Leading with Head and Heart

In this talk, the speakers unpack leadership from different perspectives – that of an organizational development specialist working with senior IT and business leadership and a technical leader and consultant who helps teams to work through some of the challenges they face every day.

Leaders (in the formal sense), have multiple responsibilities – they have to lead, and they have to manage – a people aspect and an administrative aspect. We will discuss what these responsibilities entail and how they have changed over the past few years, as the whole world changed. We will share thoughts and suggestions on how leaders and teams can navigate through the chaos.

Leaders must set a vision for their teams, provide enabling context, help to maintain a team culture, and keep their stakeholders informed. A lot of this used to happen informally around the coffee machine and over lunch. Now, however, it takes deliberate consideration and effort.

Leaders must connect people with purpose and help their teams to collaborate effectively. This too, looks different now. True leadership in uncertain times is a critical, yet hard-to-find, skill.

A (fr)Agile Manifesto

The Agile Manifesto is a fantastic document and something that I really support and value.

In practice, sadly, we often seem to adopt some kind of (fr)Agile Manifesto that contradicts the values we proclaim - in practice, we value processes and tools over individuals and interactions, we see status updates as the primary measure of progress rather than working software, and we value silos over collaboration.

In other words, we get caught up in processes and ceremonies but we miss the core reasons behind why we actually follow those processes. We disregard the fundamental differences between Agile and traditional approaches and then we try to run waterfall projects, but with standups and retrospectives thrown into the mix so that we can claim that we're "Agile". We end up doing the exact things that we want to get away from, but we do them under the guise of "Agile" - and then nothing changes and we conclude that "Agile doesn't work".

In this talk, we'll go back to the fundamentals and help the audience to see through the noise. It's not a critique of any specific methodology, but it's a look at the core things we want to accomplish. It comes from the perspective of someone who's been in the trenches on a multitude of projects - good projects and bad projects.

I realize that I'm not the first person to pick up on the "Fragile Manifesto" word play, and there have been a couple of other takes (and April Fools jokes) on it. However, in this talk, I give a frank view of my own experience as someone who has been involved in a multitude of projects (some of which went well and some of which didn't), not as a coach or outside observer, but really being in the trenches and being responsible for delivery.

I'll talk about the Agile Manifesto, the (Fr)Agile Manifesto that we actually seem to adopt based on our behaviour, and I'll go back to the values and the core things that we actually want to accomplish.

Me, a tech lead? Help!

If you happen to be good at what you do, at some point, someone will want to turn you into a manager/leader/boss (sorry, I don’t make the rules). However, despite the fact that being good at what you do got you into a management role, you’ll need to cultivate an entirely different skillset to succeed at it.

A manager’s job has two parts to it – leadership and management. Unfortunately, leadership isn’t something that I can teach you in one session – that comes with experience, scars, and introspection. There are a few things that I could probably teach you though, so in this talk, we’re going to cover some of the most important skills that go with the role – communication, delegation, stakeholder management, admin, and giving up on trying to be the smartest person in the room.

This talk is inspired by an interaction with a leader on project team that I worked with. The leader came from a technical background – i.e. they were moved into a leadership role because of the fact that they were technically very skilled.

However, one of the biggest challenges on the team was a lack of information flowing to the team members and the team’s stakeholders – the leader’s natural instinct was to get their head down and actually do the work. Unfortunately, while that got them into the role, it was not what they need to do to succeed as leader.

I believe this is a common challenge for new leaders, and that some advice based on my learnings and my growth as a leader can also benefit a larger audience.

Field Guide for New Managers

If you are good at what you do, at some point, someone will likely try to turn you into a leader/boss/manager. Somehow, that’s become the standard for “career progression”.

However, the thing that got you there isn’t the thing that’ll make you succeed. Sure, it helps, but there’s more to it. As a leader/boss/manager, your job changes - instead of just doing whatever it is that you are really good at, you now have to inspire and lead people. You have to manage things and admin becomes a necessary evil. You can’t always be the smartest person in the room anymore. Your new job is vastly different from your old one.

So, how do you manage that? In this talk, I’m going to give you some advice on dealing with this change.

I’ve been working in the tech industry for the past 13 years or so. At some point, someone decided that they should put me in charge of other people. This talk is about the lessons that I learnt in the process. I’ll also share useful resources that helped me on my journey.

Structure
5m - intro and background
20m - what it takes to lead people
10m - dealing with admin
10m - bad ideas to avoid
5m - questions and discussions

Beyond Tech: Confusion, Conflict, and Lost Productivity

We find ourselves in a complex world where technology and business collide - people with different views working towards the same goal (even if it doesn't always feel like it).

This talk is about effectively navigating your way through that world and bridging the gaps that lead to confusion, conflict, and lost productivity. It speaks about context, communication, empathy, and understanding the businesses that we work in and the people that we work with. It's about the human aspects of software development that transcends across borders and tools.

I use (often humorous) anecdotes from personal experiences (and bashing my head many times) throughout my career working in companies of all sizes - from 12 employees to tens of thousands of employees. I end the talk by sharing links to books, talks, and articles that I've found to be useful, and I touch on development-concepts ranging from Agile to mob programming.

Spoiler Alert: Users are not the enemy, even when they give you grief.

