Sunday, March 24, 2024

Best talks I have recommended on the blog

As some of you know, I maintain a database of the talks and podcasts I watch or listen to. I usually save a description, the topics discussed, and a rating. I often use this database to make recommendations or to search for ideas and content. This is the list of all the talks or podcasts that I have recommended, and I have assigned a rating of 5/5. There is a mix of talks in English and Spanish.

  • Engineering Your Organization: Services, Platforms, and Communities (Randy Shoup) [Company Culture, Engineering Culture, Inspirational, Management, Platform, Platform as a product, Technology Strategy] [Duration: 00:38] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Great summary about the different ways high-performing engineering organizations gain leverage by specialization and sharing.
  • Building and Scaling a High-Performance Culture (Randy Shoup) [Continuous Delivery, Devops, Engineering Culture, Inspirational] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) A great talk about culture for high-performance tech organizations. Good complement for Accelerate and based in his experience at ebay and google.
  • Improving Software Flow (Randy Shoup) [Agile, Continuous Delivery, Engineering Culture, Inspirational, Technical leadership] [Duration: 00:46] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Great presentation, in which Randy, starts from the 5 ideals of the Unicorn project (Locality and Simplicity, Focus, Flow, and Joy, Improvement of Daily Work, Psychological Safety, Customer Focus) to describe what we can do as technical leaders and as engineers to improve our ability to build and deliver software.
  • Improving Software Flow (Randy Shoup) [Devops, Flow, Inspirational, Lean, Lean Software Development, Technical leadership, leadership] [Duration: 00:50] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) In this session, Randy explains how they improve the overall flow and the engineering capacity following the ideas in the Unicorn Project (Locality and Simplicity, Focus, Flow, and Joy, Improvement of Daily Work, Psychological Safety, and Customer Focus). It is an excellent talk about generating/improving an engineering culture following lean principles.
  • Driving a Tech-led Reimagination of eBay Through DevOps (US 2021) (Randy Shoup, Mark Weinberg) [Devops, Technical leadership] [Duration: 00:33] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) A very interesting session about eBay's strategy to improve delivery performance. A great example of engineering leadership.
  • Ten (Hard-Won) Lessons of the DevOps Transition (Randy Shoup) [Devops, Engineering Culture, Inspirational] [Duration: 00:26] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This talk discusses the cultural change required to adopt a devops mentality. Excellent advice and warnings derived from Randy's experience leading teams at eBay, Google, and KIXEYE.
  • Attitude Determines Altitude- Engineering Yourself (Randy Shoup) [Engineering Career, Engineering Culture, Management] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)
  • Embracing Uncertainty (Dan North) [Engineering Culture, Inspirational] [Duration: 00:55] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Very interesting talk to be aware of our aversion to uncertainty. We usualy make bad decisions in order to avoid the feeling of uncertainty.
  • The Value of Flow 14 09 17 (Dan North) [Agile, Continuous Delivery, Flow, Lean Software Development] [Duration: 00:27] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Great explanation for flow efficiency for soft delivery
  • The Journey to Continuous Delivery (Dan North) [Agile, Continuous Delivery, Flow, Lean] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Modern agile and how to introduce it. (good ideas about, flow, value, and teams).
  • Beyond Developer (Dan North) [Agile, Company Culture, Engineering Culture, Inspirational] [Duration: 00:43] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) The modern developer needs to be constantly reinventing themselves, learning, and helping others to do the same. In this session, Dan explores some of the skills and characteristics of the modern developer, and suggests some ways you can grow them for yourself.
  • Beyond Features: rethinking agile software delivery (Dan North) [Agile, Inspirational, Lean, Lean Software Development] [Duration: 01:14] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Maybe we've been thinking about delivery all wrong. Maybe features aren’t the point after all. Maybe there are other kinds of work that we should recognise, schedule and track as first class citizens. Maybe this could take some of the uncertainty out of the delivery process, and give us back our sanity. Maybe.
  • Complexity is Outside the Code (Dan North, Jessica Kerr) [Agile, Engineering Culture, Inspirational, Technology Strategy] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Dan North and Jessica Kerr make a journey through complexity. At the other side we may find simplicity, or we may find the light at the end of the tunnel is just another oncoming ESB.
  • Microservices: Software that Fits in Your Head (Dan North) [Architecture patterns, Evolutionary Architecture] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) IMHO this is the more interesting talk I show this year. No spoilers :)   I agree one hundred per cent with the talk. Just show it.
  • Snow White and the 777.777.777 Dwarfs (Gojko Adzic) [Agile, Cloud, Inspirational, Product, Technology Strategy] [Duration: 00:45] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Great talks about how cloud is changing the risk profile of our application and the software quality practices.
  • Make Impacts Not Software (Gojko Adzic) [Lean Product Management, Lean Software Development, Product, Product Strategy] [Duration: 00:51] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) An essential talk to understand how to get the most impact with the least amount of software (and thereby reduce basal cost and time to market). Highly recommended.
  • Adaptive Planning Beyond User Stories (Gojko Adzic) [Lean Product Management, Lean Software Development, Product, Product Discovery] [Duration: 00:55] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Gojko gives a masterclass on how to focus on impacts, understand the need, and improve product decisions. Good ideas to postpone decisions, focus on behavioral changes, and be cautious with metrics. An essential talk for any product developer.
  • Maximum impact minimum effort (Gojko Adzic) [Agile, Engineering Culture, Inspirational, Product] [Duration: 00:47] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Another great talk about product.
  • Fast-track from Idea to Impact (Gojko Adzic) [Lean Product Management, Product] [Duration: 00:54] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Gojko presents very interesting examples of developments that have achieved very good impacts (by minifying the developed software). He also explains the use of the impact mapping technique, which is very useful for focusing on the impact.
  • Oredev 2011: Sleeping with the enemy (Gojko Adzic) [Engineering Culture, testing] [Duration: 00:52] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Gojko Adzic describes why independent testing should be a thing of the past. He explains how testers engaging with developers and business users create opportunities to accomplish things they cannot do otherwise.
  • Continuous Delivery Sounds Great But It Won’t Work Here (Jez Humble) [Continuous Delivery] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) A new version of a classic one. A great talk.
  • DOES17 London - The Key to High Performance What the Data Says (Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, Nigel Kersten) [Devops, Engineering Culture, Engineering productivity, Inspirational] [Duration: 00:31] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)
  • Continuous Delivery (Jez Humble) [Agile, Continuous Delivery, Engineering Culture, Lean Software Development] [Duration: 00:47] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Great 2012 presentation on Continuous Delivery. Jez discusses the value of CD to the business. He presents the principles and related practices, including value stream mapping, deployment pipelines, acceptance test-driven development, zero-downtime releases, etc. This talk is a while old, but still as relevant as the first day.
  • What Will The Next 10 Years Of Continuous Delivery Look Like? (Jez Humble, Dave Farley) [Agile, Architecture, Continuous Delivery, Devops, Engineering Culture, Inspirational, Scalability, Technical Practices, Technology Strategy] [Duration: 00:49] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) A must. Essential for understanding high performance teams and modern agile development.
  • Industry Keynote: The DevOps Transformation (Jez Humble) [Agile, Continuous Delivery, Devops, Engineering Culture, leadership] [Duration: 00:48] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) In this talk Jez will describe how to implement devops principles and practices, how to overcome typical obstacles, and the outcomes DevOps enables. A must-see talk.
  • Continuous Delivery - Sounds Great But It Won't Work Here (Jez Humble) [Continuous Delivery, Engineering Culture] [Duration: 00:49] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Since the Continuous Delivery book came out in 2010, it’s gone from being a controversial idea to a commonplace… until you consider that many people who say they are doing it aren’t really, and there are still plenty of places that consider it crazy talk. In this session Jez will present some of the highlights and lowlights of the past six years listening to people explain why continuous delivery won’t work, and what he learned in the process.
  • CONSTANT Changes To User Requirements Drive Me CRAZY (Dave Farley) [Agile, Continuous Delivery, Inspirational, Lean Product Management, Lean Software Development] [Duration: 00:13] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This presentation by Dave Farley shows that software development is not just about translating perfect requirements into code, but rather a process of discovery and exploration. It acknowledges that the nature of the problems being solved has changed and that it is impossible to have all the answers. It emphasizes that successful software products must be able to adapt and evolve over time, and that the key to success is embracing change and making it easy, safe, and low-cost.
  • You Must Be CRAZY To Do Pair Programming (Dave Farley) [Agile, Technical Practices, XP] [Duration: 00:24] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) One of the best descriptions I have heard of the usefulness of this practice. Dave provides pair programming examples, describes some pair programming best practices, and challenges some thinking about pair programming patterns and anti-patterns.
  • Continuous Integration vs Feature Branch Workflow (Dave Farley) [Agile, Continuous Delivery, Technical Practices, XP] [Duration: 00:17] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Essential 5-minute video. In this video Dave Farley explains the difference and why the two are largely mutually exclusive, and then explains how to live in the CI world by describing three different approaches to keeping the software working as it evolves.
  • Avoid These Common Mistakes Junior Developers Make (Dave Farley) [Engineering Career, Inspirational, Software Design] [Duration: 00:18] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) A must-see talk. Dave Farley describes 8 common mistakes that junior developers often make and offers his advice on how to avoid them. Whatever your approach to software engineering and software development, whether you are practicing Continuous Delivery, DevOps, or something else, we think that you may find some helpful ideas in this video.
  • GeePaw Hill on Incremental Software Delivery (GeePaw Hill) [Small Safe Steps (3s), Software Design, XP] [Duration: 01:18] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Pure wisdom on why working in small, safe steps is the most efficient way to work in software product development when we have environments of high uncertainty (which is almost always).
  • GeePaw Hill "More Smaller Steps" (GeePaw Hill) [Agile, Lean Software Development, Small Safe Steps (3s), XP] [Duration: 01:20] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) A great talk for anyone trying to do lean/agile software development. Explain why we need to give small safe steps (3s). Very interesting Q&A session at the end.
  • Want More Value Faster? Take Many More Much Smaller Steps (GeePaw Hill) [Agile, Lean Software Development, Technical Practices, XP, tdd] [Duration: 00:55] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) A must-talk for anyone trying to do lean/agile software development. The talk delves into the reasons why the strategy of using small, safe steps is the right one to steadily evolve a software system. I am very much aligned with this approach to software development.
