The Story of Software

Marco Ziccardi from Doctolib joins us to talk about scaling software teams, and the importance of keeping your team engaged in that process.

The Guest: Marco Ziccardi, Director of Engineering at Doctolib:

Marco Ziccardi is the Director of Engineering, Security & Privacy at Doctolib, an innovative healthcare company providing solutions to care teams. With over 10 years of experience in the industry, Marco builds and leads teams that use technology for commercial impact. 

Scaling Software Teams Successfully:

As a company grows, the needs and expectations of team members start to evolve with it. From structural changes to how individuals fit into the overall team - there is a lot for companies to continuously optimize. So, what are the key elements you need to get right as you scale a software team? 

Some of the topics we cover in this episode are;

• The requirements for scaling a team successfully, based on the size of the team
• The importance of engaging employees for the success of a team
• Employee engagement strategies in an all-remote world
• What future software teams may look like beyond remote working

Listen to the Story of Software on any podcast platform of your choice. The Story of Software Podcast is produced by Zartis. We hope you enjoy listening to this tech podcast and feel free to share any feedback with us: [email protected]

Sagar Patel, VP of Engineering at Ampla, joins us to discuss how engineering leaders should manage growth, productivity, and culture in software teams.

The Guest: Sagar Patel, VP of Engineering at Ampla

Sagar Patel is an experienced technology leader with a demonstrated history of building and managing high-performing product and engineering teams. Currently, he is the VP of Engineering at Ampla, a New York-based company empowering founders and operators to grow their businesses through accessible capital.

Engineering Management and Productivity:

Whether you are a CTO, VP of Engineering, or an Engineering Manager, there are certain aspects of team management that remain common. Ensuring engineering goals are aligned with the business goals, warranting that team members understand their roles and responsibilities, and most importantly, keeping their engineers engaged and motivated during times of change.

In this episode, we talk about the principles of good engineering management, as well as the common mistakes that tech leaders make in the face of major change, such as high growth or down-scaling in software teams. Discover:

• How to make the right decisions when it comes to growth and hiring
• Balancing engineering and business needs
• Common mistakes tech leaders make during the hiring process
• How to communicate and manage change within engineering teams

Listen to the Story of Software on any podcast platform of your choice. The Story of Software Podcast is produced by Zartis. We hope you enjoy listening to this tech podcast and feel free to share any feedback with us: [email protected]

Sebastian Lau and Jack Godau from Doctorly join us to talk about the evolution of digital healthcare and recent technological advancements in the sector.

Sebastian Lau and Jack Godau are the CTO and CDO at Doctorly. Doctorly provides all of the digital technology, tools, and support, via a single system, for a doctor to efficiently and digitally manage their practice. They also enable patients to access, control and understand their own health records and data via their fully integrated doctorly health app. 

Digital Transformation in Healthcare:

Today, everyone is turning online or to apps to handle important aspects of their lives such as careers, personal finances, and investments, so why not healthcare? 

The rise of digital transformation and the growing demand for healthcare in the post-Covid world has created a need for a more modern and efficient patient management process. With the use of technology, medical practices can offer digital services and provide faster results to their patients. From online scheduling and examination, to digital data management and instant sharing between practitioners, applications of digital healthcare are limitless. But, what is the actual speed of innovation in the healthcare industry worldwide, and what does the future behold? 

Some of the topics covered in this episode include:

• The recent technological developments in the healthcare sector
• The technology gap in patient and data management
• Expected innovations in digital healthcare

Listen to the Story of Software on any podcast platform of your choice. The Story of Software Podcast is produced by Zartis. We hope you enjoy listening to this tech podcast and feel free to share any feedback with us: [email protected]

Brian Kelly, VP of Engineering at AppMap, joins us to talk about code security from best practices to main vulnerabilities.

Brian has over 25 years of experience in software, with 20 years of experience managing and scaling engineering teams both locally and internationally. His areas of expertise include cybersecurity, SaaS, DevOps, microservices, and distributed systems. He has led the development of a number of products in the security space across companies such as Flipdish, CyberArk and currently AppMap.

