Good talks/podcasts (Aug)

These are the best podcasts/talks I've seen/listened to recently:

• Red Bead Experiment with Dr. W. Edwards Deming 🔗 talk notes (W. Edwards Deming) [Lean, Quality] [Duration: 00:09] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) The Red Bead Experiment vividly demonstrates that quality and performance are products of the system, not merely individual effort or willingness to do one's best.
• Vibe Coding Is The WORST IDEA Of 2025 🔗 talk notes (Dave Farley) [AI, Software Design, testing] [Duration: 00:17] This talk critically examines "vibe coding," arguing that effective software engineering requires precise problem definition, structured thinking, and robust automated testing to manage complexity and enable evolvability, rather than relying on vague AI-assisted code generation.
• Diversity, AI, and Junior Engineers with Meri Williams 🔗 talk notes (Meri Williams) [AI, Diversity, Engineering Culture, leadership] [Duration: 00:52] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This talk explores how AI is changing the development and growth of engineers, particularly junior co-workers, emphasizing the increased importance of foundational skills, critical thinking, and the shift from writing to reviewing code in the age of AI.
• Continuous Deployment and Pair Programming for Lean Software Delivery Even without Jira 🔗 talk notes (Asgaut Mjølne Söderbom, Ola Hast) [Continuous Delivery, Lean Software Development, Technical Practices] [Duration: 00:54] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This talk details how a tech company achieved 5-minute code-to-production and high quality in banking software through practices like pair programming, TDD, continuous deployment, and fostering a lean, people-centric culture.
• Lean Product Development: Resource management vs. Flow efficiency 🔗 talk notes (Johanna Rothman) [Flow, Lean, Lean Product Management, Teams] [Duration: 00:24] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) A compelling talk on Lean Product Development that contrasts resource efficiency with flow efficiency, demonstrating how optimizing for flow through cross-functional teams enhances project delivery and portfolio management.
• From Noob to Automated Evals In A Week (as a PM) w/Teresa Torres 🔗 talk notes (Teresa Torres) [AI, Feedback cycles, Generative AI, Product Discovery] [Duration: 01:10] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Product discovery expert Teresa Torres recounts her journey from a self-described "noob" in AI to implementing automated evaluations for an AI-powered interview coach within a week, detailing her iterative process of building and refining the tool with significant LLM assistance.

Reminder: All of these talks are interesting, even just listening to them.

You can now explore all recommended talks and podcasts interactively on our new site:

• 🌐 Interactive Site: https://eferro.github.io/eferro-picks-site/

The new site allows you to:

• 🏷️ Browse talks by topic
• 👤 Filter by speaker
• 🎤 Search by conference
• 📅 Navigate by year

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Good talks/podcasts (Jul) / AI & AI - Augmented Coding Edition!

These are the best podcasts/talks I've seen/listened to recently — AI & AI-Augmented Coding Edition! All of them explore how AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) are reshaping software development, product design, and engineering culture.

• How To Get The Most Out Of Vibe Coding | Startup School 🔗 talk notes (Tom Blomfield) [AI, Software Design, testing] [Duration: 00:16] A talk exploring best practices and practical tips for leveraging AI tools and Large Language Models (LLMs) to achieve great results in software development through the "vibe coding" approach.
• Stop Writing Code – That’s what LLMs are for 🔗 talk notes (Steve Yegge) [AI, Engineering Career, testing] [Duration: 00:29] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This talk by Steve Yegge exploring the inevitable transformation of software engineering due to AI and LLMs, detailing changing developer roles and the increasing importance of testing and validation
• Andrew Ng: Building Faster with AI 🔗 talk notes (Andrew Ng) [AI, Product, startup] [Duration: 00:43] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Andrew Ng's talk provides best practices for startups to achieve unprecedented execution speed by leveraging new AI technology for rapid engineering, product iteration, and strategic decision-making
• Vibe Coding For Grownups with Gene Kim 🔗 talk notes (Gene Kim) [AI, Architecture, Devops] [Duration: 00:37] Gene Kim discusses the transformative power and inherent dangers of AI-assisted "Vibe Coding", emphasizing the critical role of architecture and sound practices in achieving high performance and avoiding "vibe coding disasters"
• How custom GPTs can make you a better manager | Hilary Gridley (Head of Core Product at Whoop) 🔗 talk notes (Hilary Gridley) [AI, Management, leadership] [Duration: 00:36] This talk demonstrates how custom GPTs significantly leverage managers' time by scaling their expertise and providing consistent, automated feedback to their teams.
• AI prompt engineering in 2025: What works and what doesn’t 🔗 talk notes (Sander Schulhoff, Lenny Rachitsky) [AI, Generative AI, Product, Security] [Duration: 01:37] Sander Schulhoff, discusses tangible prompt engineering techniques (including few-shot prompting, decomposition, self-criticism, and additional information), distinguishes between conversational and product-focused prompt engineering, and delves into the critical and unsolvable problem of AI prompt injection and red teaming.
• How AI is changing software engineering at Shopify with Farhan Thawar 🔗 talk notes (Farhan Thawar, Gergely Orosz) [AI, Developer Productivity, Engineering Culture, Technology Strategy] [Duration: 00:47] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) A deep dive into Shopify's AI-first transformation, emphasizing pervasive AI tool adoption, internal AI infrastructure, and cultural shifts empowering all employees to leverage AI.
• Gene Kim on developer experience and AI engineering 🔗 talk notes (Gene Kim) [AI, Developer Productivity, Devex, Generative AI] [Duration: 00:44] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Gene Kim explores how Developer Experience, Generative AI, and Platform Engineering serve as the next chapter in organizational transformation, fundamentally improving developer productivity and value creation.
• TDD, AI agents and coding with Kent Beck 🔗 talk notes (Kent Beck, Gergely Orosz) [AI, XP, tdd] [Duration: 01:15] Industry legend Kent Beck, creator of XP and TDD, shares insights on the evolution of Agile, Extreme Programming, and Test-Driven Development, alongside his current experience of "most fun ever" coding with AI agents.
• The Agent Native Company — Rick Blalock, Agentuity 🔗 talk notes (Rick Blalock) [AI, Company Culture, Management, Teams] [Duration: 00:20] This talk introduces the concept of agent native companies, where AI is fundamental to their operations, fundamentally reshaping culture, workflows, and team structures
• AI at Honeycomb: What’s Actually Working 🔗 talk notes (Charity Majors) [AI, Engineering Culture, Product] [Duration: 00:11] A talk with Honeycomb's CTO exploring AI's impact on engineering velocity and culture, the emergence of disposable software, and the future of product interfaces focused on production.