  • Many More Much Smaller Steps with GeePaw Hill (GeePaw Hill, Chris Lucian, Austin Chadwick) [Evolutionary Design, Lean Software Development, Software Design, Technical Practices, XP] [Duration: 00:39] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Good conversation about GeePaw Hill's software development approach based on taking continuous small safe steps (Many More Much Smaller Steps).
  • Shared Mental Models Part 1 (Jessica Kerr) [Engineering Culture, Inspirational, Mental models] [Duration: 00:33] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This was an excellent talk, full of insights that prompted reflection. In this talk Jessica looks at how the shared mental models created while mob programming work throughout the team even when they are not actively mobbing. She also explores the other practices she’s found complementary in creating a high functioning team and how looking at your contribution from a generative (helping other create) vs a productive (what I created, myself) frame can lead to a happier, better and more productive team.
  • Systems Thinking for Developers (Jessica Kerr) [Inspirational, Mental models] [Duration: 00:55] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Great explanation of how system thinking arises and its basic concepts. System thinking is a fundamental tool to work with/in complex systems such as software systems.
  • KEYNOTE Designing change (Jessica Kerr, Avdi Grimm) [Agile, Architecture, Evolutionary Design, Inspirational, Software Design] [Duration: 00:48] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) The journey of a software developer is a climb through abstraction: algorithms, patterns, architecture.... How do we keep expanding scope, without losing focus on the real work? Join us for a journey into the fourth dimension, where we don't just change code; we design change.
  • Yes, I Test in Production (And So Do You) (Charity Majors) [Testing in production, testing] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) A great talk about the need for testing in production and the approach we can use.
  • What got you here won't get you there: How your team can become a high-performing team by embracing observability (Charity Majors) [Engineering Culture, Observability, Operations] [Duration: 01:55] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) A ton of useful insights and ideas in this excellent Charity presentation. Great description of observability and its need in modern systems.
  • The Sociotechnical Path to High-Performing Teams (Charity Majors) [Continuous Delivery, Devops, Engineering Culture, Teams, team topologies] [Duration: 00:41] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This talk describe the social and technical strategies that great teams all of the world are using to be happier, more productive and make their users happy too.
  • A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer to Technical Decision-Making (Charity Majors) [Engineering Culture, Technical leadership] [Duration: 00:41] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Fun and interesting talk about the context and process for making technical decisions. Very good ideas. The talk is a few years old, but the ideas are still very valid. Charity talks about how to decide to introduce new technologies, the cost of maintaining them, the importance of migrations, failure modes, etc.
  • The Marty Cagan special - ProductTank #27 Singapore (Marty Cagan) [Product, Product Discovery] [Duration: 01:28] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) An open discussion on Modern Product Management. The talk contains a lot of interesting discussions during the Q&A. I think it covers all the underpinnings of modern product management.
  • Master Class with Marty Cagan (Marty Cagan) [Inspirational, Product, Product Discovery, Product Leadership, Product Team, leadership] [Duration: 01:21] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) A great presentation on skilled product teams and leading product organizations. The questions at the end are also very interesting.
  • Minimum Viable Product for Platforms (Marty Cagan) [Platform, Platform as a product, Product] [Duration: 01:02] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)
  • Digital Transformation (Adrian Cockcroft) [Cloud, Engineering Culture, Scalability, Technology Strategy] [Duration: 00:14] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)
  • Velocity and Volume or Speed Wins (Adrian Cockcroft) [Architecture, Cloud, Continuous Delivery, Devops, Engineering Culture, Scalability] [Duration: 00:36] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) A classic talk to understand how to leverage the cloud, continuous delivery and devops to create modern web-scale systems.
  • Speeding Up Innovation (Adrian Cockcroft) [Architecture, Cloud, Devops, Inspirational, Technology Strategy] [Duration: 00:42] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Interesting talk about how to use the cloud and how it enables innovation.
  • Hibernate should be to programmers what cake mixes are to bakers: beneath their dignity. (Christin Gorman) [Engineering Culture, Inspirational] [Duration: 00:08] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Great lightning talk, provocative and inspiring.
  • What makes a good developer (Christin Gorman) [Engineering Career, Inspirational] [Duration: 00:11] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Inspiring lightning talk about the importance of humanities, empathy for users and information management as the basis of our profession (beyond pure technology and knowledge about logic or mathematics).
  • From initial request to software in production in 3 weeks (Christin Gorman) [Inspirational, Lean Software Development] [Duration: 00:22] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential. Great talk on how to focus on the essentials and make simple solutions.
  • The resource utilization trap (Henrik Kniberg) [Flow, Lean, WIP] [Duration: 00:05] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Henrik Kniberg explains the resource utilization trap, how it impacts our ability to deliver and what we can do about it.
  • Multiple WIP vs One Piece Flow Example (Henrik Kniberg) [Flow, Lean, WIP] [Duration: 00:07] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Brilliant explanation of the concept of WIP and how limiting it improves delivery flow.
  • AgileByExample 2016: Henrik Kniberg - Keynote - Focus (or Stop Starting, Start Finishing) (Henrik Kniberg) [Agile, Inspirational] [Duration: 00:43] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) As usualy Henrik deliver a great talk that inspired me a lot.
  • Code for Ukraine #2: Tidy First? Daily Empirical Software Design & Why It Works (Kent Beck) [Software Design, XP] [Duration: 00:58] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Interesting presentation about software design and trade-offs and techniques to refactor the code before applying a change. The talk is full of interesting insights. It is also very interesting the Q&A part that is not only focused on the content of the talk.
  • Big Transitions in Small Steps (Kent Beck) [Agile, Software Design, Technical Practices] [Duration: 00:59] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Very deep ideas about how to make any kind of huge technical change using small and incremental changes. This part of the core of agile... Vertical slicing to make changes in small (low risk) steps.
  • Tidy First? (Kent Beck) [Agile, Evolutionary Design, Software Design, Technical Practices, XP] [Duration: 00:15] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Great talk about the human relationships generated during software development. Kent explains these relations and uses them to analyze the development flow, the need for small safe steps, and the tension generated between the people involved. For me, this talk is a must.
  • "Simple Made Easy" (12-minute redux) by Rich Hickey (2011) (Rich Hickey) [Architecture, Inspirational, Scalability, Software Design] [Duration: 00:12] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This is a 12-minute redux of the 1-hour talk by Rich Hickey, for really impatient people. Original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxdOUGdseq4
  • Simple Made Easy (Rich Hickey) [Architecture, Architecture patterns, Functional, Inspirational, Scalability, Software Design] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) 2011\. Great talk and a good excuse to study functional programming.
  • Six Decades of Software Engineering (Mary Poppendieck) [Agile, Devops, Engineering Culture, Lean Software Development] [Duration: 01:23] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Great talk with the evolution of our field from a lean perspective. Great insights about the engineering role, agile, the current painful division between business and development, how we can think about complex systems, the failure of having proxy roles as the product owner, etc... Great talk, lot of computer and development history, and great Q&A session. Slides:
  • Competing On The Basis Of Speed (Mary Poppendieck) [Engineering Culture, Lean Product Management, Lean Software Development] [Duration: 01:00] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Optimizing for speed, flow, and waste reduction. Lean Software Development
  • Integrated Tests Are A Scam (J.B. Rainsberger) [Technical Practices, testing] [Duration: 01:04] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Integrated tests are a scam. You’re probably writing 2-5% of the integrated tests you need to test thoroughly. You’re probably duplicating unit tests all over the place. Your integrated tests probably duplicate each other all over the place. When an integrated test fails, who knows what’s broken? Integrated tests probably do you more harm than good. Learn the two-pronged attack that solves the problem: collaboration tests and contract tests.
  • 7 minutes, 26 seconds, and the Fundamental Theorem of Agile Software Development (J.B. Rainsberger) [Agile, Software Design, XP] [Duration: 00:07] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Short excellent talk (7:26') that distilled the essence of software development and agile development. Essential. A must.
  • Product Tank Madrid: Focus on Impact with John Cutler - World Product Day 2020 (John Cutler) [Product] [Duration: 01:05] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Excellent talk. John presents all the learnings he had during the last three years, using his great article as a starting point (). Lots of knowledge and tips to introduce product thinking.
  • Creating Value and Flow in Product Development (John Cutler) [Agile, Engineering Culture, Lean, Lean Software Development, Product, Teams] [Duration: 00:07] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) John Cutler, Product Evangelist at Amplitude explains why most of a product developers time is spent waiting and how limiting work in progress, the scope of work and handoffs can increase flow and value.
  • Full Cycle Developers at Netflix (Greg Burrell) [Architecture, Devops, Operations] [Duration: 00:48] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This talk presents Netflix' journey from siloed teams to our Full Cycle Developer model for building and operating our services at Netflix. Greg discusses the various approaches they’ve tried, the motivations that pushed them to keep evolving, and the lessons learned along the way.
  • Full Cycle Developers @Netflix (Greg Burrell) [Architecture, Devops, Engineering Culture, Management, Operations] [Duration: 00:50] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Greg Burrell presents Netflix’s journey from siloed teams to their Full Cycle Developer model for building and operating their services at Netflix. He discusses the various approaches they’ve tried, the motivations that pushed them to keep evolving, and the lessons learned along the way.
  • Testing and Refactoring Legacy Code (Sandro Mancuso) [Evolutionary Design, Refactoring, Technical Practices, XP] [Duration: 01:29] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) In this live coding session, Sandro will present many techniques that will help you to efficiently retrofit tests to legacy code and then refactor it to show the business logic more clearly.
  • A Case for Outside-In Design (Sandro Mancuso) [Architecture, DDD, OOP, Product] [Duration: 00:51] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) another version  (NEWCRAFTS Conferences Paris). A very interesting for any developer, product manager o business person. Technics to understand the whole picture for a system and help to define the design from the outside. A good approach for domain modeling.
  • Keynote: 8 Lines of Code (Greg Young) [Design, Inspirational] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Interesting talk to understand some concepts about simplicity and hiden accidental complexity.
