I write regularly about software development and delivery and the latest best practices and ideas for organisation design and delivery. These are typically summarised and commented on in my regular newsletter.
Below you can find the full archive of blog articles.
2024
Saturday, April 20 - Missing The Social Cues – When The Tools Do The Talking (Culture) (dynamic reteaming, team dynamics) Monday, April 8 - The Secrets of Quiet Leadership (Leadership) Friday, March 29 - Monitoring Azure DevOps Build Pipelines with Prometheus and Grafana (Tools & Infrastructure) (azure devops, continuous delivery, DevOps, observability) Tuesday, March 19 - Being Nice Asynchronously: The Discipline of Remote Working (Culture) (ai, remote working, team dynamics) Tuesday, March 12 - How to be a Happier Software Engineer (Software Development) (happiness, Leadership, team dynamics) Monday, February 19 - Too Busy To Do It Right (DevOps) (conway's law, Leadership) Monday, February 5 - Can Our Decisions Always Work Out for the Best? (Software Development) (podcasts) Friday, January 5 - How to be a Contented Engineer (Personal Development) (newsletter)
2023
Monday, December 18 - New Books in 2023 (Leadership) (books) Thursday, December 7 - Optimizing for Engineering Happiness (Culture) (conway's law, culture, team topologies) Friday, December 1 - Daily Habits: The Advent of Code (Software Development) Friday, November 24 - The Successful Platform is a Product (Organisation) (conway's law, platform engineering, platform team, product mindset, team topologies) Friday, November 3 - Are pipelines an effective way to build high quality software? (Software Development) (fast flow, residuality theory) Tuesday, October 10 - How to Embrace Complexity and Uncertainty in Programming (Systems Thinking) (psychology, team dynamics) Saturday, September 16 - How To Build a Successful Platform Team (Organisation) (platform engineering, platform team) Saturday, September 2 - Azure DevOps YAML pipelines: The land of confusion (Tools & Infrastructure) (continuous delivery, continuous integration, DevOps, fast feedback) Tuesday, August 29 - When You Are Doing Devops (Quality & Testing) (atomic habits, quest) Wednesday, August 23 - Avoiding Toxicity: How to Manage Cognitive Load (Organisation) (team dynamics, team topologies) Monday, August 14 - When you can’t do Test-Driven Development (Software Development) (test driven development) Saturday, July 15 - How to fix the “Failing” Team (Organisation) (Leadership, psychological safety) Tuesday, July 11 - When Speed and Quality are the Same Thing (Quality & Testing) (psychological safety) Monday, June 26 - Test-Driven Development for Microservices (Quality & Testing) (microservices, mocking, test driven development) Saturday, June 10 - Have You Ever Tried to Make Software Without Using Humans? (Organisation) (dora metrics, team topologies) Wednesday, May 10 - People Patterns and Learning How to Say No, Nicely (Organisation) (team topologies) Friday, May 5 - How to Visualise Your Systems (Architecture) (C4 diagrams) Tuesday, May 2 - How to Write Good Requirements (Product) (C4 diagrams, requirements) Wednesday, April 19 - How to be a Happy Engineer (Organisation) Sunday, April 9 - How Does Ability to Innovate Impact Bottom Line? (Systems Thinking) (Leadership) Tuesday, April 4 - Doing Gitflow means you’re leaving Business Value on the Table (Quality & Testing) (continuous delivery, continuous integration) Thursday, March 30 - The Challenge of IT Change (Organisation) Thursday, March 23 - Learning to Live With The Phoenix Project (Systems Thinking) (phoenix project) Sunday, March 12 - What is Infrastructure as Code? (Tools & Infrastructure) Wednesday, March 1 - Developer Productivity is Not a Helpful Label (Organisation) (developer productivity) Thursday, February 23 - Is Splunk better than Datadog? (Tools & Infrastructure) Thursday, February 23 - Why