Reminder: All of these talks are interesting, even just listening to them.

You can now explore all recommended talks and podcasts interactively on our new site:

• 🌐 Interactive Site: https://eferro.github.io/eferro-picks-site/

The new site allows you to:

• 🏷️ Browse talks by topic
• 👤 Filter by speaker
• 🎤 Search by conference
• 📅 Navigate by year

Feedback Welcome!
Your feedback and suggestions are highly appreciated to help improve the site and content. Feel free to contribute or share your thoughts!
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Good talks/podcasts (Jun)

These are the best podcasts/talks I've seen/listened to recently:

• Data - The Land DevOps Forgot 🔗 talk notes (Michael T. Nygard) [Architecture, Data Engineering, Devops, Platform] [Duration: 00:47] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This talk offers a critical look at why the analytical data world is "the land DevOps forgot," and presents Data Mesh as a paradigm shift to enable decentralized, autonomous data operations, emphasizing that successful adoption requires significant organizational and cultural change.
• Jeff Bezos explains one-way door decisions and two-way door decisions 🔗 talk notes (Jeff Bezos) [Management, Mental models] [Duration: 00:03] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Jeff Bezos explains his mental model of two-way door (reversible) and one-way door (irreversible) decisions, highlighting how to apply different decision-making processes for each in organizations.
• TDD, AI agents and coding with Kent Beck 🔗 talk notes (Kent Beck, Gergely Orosz) [AI, XP, tdd] [Duration: 01:15] Industry legend Kent Beck, creator of XP and TDD, shares insights on the evolution of Agile, Extreme Programming, and Test-Driven Development, alongside his current experience of "most fun ever" coding with AI agents.

Reminder: All of these talks are interesting, even just listening to them.

You can now explore all recommended talks and podcasts interactively on our new site:

• 🌐 Interactive Site: https://eferro.github.io/eferro-picks-site/

The new site allows you to:

• 🏷️ Browse talks by topic
• 👤 Filter by speaker
• 🎤 Search by conference
• 📅 Navigate by year

Feedback Welcome!
Your feedback and suggestions are highly appreciated to help improve the site and content. Feel free to contribute or share your thoughts!
Related:

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Good talks/podcasts (May)

These are the best podcasts/talks I've seen/listened to recently:

• Escaping A MAJOR Platform Engineering PITFALL (Steve Smith) [Engineering Culture, Platform, Platform engineering, Technology Strategy] [Duration: 00:11] This talk explores the pitfalls of technology anarchy and autocracy in platform engineering and advocates for escaping them by building opinionated platform capabilities with contextual technical alignment to accelerate delivery teams
• How To Get The Most Out Of Vibe Coding | Startup School (Tom Blomfield) [AI, Developer Productivity, Devex, Generative AI] [Duration: 00:16] Practical best practices for effective vibe coding and using AI tools/LLMs in software development workflows, from planning and testing to debugging and leveraging multiple models.
• o11ycast - Ep. #80, Augmented Coding with Kent Beck (Ken Rimple, Kent Beck, Jessica Kerr) [AI, Engineering Culture, Inspirational, testing] [Duration: 00:39] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Explore augmented coding with Kent Beck, discussing how AI agents transform software development, the essential role of observability and testing for control and understanding, and the future impact on engineering careers.
• Devoxx Greece 2025 - Data Modeling for Software Engineers by Scott Sosna (Scott Sosna) [Agile, Architecture, Data Engineering, Flow, Software Design] [Duration: 00:40] Learn why thoughtful, consistent data modeling and decoupling external data views from internal implementations are critical responsibilities for software engineers in modern agile environments, given that data persists forever and outlives the code that uses it.
• Devoxx Greece 2025 - How Flow Works and other curiosities by James Lewis (James Lewis) [Continuous Delivery, Flow, Lean, Lean Product Management, Lean Software Development] [Duration: 00:40] "How Flow Works and other curiosities" by James Lewis explains how work flows as information through organizational value streams, detailing blockages like queues and offering principles like batch size reduction to improve delivery and throughput.
• Software Engineering F&*K Up Behind The Passport E-gate Failure" (Dave Farley) [Architecture, Resilience, Software Design] [Duration: 00:17] In this episode, Dave Farley talks about the issue, how poor software engineering led to this, how distributed systems come into it all, how to avoid something like this happening again and at the end of the video asks for answers on some concerning issues around the whole story.

Reminder: All of these talks are interesting, even just listening to them.