  • The art of destroying software (Greg Young) [Evolutionary Architecture, Evolutionary Design, Inspirational] [Duration: 00:42] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Some good points about the easy evolution of a system when the services are small enough to be understandables and to be rewritten without fear.
  • Rails Conf 2013 The Magic Tricks of Testing (Sandi Metz) [Agile, Technical Practices, XP, testing] [Duration: 00:32] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This talk strips away the veil and offers simple, practical guidelines for choosing what to test and how to test it. Finding the right testing balance isn't magic, it's a magic trick; come and learn the secret of writing stable tests that protect your application at the lowest possible cost.
  • Less - The Path to Better Design (Sandi Metz) [OOP, Software Design] [Duration: 00:50] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This talk strips away the well-known design principles and exposes the hidden, underlying goals of design. It reveals programming techniques that allow you to write less code while creating beautiful, flexible applications.
  • Keynote: Creating a Holistic Developer Experience (Jasmine James) [Developer Productivity, Devex] [Duration: 00:15] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Great talk to understand what is development experience.
  • DOES14 On the Care and Feeding of Feedback Cycles (Elisabeth Hendrickson) [Continuous Delivery, Devops, Feedback cycles, Inspirational, Quality] [Duration: 00:31] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This talk examines the many forms of feedback, the questions each can answer, and the risks each can mitigate. Agile practices involve testing early and often. However feedback comes in many forms, only some of which are traditionally considered testing. Continuous integration, acceptance testing with users, even cohort analysis to validate business hypotheses are all examples of feedback cycles.
  • AWS re:Invent 2019: Data modeling with Amazon DynamoDB (CMY304) (Alex DeBrie) [Architecture, Scalability, Serverless, Software Design, Technical Practices, Technology] [Duration: 00:39] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Modeling your data in the DynamoDB database structure requires a different approach from modeling in traditional relational databases. Alex DeBrie has written a number of applications using DynamoDB and is the creator of DynamoDBGuide.com, a free resource for learning DynamoDB
  • Product minded software crafter (Cansu Karayel, Gemma Cortel) [Lean Product Management, Lean Software Development, Small Safe Steps (3s)] [Duration: 00:38] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Ejemplo real de como un equipo de desarrollo de producto en el que todo el mundo entiende el software como un medio puede tener un gran impacto.
  • Boundaries (Gary Bernhardt) [Architecture, Architecture patterns, Evolutionary Design, Software Design] [Duration: 00:30] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) An exploration of the boundaries between pieces of code, including: isolated testing, behavior vs. data, mutation vs. immutability, how data shape affords parallelism, transforming interface dependencies into data dependencies, and what a system optimizing each of these for natural isolation might look like.
  • LISA17 - Scalability Is Quantifiable: The Universal Scalability Law (Baron Schwartz) [Architecture, Performance, Scalability] [Duration: 00:29] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Do you know what scalability really is? It's a mathematical function that's simple, precise, and useful. REALLY useful. It describes the relationship between system performance and load. In this talk you'll learn the function (the Universal Scalability Law), how it describes and predicts system behavior you see every day, and how to use it in practice. I'll show you how to understand the function, how to capture the data you need to measure your own system's behavior (you probably already have that), and how to analyze the data with the USL. You'll leave this talk knowing exactly what scalability is and what causes non-linear scaling. There are two factors, and you'll start seeing those everywhere, too. As a result, when systems don't scale you'll know what kind of problem to look for, and you'll avoid building bottlenecks into your systems in the first place. Final note: this talk requires zero mathematical skill.
  • Sufficiently Advanced Monitoring is Indistinguishable from Testing (Ed Keyes) [Technical Practices, Testing in production, testing] [Duration: 00:05] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Interesting ideas about testing in production.
  • Technical leadership and glue work (Tanya Reilly) [Engineering Career, Engineering Culture, Inspirational, Management] [Duration: 00:28] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Let's talk about how to allocate glue work deliberately, frame it usefully and make sure that everyone is choosing a career path they actually want to be on.
  • Continuous Delivery and the Theory of Constraints (Steve Smith) [Architecture, Continuous Delivery, Engineering Culture, Technical Practices] [Duration: 00:44] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) In this talk, Steve Smith will explain how easy it is for a Continuous Delivery programme to be unsuccessful, how the Theory Of Constraints works, how to apply the Five Focussing Steps to Continuous Delivery, and how to home in on the constrained activities that are your keys to success. It includes tales of glorious failures and ignominious successes when adopting Continuous Delivery.
  • Debt Metaphor (Ward Cunningham) [Inspirational, Technical Practices, Technology Strategy, XP] [Duration: 00:05] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Ward Cunningham reflects on the history, motivation and common misunderstanding of the "debt metaphor" as motivation for refactoring.
  • YOW! 2019 Evolutionary Design Animated (James Shore) [Agile, Engineering Culture, Evolutionary Design, Software Design, XP] [Duration: 00:48] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Modern software development welcomes changing requirements, even late in the process, but how can we write our software so that those changes don’t create a mess? Evolutionary design is the key. It’s a technique that emerges from Extreme Programming, the method that brought us test-driven development, merciless refactoring, and continuous integration. James Shore first encountered Extreme Programming and evolutionary design nearly 20 years ago. Initially skeptical, he’s explored its boundaries ever since. In this session, James will share what he’s learned through in-depth animations of real software projects. You’ll see how designs evolve over time and you’ll learn how and when to use evolutionary design for your own projects.
  • Architecture for Flow with Wardley Mapping, DDD, and Team Topologies (Susanne Kaiser) [DDD, Engineering Culture, Technology Strategy, Wardley maps, team topologies] [Duration: 00:43] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This talk illustrates the concepts, connects the dots between DDD, Wardley mapping and team topologies, and demonstrates how these techniques help to evolve a fictitious legacy system for a fast flow of change.
  • Second Generation Lean Product Development Flow (Donald Reinertsen) [Lean, Lean Product Management, Mental models, Product, Product Strategy] [Duration: 01:27] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) An introduction to Lean Product Development Flow given by Don Reinertsen at Adventures with Agile in London. This talk is a must to understand modern product development (Flow, uncertainty, Little's law, cost of delay, the value of feedback, queues, batch size, etc).
  • The subtle difference between a constraint and a bottleneck (Theory of Constraints) (Chris Hohmann) [Lean, TOC] [Duration: 00:03] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Excellent 3-minute video explains the subtle difference between a constraint and a bottleneck in the Theory of Constraints (and, therefore, where to put the focus.)
  • Escaping the Build Trap (Melissa Perri) [Product, Product Discovery, Product Strategy] [Duration: 00:26] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Mind the Product San Francisco 2017. A classic one to escape from the feature factory mindset.
  • From Kubernetes to PaaS to ... Err, What's Next? (Daniel Bryant) [Developer Productivity, Devex, Platform, Platform as a product] [Duration: 00:31] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) In this talk Daniel reviews his experience in building platforms, both as an end user and now as part of an organization that helps our clients do the same. She discusses topics such as DevEx, UX, workflows, available tools, etc.
  • Reboot Your Team (Christina Wodtke) [Engineering Culture, Product, Product Team, Teams] [Duration: 00:32] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Christina told us how to reboot the team you have, or build a healthy one from the ground up.
  • Fail Better: Radical Ideas from the Practice of Cloud Computing (Tom Limoncelli) [Architecture, Cloud, Devops, Operations, Technical Practices] [Duration: 01:04] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)
  • Artificial Intelligence seen from the software development lifecycle perspective (Nerea Luis) [AI, MLOps] [Duration: 00:54] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Great introduction to the differences between traditional software development and the development cycle with AI models. Nerea introduces concepts such as Continuous training, model deployment, MLOps, and collaboration between data scientists and software engineers. Highly recommended for software engineers looking to delve into these topics and collaborate more closely on AI-based feature development.
  • Reliable Messaging Without Distributed Transactions (Udi Dahan) [Architecture patterns, Software Design] [Duration: 00:16] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Particular CEO, Udi Dahan, describes how you can still do reliable messaging without using distributed transactions
  • Aprender a distinguir el problema de las soluciones (Carlos Ble) [Agile, Engineering Culture, Lean Product Management, Lean Software Development, Product] [Duration: 00:41] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) En esta sesión Carlos se centra en cómo saber separar el "Qué" del "Cómo" para ser eficaces y económicos resolviendo problemas, sin que la calidad de las soluciones se vea afectada. Una muy buena charla para cualquiera que se interese por el desarrollo de software lean (agile real).
  • Monolith Decomposition Patterns (Sam Newman) [Architecture patterns, DDD, Microservices] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Sam Newman shares some key principles and a number of patterns to use to incrementally decompose an existing system into microservices. He covers patterns that can work to migrate functionality out of systems hard to change, and looks at the use of strangler patterns, change data capture, database decomposition and more.
  • TDD, where did it all go wrong (Ian Cooper) [Technical Practices, tdd, testing] [Duration: 01:01] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Essential talk about how to do TDD in an efficient way and getting a battery of tests that support continuous refactoring. It fundamentally changed my approach to TDD. I highly recommend it.
  • Enterprise Architecture = Architecting the Enterprise? (Gregor Hohpe) [Architecture, Architecture patterns, Engineering Culture] [Duration: 01:01] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This session takes a serious but light-hearted look at the role of enterprise architects in modern IT organizations.
  • JavaZone 2019, Room 5 - Survival Tips For Women in Tech (Patricia Aas) [Culture, Inspirational] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Essential talk especially to open our eyes to privileged people like me (white male in tech).
  • Foundations of Modern Product Organizations (Gerard Chiva) [Company Culture, Lean Product Management, Product, leadership] [Duration: 00:41] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This talk explains the keys to the success of digital product organizations. Technology is an essential part of any business today, not just a cost center.
  • Simplifying The Inventory Management Systems at the World’s Largest Retailer Using Functional Programming Principles (Scott Havens, Gene Kim) [Architecture, Architecture patterns, Functional, Technical leadership, Technology Strategy] [Duration: 02:02] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Havens shares his views on what makes great architecture great. He details what happened when an API call required 23 other synchronous procedures calls to return a correct answer. He discusses the challenges of managing inventory at Walmart, how one implements event sourcing patterns on that scale, and the functional programming principles that it depends upon. Lastly, he talks about how much category theory you need to know to do functional programming and considerations when creating code in complex systems. It is recommended to first watch the talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5S3hScE6dU or listen to the podcast https://itrevolution.com/the-idealcast-episode-22/
