Software systems rule our world. My regular newsletter explores the human factors that make software engineering so unique, so difficult, so important and all consuming.
The Human DevOps - Sunday 6th October - What is Humane Engineering?
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September took me to London to attend a couple of conferences. The first was the Team Topologies-aligned Fast Flow conference , preceded by a workshop with the Team Topologies core team. I also popped into the Design Museum when I was in the area, an inspirational space if you're ever in London. As part of the work I do, I sometimes bump into like-minded folks. While I didn't catch up with them at Fast Flow Conf, a few days ago I enjoyed chatting with John and Simon from Human-Centric Engineering. Their approach interests me, not least in the way they weave Self-Determination Theory and Team Topologies together to support leadership in engineering organisations. They have also defined ten "Human-Centric Engineering Principles," worth checking out as an excellent starting point for building your engineering organisation. More than anything, we should start by being principled and value-driven when we design or create organisations. The second conference I attended in London was the SaaS CTO conference from Scale Factory. This brought together industry experts and leaders concerned with the challenges associated with personal and organisational growth around SaaS products. As someone involved in SaaS leadership, I find this particularly fascinating. There were some brilliant talks, and I'm hoping that in particular the talk from Olly Headley will be published before too long. His work as a founder and CTO took him to work for (the never knowingly undersold) DHH and 37 signals as VP of Engineering. This should tells you everything you need to know about Olly's entrepreneurial spark and drive and this enthusiasm and humour came through in his talk very naturally. As I said to him afterwards, he needs to write the book as he tells a brilliant, relatable story around managing growth in software engineering. Olly also recommended a few books: The Manager's Path by Camille Fournier I've read "An Elegant Puzzle" and had multiple people recommend the others to me, so those are going in the basket today! Finally, a couple of personal notes. After going on a journey with ADHD over the last couple of years with my kids, it's time to start my journey. The support that we've received in helping them understand their neurodivergence has led me to start down the track of getting a diagnosis for myself. There are certain areas in my life where I struggle - notably staying interested in jobs and tasks, time management, procrastination, handling emotions at work and at home. I'm now on a waiting list to get an ADHD assessment, having already done quite some research on my own. This will continue the journey for me but I feel it's an important step. I've written about it in more detail in the blog below if you want to learn more. I'm also interested in connecting with others and hearing stories from those who've faced neurodiversity challenges in the workplace. Secondly, I'm still writing a novel! Human Software is now in the third or fourth draft (honestly I forget) and I've got some invaluable feedback from alpha readers and continuing to hone the story and the prose. I'm still hopeful that it will be in decent shape by the end of the year and I'm still mulling over the way I'm going to release it - perhaps it will be direct self-published, perhaps I'll engage an editor to help me polish it, perhaps I'll seek out an agent. All possibilities are still open. Finally, as I consider rebooting my podcast, I find it fascinating that you can use NotebookLM to automatically create authentic-sounding podcasts based on uploaded documents. Perhaps I won't bother?! Have a great Sunday! Exploring Neurodivergence: ADHD and mePublished on September 17, 2024 I’m in my 50s and I’m interested in learning more about ADHD. So I spend a long, long time reading around the subject and then I listen to the excellent Neurodivergent Woman podcast and I come across this tidbit: ‘If you have been diagnosed with ADHD there’s a 50-70% that one of your parents is… Read More »Exploring Neurodivergence: ADHD and me
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The Human Software
Software systems rule our world. My regular newsletter explores the human factors that make software engineering so unique, so difficult, so important and all consuming.
The third working week of the year starts tomorrow, and, as Danny the Drug Dealer says in "Withnail and I", there are going to be a lot of refugees. The years take on familiar shapes when it comes to corporate whim. We have our budget-setting periods, our summer holidays, and perhaps even our closed or quiet periods around Christmas. Predictability, as comforting as it is, can be equally disquieting. Are we here again? As marketing guru Seth Godin says, your comfort zone is not the place to...
Did you know that Kate Bush was only 19 when she embarked on her first solo tour of the UK? Not only had she been writing music from a very young age but at that point she had been working on some of the songs on her first album "The Kick Inside" for more than four years. Clearly even at 19 she is a driven person and has been from a while - creating and forming the world around her as she goes - a force of nature. How do we choose to impose ourselves on the world? As we head to the end of...
The period after the summer holiday is always a busy one. What have you been up to? A lot of what has been on my mind is my mind. And not only my mind but the minds of those around me. There is an increasing neurodivergent component in my family, so for me, it's been really hard to think or read or write about anything else! Against this backdrop, I've been back to working as a DevOps engineer, writing Terraform, Python and Ansible and having design discussions. While I still enjoy it, I...