You can now explore all recommended talks and podcasts interactively on our new site:

• 🌐 Interactive Site: https://eferro.github.io/eferro-picks-site/

The new site allows you to:

• 🏷️ Browse talks by topic
• 👤 Filter by speaker
• 🎤 Search by conference
• 📅 Navigate by year

Feedback Welcome!
Your feedback and suggestions are highly appreciated to help improve the site and content. Feel free to contribute or share your thoughts!
Related:

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Good talks/podcasts (April)

These are the best podcasts/talks I've seen/listened to recently:

• AWS re:Invent 2023 - Do modern cloud applications lock you in? (Gregor Hohpe) [Architecture, Cloud, Software Design, Technology Strategy] [Duration: 00:55] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This talk reframes modern cloud application lock-in as switching costs, explaining how to manage them through architecture trade-offs, increasing developer velocity, and focusing on design intent rather than just service selection
• Test Driven DESIGN - Step by Step (Dave Farley) [Small Safe Steps (3s), Software Design, Technical Practices, testing] [Duration: 00:24] In this episode Dave Farley describes how to use TDD to build your system in a series of small steps, using a project of his own to demonstrate the approach.
• Anthropic CEO Declares Programming Over, We Respond (Ray Myers) [AI, Engineering Culture, Generative AI] [Duration: 00:22] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) The talk discusses reactions and scenarios related to the Anthropic CEO's prediction that AI will soon write essentially all code, proposing challenges to this claim and exploring different potential futures for software engineering roles and processes
• Keynote: AI without the BS, for humans (Scott_Hanselman) [AI, Generative AI, Mental models, ethics] [Duration: 00:58] Scott Hanselman's "AI without the BS" talk cuts through the hype, explaining AI models as statistical predictors based on context and biased data, highlighting ethical concerns, and demonstrating the practicality of running smaller models locally
• Observability 2.0: Transforming Logging & Metrics • Charity Majors & James Lewis (Charity Majors, James Lewis) [Engineering Culture, Observability, Platform engineering] [Duration: 00:30] Interesting interview about observability, and the tools and models needed to develop a systems thinking approach that allows us to understand and manage our software systems, which are often complex and distributed.
• Observability & Testing in Production (Charity Majors, Luca Rossi) [Continuous Delivery, Observability, Testing in production] [Duration: 00:53] Charity Majors, CTO at Honeycomb and observability expert, discusses observability, testing in production, continuous delivery, and developer experience
• Human Robot Agent: Scouting AI Beyond Hype and Doom (Jurgen Appelo) [AI, Agile, Generative AI, Teams] [Duration: 00:53] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Jurgen Appelo discusses how AI is fundamentally changing the nature of work, teams, and processes within an agile context, highlighting new uncertainties and the enduring importance of the human experience.
• Software Engineering F&*K Up Behind The Passport E-gate Failure" (Dave Farley) [Architecture, Resilience, Software Design] [Duration: 00:17] In this episode, Dave Farley talks about the issue, how poor software engineering led to this, how distributed systems come into it all, how to avoid something like this happening again and at the end of the video asks for answers on some concerning issues around the whole story.

Reminder: All of these talks are interesting, even just listening to them.

You can now explore all recommended talks and podcasts interactively on our new site:

• 🌐 Interactive Site: https://eferro.github.io/eferro-picks-site/

The new site allows you to:

• 🏷️ Browse talks by topic
• 👤 Filter by speaker
• 🎤 Search by conference
• 📅 Navigate by year

Feedback Welcome!
Your feedback and suggestions are highly appreciated to help improve the site and content. Feel free to contribute or share your thoughts!
Related:

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I've launched eferro-picks-site: my personal selection of talks on software development

Over the years, I've listened to hundreds of talks on software development, product, Lean, Extreme Programming, and related topics. I usually listen to them while walking, and when a talk really resonates with me, I add it to my personal database. Right now, I have over a thousand talks tracked, and I've marked around 200 of them with a 5-star rating — these are the ones featured on eferro-picks-site.

The curation and logging process behind these talks has been ongoing for more than 7 years. What’s new is that I’ve finally put the best of them into a website that’s easy to browse and continuously updated. It’s a simple project with one goal: to share the talks that have helped me grow — in case they can help someone else too.

The talks are grouped by topic, and only those I've rated 5 stars make it to the site. The selection is personal and opinionated. It’s not meant to be exhaustive or neutral — it’s my perspective, based on what has resonated with me most.

eferro-picks-site

A small project, powered by AI and Vibe Coding

While the curated database has been growing for years, turning it into a browsable site was a small, recent project — and a learning opportunity. I kicked it off using a Vibe Coding approach: following flow, curiosity, and feel, rather than strict planning.

I had no real frontend experience, so I relied heavily on AI to explore, experiment, and build. It’s helping me learn how to work effectively with AI as a development partner, and at the same time get slightly more familiar with frontend technologies (which are mostly new to me). The site is built with React, hosted on GitHub Pages, and fed from an automatically updated JSON file based on my Airtable database.

You can check out the code on GitHub, and I'm happy to receive feedback or corrections. That said, the curation itself will remain personal 😊.

---

If you find something useful — or if any talk really resonates with you — I’d love to hear about it. You can reach out on social media or open an issue on the repo.

And if you’d like to support my work and help me keep sharing things like this, you can do so with a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/eferro ☕️

Hope it helps!