  • CDD (Desarrollo dirigido por consenso) (Xavi Gost) [Agile, Engineering Culture, Lean Software Development] [Duration: 00:58] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) En esta charla, Xavi introduce el concepto de 'Desarrollo Dirigido por Consenso' junto con el 'Sistema de Concerns'. Esta metodología resulta ser una práctica sumamente efectiva para optimizar el flujo de trabajo en equipos, manteniendo al mismo tiempo bajo control la deuda técnica y abordando eficientemente los menores problemas de diseño identificados por el equipo. Tras observar la implementación de esta metodología en varios equipos, puedo afirmar que su utilidad es significativa.
  • The puzzle of motivation (Dan Pink) [Inspirational, Management] [Duration: 00:18] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think.
  • Building DevX Teams, my story (Cirpo Cinelli) [Developer Productivity, Devex, Teams] [Duration: 00:42] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) In this presentation, Cirpo talks about his past 4 years of experience setting up a DevX team from scratch, the main challenges, the pain, the gain, and the lessons learned.
  • Muda, Mura, Muri: mitos y prácticas aplicando Lean Software Development (Abraham Vallez) [Agile, Lean Software Development, XP] [Duration: 00:55] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Excelente charla que se fundamenta en experiencias prácticas acerca de cómo colaborar eficazmente en equipo, siguiendo los principios del desarrollo de software Lean y de Programación Extrema (XP). Constituye un recurso valioso para recomendar o compartir con equipos que buscan optimizar sus metodologías de trabajo.
  • Platforms at Twilio: Unlocking Developer Effectiveness (Justin Kitigawa) [Developer Productivity, Devex, Devops, Platform, Platform as a product] [Duration: 00:50] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Learn how Twilio’s internal Platform has evolved to reduce their engineers' cognitive load by providing a unified self-service, declarative platform to build, deliver, and run the thousands of global microservices that make up Twilio.
  • Stop Writing Dead Programs (Jack Rusher) [Inspirational] [Duration: 00:43] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This talk argues that it would be better to focus on building new live programming environments that can help us solve the problems of the future.
  • Queueing Theory in Practice: Performance Modeling for the Working Engineer (Eben Freeman) [Architecture, Performance, Scalability, Software Design] [Duration: 00:45] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Cloud! Autoscaling! Kubernetes! Etc! In theory, it's easier than ever to scale a service based on variable demand. In practice, it's still hard to take observed metrics, and translate them into quantitative predictions about what will happen to service performance as load changes. Resource limits are often chosen by guesstimation, and teams are likely to find themselves reacting to slowdowns and bottlenecks, rather than anticipating them. Queueing theory can help, by treating large-scale software systems as mathematical models that you can rigorously reason about. But it's not necessarily easy to translate between real-world systems and textbook models. This talk will cover practical techniques for turning operational data into actionable predictions. We'll show how to use the Universal Scalability Law to develop a model of system performance, and how to leverage that model to make more informed capacity planning and architectural decisions. We'll discuss what data to gather in production to better inform its predictions -- for example, why it's important to capture the shape of a latency distribution, and not just a few percentiles. We'll also talk about some of the limitations and pitfalls of performance modelling.
  • Simon Sinek Performance vs Trust (Simon Sinek) [Company Culture, Culture, Inspirational] [Duration: 00:02] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Great description of the impact of trust on team members and leaders.
  • GOTO 2020 • Modern Continuous Delivery (Ken Mugrage) [Continuous Delivery, Engineering Culture] [Duration: 00:19] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Great description of a Continuous Delivery process.
  • The Art of Simplicity by Venkat Subramaniam (Venkat Subramaniam) [Software Design, simplicity] [Duration: 00:54] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) vJUG KeyNote. A great complementary talk to my talk Simplicidad para desarrolladores (Spanish)
  • SLO TheoryWhy the Business needs SLOs (Danyel Fisher, Nathen Harvey) [Observability, Operations, Technical Practices] [Duration: 00:38] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Great explanation about SLI, SLOs, error budgets and how to introduce them to improve our production operations.
  • Inside-Out TDDDD (Amitai Schleier) [Inspirational, Technical Practices, XP, testing] [Duration: 01:00] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Talk about joy and humanity in software development. The talk was primarily concerned with the effects of software craft on our emotional states and working relationships. Along the way, Amitai touched on Theory of Constraints, stable and unstable equilibria in work environments, a significant and deliberate omission from Scrum, my take on “legacy code”, applied empathy (never mentioned explicitly, merely woven in), and what agility looks and feels like when you’ve got it.
  • Nordstrom Innovation Lab (nordstrominnovationlab) [Inspirational, Lean Product Management, Product, Product Discovery] [Duration: 00:06] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) During this episode, Mik and Manuel discuss some of the key issues in Team Topologies with great insights into different types of collaboration, treating platforms as products, and how to improve team flow by aligning teams with value streams. This was a very interesting episode.
  • The Limited Red Society (Joshua Kerievsky) [Agile, Continuous Delivery, Technical Practices, XP] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Joshua Kerievsky discusses the need to reduce “red” periods of time while developing software. One is in the red when he spends too much time designing, or having compilation errors or the tests do not pass. Kerievsky demonstrates a method (Parallel Change) of reducing the red while refactoring code, and discusses another approach called Narrowed Change, and answers refactoring related questions.
  • Connectsai 2020: Cómo entregar más por menos - Marta Manso (Marta Manso) [Lean Product Management, Product, Product Discovery, Product Engineer] [Duration: 00:57] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Inspiradora charla de Marta sobre como trabajar en un equipo enfocado a dessarrollo de producto y que entiende la tecnologia como un medio. Gran cantidad de ideas y detalles interesantes.
  • Tips For Technical Startup Founders | Startup School (Diana Hu) [Inspirational, Lean Software Development, Lean Startup, startup] [Duration: 00:28] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Diana Hu shares her advice for being a technical founder at the earliest stages - including topics like how to ship an MVP fast, how to deal with technology choices and technical debt, and how and when to hire an engineering team.
  • GOTO 2020 • Talking With Tech Leads (Patrick Kua) [Engineering Culture, Technical leadership, leadership] [Duration: 00:35] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Practical tips to be a successful Tech Lead. Very interesting for anyone interested in a leadership role for an engineering team.
  • Production - Designing for Testability (Michael Bryzek) [Continuous Delivery, Devops, Engineering Culture, Testing in production, testing] [Duration: 00:50] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Michael Bryzek explores what it’s like to build quality software with no development, QA, or staging environments. He includes a deep dive into “verification in production” and what it really takes to build software that can safely be tested continuously in production.
  • Stop starting and start finishing (Jason Yip) [Flow, Lean, TOC, WIP] [Duration: 00:05] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Great explanation about Lean concepts (Limit WIP, class of services, Root cause analysis...)
  • The Efficiency Paradox (Niklas Modig) [Agile, Company Culture, Flow, Inspirational, Lean, Lean Software Development] [Duration: 00:18] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) The best explanation I know about resource efficiency vs flow efficiency, the base of Lean.
  • GOTO 2020 • Advanced Feature Flagging: It's All About The Data (Dave Karow) [Continuous Delivery, Engineering Culture, Product, Product Discovery] [Duration: 00:16] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) A great talk on one of the fundamental techniques for making product discovery and continuous release. Excellent information about how to use them, define experiments, and interpret results.
  • Product Strategy is About Saying No (Des Traynor) [Product] [Duration: 00:07] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Why Product strategy is mostly about saying no. Funny, short, thought-provoking and actionable. Imprescindible.
  • AWS re:Invent 2018: Close Loops & Opening Minds: How to Take Control of Systems, Big & Small ARC337 (Colm MacCárthaigh) [Architecture patterns, Platform, Product, Scalability, Software Design] [Duration: 00:58] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Whether it’s distributing configurations and customer settings, launching instances, or responding to surges in load, having a great control plane is key to the success of any system or service. Come hear about the techniques we use to build stable and scalable control planes at Amazon. We dive deep into the designs that power the most reliable systems at AWS. We share hard-earned operational lessons and explain academic control theory in easy-to-apply patterns and principles that are immediately useful in your own designs. A must to learn how to design Control Panels.
  • Operations: The Last Mile (Damon Edwards) [Devops, Engineering Culture, Inspirational, Operations] [Duration: 00:30] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This talk is not only very funny, it is also a great description of the problems generated by a "classic" operations mindset and how to change to a modern approach / devops.
  • Tips & tricks para llegar a ser un equipo de alto rendimiento (Iván Badia) [Agile, Engineering Culture, Lean Software Development] [Duration: 00:53] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Iván da las claves para tener una cultura de ingenieria sana en el que los equipos tienen una aproximación lean y con buenas prácticas para el desarrollo de producto. Muy alineado con las ideas descritas en la charlas.
  • Reduce Alerting Noise with One Weird Trick (Liz Fong-Jones) [Observability, Technical Practices] [Duration: 00:10] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) A great and concise description of SLI/SLOs and how to use them to improve our lives.
  • The Technical Debt Trap (Doc Norton) [Engineering Culture, Technical Practices] [Duration: 00:53] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) What is technical debt? What is not technical debt? Why should we care? What is the cost of misunderstanding? What do we do about it? Doc discusses the origins of the metaphor, what it means today, and how we properly identify and manage technical debt.
  • Product Management for Continuous Delivery (Elizabeth Ayer) [Continuous Delivery, Lean Product Management, Product] [Duration: 00:40] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This presentation explains how Continuous Delivery is very beneficial for excellent product management and growing a customer-focus team. CD enables closing the loop for each product increment, getting feedback, making decisions, and punting the focus on the impact generated (and not creating more and more features).
  • Agile as if you meant it (Maaret Pyhäjärvi) [Agile, Lean Product Management, Product, Product Strategy, Teams] [Duration: 00:55] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) A good example of what Modern Agile looks like. Customer-focused team, with direct contact with the customer and without a proxy. Very interesting. It reminds me a lot of the way I used to work at [@AleaSolucionesS](https://twitter.com/AleaSolucionesS) and at TheMotion ([@HoneyBadgersDev](https://twitter.com/HoneyBadgersDev)).
I hope you find these recommendations helpful.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Disfrutando y aprendiendo en el SOSZ24