Quality & Security Problem Detection:

With our lives moving online in the last decade, the value of what can be stolen or hacked has risen exponentially. This leads to a very high pressure on software and service providers to develop systems with zero vulnerabilities against such attacks. Sadly, in most of the cases, such vulnerabilities are only discovered once the code runs in real time and interacts with different parts of the system. But, what if we could detect security vulnerabilities in real time as our developers code? 

Some of the topics covered include:

• How security issues are created and can be detected before release
• The major security threats that organizations face
• Early detection and prevention mechanisms to leverage
• Guiding development teams to uphold security

Listen to the Story of Software on any podcast platform of your choice. The Story of Software Podcast is produced by Zartis. We hope you enjoy listening to this tech podcast and feel free to share any feedback with us: [email protected]

Francesco Dominidiato, CTO at Casavo, shares his insights on the path to becoming a tech leader & the experiences one needs to gain along the way.

Francesco is the CTO at Casavo, a company redesigning the experience of selling and buying homes by leveraging proprietary technology in each step of the transaction process. Francesco shares some context about his career journey in technology & how successes and failures are both a key part of the story.

Failing is The New Winning:

Whether you are growing from an individual contributor role to a manager or you are joining a team as an appointed new leader; how can you gain the necessary skills to lead your team to success? What is a good synthesis of success and failure that allows leaders to learn lessons taught nowhere else?

Some of the topics covered in this episode include:

• Challenges faced early on in a tech career
• The past and future career paths for technologists and engineers
• Baking failure into the culture of a business
• The past and present startup ecosystem in Italy

Resources:

Within this episode, you will find mentions of reading resources which we are linking here for ease of access:

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fabiomaffioletti_engineering-leadership-remotework-activity-6988540179133177857-zm8z?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
• https://whimsical.com/resources-for-engineering-management-2Jut7BVjoSyBXgB8fBVeHd
• https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1x4nIhYXvxdWK03I5qcZ5UAG3eOG5L8ugmbLSLtGvMNk/edit#gid=0

Listen to the Story of Software on any podcast platform of your choice. The Story of Software Podcast is produced by Zartis. We hope you enjoy listening to this tech podcast and feel free to share any feedback with us: [email protected]

Stefan Avramtchev is a Leadership and Agile Coach with 20 years of experience in software engineering. He specializes in coaching software development teams, and individuals going through a switch in their careers. He joins us today to speak about coaching people entering a managerial role for the first time. 

From Individual Contributor to Leader

By this stage, we are well aware that a successful leader is someone who influences people to achieve their goals and continue to strive within their role in the team. 

However, it’s often the case that top-performing engineers find themselves being promoted to tech leaders or software development managers, and this transition doesn’t always go so smoothly. The transition from being the go-to person related to technical matters to all of a sudden starting off with step 1 of management can be incredibly challenging. 

So, what can people making that transition from an engineering role to management do to give themselves every chance of success? 

Some of the topics covered include:

• What makes a good leader
• The challenges of the initial transition
• How to deal with ego
• Feeling unsupported

It’s one thing being the best engineer on your team, and it’s another being someone who can help others fulfill their potential. When we think about the challenges around these transitions, what are the things that you've seen? 

“They have to understand that they need to grow, they need to develop, they need to tame their ego, and they need to start appearing as a leader. So, showing vulnerability and all these other things that we just mentioned is important. Another thing is the problem with authenticity, the fear and the lack of safety that they experience in the face of shortcomings and in the face of challenges that they haven’t tackled. Essentially dealing with questions that they don't have the answer to…..

These people have invested heavily in their careers, they are used to being the go-to people for technical matters in the team, and now they have to abandon that. They have to go to square one of management. So that's not easy and they need support and encouragement for that.”


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Igor Bakman, CTO at ViViRA Health Lab, joins us to discuss the different approaches and mindsets involved in managing code vs people.

Igor is the CTO at ViViRA Health Lab, a Berlin-based company providing personalised therapeutic training for patients with musculoskeletal pain. Igor joins the podcast to discuss his career journey from software engineer to CTO, and his passion for building successful teams and innovative products. 