Good talks/podcasts (March II)

 

These are the best podcasts/talks I've seen/listened to recently:

• The 10 COMMANDMENTS Of Continuous Integration (CI) (Dave Farley) [Agile, Technical Practices, XP] [Duration: 00:09] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This YouTube video outlines the 10 essential rules for continuous integration (CI), emphasizing its role as the foundation of a modern deployment pipeline and continuous delivery
• Add APPROVAL TESTING To Your Bag Of Tricks (Dave Farley) [Technical Practices, XP, testing] [Duration: 00:19] Learn about approval testing as a technique, particularly its effectiveness in safely refactoring legacy code by verifying that changes preserve existing behavior, and its utility for comparing complex outputs like graphical data
• TDD Revisited - Ian Cooper - NDC Porto 2023 (Ian Cooper) [Technical Practices, XP, testing] [Duration: 01:13] This talk re-examines TDD, emphasizing that it's about writing developer tests focused on behavior and contracts, not isolated unit tests with mocks, to guide development and enable safe refactoring
• Leading Teams For Silicon Valley Tech Giants | Randy Shoup In The Engineering Room Ep. 7 (Randy Shoup, Dave Farley) [Architecture, Continuous Delivery, Scalability] [Duration: 01:34] This conversation explores the architectural evolution of Silicon Valley tech giants from monoliths to microservices, highlighting the importance of customer focus, asynchronous communication, and continuous delivery for achieving scale and velocity.
• Become A GREAT Programmer VOL. 1: How To Be GREAT, Why Do You Suck & Why Your Hobby Won't Cut It (Dave Farley) [Engineering Culture, Software Design, Technical Practices] [Duration: 00:53] This talk by Dave Farley outlines essential principles and mindsets for becoming a great programmer, distinguishing professional practices from hobbyist approaches and emphasizing communication, design, quality, collaboration, and continuous improvement
• Charity Majors on Observability, OTEL, AI ops, DevOps and Friday deploys (Charity Majors, Yan Cuim) [Devops, Engineering Culture, Observability] [Duration: 00:51] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This podcast episode features Charity Majors discussing the evolution of observability from her experiences at Parse and Facebook to co-founding Honeycomb, emphasizing its event-based approach for understanding complex systems and contrasting it with traditional metrics and logging, while also covering topics like Open Telemetry, DevOps, and engineering culture.
• Mastering Observability: Unlocking Customer Insights with Gojko Adzic (Gojko Adzic) [Feedback cycles, Lean Product Management, Product, testing] [Duration: 00:34] This podcast episode with Gojko Adzic explores the principles behind specification by example (driven by TDD/BDD), the challenges of its widespread adoption due to a focus on effort over value, and introduces the concept of lizard optimization based on observing unexpected user behaviors to uncover product opportunities, all within the context of measuring value through user behavior change and understanding the five stages of product growth.
• Webinar #23 - Gojko Adzic on designing product development experiments with Lizard Optimization (Gojko Adzic) [Lean Product Management, Product, Product Discovery] [Duration: 00:57] This talk with Gojko Adzic introduces lizard optimization, a method for uncovering unexpected product opportunities by observing unusual user behaviors and focusing on delivering real user value beyond initial assumptions. It emphasizes using technical observability tools to inform product decisions and understanding the stages of product growth.

Reminder: All of these talks are interesting, even just listening to them.

The talks and podcasts that I have rated as five stars are also available on the following website:

• By speaker: https://eferro.github.io/eferros-picks/
• By topic: https://eferro.github.io/eferros-picks/index-by-topic.html

Related:

• Recommended Talk/Podcast Database
• Recommended resources tag

Good talks/podcasts (March I)

These are the best podcasts/talks I've seen/listened to recently:

• Acceptance Testing Is the FUTURE of Programming (Dave Farley) [AI, Generative AI, testing] [Duration: 00:16] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This talk explores a radical idea that acceptance testing, rather than being just a way to verify software, may be the next step in the evolution of how we program computers, using AI to generate code from detailed specifications
• 5 Things That Waste Time & Money On A Software Project (Dave Farley) [Agile, Teams, testing] [Duration: 00:15] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This interesting video identifies common pitfalls in software development, such as not building what users want, using big teams, delaying feedback, chasing features over quality, and relying on manual regression testing, and advises optimizing for learning, fast feedback, and automated testing to improve productivity and reduce waste
• Marty Cagan - Transformed: Moving to the Product Operating Model at just product 2023 (Marty Cagan) [Generative AI, Product Strategy, Product Team] [Duration: 01:05] This presentation explains the product operating model with its three dimensions (how to build, how to solve problems, and how to decide which problems to solve), four competencies, five product concepts, and underlying principles to help companies transform and work like the best product companies
• Kent Beck on why software development is an exercise in human relationships (Kent Beck, Jack Hannah) [Engineering Culture, Teams, leadership] [Duration: 00:50] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Kent Beck discusses how software development is fundamentally an exercise in human relationships, and how creating a safe, supportive environment (a "forest") leads to better results than a resource-scarce, high-pressure one (a "desert"). He also touches on remote work, generational teaching, and test-driven development. An interview full of interesting insights.
• The Software Industry's Evolution, Complex Architecture & Problem-Solving At Scale | Michael Nygard In The Engineering Room Ep. 35 (Michael T. Nygard, Dave Farley) [Architecture, Data Engineering, Platform, Platform engineering] [Duration: 00:44] A discussion between two experts on incremental design and architecture, including data mesh solutions, managing complexity, platform engineering, and the challenges of balancing innovation with stability
• DuckDB and Python: Ducks and Snakes living together (Alex Monahan) [Data Engineering, Data Science, Python] [Duration: 01:02] This Talk Python episode explores DuckDB, a fast, in-process analytical database, and its cloud companion MotherDuck, highlighting their capabilities and use cases in Python and data science workflows.