Este fin de semana he asistido un año más al Startup Open Space Zaragoza. Como siempre que voy, he vuelto con las pilas cargadas, con muchas ideas y con una genial sensación de haber compartido el fin de semana con una gran comunidad. Es imposible transmitir cómo es un Open Space de este nivel si no has asistido a uno. Solo puedo decir que el Open Space es el formato que más me gusta y que el SOSZ es, de largo, de lo mejor que tenemos para cualquier persona interesada en el mundo de las startups, los productos digitales y la tecnología.

Dado que el formato es Open Space, la agenda se va construyendo en el momento por los asistentes. Aunque se propusieron muchas sesiones, no pude asistir a todas las que me hubiera gustado. Aún así, aquí tienes un resumen de las sesiones a las que asistí:


  • "Cómo mantener motivado a un equipo en tiempos revueltos". Se generó un debate interesante sobre el tema. Se trataron cosas como la infantilización del sector, la evolución de los últimos años en el sector, la importancia de la comunicación y la transparencia en tiempos revueltos.
  • "Modelos salariales / ¿cómo va lo de la pasta en las self-orgs?". Me gustó ver que, aunque no es muy común en España, hay empresas que están experimentando con modelos salariales diferentes. También se habló de cómo estructurar la compensación en empresas algo más clásicas y que están creciendo, por lo que se están planteando cambiar su modelo salarial. Se habló de cómo dividir la compensación entre salario base, variable y bono. Me resultó muy interesante, aunque mi tendencia es intentar siempre evitar los bonos, sobre todo si son individuales. Pero entiendo que es una práctica muy común.
  • "Hacer producto sin código". De esta sesión me quedo con cómo han orientado en codely.tv el desarrollo de las partes no core mediante el uso de plataformas no/low-code integradas con servicios SaaS. Me interesó en especial la aproximación que tienen al testing para estos casos, puesto que este tipo de plataformas no suelen favorecer el testing adecuado. Me he apuntado para probar la solución que están usando ellos, puesto que yo uso otra distinta y la verdad es que tengo el testing muy olvidado en esa parte :)
  • "Back from the Cloud". Este debate fue interesante porque pudimos ver cómo se ha ido evolucionando en el uso de la nube y cómo, en algunos casos, algunas empresas están empezando a plantearse salir de la nube por coste, de la misma forma que subieron a ella por el mismo motivo. Al final, como siempre, se trata de contexto y de entender las herramientas que tenemos a nuestra disposición. Me gustó ver que, al menos en esta conferencia, la gente que usaba la nube tenía claro las ventajas y desventajas que tenía y que no era un dogma de fe.
  • "La “mal” entendida calidad en el desarrollo de software". Si algo me quedó claro en esta discusión es que todo en el desarrollo del software es contextual, incluida la calidad. Por supuesto, se habló de ser consciente de las decisiones que tomamos y de que la velocidad implica una dirección. Yo introduje el tema de la inercia y la madurez de los equipos, puesto que es fácil hablar de tener distintos niveles de calidad dependiendo del contexto, pero eso implica que el equipo es capaz de trabajar bien y seguro con distintas prácticas y que tendremos que absorber el coste basal del software desarrollado durante los distintos periodos y contextos (inercia).
  • "Productividad, métricas y ktlo". Otra gran discusión sobre cómo obtener el balance entre el medio plazo, la evolución de la arquitectura y la necesidad (más en una startup) de desarrollar features. Se vieron técnicas para visibilizar la importancia de la inversión en mejoras de arquitectura de plataforma, cómo priorizar cambios profundos identificados en postmortems y cómo medir el impacto de las mejoras que no estén directamente relacionadas con la entrega de features.


