Winning technical strategy for your teams and products

Winning

A talk by Alexandru Bolboaca@alexboly

alex.bolboaca@mozaicworks.com

Technical Strategy

I was once named architect...

but what was I supposed to do?

Technical Lead?

CTO?

Purpose of the Talk

● Useful technical leadership practices● A bit about how to learn them● A bit about how to apply them

As a technical lead...

You are responsible for keeping, protecting and growing your teams

Technical Leadership Practices

1. Align with Business

2.Assess the situation

3. Build a roadmap

4. Encourage learning

5. Set boundaries

6. Execute the roadmap

7. Create opportunities

+Influence Company Culture

I'm guilty for this talk!

Alexandru Bolboacă

Trainer, coach, polyglot programmer with international experiencealex.bolboaca@mozaicworks.com

@alexboly

1. Align with Business

● What does the business want the most in the next 6 months?– Improved customer happiness?– Improved productivity?– Expand to new lines of business?

● How can the technical practices help these objectives?

2. Assess the Situation

● '121 ' chats with everyone involved● Code, design, architecture review● Key Metrics eg. cyclomatic complexity, –

no. of bugs, files with most changes● Documentation review● Process review

=> weak and strong points

3. Build a Roadmap

Vision: Improve customer happiness

Objective: Customers to like the release 9/10 times

Goals

0 blocking / majorbugs per release

Underpromise, overdeliver

0 misunderstandingson features

Nice visual, interaction design

Practices

Demo 2 x week

Code review

Unit test critical areas

ATDD or BDD

Continuous improvement

Visual Management

First demo the design

Top-down dev.

How we'll learn

Coaching / MentoringWorkshop + coaching

DoingBook + Practice

Book + PracticeDoing

Better code design Workshop + coaching

4. Encourage learning

● Low investment + low speed:– Internal Communities of Practice– Encourage community participation– Book clubs

● Average investment + average speed:– Attend conferences– Workshops (see roadmap)

● High investment + high speed:– Coaching– Mentorship

5. Set Boundaries

Because of business need X we need to do / never do practice Y

Eg: because we need to demo flawlessly twice a week, we need high coverage for

automated tests and we don't estimate (unless explicitly requested)

6. Execute the Roadmap

● Change is part of the roadmap● Remember about change:

– Repeat the goals over and over again– Explain, explain and explain again why they're

important– Start with the most likely team(s) to succeed– Market successes, learn from failures– Get outside help

7. Create Opportunities

● Each developer should have a growth objective

● Have '121's every two weeks to review status and define next actions

Company Culture is Crucial!

● Culture = what you do every day● Eg, Mozaic Works:

– Trust, transparency, communication, autonomy, results-orientation

● Eg, Spotify:– High autonomy, high alignment, responsibility– http://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engin

eering-culture-part-1/ for details

You Influence Company Culture!

● What kind of personalities do you want in the team?– collaborative OR combative– help grow others OR eliminate them

● What are the team values?– eg. trust, transparency, communication,

autonomy, results

Technical Leadership Practices

1. Align with Business

2.Assess the situation

3. Build a roadmap

4. Encourage learning

5. Set boundaries

6. Execute the roadmap

7. Create opportunities

+Influence Company Culture

Your Questions?

“The important thing is not to stop questioning”

I'm guilty for this talk!

Alexandru Bolboaca

alex.bolboaca@mozaicworks.com

@alexboly

http://alexbolboaca.ro

Learn More

http://itakeunconf.com/Bucharest, 29-30 May 2014

AssessmentsWe provide assessments for technical and organizational purposes

I T.A.K.E. Unconference

Blogmozaicworks.com/category/blog

11

WorkshopsSOLID PrinciplesDesign PatternsUnit TestingTDD etc.

Agile Works Communitywhere we talk about various development practices

Photo Attribution

http://life.halcode.com/archives/2008/04/13/the-7-attributes-of-leadership/

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Cqdg1WeNuA8/TjZ8iloJEpI/AAAAAAAAAGY/bGX693pKEPU/s1600/super_architect.jpeg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Navy_110312-N-OA833-005_The_U.S._Naval_Academy_womens_basketball_team_hoists_the_Patriot_League_Tournament_championship_trophy_after_winning_the.jpg