Reminder: All of these talks are interesting, even just listening to them.

The talks and podcasts that I have rated as five stars are also available on the following website:

• By speaker: https://eferro.github.io/eferros-picks/
• By topic: https://eferro.github.io/eferros-picks/index-by-topic.html

Related:

• Recommended Talk/Podcast Database
• Recommended resources tag

Good talks/podcasts (Feb I)

 

These are the best podcasts/talks I've seen/listened to recently:

• Patterns of Effective Delivery (Dan North) [Agile, Engineering Culture, Inspirational] [Duration: 00:59] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This talk explores patterns of effective software delivery, emphasizing that delivery means solving problems, not just writing code, and focusing on optimizing for the right outcomes rather than just process
• Dantotsu Radical Software Quality Improvement (Fabrice Bernhard) [Inspirational, Lean Software Development, Quality, testing] [Duration: 00:37] This presentation covers how to apply the Dantotsu method—rooted in Toyota’s manufacturing principles—to optimize software development and delivery. By focusing on visual management, team leadership, and systemic solutions, the approach minimizes defects, boosts efficiency, and fosters continuous improvement. Very good ideas on how to improve post-mortems or how to classify problems to improve quality more quickly.
• Beyond Engineering: The Future of Platforms (Manuel Pais) [Flow, Platform as a product, leadership] [Duration: 00:21] This talk explores applying the "platform as a product" approach beyond engineering, emphasizing how to improve flow and reduce friction across an organization by providing internal services in a self-service manner, and by focusing on the needs of the organization's internal users
• The Most Dangerous Phrase: SOLID, Scrum And Other Antiques (Dan North) [Agile, Engineering Culture, Management, Technical Practices] [Duration: 00:38] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This presentation challenges the idea of blindly following software development practices like SOLID and Scrum, urging a re-evaluation of their continued relevance in light of changing contexts and technology, advocating for a more fluid, context-driven approach that prioritizes outcomes, learning, and continuous improvement
• How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture (Farhan Thawar, Lenny Rachitsky) [Engineering Culture, Product Engineer, leadership] [Duration: 01:40] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This talk explores how Shopify builds a high-intensity culture through principles like choosing the hard path, prioritizing intensity over hours, and valuing pair programming, while also emphasizing continuous learning, code deletion, and a unique approach to hiring.

Reminder: All of these talks are interesting, even just listening to them.

The talks and podcasts that I have rated as five stars are also available on the following website:

• By speaker: https://eferro.github.io/eferros-picks/
• By topic: https://eferro.github.io/eferros-picks/index-by-topic.html

Related:

• Recommended Talk/Podcast Database
• Recommended resources tag

Good talks/podcasts (Dec 2024 I)

 

These are the best podcasts/talks I've seen/listened to recently:

• Adam Ralph - Finding your service boundaries — a practical guide - SCBCN 24 (Adam Ralph) [Architecture, Architecture patterns, Microservices] [Duration: 00:48] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This presentation is about identifying service boundaries in software architecture to avoid coupling and ending up with a "big ball of mud", even when using microservices. I recommend this talk because it provides practical advice on how to define services as technical authorities for specific business capabilities, leading to more maintainable and scalable systems.
• AWS re:Invent 2024 - Dr. Werner Vogels Keynote (Werner Vogels) [Architecture, Engineering Culture, simplicity] [Duration: 01:50] This presentation explores the concept of "simplexity" - building and operating complex systems safely and simply, using lessons learned from 20 years of evolution at Amazon Web Services (AWS). The speaker emphasizes the importance of designing evolvable systems from the beginning and outlines six key lessons for managing complexity, including breaking down systems into smaller units, aligning organizations to architecture, and automating tasks that don't require human judgment. Numerous examples from AWS, such as the evolution of Amazon S3, CloudWatch, and Route 53, illustrate the practical application of these principles.
• How to Deliver Quality Software Against All Odds GOTO 2024 (Dan North) [Agile, Continuous Delivery, Engineering Culture, XP] [Duration: 00:52] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This podcast features Daniel Terhorst-North, a prominent figure in the software development world, reflecting on 20 years of industry changes and sharing his insights on topics ranging from Agile and DevOps to product management and organizational flow. Drawing on his experiences at Thoughtworks and beyond, Terhorst-North highlights the importance of connecting business needs with technical implementation and emphasizes the value of building evolvable systems with "simplexity" in mind.
• Microservices Retrospective – What We Learned (and Didn’t Learn) from Netflix (Adrian Cockcroft) [Architecture, Architecture patterns, Cloud, Microservices] [Duration: 00:55] This presentation offers a retrospective analysis of the speaker's experience implementing microservices at Netflix from 2007-2013, examining both the successes and the lessons learned along the way. The speaker discusses key aspects of Netflix's innovative approach, including their "extreme and agile" culture, early adoption of cloud technologies like AWS and Cassandra, and focus on developer freedom and responsibility. The presentation also highlights specific technical patterns and practices developed at Netflix, such as the use of service access libraries, lightweight serializable objects, and chaos engineering.
• Team Topologies, Software Architecture & Complexity • James Lewis • GOTO 2022 (James Lewis) [Architecture, Engineering Culture, Microservices, team topologies] [Duration: 00:38] This presentation explores the intersection of team topologies, software architecture, and complexity science, arguing that successful organizational design and software development hinges on optimizing for flow and value delivery. The speaker, drawing on his experience with the evolution of microservices, advocates for embracing decentralization, limiting hierarchy, and leveraging social network structures to foster innovation and agility in growing organizations.

