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 - 5th May 2024 - Human Software
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It's the start of the party season in the Netherlands. Last weekend started with King's Day and it's Bevrijding's Dag today: liberation day. This marks the start of the summer period and it also marks the start of an important personal milestone. I've been writing a novel about software development and humans since the end of last year, and May 1st marked the end of the first draft. I was truly inspired after reading the Unicorn Project, and while I loved the Five Ideals it presented, I wanted to dive deeper into the lives of the characters and their families. Therefore, I decided to write something personal and something that resonated with my experiences in software engineering and DevOps. I wanted to explore the effects on individuals, families, and friends. So, last autumn, I started writing, and last week, I reached the end of the first draft. I will celebrate briefly before launching into the second draft. If you'd like to hear more about it you can head over to the book webpage - there's not much there but it gives you a few clues :) Enjoy the rest of your weekend! -- Richard Do you need to be a public speaker to be a great engineer?Published on May 5, 2024 I have observed that companies use industry conferences for different purposes. Sending engineers and architects to (often far-flung) events to attend as a reward, sending them there to learn and report back, or sending them there to speak. Big conference trips are showcases for projects, talent and networking. We learn from other companies about how… Read More »Do you need to be a public speaker to be a great engineer?
People Silos: Revisiting Conway’s LawPublished on April 30, 2024 Conway’s Law is a powerful underlying philosophy that informs how modern software organisations organise. Any system you build is actually a mirror of the system you use to build it. Therefore, the corollary is that it’s possible to design an organisation that informs your target architecture. This learning should be table-stakes for any software development… Read More »People Silos: Revisiting Conway’s Law
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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.
Happy Sunday and Happy International Women's Day for yesterday. All socially or culturally significant milestones are accompanied by an excruciating number of tone-deaf, tokenistic LinkedIn engagement attempts and yesterday was certainly no exception. LinkedIn is a strange place indeed but it's my primary social engagement platform. Because I take what I think is fair to say an organisationally cynical but deeply humanistic view of life in tech, I find it fascinating to see the (lack of)...
We can all finally breathe a sigh of relief that January is behind us and February moves on apace. Our northern hemisphere days get longer, and before you know it, let's hope we'll be stretching out in the sunshine and enjoying the fruits of our winter's work. I'm making the most of the dark months by keeping my head down and writing. Amsterdam with Moon and Venus, January 2025 Human Software is now in development edit. What does that mean? As a self-published author, I'm working with an...
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...