Tech Lead Journal

“The goal is not Agile. The goal is not DevOps. The goal is not Cloud. The goal is value, time to value, safety, happiness, and quality." Jonathan Smart and Simon Rohrer are the co-authors of “Sooner Safer Happier”. In this episode, Jon and Simon shared how we can deliver better outcomes in a more humane way of working, by delivering better value sooner, safer, and happier. They shared severa...

“Think about delegation as more of a coaching mindset instead of the doer mentality. It’s not about looking at the immediate task at hand, it’s about teaching that to others." Akanksha Gupta is the author of “Think Like a Software Engineering Manager”. In this episode, Akanksha described the role of an engineering manager and the key traits of being a good engineering manager. She gave advice...

“To build trust, you need to do the right thing, do the best you can, and show people you care. And when you do that, it builds commitment. Trust and commitment are how teams do best and win the most." Michael Foss is a leadership coach and the founder of CoachFoss LLC. In this episode, we discussed the power of leadership principles and positive leadership. Michael started by sharing the imp...

“You should never do something just because the auditors want you to do it. They should be able to explain the risk and controls in accordance with your risk appetite and tolerance." Clarissa Lucas is an audit and risk management leader and the author of “Beyond Agile Auditing”. In this episode, Clarissa shared a novel approach to internal auditing called auditing with agility. She shared thi...

“It’s so important to start with a problem and make sure you understand it is a big market. Many tech founding teams end up building a technology that is still in search of a problem." Jothy Rosenberg is a serial entrepreneur who has founded 9 startups with exits of over $100 million. He is the author of an upcoming book “Think Like a Tech Founder: Anecdotes of an Incorrigible Entrepreneur”....

“An effective developer is an effective software tester. As a developer, it’s your responsibility to make sure what you do works. And automated testing is such an easy and cheap way of doing it." Mauricio Aniche is the author of “Effective Software Testing”. In this episode, Mauricio explained how to become a more effective software developer by using effective and systematic software testing...

“Building an application security program is about ensuring security is built into the software development lifecycle and how to respond to vulnerabilities." Derek Fisher is the author of “Application Security Program Handbook”. In this episode, Derek shared about building an application security program and how to implement it in our organization. First, we discussed some security fundamenta...

“It’s not about the tools or processes. Most important is you understand the target outcomes for your customers and establish the right level of shared situational awareness across the teams." Robert Benefield is the author of “Lean DevOps: A Practical Guide to On Demand Service Delivery”. In this episode, Robert shared insights on how we can apply the Lean DevOps mindset for building success...

“Privacy is about handling data in a way that builds for both compliance and trust, maturity and transparency." Nishant Bhajaria is cybersecurity and data privacy executive and the author of “Data Privacy: A Runbook for Engineers”. In this episode, we discussed the importance of data privacy and privacy engineering. Nishant described his definition of data privacy and why it is becoming a key...

“Spend some time looking at the system in which you work. Understand how the work is working. Understand how flow is for your organization. And then you can work to optimize that." James Lewis is a Director at ThoughtWorks and a pioneer of microservice architecture. In this episode, we went back memory lane to the time when James first coined and popularized the microservice architecture. Jam...

“The three core dimensions of developer experience are feedback loops, cognitive load, and flow state." Margaret-Anne (Peggy) Storey and Abi Noda are the coauthors of the recently published ACM paper “DevEx: What Actually Drives Productivity”. In this episode, we discussed how we can better measure and improve developer productivity using a developer-centric approach. Peggy and Abi first bega...

“The goal of requirements development is clear and effective communication. Thus, it has to be done in an incremental and iterative fashion." Karl Wiegers is the coauthor of “Software Requirements Essentials” and has previously appeared in our episode #103. In this episode, we discussed 6 essential practices for software requirements out of the 20 core practices specified in his book. Karl al...

