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.

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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
An Elegant Puzzle by Will Larson
Managing Humans by Michael Lopp (aka "Rands")
Radical Candor by Kim Scott

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 me​

Published on September 17, 2024

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