software architecture Featured Never Just One Writing software these days involves asking the question "How many?" over and over again. There is one answer that's always wrong.
process Featured Inner Source is not the goal Inner Source often gets touted as the way to improve productivity, time to market, and many other business-oriented metrics. It helps, but it shouldn't be the goal. There are better ways.
retros Featured Tales from the Retro: Siloing After 15 years of running agile retrospectives, I've noticed a few patterns. Today's theme is siloing.
process Featured How "Code Wins" Can Lead to Bad Decisions A few months ago, I saw a post on LinkedIn about the concept of "code wins" or sometimes "code wins arguments". As someone who used to espouse this idea, I decided to stop and think hard about what it means and why I stopped using it
design reviews Featured Design Reviews: Wrapping up It's the holiday season, so it's probably time I wrap up the design review series, like I was supposed to in October. <insert rim shot here> Honestly, my goal to get ahead failed, and a new job prevented me from even keeping up. In
jobs Finding a Job in the "Current Macroeconomic Conditions" I posted on LinkedIn a couple weeks ago that I'd accepted another offer. I've had some people ask me various forms of the same question: how?
design reviews Featured Design Reviews: Patterns and Anti-patterns A couple weeks ago, we addressed the preparation and general structure of the design review. Still, there's a gap when you think about how people should approach the review and behave during the review. It's all too common to experience frustration, anxiety, and hopelessness during reviews,
News Quick Update Hello! I wanted to provide a quick update here. First, the next post on design reviews will come out next week. Between the holiday weekend and finishing up my job search, I've been very busy and haven't finished the patterns and anti-patterns post. Second, I do,
design reviews Featured Design Reviews: Meeting Format We've finally made it. The design review is happening. What do you do?!
design reviews Featured Design Reviews: Goals Defining what you want out of design reviews can change how well they work.
design reviews Featured Design Reviews Part 1: Why does everyone avoid them? Design reviews are one of the most dreaded parts of software engineering process. Why do we always try to avoid them?
announcements Programming Notes Whew, that first post was super depressing, huh? Well, I just wanted to have a separate place to provide some context about what's coming. To start, I'm going to start off trying to get posts out once per week, hopefully with a healthy backlog of scheduled
layoffs Featured The Elephant in the Room: Layoffs Welcome to my new blog/newsletter/whatever you call these things these days. I figured it would be good to start off on a lighter note and the reason I'm here: tech layoffs.