“Speak about topics you are passionate about, because if you are passionate about something, you can easily find the story and the motivation that will lead you to success." Oscar Santolalla is the author of “Rock the Tech Stage” and the host of the “Time to Shine” podcast. In this episode, we discussed techniques on how to deliver a successful tech presentation and demo. Oscar broke down the...

“The notion of transaction, consistency, and ACID compliance are many times tech imposed. It should be the business that makes the decision. We as technologists should not make that decision." Pramod Sadalage is a Director at ThoughtWorks and the co-author of the Jolt Award winning “Refactoring Databases”. In this episode, we discussed data essentials in software architecture. Pramod started...

“Understand the stage of your company and the kind of risks you face at that stage, make decisions that are appropriate, and remind other people about that all the time." Sarah Milstein is the VP of Engineering at Daily and has run remote teams for 25 years. In this episode, Sarah started by sharing some remote work insights we may not have heard before, such as why remote distributed teams o...

“The difference of why some companies are so much more successful at producing high value, high-impact products than others comes to 4 areas of GIST (Goals, Ideas, Steps, Tasks)." Itamar Gilad is a coach and author with over 20 years of experience in product management, strategy, and growth, and was previously a product manager at Google and the head of Gmail’s growth team. In this episode, w...

“The core of threshold leadership is a set of four pathways of cultivating stillness, embodying intelligence, thinking independently, and maturing consciousness." Nick Chatrath is a leadership and organizational transformation expert and the author of “The Threshold: Leading in the Age of AI”. In this episode, Nick shared the concept of threshold leadership and explained its importance in the...

“3 core ideas in game thinking: super fan funnel to find the right people, loop design to create the experience people want to stick around for, and concept testing to figure out the user experience." Amy Jo Kim is a game designer, startup coach, author, and co-founder of Game Thinking. In this episode, Amy shared how we can use game thinking to build better and successful products that peopl...

“The vertical altitude of the organization leaders sets the ceiling for how effective the organization can be." Ryan Gottfredson is a leadership development researcher and a Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-selling author of “The Elevated Leader”. In this episode, Ryan explained the concept of an elevated leader and why it is important to have elevated leaders in an organization. He des...

“A good API doesn’t expose the internal data models or internal logic too much. And the more your clients are not under your control, the less you want to do that." Daniel Luebke is a software architect and the co-author of “Patterns for API Design”. In this episode, we discussed some API design patterns and best practices taken from his book. Daniel first shared the importance of understandi...

“The business technology divide was apparent in many companies. The idea of the value flywheel effect is to join the business and technology goals and create this flywheel effect momentum." David Anderson is the author of “The Value Flywheel Effect” and the co-creator of The Serverless Edge. In this episode, David described the value flywheel effect concept and its four stages: clarity of purpose,...

“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. What people want in these traumatic moments is somebody to listen to and acknowledge them." Katharine Manning is the President of Blackbird DC and author of “The Empathetic Workplace”. In this episode, we discussed how leaders can deal with traumatic experience in the workplace. Katharine described what she means by workplace...

“In a world that runs on software, when we develop and deploy software, we are part of a larger system where our failures are no longer about us, they are also about other people." Kevlin Henney is a consultant, writer, and speaker on software development and has written and edited several popular books. In this episode, Kevlin shared his 3 favorite things every software engineer should know based...

“Creativity at work is a type of thinking and a process of developing ourselves and our ability to create and bring novelty to our professional life." Oana Velcu-Laitinen is the author of “How to Develop Your Creative Identity at Work”. In this episode, Dr. Oana shared how we can develop our creative identity at work and in our personal life. She first started by describing the definition of creat...

“Everything in software architecture is a trade-off, and the why is more important than how." Neal Ford is a Director and software architect at ThoughtWorks. In this episode, we discussed all things about software architecture covering his three most recent books: “Fundamentals of Software Architecture”, “Software Architecture: The Hard Parts”, and “Building Evolutionary Architectures”. We first d...