Me es muy difícil transmitir la calidad de las conversaciones y el nivel de las mismas. Lo importante del SOSZ, además de la organización impecable, es la gente que asiste, y el ambiente de compartir y aportar que se genera. Todas estas discusiones sobre la calidad, bajarse del cloud, o las métricas de productividad, son geniales porque se generan desde la experiencia y el conocimiento de gente muy crack, y es algo que en una conferencia al uso es muy difícil que suceda, puesto que no se da el contexto adecuado para que se genere esa conversación, y casi toda la comunicación es unidireccional (ponente-audiencia). De verdad, si no has asistido a un Open Space, hazlo, y si puedes, hazlo en el SOSZ. Ya me lo agradecerás...


Muchísimas gracias a la organización, lo que hacéis es impresionante y lo que aprendo cada año es impagable.

Referencias:

Sunday, March 03, 2024

CPS Live 2024 / Presentaciones

Ayer tuve el placer de asistir al evento CPS Live, un encuentro organizado por la incipiente comunidad CPS Hispana. La filosofía detrás de este evento era fomentar el intercambio de experiencias y aprendizajes, en un formato Open Space, aunque con la particularidad de que las charlas fueron seleccionadas y votadas con antelación. Esto, supongo, con el objetivo de facilitar la organización y aprovechar al máximo el tiempo disponible, ya que el evento solo duró un día, de 9 a 16:30.




Decidí presentar dos charlas que ya había ofrecido anteriormente, pensando que solo una sería seleccionada. Para mi sorpresa, ambas fueron elegidas, lo que me impidió asistir a otras ponencias y generó un notable FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). Pero, al fin y al cabo, en un Open Space ocurre lo que tiene que ocurrir, así que no hay problema.



Dejo aqui las presentacion que use en mis dos charlas.

Lean Coffee: Mental Models for Product Developers

Utilicé el formato Lean Coffee para decidir cuánto tiempo dedicábamos a cada uno de los modelos mentales. Esto nos permitió cubrir temas como el Valor, la Eficiencia de Recursos vs. la Eficiencia de Flujo, el Costo Basal del Software, el Costo de Demora, los Perfiles de Urgencia, lo Crítico vs. la Incertidumbre, entre otros. En las diapositivas podéis encontrar el resto de temas que podríamos haber tratado.

