Software Delivery Recipes

Some ingredients for success from a Software Delivery Chef.

There are conferences for Web, and there are conferences for Web. If you look at the conference calendar, you will see multiple of them. You might wonder to which one to go this fall. And you will be correct. There are so many.

I want to introduce you to an event that could change how you define a “good conference experience” for yourself.

The event is called “HalfStack,” and it runs in several cities, but my pitch for you is for their Vienna event because I will be speaking there.

HalfStack events are fun, creative, single-track events hosted in relaxed environments focusing on the attendee experience, with great food, drinks, talks, swag, and community. It's different from your ordinary tech event.

If you look at the speakers and their talks, you will see that for just one day, you will learn a lot about APIs, Javascript, Team management, building stuff, and how to bring fun back to your developer's life!

Then, you might realize that the event is just half done because the rest of the activities are before you. You can mingle with the speakers and other fellow attendees and even participate in some funny actions. All of this is included in your ticket!

What is my talk about?

After three days at a metal festival, I realized something sad. In the software world, we don't have fun at work anymore. I am not talking about the HR-inspired fun; I am talking about the joy that comes from the inside. I want to change that and challenge you to bring back our fun.

My career in IT started as a servant to programmers, fixing a line or two in the code, and now I am a director in a vast international privacy company. If I look back, it was different. Oh gosh, we had so much fun in the past.

Do you remember the chair rowing? Do you remember how amazed we were to crash a keyboard or two on each other backs? Do you remember us singing songs about Java while writing fake protocols?

What happened to us?

I don't know when it happened, but it seems that at some point recently, most of the world decided that IT is an elite profession that needs to produce only value no matter what.

This is a great tragedy, and it must be rectified. Why do we have feelings, emotions, and personalities if we no longer have fun?

In the talk, I will take you on a retrospective journey through the years to see what went wrong and how we fix it together. It's more like an art provocation than talk, so please keep your mind open to learn something new.

Thanks!

Thanks for reading this small pitch that looks like a marketing message, but it's not. It comes from my heart!

As a thank you gift I am ready to give you a 10% discount. Reach out to me if you are interested.

I received this question on my Mastodon account.

The Cold Dish:

When I suggest we bring more people into the team to help us when we have capacity problems, most engineering leads start screaming at me that this is counterproductive. How do I solve this?

My Recipe:

I wrote an excellent article that could give in-depth details into the problem and the solution we took together.

Deliver a product with an impossible timeline: Can seven apple trees grow an apple for one month?

The lesson here is to know that sometimes throwing more people to help the team helps, and all the time, we should challenge the status quo or the fixed “this wouldn’t work.” because it might.

Happy reading!

I received this question via e-mail.

The cold dish:

Peter: I come from a very “direct” culture and am often seen as rude while communicating with others. Once, someone also reported me to HR. How would you solve this?

My recipe:

You hit the spot. I had the same experience since I come from the Balkans, and how we express ourselves can sometimes qualify as “ inappropriate for business.”

This is what I did; it helped me communicate well. Also, the feedback I received confirmed that I am moving in the right direction.

Ingredient 1: Give more context.

Before saying to someone that they suck or the process in B.S., take a step back and think about what you are trying to achieve. You don't want to offend your business peers, but helping them see something they don't, could make your working lives much more manageable.

Read more...

A chef is a person who can mix tastes, approaches, and traditions to create delicious recipes.

I have a lot of experience in the software development industry, and I use the knowledge to mix approaches, flavors, and methodologies to create beautiful recipes for success.

Let's fusion this together.

Basic Tastes

A chef also knows his theory. What are the basic tastes of the software delivery? The same as those in your mount when you eat a delicious meal.

Bitter

  • How many times have you failed a release?

Sweet

  • How does it feel to release your first product in public?

Salt

  • How many bugs did you discover after you finished your sprint?

Sour

  • What happened to the psychological safety of your team after a layoff?

Umami

  • Tell me about your first revenue dollar.

Pungent

  • How do you feel when your CI/CD pipeline runs for the first time?

Recipes

Come with me on a journey and rediscover the software delivery world.

Classic Recipes

I'll share some classic ways of solving a problem you won't consider because there are more fancy ways of doing what you are doing best. Traditions are called that way because they are well-known and work in most cases.

Regional Kitchen

You could use some inspiration from the others. There are approaches in different parts of the world that you need to learn which might solve your problem.

Fusion

Mixing different approaches to discover a new taste and a solution is one of the things I do best. We live in a world where the information pours. Let's use it and mix it for our own needs.

Happy reading and experimenting!