DevOps at is the heart of modern software systems. In my regular newsletter, I dive into the human factors that make successful engineering organizations where teams and platforms thrive at the heart of your socio-technical systems. From leadership to team setup, maximizing performance, tools and techniques.
The Human DevOps - 19th May 2024 - Leading from Behind
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Software development is mentally and emotionally challenging work. Studies reveal that around 50% of developer time is spent on maintenance or wasted in workplace inefficiency. How can we, as individuals, enjoy our work and stay productive and healthy while positively influencing efficiency, quality and customer value? This question has bothered me throughout my career, and I'm finally on a path to finding some practical answers. As I delve into this topic, I'm struck by the profound influence of the average software development team's composition, dynamics, and motivations on our collective cognitive load. It's not just about inefficient organizational setups; it's also about the very nature of many of our ‘best practice’ tools and techniques that can limit our potential. I'm inspired by a few texts and a few people here, not least:
All of these books explore how we lead through inversion of control, using influence and importantly, reducing lofty goals into manageable steps. Leading as a manager sets up a lot of expectations. Leading from Behind is an effective and sustainable way of making sense of complex domains such as software engineering. Have a great Sunday. -- Richard The Passive-Aggressive Pull RequestPublished on May 18, 2024 Have you ever had an extreme reaction to someone leaving a comment on a Pull Request (PR)? Why was that? Was it something about your mood that day? Was it that you feel attacked and don’t like it? Is it the frustration with the speed of the PR process? Something else? PRs are divisive. They… Read More »The Passive-Aggressive Pull Request
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Human DevOps
DevOps at is the heart of modern software systems. In my regular newsletter, I dive into the human factors that make successful engineering organizations where teams and platforms thrive at the heart of your socio-technical systems. From leadership to team setup, maximizing performance, tools and techniques.
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...
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. The Design Museum in Kensington, 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...
How was your summer? Does it feel like it's still happening, or are you already back in the thick of things? It's been a bit of both for me over the last few weeks. I've been in and out of holiday mode. The weather is still hot, but the office is in action. Next week, I'm off to London, where I'll be attending the second edition of the Fast Flow Conference with the Team Topologies organisation and heading to SaaS CTO Conference to meet with tech leaders and find out what's got them worried...