Quería testear este formato en una conferencia y funcionó muy bien en mi opinión. No utilice el formato completo, sino que traje yo los temas a presentar, chequee con la audiencia si el orden que yo había preparado tenía sentido o quieren empezar con otro punto y lo que sí que hice es gestionar el tiempo para decidir cuantas rondas dedicamos a cada tema. Este formato fomenta la discusión y el feedback en cada punto y además permite un mejor control del tiempo al decidir colectivamente en qué enfocarse y durante cuánto tiempo.

Slides de la Charla

Doc original 


The Complexity Trap: Reevaluating Our Incentives

Esta charla la preparé originalmente para DevOps Days Madrid, pero me pareció que encajaba perfectamente con el contenido del CPS Live, así que decidí repetirla con algunas adaptaciones. Lo más destacado fue la sesión de preguntas y discusiones que tuvimos después, que duró unos 20 minutos y resultó ser increíblemente enriquecedora.


Slides de la Charla

Doc original 

Además, aquí les dejo un video de la charla en DevOps Days Madrid para quien tenga curiosidad:

DevOpsDays Madrid: The Complexity Trap Reevaluating our incentives


Reflexiones sobre el Evento

Me gustó mucho el evento. Me llevo muchas ideas para profundizar y siento la misma emoción que al inicio de otras comunidades de práctica. Espero que evitemos repetir los errores de comunidades como la agile o la DevOps, o al menos, que cometamos errores nuevos.

El networking durante el evento y en las cañas posteriores fue fantástico. Disfruté especialmente de las conversaciones con Sara y Ana de Surfeando el Cambio, con Pedro Pablo, Miguel Ángel, y me encantó discutir con Diana Damas sobre las similitudes entre el desarrollo de producto ágil (el de verdad, no la versión descafeinada) y la gestión del cambio en proyectos CPS. Aunque me dejó mucha gente por mencionar, estas interacciones fueron un punto alto del evento para mí. Al mismo tiempo y despues de un acto social tan intentos, llegue a casa reventado y esta noche he dormido diez horas del tirón :)


Saturday, February 17, 2024

Bilbostack 2024: Mi crónica de la conferencia

El pasado 27 de enero tuve la suerte de poder asistir a la duodécima edición de Bilbostack (https://bilbostack.com/), un evento que se celebra en Bilbao y que reúne a profesionales del mundo de la tecnología y el diseño.
Es una de mis conferencias favoritas y de la que he disfrutado en bastantes ediciones, tanto como asistente como ponente (https://www.eferro.net/2019/01/bilbostack-2019devops-is-not-what-you.html y https://www.eferro.net/2022/01/talk-developer-experience-modern.html).  Un año más, terminé encantado con la conferencia y con ganas de volver el próximo año. Dejo por aquí una crónica de la conferencia por si a alguien le ayuda a decidirse a asistir el próximo año. :) 




Aparte de volver a mi tierra e ir a visitar a la familia, el evento me sirvió para ver a viejos amigos y hacer nuevos. Además, tuve la suerte de poder asistir a charlas muy interesantes. 
La Bilbostack es una conferencia que "solo" tiene 8 charlas, organizadas en dos tracks paralelos. Las charlas son siempre de gran calidad y el ambiente es inmejorable.

Charlas

La primera charla a la que asistí fue la de Adrià Fontcuberta (https://twitter.com/afontq), "El arte de desarrollar: ¿En qué pensamos cuando pensamos en software?". Adrià nos habló de los modelos mentales que utilizamos para desarrollar software y de cómo estos afectan a la calidad del software que desarrollamos. Me encantó, y me sentí como si todo lo que comentaba Adrià fueran mis propias conclusiones. Explicó mediante metáforas y con ejemplos claros la importancia de los feedback loops, la simplicidad, la necesidad de ser capaces de posponer las decisiones mientras aprendemos lo más rápido posible para ir disipando la incertidumbre.
Espero que Adrià grabe la charla en algún momento para poder recomendarla a todo el mundo. De momento, os dejo el enlace a sus slides: https://noti.st/afontcu/kmdzCv/el-arte-de-desarrollar-en-que-pensamos-cuando-pensamos-en-software y al blog post que Adrià escribió sobre la charla: https://afontcu.dev/bilbostack-2024/ 

Después de esta primera charla, intenté asistir a una relacionada con seguridad, pero había tantos amigos y conocidos, que para cuando llegué a la puerta de la sala, ya estaba llena :) En cualquier caso, no me arrepiento, puesto que una de las mejores cosas de la Bilbostack es el networking, así que aproveché para estar poniéndome al día con amigos y conocidos.

La siguiente charla a la que asistí fue la de Mario López Martínez (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariolopezmartinez/), "Ser data-driven no es de guapas". Mario nos habló de la dificultad de ser "data-driven" en una empresa, y de cómo la cultura de la empresa y la naturaleza humana dificultan la tarea. Me pareció una charla muy interesante y que me hizo reflexionar sobre la forma de trabajar en data engineering. Mario es un gran comunicador y, además de disfrutar del contenido de la charla, me estuve riendo un buen rato. Os dejo por aquí el enlace al post que Mario escribió sobre la charla: https://brain.drmario.tech/pages/%E2%9C%8D%EF%B8%8F+Ser+data-driven+no+es+de+guapas




Por último, asistí a la charla de mi gran amigo Isidro López (https://twitter.com/islomar), "Valor por encima de código: el poder del Despliegue Continuo". Isidro nos habló de la entrega continua, de su importancia y de cómo llevarla a la práctica. Es un tema que me apasiona, y en esta ocasión lo disfruté doblemente puesto que hasta hace poco (y por segunda vez) Isidro y yo trabajamos juntos usando entrega continua. Por tanto, parte de los ejemplos usados eran de cómo trabajamos en algunos equipos de ClarityAI. La charla estuvo genial, y contenía mucha sabiduría y experiencia. Me parece fundamental que se hable de esta forma de trabajar (entrega continua, Trunk Based Development, XP, etc.) puesto que para mucha gente parece algo lejano y casi utópico, pero la realidad es que llevo trabajando de esa forma desde hace al menos 14 años y no lo cambiaría por nada. Desarrollar software no tiene por qué ser un infierno lleno de ansiedad y estrés; puede ser un ritmo sostenible en el que disfrutes con tu trabajo mientras entregas valor a tus clientes de forma continua. Isidro ha publicado las slides y recursos de la charla en su blog: https://islomar.es/blog/talks/slides-and-resources-talk-bilbostack-2024/ y además ha tenido la paciencia de contestar con detalle todas las preguntas que los asistentes le hicieron en la charla: https://islomar.es/blog/talks/preguntas-y-respuestas-bilbostack-2024/ 

Con mucha, lo más duro de la Bilbostack es la necesidad de elegir entre las charlas, puesto que al mismo tiempo de la charla de Isidro, me quedé con muchísimas ganas de asistir a la charla de Ujue Agudo (https://twitter.com/ujue) y Karlos G (https://twitter.com/patxangas), "Cuando las decisiones humanas se cruzan con los sistemas automatizados". Pero bueno, la vida es elegir.

Networking



Después de las charlas, llegó una de las estrellas de esta conferencia, el networking. En este año (creo que ya es el segundo), los organizadores de la Bilbostack han habilitado una zona en la explanada del museo marítimo de Bilbao para poder charlar con los asistentes, tomar algo y disfrutar del buen ambiente. Me encanta esta parte de la conferencia, puesto que es una oportunidad para charlar con amigos, conocidos y desconocidos. Creo que el lugar es una gran elección puesto que está muy cerca del Palacio Euskalduna, donde se celebra la conferencia, y además es un lugar espacioso.
Hace algunos años, el networking era en la Plaza Nueva, y aunque era un lugar mucho más típico, estaba más lejos de donde se hace la conferencia y, al ser un sitio público, los organizadores no podían fácilmente controlar el aforo u organizar actividades. 
Con la decisión de hacerlo en la explanada del museo, les ha permitido poner puestos de comida y bebida, hacer actividades y tener más flexibilidad sobre la experiencia de los asistentes. Ni que decir tiene que disfruté como un puerco en la charca, charlando con amigos, conocidos y desconocidos.
Me hubiera encantado seguir el networking hasta altas horas de la madrugada, pero al ser de Bilbao tenía otros compromisos, así que me tuve que ir pronto.
En cualquier caso, un acierto el nuevo formato de networking. 




