076 - Signals & Levers

In this episode, Dave and Allan had the wonderful opportunity to chat with the authors of Signals and Levers: Elisabeth Hendrickson and Joel Tosi! Why is it that we get so caught up in the three illusions of predictability, progress, and control? What levers can the average developer reach? Why do we like causal diagrams so much? How does framing change as a hypothesis affect our mindset? It turns out that software engineers might have more capability for influence than we sometimes think.

Shift left is a strategy for moving tasks earlier in your workflow or timeline so that issues are discovered and addressed cheaper and faster. We've seen it move through the industry across QA, Operations, and Security. In this episode, Dave and Allan talk about how these shifts have affected our industry and what's happened with those traditional roles. Is the next step for developers begin to shift left into Product roles? Are there some things which should shift right?

Do you know how your system behaves in production? Can you tell what is normal and what is a problem? It can be all too easy to do a basic set up with a SaaS product and then stop thinking about what's happening in production, hoping that you'll be able to get to the data if there's a problem. In this episode, your hosts discuss the concept of Observability. If we want to be able to improve our systems, avoid problems, and get the right alerts then we must instrument our code for the right data and learn what our baseline actually looks like.

Biology has a lot to teach us about successful complex systems. As with other disciplines, we can adapt biological concepts to help us create better software — both in code and in how we work. In this episode, your hosts talk about how we can apply concepts from cells, genetics, and evolution to practical concepts like team creation, code communication patterns, and architecture. You may never code up your own genetic algorithm, but we think you'll find the concepts interesting and useful.

Databases are key technology used in a large number of applications. There are different types and how we utilize them matters. In this episode, Dave and Allan talk about the changes we've observed in database patterns over time. We cover a variety of types of databases and give some suggestions for implementation details we have found valuable.

Mistakes and failures are a common part of software development. But the consequences depend greatly on whether the failure was part of an experiment or if it was a production incident. In this episode, Dave and Allan discuss how we approach failures and what we can do to help us prevent future mistakes. We also discuss the importance of experimentation, and the necessary components to make it safe to experiment.

Volatility means risk. We experience volatility in our companies and products. We experience it in our teams, our practices, and perhaps especially in code. In this episode, your hosts discuss the importance of recognizing volatility and discuss some ways to handle it.

In prior episodes we've mentioned that although code can be art of itself, we usually focus on the value provided by the functionality from executing the code. But crafting code in a way that creates said value in a sustainable way is difficult, and how you go about it constitutes an art form of its own. In this episode, Allan and Dave discuss the difference between code as art and the art of coding. We talk about why this distinction matters both in the codebase and also to the coders.

While exploring the concept of business strategy, Simon Wardley came up with a mapping concept to visualize the space you are playing in. In this episode, Allan and Dave explore a subset of these ideas and discuss how we've found them helpful in software development. We cover the basic concepts of a Wardley map, then how these maps can help us understand the changing landscape and make better technology decisions.

Fear is the mind-killer, leaving us convinced that we cannot trust others to make decisions. But being the bottleneck for decision making only slows everything down. Delegating to other people helps them grow and be more fulfilled while also freeing up leaders to do more. In this episode, your hosts discuss the importance of delegation and a framework we've used to help provide clarity on how people participate along the spectrum of delegation.