leadership in such teams. Kurt also explained how to measure the self-management spectrum of a team by measuring decision latency and shared some advice on how to reduce decision-making dependencies in organizations.

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Kurt Bittner’s Bio

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DevTernity 2022 (devternity.com) is the top international software development conference with an emphasis on coding, architecture, and tech leadership skills. The lineup is truly stellar and features many legends of software development like Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin, Kent Beck, Scott Hanselman, Venkat Subramaniam, Kevlin Henney, and many others! The conference takes place online, and we have the 10% discount code for you: AWSM_TLJ.

Skills Matter is the global community and events platform for software professionals. It is an easier way for technologists to grow their careers by connecting you and your peers with the best-in-class tech industry experts and communities. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones.

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“A highly functional team defines the right environment and has what they need to be the best professionals they can be. And that always includes agency and psychological safety."

Jim Benson is the co-author of “Personal Kanban” and is currently working on his upcoming book “The Collaboration Equation”. In this episode, we started by discussing Personal Kanban, how it differs from a to-do list, and its two main rules, i.e. visualizing our work and limiting our work-in-progress. Jim also shared practical tips on managing our personal backlog, doing prioritization, and limiting our work in progress. In the latter half of our conversation, we discussed Jim’s new book, “The Collaboration Equation”, starting with the discussion about the common collaboration challenges and why professionalism and psychological safety are prerequisites to building high-performing teams. Jim also explained the concept of collaborative leadership and gave practical tips on how we can measure effective collaboration.

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Jim Benson’s Bio

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DevTernity 2022 (devternity.com) is the top international software development conference with an emphasis on coding, architecture, and tech leadership skills. The lineup is truly stellar and features many legends of software development like Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin, Kent Beck, Scott Hanselman, Venkat Subramaniam, Kevlin Henney, and many others! The conference takes place online, and we have the 10% discount code for you: AWSM_TLJ.

Skills Matter is the global community and events platform for software professionals. It is an easier way for technologists to grow their careers by connecting you and your peers with the best-in-class tech industry experts and communities. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones.

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“Reliability is the most important thing. Your users define your reliability, so make sure you’re measuring the right thing. And 100% is out of the question, so pick the right target."

Alex Hidalgo is the Principal Reliability Advocate at Nobl9 and author of “Implementing Service Level Objectives”. In this episode, we discussed the practical guide on how to implement SRE and SLOs. Alex started by explaining the basic concept of service reliability and service truths. He then explained the concept of reliability stack, that includes the famous SRE concepts: SLI, SLO, and error budgets. Alex then shared his insights on how we can define a service reliability target, why a higher reliability target is expensive, and the risk of a service of being too reliable. Towards the end, Alex shared his tips on how we can build an SRE culture and how we can use the error budget as a communication tool within the organization.

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Alex Hidalgo’s Bio

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DevTernity 2022 (devternity.com) is the top international software development conference with an emphasis on coding, architecture, and tech leadership skills. The lineup is truly stellar and features many legends of software development like Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin, Kent Beck, Scott Hanselman, Venkat Subramaniam, Kevlin Henney, and many others! The conference takes place online, and we have the 10% discount code for you: AWSM_TLJ.

Skills Matter is the global community and events platform for software professionals. It is an easier way for technologists to grow their careers by connecting you and your peers with the best-in-class tech industry experts and communities. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones.

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“You are your greatest asset in your career and in your life. Invest in you personally in all areas of life in order to live your best life."

Jeff Perry is an engineering coach, the founder of More Than Engineering and the co-host of the Engineering Career Coach podcast. In this episode, Jeff shared the important role of a coach or mentor in our engineering career. We first discussed Jeff’s engineering career clarity checklist and why it is truly important to find the clarity in our career journey. Jeff then shared the role of an engineering career coach, how a coach can help us navigate our career, and the difference between a coach and a mentor. Throughout our discussion, we also touched on a few other topics, such as the Great Resignation, making intentional career transitions, transitioning to a leadership role, and the power of accountability.

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Jeff Perry’s Bio

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DevTernity 2022 (devternity.com) is the top international software development conference with an emphasis on coding, architecture, and tech leadership skills. The lineup is truly stellar and features many legends of software development like Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin, Kent Beck, Scott Hanselman, Venkat Subramaniam, Kevlin Henney, and many others! The conference takes place online, and we have the 10% discount code for you: AWSM_TLJ.

Skills Matter is the global community and events platform for software professionals. It is an easier way for technologists to grow their careers by connecting you and your peers with the best-in-class tech industry experts and communities. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones.

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“An engineering manager should make sure that the team has a good balance of delivering things that the business needs with enough capacity to do it sustainably over time."

Patrick Kua is a seasoned technology leader with a passion to accelerate the growth and success of tech organisations and technical leaders. In this episode, we discussed Pat’s latest course, Engineering Manager Essentials, which covers all the building blocks required to be an effective Engineering Manager (EM). We first discussed what an EM role is, how it differs from a tech lead role, and the common manager vs IC career track. Pat shared his view on why being an EM is not a promotion and what are some of the success criteria to be a good EM. Towards the end, Pat shared some anti-patterns that EM should avoid to become successful.

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Patrick Kua’s Bio

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DevTernity 2022 (devternity.com) is the top international software development conference with an emphasis on coding, architecture, and tech leadership skills. The lineup is truly stellar and features many legends of software development like Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin, Kent Beck, Scott Hanselman, Venkat Subramaniam, Kevlin Henney, and many others! The conference takes place online, and we have the 10% discount code for you: AWSM_TLJ.

Skills Matter is the global community and events platform for software professionals. It is an easier way for technologists to grow their careers by connecting you and your peers with the best-in-class tech industry experts and communities. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones.

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“We want to write as little software as possible, and we want it to have as much value as possible. If you actually focus on that, it means you have to be close to your customer."

Dave Thomas is the founder & chairman of Bedarra Corp, creator of IBM Smalltalk, VisualAge for Java, Eclipse, Kx Analyst workbench and Skills Matter YOW! Australia conferences. In this episode, Dave shared about his personal research, 42D, on ideas we can use to develop high-value software rapidly. He started by describing the current developer’s productivity challenges and touched on the idea that big is not better, relating to the size of the team and code base, and how development tools are becoming more complicated and complex. We then discussed the importance of developers understanding domain knowledge, leveraging tools such as decision tables and spreadsheets, and how the choice of programming language actually matters. Towards the end, Dave shared about using a data-centric approach to deal with legacy systems and his perspective on query as the future of programming.

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Dave Thomas’s Bio

Dave is recognized as an ACM Distinguished Engineer for his contributions to Object Technology, which includes IBM VisualAge and Eclipse IDEs, Smalltalk, and Java virtual machines.

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Today’s episode is proudly sponsored by Skills Matter, the global community and events platform for software professionals.

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