Wait to Discover Mistakes? (Software Development) (continuous delivery) Tuesday, February 14 - They Made a Documentary about React (Software Development) (front-end, react) Tuesday, February 7 - How to Deliver High-Quality Software, Faster without Feature Branches (Quality & Testing) (continuous delivery, continuous integration) Thursday, February 2 - The Why of Building Software (Architecture) (domain driven design) Wednesday, February 1 - What can we learn from a WordPress upgrade? (Tools & Infrastructure) (configuration management) Thursday, January 26 - Building Software in a Post-Agile World (Software Development) Tuesday, January 24 - Learning to Fight Complexity (Organisation) Saturday, January 21 - 2023: So Where Now? (Organisation) Sunday, January 15 - QUEST: How To Build Great Software (Software Development) Thursday, January 12 - The Language of Change (Organisation) (cynefin, domain driven design, team topologies) Thursday, January 12 - Creating a DevOps Culture? (Organisation) (accelerate, DevOps, phoenix project, unicorn project) Wednesday, January 11 - Reducing Complexity in Software Configuration (Software Development) Friday, January 6 - Loving the Legacy Rabbit Hole (Software Development) (Legacy, refactoring) Wednesday, January 4 - SE Radio Podcast: The Differences between DevOps vs SRE (Tools & Infrastructure) (DevOps, sre)
2022
Saturday, December 31 - Time to Take a Deep Cleansing Breath (Organisation) (ai) Friday, December 23 - The Social Legacy of Code (Architecture) (adventofcode, Legacy) Wednesday, December 21 - Advent of Code 2022: Into The Valley of Self-Doubt (Software Development) (adventofcode, algorithms) Sunday, December 18 - Do You Still Need ITIL and ITSM? (Organisation) (itil, itsm) Thursday, December 15 - Causes of Tech Debt and Legacy (Architecture) (Legacy, technical debt) Monday, December 12 - Software Engineering Happiness: The Five Ideals (Software Development) (5 ideals, unicorn project) Friday, December 9 - Podcast: How Does Legacy and Tech Debt appear? (Software Development) (Legacy, technical debt) Monday, December 5 - Skating on Thin Ice (Organisation) (technical debt) Sunday, December 4 - The Advent of Code and GPT-3 (Software Development) Friday, December 2 - Thoughtworks: On Displacing Legacy Systems (Software Development) (Legacy) Tuesday, November 29 - Lines of Code: How to Feel Good About Yourself (Software Development) Thursday, November 24 - Rust Code Analysis in SonarCloud using GitHub Actions (Quality & Testing) (code analysis, rust) Wednesday, November 23 - How to Tackle a Legacy Codebase (Software Development) (Legacy) Tuesday, November 22 - Find Your Unique Perspective (Organisation) Monday, November 21 - Kubernetes or Serverless and When Should You Care? (Tools & Infrastructure) (kubernetes, serverless) Thursday, November 17 - Legacy Code: Sunk Cost or Opportunity? (Software Development) (Legacy) Saturday, November 12 - When you code. Mean it. (Software Development) Friday, November 11 - Does Continuous Delivery have an Image Problem? (Software Development) (continuous delivery) Thursday, November 10 - DDD, Refactoring and Legacy Code (Architecture) (domain driven design, Java, Kotlin, Legacy) Wednesday, November 9 - What Do You Need To Get Started in Software? (Software Development) Tuesday, November 8 - How Team Topologies Changes The Script (Systems Thinking) Monday, November 7 - Bryan Finster -Continuous Delivery: No Nonsense Podcast (Software Development) (continuous delivery) Friday, November 4 - Does Fixing Legacy Mean I’m Not Innovating? (Software Development) (Legacy) Thursday, November 3 - Do You Need CI/CD to be successful at Software Delivery? (Software Development) (continuous delivery, continuous integration) Wednesday, November 2 - Appropriate Context for XP, Scrum and MVP (Systems Thinking) Tuesday, October 25 - Colouring Outside the Lines (Software Development) Monday, October 