Reminder: All of these talks are interesting, even just listening to them.

Related:

• Recommended Talk/Podcast Database
• Recommended resources tag

Good talks/podcasts (Nov 2024 II)

 

These are the best podcasts/talks I've seen/listened to recently:

• YOW! 2019 Evolutionary Design Animated (Part1) (James Shore) [Agile, Engineering Culture, Evolutionary Design, Software Design, XP] [Duration: 00:24] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) 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. Part 2: YOW! 2019 Evolutionary Design Animated (Part2)
• 5 Reasons Your Automated Tests Fail (Dave Farley) [CI, Continuous Delivery, testing] [Duration: 00:21] This video explores the five reasons why automated tests fail, including environment, test data, version control, resource use, and system behavior. It then explains how to fix these failures by controlling the environment, isolating test data, using version control, addressing resource constraints, and designing deterministic systems
• Product Agility Podcast: 9 Million Users from a Full Stack Product Legend An Interview with Gojko Adzic (Gojko Adzic) [Inspirational, Product, Product Discovery] [Duration: 00:50] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)  This interview with Gojko Adzic, the creator of Narakeet and author of "Lizard Optimization," explores his journey in building products that reach millions of users. He shares insights on "lizard optimization," a method of leveraging unexpected user behavior for product innovation and growth, as well as the importance of aligning development with the five stages of product growth.
• Observability & Testing in Production - with Charity Majors (Charity Majors, Luca Rossi) [Continuous Delivery, Engineering Culture, Observability, Testing in production] [Duration: 00:53] This interview with Charity Majors, CTO of Honeycomb, explores the concept of observability, particularly focusing on the differences between observability 1.0 and 2.0 and the advantages of the latter for modern software development. The conversation also touches upon the importance of testing in production, implementing an effective continuous delivery process, and embracing the changing role of software engineers in the age of AI.
• Developer Productivity Engineering: What's in it for me? (Trisha Gee) [Developer Productivity, Devex, testing] [Duration: 01:08] This video features Trisha Gee, presenting on Developer Productivity Engineering (DPE). She explains the principles and practices of DPE and emphasizes how it can improve developer experience and efficiency.
• Shaped by demand: the power of fluid teams (Dan North) [Agile, Lean Software Development, Management, Teams] [Duration: 00:32] Daniel Terhorst-North challenges the notion of stable, long-lived teams and presents an alternative approach called demand-led planning. He argues that by structuring teams around the demand for specific types of work, including feature delivery, discovery, Kaizen, failure demand, and business as usual, organizations can achieve greater flexibility and responsiveness to changing needs.
• Why Scaling Agile Doesn't Work - GOTO 2015 (Jez Humble) [Agile, Continuous Delivery, Lean Software Development] [Duration: 00:51] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Jez Humble examines the common pitfalls of scaling Agile methodologies and presents alternative strategies for achieving organizational agility. He argues that simply implementing Agile practices without addressing underlying systemic issues, such as lengthy feedback loops and inefficient decision-making processes, will not lead to significant improvements. Instead, he proposes that organizations focus on creating rapid feedback loops, reducing batch sizes, and adopting an experimental approach to product development and process improvement, emphasizing value over cost and estimation.

Reminder: All of these talks are interesting, even just listening to them.

Related:

• Recommended Talk/Podcast Database
• Recommended resources tag

Good talks/podcasts (Nov 2024 I)

These are the best podcasts/talks I've seen/listened to recently:

• YOW! 2019 Evolutionary Design Animated (Part1) (James Shore) [Agile, Engineering Culture, Evolutionary Design, Software Design, XP] [Duration: 00:24] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) 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.
• Working Effectively with Legacy Code • Michael Feathers & Christian Clausen • GOTO 2023 (Michael Feathers, Christian Clausen) [AI, Legacy code, Refactoring, testing] [Duration: 00:45] This interview with Michael Feathers, author of "Working Effectively with Legacy Code," explores practical strategies for managing and improving large, untested codebases, including techniques for testing, refactoring, and understanding software change mechanics. Feathers and interviewer Christian Clausen also discuss the impact of AI on code quality, the challenges of advocating for testing in organizations, and the importance of prioritizing efforts based on code value and criticality
• Living Domain Model: Continuous Refactoring to Accelerate Delivery (Younes Zeriahi) [Legacy code, Refactoring, Technical Practices] [Duration: 00:47] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Useful talk for anyway working with legacy complex systems. Younes Zeriahi shares practical examples and techniques for refactoring code in a way that accelerates delivery and improves the overall design, using concepts like Mikado, expand and contract, and Chesterton's Fence. He also highlights the importance of a strong test suite and a deep understanding of the domain for effective refactoring.
• Product management theater (Marty Cagan, Lenny Rachitsky) [Product, Product Discovery, Product Leadership] [Duration: 01:25] This podcast episode features a conversation with Marty Cagan about the state of product management and the differences between effective and ineffective practices. Cagan discusses the common problem of "product management theater," where individuals hold product management titles but lack the necessary skills and operate within feature teams rather than empowered product teams. The discussion emphasizes the importance of focusing on outcomes, understanding customer needs, and embracing experimentation to build successful products.
• The Logic of Flow: Some Indispensable Concepts (Donald Reinertsen) [Lean Product Management, Product] [Duration: 00:33] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) This talk explores key concepts and mathematical principles behind achieving flow in processes, like product development, drawing parallels to flow dynamics in traffic and internet systems. Don Reinertsen explains the economics of queuing, batch size reduction, and fast feedback loops, highlighting their impact on cycle time and overall process efficiency.
• If Russ Ackoff had given a TED Talk... (Beyond continuous improvement) (Russ Ackoff) [Quality, Resilience, Systems Thinking] [Duration: 00:12] This talk explores how to avoid common pitfalls in quality improvement programs by applying systems thinking principles, arguing that focusing on improving individual parts in isolation can be detrimental to the overall system's performance.
• Small Batches podcast: The Mental Model (Adam Hawkins) [Lean, Lean Software Development] [Duration: 00:07] This episode explores when to apply the lean mental model in software development, emphasizing its effectiveness for navigating situations with high uncertainty and the need for rapid learning.