The Ins and Outs of People Management

After our talk with Igor, it is clear that effective people management and code management have fundamental differences, and require different sets of skills. Successful people management in tech teams requires trusting your team, allowing them to come up with solutions, and not being possessive of the code or the work involved. 

So, what should leaders who started out as part of the development team do in order to avoid micromanagement and enable success for everyone?

Some of the topics covered include:

• The route from developer to CTO
• The differences between managing code and people
• The mindset needed to be a good leader
• The common mistakes involved in scaling teams

Listen to the Story of Software on any podcast platform of your choice. The Story of Software Podcast is produced by Zartis. We hope you enjoy listening to this tech podcast and feel free to share any feedback with us: [email protected]

Chuck Herrin, CTO at Wib and a long-term security practitioner, shares his insights on escalating cyber attacks and the growing importance of API security. 

The Guest:

Chuck Herrin is the CTO at Wib, a platform providing a comprehensive solution for the full API software development lifecycle. He has over 18 years of experience as CISO in global financial services firms of all shapes and sizes.

With APIs becoming a prominent part of how different online systems communicate, we have become more dependent on APIs than we realize. Today, 91% of all web traffic is APIs communicating within each other and we would not be able to get anything done online without them. So by design, APIs are designed to expose certain information to the outside world.

How do we deal with the increasing risks and attacks on APIs? Are there techniques and strategies that companies can adopt?

Some of the topics covered in this episode include:

• Why APIs are so vulnerable to cyber attacks
• The recently growing numbers of API attacks
• How to analyze API vulnerabilities
• Communicating vulnerabilities to different stakeholders

Listen to the Story of Software on any podcast platform of your choice. The Story of Software Podcast is produced by Zartis. We hope you enjoy listening to this tech podcast and feel free to share any feedback with us: [email protected]

Jacopo Toccacieli, COO at ShippyPro, shares his insights on customer experience and providing impeccable results through a zero-bug policy.

ShippyPro is a company simplifying the way people ship, track and return their e-commerce orders, all over the world. Jacopo shares his career journey in technology. We talk about the principles that have enabled him to deliver successful results, such as the importance of customer empathy, and implementing a zero-bug policy.

Customer Empathy and Experience:

The best way to become a trusted services or SaaS provider is straightforward - provide high-quality support and flawless customer experience. This means not only resolving the issues of your customers consistently, but also doing it in the fastest way possible, and allowing for minimal down time. One of the top strategies in this area is to allow for no bugs in your own, or your client’s systems. 

Why implement zero-bug policies? Because zero bugs means flawless experiences, which translates into higher returns for your clients, and showcases the success of your work. Find out how you can implement zero-bug policies by achieving a full buy-in from your tech team. 

Some of the topics covered include:

• Translating customer empathy in business
• Efficiently sharing tasks between product and development teams
• Zero bug policies and engineer buy-in
• Challenges and benefits of implementing zero bug policies

Listen to the Story of Software on any podcast platform of your choice. The Story of Software Podcast is produced by Zartis. We hope you enjoy listening to this tech podcast and feel free to share any feedback with us: [email protected]

Peter Kisel, CTO at Cyrkl, joins us to talk about balancing product and software development, especially in the earlier stages of a company’s growth.

Cyrkl is Europe's leading circular waste management platform and Peter shares some context about the company, the challenges they are facing as they continue to innovate, and striking the right balance between product and software development. 

Hands-on Coding vs Managing Software Teams:

As a company grows and the needs of the business scale up, the role of a CTO and the roles of each individual team member go through change. The roles of team members - business or technical - evolve from being generalists who are ready to take on different roles, to specialists who have the resources to focus on a specific area of work and excel at it. 

So, how do you scale and delegate tasks as the definition of work changes? What are the strategies and best practices to follow in order to achieve a successful and scalable team structure?

Some of the topic covered include:

• The changing people needs of the business over time
• Lessons learned in scaling a business and software teams
• Scaling the infrastructure and the product as the business grows
• The perfect balance between product and software development

Listen to the Story of Software on any podcast platform of your choice. The Story of Software Podcast is produced by Zartis. We hope you enjoy listening to this tech podcast and feel free to share any feedback with us: [email protected]