24 - Why DevOps and Kubernetes are the New Legacy (Tools & Infrastructure) Wednesday, October 19 - Why Loose Coupling Is Important with CI/CD Tools (Software Development) (continuous delivery, continuous integration) Monday, October 17 - The Fundamentals of DevOps (Software Development) (DevOps) Friday, October 14 - The Sunk Cost Fallacy, Fallacy (Architecture) Wednesday, October 12 - You Need Better Linux Logging (Tools & Infrastructure) Tuesday, October 11 - Designing Your Release Process (Software Development) (continuous delivery) Thursday, October 6 - Can You Release When You Want To? (Software Development) (continuous delivery) Wednesday, October 5 - Do You Have Hidden Delivery Debt? (Software Development) (technical debt) Tuesday, October 4 - How To Win At Jira (Tools & Infrastructure) Monday, October 3 - Did You Spend The Weekend Fixing Bugs? (Quality & Testing) (operations) Friday, September 30 - Software as a Product or as a Service? (Product) (SaaS) Thursday, September 29 - How to Build Maintainable Software (Quality & Testing) Wednesday, September 28 - Are You Seeing The Whole Picture? (Product) (architecture, operations, support) Monday, September 26 - What is Software Delivery? (Software Development) Friday, September 23 - Is There a U-Turn on Open Source? (Software Development) (log4j, open source software, security) Wednesday, September 21 - How To Be A Good Developer (Software Development) (personal development) Tuesday, September 20 - Just Fix One Thing (Software Development) (atomic habits, strategy) Monday, September 19 - Software isn’t a Liquid (Software Development) Saturday, September 17 - The SaaS Product Risk Trajectory (Organisation) Friday, September 16 - The Magic of Wardley Maps (Systems Thinking) (mapping) Wednesday, September 14 - The Streisand Effect (Organisation) Tuesday, September 13 - Are You Happy With Your Front-End? (Architecture) (front-end, ux) Monday, September 12 - Is The Path of Least Resistance Sometimes The Right Choice? (Software Development) (css, motivation) Sunday, September 11 - The Eight Rules of Good Construction (Software Development) Friday, September 9 - Do You Love Story Points? (Organisation) (agile, project management, scrum) Wednesday, September 7 - Approvals Come First (Software Development) Thursday, September 1 - Are You An Engineer or A Dreamer? (Software Development) Wednesday, August 31 - Is Your SaaS Product a Compromise? (Product) (SaaS) Tuesday, August 30 - Do You Have To Use Innovative Technology? (Tools & Infrastructure) Monday, August 29 - Some People Like To Fight Fires (Organisation) Saturday, August 27 - Is Your CI Doing Valuable Work? (Software Development) (continuous integration) Friday, August 26 - How Easily Can You Deliver New Features? (Software Development) (continuous delivery) Wednesday, August 24 - The Power of the Business Case (Organisation) Tuesday, August 23 - Pull Requests cause Friction (Software Development) Monday, August 22 - Technology First Solutions (Product) Sunday, August 21 - The Lies We Tell Ourselves (Product) (automation, jira) Friday, August 19 - Say Yes to Different (Organisation) Thursday, August 18 - Why Vi or Emacs? (Software Development) Tuesday, August 16 - The Emperor’s New Clothes (Product) Monday, August 15 - The Illusion of Control (Systems Thinking) (software craftsmanship) Sunday, August 14 - The Four Ps of Automation (Tools & Infrastructure) Saturday, August 13 - Why does Kubernetes even exist? (Tools & Infrastructure) Friday, August 12 - How to HumanOps (Organisation) (humanops, operations) Thursday, August 11 - When The Team is Scared (Organisation) (team dynamics) Wednesday, August 10 - Brazil 1986: State Management by Committee (Architecture) (conway's law) Tuesday, August 9 - How to Know When the Team is Broken (Organisation) (Leadership) Sunday, August 7 - Do You Need The Default Clause? (Software Development) (personal