Reminder: All of these talks are interesting, even just listening to them.

Related:

• Recommended Talk/Podcast Database
• Recommended resources tag

Good talks/podcasts (Sept 2024 I)

These are the best podcasts/talks I've seen/listened to recently:

• YOW! 2019 Evolutionary Design Animated (Part1) (James Shore) [Agile, Engineering Culture, Evolutionary Design, Software Design, XP] [Duration: 00:24] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) 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.
• Eric Ries: The Science of Lean Startups (Eric Ries) [Continuous Delivery, Inspirational, Lean Startup] [Duration: 00:58] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) I believe this is the best talk I have heard from Eric about the ideas of Lean Startup. It is also very enlightening to see how one of the fundamental pieces is continuous deployment and the engineering practices he uses. Essential.
• A Conversation with Kent Beck and Eric Ries (Eric Ries, Kent Beck) [Lean Startup, XP] [Duration: 01:04] Interesting conversation between the author of Lean Startup and the author of XP. Clearly, there are synergies between the two movements, and they complement each other perfectly. With both approaches, I believe we can fully cover "Building the right thing, and building the thing right."
• The future of software engineering (Grady Booch) [AI, Engineering Culture, Inspirational] [Duration: 01:09] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Interesting journey through the history of our profession and some predictions about the future with one of the main protagonists (Grady Booch). Very interesting, both the talk and the subsequent questions.
• Overcomplicated Architecture: Scaling Bottleneck (Cassandra Shum) [Architecture, Architecture patterns, Engineering Culture, Evolutionary Architecture] [Duration: 00:49] Cassandra Shum discusses one of the bottlenecks of software development, an overcomplicated architecture, addressing how a company gets to an overcomplicated architecture, and how to get out of it.
• T1 and T2 Signals (Adam Hawkins) [Devops, Lean, Operations] [Duration: 00:17] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Adam presents in this episode an interesting mental model that he calls T1 and T2 signals. It's worth understanding this model.
• Lean Agile Brighton 2019 - Crossing the River by Feeling the Stones (Simon Wardley) [Inspirational, Product Strategy, Strategy, Technology Strategy] [Duration: 01:05] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Simon has given this talk several times, in which he presents Wardley maps and how to use them to help with strategy. I particularly like this version because it uses very good examples, including one about when to use Agile development or Lean ideas. Very instructive.
• Platform Orchestrators: The Missing Middle of Internal Developer Platforms? (Daniel Bryant) [Platform, Platform engineering] [Duration: 00:14] Good introduction to the different approaches to platform creation for development, with an emphasis on Platform Orchestrators, which are not as well-known but can play an important role in the success of these platforms.

Reminder: All of these talks are interesting, even just listening to them.

Related:

• Recommended Talk/Podcast Database
• Recommended resources tag

Good talks/podcasts (Aug 2024 I)

These are the best podcasts/talks I've seen/listened to recently:

• YOW! 2019 Evolutionary Design Animated (Part1) (James Shore) [Agile, Engineering Culture, Evolutionary Design, Software Design, XP] [Duration: 00:24] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) 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.
• Be Quick But Don't Hurry (Joshua Kerievsky) [Agile, Culture, Inspirational] [Duration: 00:02] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Inspirational. These two minutes summarize very well why it is important to be fast but maintain control in order to be truly agile.
• YOW! 2019 Evolutionary Design Animated (Part2) (James Shore) [Agile, Engineering Culture, Evolutionary Design, Software Design, XP] [Duration: 00:24] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) The second part of this great talk. Part1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtBRvsez8DI
• The best programmer I know (Dan North) [Agile, Engineering Career, Engineering Culture, Inspirational, Nature of Software Development] [Duration: 00:56] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Very good talk about the nature of software development and the approach to the profession. Dan talks about software as a medium, continuous learning, teamwork, etc. Highly recommended.
• The Joy of Building Large Scale Systems (Suhail Patel) [Architecture, Engineering Culture, Microservices, Scalability] [Duration: 00:53] Suhail Patel discusses the art and practice of building systems from core principles with a focus on how this can be done in practice within teams and organisations. Very interesting talk with many details about system implementation, taking into account the changes that have occurred in the hardware.
• Alan Kay at OOPSLA 1997 - The computer revolution hasnt happened yet (Alan Kay) [Engineering Culture, Evolutionary Design, Inspirational, Nature of Software Development, OOP, Software Design] [Duration: 01:04] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Classic presentation by Alan Kay talks about the nature of software, the design that systems should have, scalability, and how, to some extent, we could compare it to how biological systems work. Many of the ideas behind Smalltalk can be identified in the talk.. Inspirational.
• Concurrency Oriented Programming in a Modern World (Francesco Cesarini, Robert Virding) [Architecture patterns, Microservices, Scalability, erlang] [Duration: 00:52] This talk delves into how the Erlang concurrency model, initially developed for telecom systems in the 90s, is now vital for modern cloud-based microservices, mobile apps, and machine learning. Presenters Robert and Francesco emphasize how functional languages and fault-tolerant computing principles are essential for distributed multi-core architectures across cloud, edge, and IoT networks.
• Continuous Integration: That’s Not What They Meant (Clare Sudbery) [CI, Technical Practices, Trunk Based Development, XP] [Duration: 00:56] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Very good talk about the benefits of using Trunk Based Development (or in other words, the practice of CI as it was originally created).
• Generative AI in a Nutshell - how to survive and thrive in the age of AI (Henrik Kniberg) [AI, Generative AI] [Duration: 00:17] Simple explanation of what AI is, Generative AI, and how it works at a high level. It's not a detailed explanation, but it's very useful if you want to explain it to someone without a technological background.