 En resumen, la Bilbostack 2024 fue una conferencia genial, con charlas de gran calidad y un ambiente inmejorable. Me encanta que se celebre en Bilbao, y que sea una conferencia pequeña y acogedora. Espero poder asistir el próximo año y volver a disfrutar de la comunidad.

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Selección de charlas recomendadas en español

 

Normalmente comparto en este blog el contenido (charlas/podcast) que encuentro interesantes. La mayoría del contenido es en inglés, pero con el paso del tiempo he ido acumulando algunas que son en castellano y merecen mucho la pena. Espero que las disfruteís...
  • Aquí también hay esperanza (Modesto San Juan) [Engineering Career, Inspirational] [Duration: 01:22] Inspiradora charla sobre nuestra profesión de eternos aprendices. Imprescindible.
  • Clean Architecture: La mejor forma de escalar y mantener tu código (Rafa Gómez) [Architecture, Design, hexagonal] [Duration: 00:18] Muy buena descripción de las arquitecturas limpias y de la arquitectura hexagonal. Muy didactico.
  • Artefactos en la gestión de Producto (Vanesa Tejada) [Product] [Duration: 01:06] Interesante charla en la que Vanesa nos comparte los artefactos que usa para mejorar el proceso de producto a escala (radiadores de información, tracking, etc).
  • E019 Qué es y para qué sirve la cultura organizacional (Xavi Gost, Carlos Iglesias) [Agile, Company Culture, Culture] [Duration: 00:59] Realworld podcast Ep 19.
  • Startup School: Restart "Motivación y responsabilidad" (Félix López) [Engineering Career, Inspirational, Product] [Duration: 00:56] "ownership" o responsabilidad, una de las grandes tendencias en muchos artículos sobre productividad y efectividad para gestionar equipos y que pocas veces se explica en profundidad cómo conseguirla o las principales razones para hacerlo.
  • Aprender a distinguir el problema de las soluciones (Carlos Ble) [Agile, Engineering Culture, Product, Lean Software Development] [Duration: 00:41] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) En esta sesión Carlos se centra en cómo saber separar el "Qué" del "Cómo" para ser eficaces y económicos resolviendo problemas, sin que la calidad de las soluciones se vea afectada. Una muy buena charla para cualquiera que se interese por el desarrollo de software lean (agile real).
  • CDD (Desarrollo dirigido por consenso) (Xavi Gost) [Agile, Engineering Culture, Lean Software Development] [Duration: 00:58] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) En esta charla, Xavi introduce el concepto de 'Desarrollo Dirigido por Consenso' junto con el 'Sistema de Concerns'. Esta metodología resulta ser una práctica sumamente efectiva para optimizar el flujo de trabajo en equipos, manteniendo al mismo tiempo bajo control la deuda técnica y abordando eficientemente los menores problemas de diseño identificados por el equipo. Tras observar la implementación de esta metodología en varios equipos, puedo afirmar que su utilidad es significativa.
  • La economía del refactoring. Una visión desde la gestión económica del proyecto. (Xavi Gost) [Inspirational, Technical Practices, XP] [Duration: 00:51] Inspiracional charla sobre las motivaciones y la estrategia para refactorizar de forma continua.
  • ¿Que es un programador y cual es su papel en la sociedad? (Xavi Gost) [Inspirational, ethics, professionalism] [Duration: 00:34] Buena reflexión sobre el papel del desarrollador en la sociedad y la necesidad de una etica profesional fuerte.
  • Unexpected inhabitants: algorithms, ethics, and emergency (Aitor García Rey) [Inspirational, ethics, professionalism] [Duration: 00:21] Interesante charla para comprender el contexto del cambio que estamos experimentando debido a la entrada masiva de software (y ahora de la Inteligencia Artificial) en todos los aspectos de nuestra sociedad. Invita a la reflexión.
  • Case Study: tools and strategies for tackling legacy practices (Alejandro Scandroli) [Engineering Culture, Technical leadership] [Duration: 00:48] Ejemplo práctico del uso de los Wardley Maps y algunos conceptos de DDD (strategic design) para proponer una estrategia para el equipo de Ingenieria.
  • Connectsai 2020: Cómo entregar más por menos - Marta Manso (Marta Manso) [Lean Product Management, Product, Product Discovery, Product Engineer] [Duration: 00:57] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Inspiradora charla de Marta sobre como trabajar en un equipo enfocado a dessarrollo de producto y que entiende la tecnologia como un medio. Gran cantidad de ideas y detalles interesantes.
  • Muda, Mura, Muri: mitos y prácticas aplicando Lean Software Development (Abraham Vallez) [Agile, Lean Software Development, XP] [Duration: 00:55] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Excelente charla que se fundamenta en experiencias prácticas acerca de cómo colaborar eficazmente en equipo, siguiendo los principios del desarrollo de software Lean y de Programación Extrema (XP). Constituye un recurso valioso para recomendar o compartir con equipos que buscan optimizar sus metodologías de trabajo.
  • Product minded software crafter (Cansu Karayel, Gemma Cortel) [Lean Product Management, Lean Software Development, Small Safe Steps (3s)] [Duration: 00:38] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Ejemplo real de como un equipo de desarrollo de producto en el que todo el mundo entiende el software como un medio puede tener un gran impacto.
  • Tips & tricks para llegar a ser un equipo de alto rendimiento (Iván Badia) [Agile, Engineering Culture, Lean Software Development] [Duration: 00:53] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Iván da las claves para tener una cultura de ingenieria sana en el que los equipos tienen una aproximación lean y con buenas prácticas para el desarrollo de producto. Muy alineado con las ideas descritas en la charlas.

Relacionado:

Monday, January 22, 2024

Good talks/podcasts (Jan 2024 II)

 

These are the best podcasts/talks I've seen/listened to recently:
  • Rockstar Developers Are THE WORST Developers (Dave Farley) [Engineering Career, Engineering Culture] [Duration: 00:17] Dave explains clearly why what the industry often calls a RockStar developer is by no means a good developer, and why we should change that definition to focus on teams and disciplined developers who work in teams rather than individually. My notes on the topic: https://www.eferro.net/2024/01/be-humble-no-rockstars-allowed.html
  • Polly Want a Message (Sandi Metz) [OOP] [Duration: 00:41] A good talk by Sandi about how to create and evolve applications with good OO design. Like all of Sandi's talks, it is very worthwhile.
  • DDD Europe 2023. A Daily Practice of Empirical Software Design (Kent Beck) [Small Safe Steps (3s), Software Design, XP] [Duration: 00:59] Interesting reflection on the economics of software design and the principles that affect it. This talk describes some of the ideas that Kent elaborates on in detail in his new book 'Tidy first?'
  • GeePaw Hill on Incremental Software Delivery (GeePaw Hill) [Small Safe Steps (3s), Software Design, XP] [Duration: 01:18] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Pure wisdom on why working in small, safe steps is the most efficient way to work in software product development when we have environments of high uncertainty (which is almost always).
  • “Industry Changing Book” | Jez Humble & Dave Reflect On Continuous Delivery (Jez Humble, Dave Farley) [Continuous Delivery] [Duration: 01:06] This is an interesting talk by the two authors of the book 'Continuous Delivery' about the impact the book has had on the industry.
Reminder: All of these talks are interesting, even just listening to them.

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