development) Saturday, August 6 - I Wanna Be Adored (Software Development) Friday, August 5 - The Developer Mindset (Software Development) Wednesday, August 3 - Integrating AWS CloudWatch with Honeycomb.io (Tools & Infrastructure) Tuesday, August 2 - Dave Farley and Allen Holub: Agile & Scrum – what doesn’t work (Organisation) (agile, DevOps, Leadership, scrum) Monday, August 1 - Creativity Not Always Required (Software Development) Sunday, July 31 - When the Weekend Isn’t Your Own (Organisation) Saturday, July 30 - When You Can’t See the Forest for the Trees (Software Development) Friday, July 29 - Refining the Big Scary Story (Organisation) Thursday, July 28 - Release Cadence Considered a Poor Quality Metric (Quality & Testing) (continuous delivery, dora metrics) Wednesday, July 27 - The Office: Dare to be Different (Organisation) Sunday, July 24 - Getting The Basics for Kubernetes: Linux (Tools & Infrastructure) Saturday, July 23 - Show No Fear (Product) Friday, July 22 - Delivery Wins (Software Development) Thursday, July 21 - Rust vs Go: Does it Matter? (Software Development) (golang, rust) Wednesday, July 20 - Welcome to Software Delivery Club (Software Development) Tuesday, July 19 - Observability vs Monitoring (Tools & Infrastructure) Monday, July 18 - Bullshit Jobs (Organisation) Saturday, July 16 - Are You Still Ignoring the Cloud? (Tools & Infrastructure) Monday, July 11 - Building a Software Product (Software Development) (product management) Sunday, July 10 - Cult of the Developer (Organisation) Saturday, July 9 - Building Better Software through Observability (Software Development) (observability) Friday, July 8 - How to Commit like Keith and Mick (Tools & Infrastructure) Monday, July 4 - Managing Your Time & Managing Tasks (Organisation) (project management, projects) Sunday, July 3 - How to get DevOps Insights You Can Trust (Software Development) (agile, DevOps, Leadership) Thursday, June 30 - Learning to Lead Through Technology (Organisation) Wednesday, June 29 - Does Your Sector Matter? (Product) Monday, June 27 - Identifying The Busywork (Organisation) (project management) Thursday, June 23 - The Technical Details (Organisation) (people management, project management) Wednesday, June 22 - Planning, Selection and Installation (Organisation) (project management) Thursday, June 16 - What does leading a successful project look like? (Organisation) (project management) Tuesday, June 14 - The Level Playing Field (Product) Sunday, June 12 - Life Is Like a Box of Chocolates (Systems Thinking) Saturday, June 11 - Sunscreen vs Sunblock (Organisation) Friday, June 10 - How to Run a Successful Project (Organisation) (agile, project management, scrum) Friday, June 3 - Please Don’t Explain It, Just Fix It (Organisation) (project management) Tuesday, May 31 - The Pros and Cons of Excel Spreadsheets (Tools & Infrastructure) Saturday, May 28 - Build or Buy? Or Both? (Product) Monday, May 16 - Avoiding the “Big Bang” project (Organisation) (project management) Thursday, April 7 - That’s Just How It Works (Organisation) Monday, March 21 - Breaking the Reliance (Organisation) Monday, March 21 - Understanding I.T. in the 21st century (Systems Thinking) Wednesday, March 16 - How to Think Like a Developer (Organisation) Monday, February 28 - Dear IT Director (Organisation) Tuesday, February 22 - You’re a Knowledge Business (Organisation) Wednesday, February 16 - Tool Selection for your Business (Tools & Infrastructure) Tuesday, February 15 - Thank you, Mr Conway (Systems Thinking) (conway's law) Tuesday, February 8 - Getting Ready to Automate (Tools & Infrastructure) Tuesday, February 1 - Dear Entrepreneur, Your Website isn’t a Website (Architecture) (cms, wordpress) Monday, January 31 - Time to Stop Overcomplicating (Organisation) (agile, waterfall) Monday, January 17 - Brittle Systems (Organisation)
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