Reminder: All of these talks are interesting, even just listening to them.

Related:

• Recommended Talk/Podcast Database
• Recommended resources tag

Good talks/podcasts (June 2024 I)

These are the best podcasts/talks I've seen/listened to recently:

• (Spanish) Impulsando el crecimiento organizacional a través de la Developer Experience (Angélica Lozano, José Rodríguez Huerta) [Devex, Engineering Culture] [Duration: 01:07] Interesante conversación sobre el funcionamiento y organización de MLean con Angélica CTO y fundadora. Interesantes ideas sobre como conectar la experiencia de desarrollo con las necesidades de la compañia, la organizacion de equipos, las particularidades del negocio, como balancean las distintas inversiones en ingenieria. 
• Software Engineering F&*K Up Behind The Passport E-gate Failure" (Dave Farley) [Architecture, Resilience, Software Design] [Duration: 00:17] In this episode, Dave Farley talks about the issue, how poor software engineering led to this, how distributed systems come into it all, how to avoid something like this happening again and at the end of the video asks for answers on some concerning issues around the whole story.
• Perspectives on effective product development culture (Jason Yip) [Culture, Engineering Culture, Product] [Duration: 00:39] Good description of what an efficient product development culture should be like. Jason talks about the pillars of that culture, the guiding principles, and even the main practices, including technical, product, and organizational practices.
• Lean Code (Kevin Kelly) [Agile, Lean Software Development] [Duration: 01:05] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Interesting approach to lean software development focused on how to tackle agile development with this lean mindset. It contains a few interesting points.
• Designing for Habitability (Sam Newman) [Platform, Platform engineering] [Duration: 00:27] Tips and tricks for creating platforms that truly accelerate the pace of innovation in companies.
• Fighting User Requirements That CONSTANTLY Change (Dave Farley) [Nature of Software Development, Product] [Duration: 00:13] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Great description of the true nature of software development as an adaptive learning process of customer needs. A must.
• Continuous Delivery vs. Gitflow & CD At Scale | Bryan Finster In The Engineering Room Ep. 11 (Bryan Finster, Dave Farley) [Continuous Delivery, Engineering Culture, Engineering Scalability] [Duration: 01:09] Interesting conversation about how to introduce CD as part of the engineering strategy in large companies and how having CD as part of the vision (not as a goal in itself) can generate a healthy engineering culture that continuously improves.

Reminder: All of these talks are interesting, even just listening to them.

Related:

• Recommended Talk/Podcast Database
• Recommended resources tag

Good talks/podcasts (Mar 2024 I)

These are the best podcasts/talks I've seen/listened to recently:

• Hexagonal Architecture from its Inventor -Alistair Cockburn, Humans & Technology, inc. | Craft, 2023 (Alistair Cockburn) [Architecture, Architecture patterns, Evolutionary Architecture, hexagonal] [Duration: 00:42] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Great explanation of hexagonal architecture made by its original author. Essential if you use or are considering using this type of architecture. Good information also to know when not to use them.
• How To Use TDD For UI Design (Dave Farley) [Software Design, tdd] [Duration: 00:13] In this episode, Dave explores testing at the edges of the system with examples based on testing UI code as part of a TDD approach. The same tactic can be used to test other components that are difficult to test.
• JUXT Cast S5E4 - Special with Kent Beck (Kent Beck, Jeremy Taylor, Malcom Sparks, James Henderson) [Software Design, XP] [Duration: 01:11] Interesting conversation about the concept of eventual business consistency () / bitemporality and about XP.
• The next grand challenge for AI (Jim Fan) [AI] [Duration: 00:10] Inspirational talk about the learning of AI agents and the power of using open games as test and learning environments.
• Maintainable Ep 161: How Small Can We Make This Problem (Chad Fowler) [Architecture, Architecture patterns, Engineering Career, Engineering Culture] [Duration: 00:58] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Great episode with Chad Fowler. Interesting ideas about design, architecture, software design, microservices, and the state of the industry.
• Scaling Organizations and Design with James Shore (James Shore, Chris Lucian, Austin Chadwick) [Agile, Fast Agile, MobProgramming, Software Design, Technical Practices, testing] [Duration: 00:48] (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) Exciting conversation with James Shores. It covers many topics, including fast-agile, mobbing, testing without mocks, technical practices, etc. Highly recommended.
• Thinking Asynchronously: App Integration Patterns for Microservices (Rebekah Kulidzan) [Architecture, Architecture patterns] [Duration: 00:44] Good list of communication and integration patterns between services. Great talk to remember the basics and clarify some concepts.

Reminder: All of these talks are interesting, even just listening to them.

Related:

• Recommended Talk/Podcast Database
• Recommended resources tag

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.