I've presented this talk publicly three times - once at the Regional Scrum Gathering in Cape Town, South Africa in 2019 (although it's a developer-focused talk, it was well-received in the Agile community), at the Developer User Group, and also at my employer - a tech consultancy.

I often feel that talks on specific languages or frameworks target a particular subset of developers, but believe that this talk can benefit developers and other members of technical teams regardless of where they work of what technology they use.

Two of the attendees at the Regional Scrum Gathering created sketch notes based on my talk: https://twitter.com/sketchingsm/status/1185200369963622401 and https://twitter.com/SharnaSammy/status/1185259048603660289.

Lastly, some of my previous talks are available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb9tr6RLysM and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qDIZXCbvVY.

Coding for Tomorrow: The Art of Building Maintainable Solutions

This talk is about general best practices and guidelines for writing well-structured, maintainable code.

We rarely write code that we never have to revisit again - in fact, we often spend more time maintaining existing code than writing new code. So - it makes sense to make our code easy to maintain, doesn't it?

In this talk, we'll look at ways to write maintainable code - including SOLID Principles, good naming conventions and other clean coding practices. We'll also touch on architectural thinking, configuration management, and testing. And of course, we'll look at lots of code.

Lastly, we'll discuss the importance of being pragmatic and considering YAGNI (you ain't gonna need it) - code should be easy to maintain, but it doesn't have to cater for every possible scenario that will (likely) never happen.

The suggestions in this talk will focus on object-oriented languages such as Java and C#. I teach a Udemy course on SOLID Principles, and I like to take a practical approach - instead of just talking through theory, I like to show code and highlight potential issues and how to fix them.

I've read numerous books that I can draw on to provide further insight and context to the audience, including The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and Dave Thomas, and Clean Code by Robert Martin.

Mob Programming 101: A Developer's Guide to Joining the Mob

In 2016, I joined a team that practiced mob programming - in a large, complex, financial-services environment.

Mob programming takes collaboration to a whole new level by having a single team around one keyboard and one screen, all working on the same problem - together. This challenges one of the biggest myths in IT - that programmers are simply typists. Programmers are problem-solvers, and it's easier to solve problems when you put many heads together.

This talk is about my journey from a solo developer (in a team, but working alone) to a mob programming (still in a team, but working with everyone else).

We'll unpack the benefits and the drawbacks of mob programming, the learning opportunities that it brings, the changes that it requires in team culture, the difficulties of getting external stakeholders to buy into it, and the mindset that it requires.

I wrote an article on mob programming for the South African OfferZen Source blog, available here: https://www.offerzen.com/blog/mob-programming-memoirs-agile-collaboration-on-steroids. The talk is brand new, but the content will draw from the same experiences.

So, You Want to Be a Software Architect?

In this talk, we'll take a whirlwind tour through the world of software architecture. This talk is technology agnostic and aimed at anyone who is involved in software architecture, regardless of their role, or who wants to become a "software architect" in title.

We'll discuss:
- What architecture is and why we need it.
- What architects are and what they do.
- Thinking like an architect.
- Context and trade-offs.
- Problem-solving beyond writing code.
- Communication.
- Some fundamental architectural patterns.

The role of the architect is interesting - it is a typical evolution of a developer, but it is often not a technical role. In other words, the skills that get you into your first architecture role are not the skills you need to succeed once you get there. It requires the ability to zoom out and look at the big picture, bridge the gap between business and technology, and lead (albeit with very little in the way of formal authority).

This talk is intended to be a primer on software architecture. The speaker has been involved in software architecture in various forms for around a decade.

Agility Through Technology: Build Like a Rockstar

When we talk about Agile implementations in organizations, it often starts with IT. The conversation then revolves around how we deliver on projects, how we run processes, and how we collaborate. But what about the actual technology?

Technology has evolved to lend itself to Agile more than ever before. In this talk, we'll unpack how modern development tools and practices can be used to enable agility in organizations. We'll discuss:
- Test automation
- DevOps
- Cloud
- CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment)
- Architecture practices
- Code analysis tools

This talk is for engineering leaders, Agile practitioners, engineers, and anyone involved in the SDLC. We'll move away from theory, and unpack how to actually apply modern development practices and tools to Agile software development.
I want to leave you with practical insight to apply in your own organization.

I started my career as a software developer and eventually transitioned into engineering leadership, including a CTO role. I've used agile methodologies, including Scrum, for over a decade.

In this talk, I want to use my experience to help non-technical Agile practitioners to understand how to apply Agile within a software engineering context, while also helping developers to understand how development practices can align to Agile initiatives.

Consider the example of software on a disk bought from your favourite retailer a decade or two ago. There had to be a "final" version that was set in stone. Today, through models like SaaS, we can release and incorporate user feedback as we go and deliver to end-users continuously.

This will be a 35 - 40 minute talk, aimed at an intermediate audience, with some time for Q&A at the end. It has not been delivered publicly before.

Mentorship 101

Careers are tricky. There are lots of lessons to learn and mistakes to be made, but if you can find a mentor somewhere along the way, the journey becomes easier.

In this talk, we'll unpack mentorship, both as a mentor and a mentee. We'll cover some important questions, such as:
- What is mentorship?
- How do I find a mentor?
- How can I be a mentor?
- How do I get the most out of mentorship?

I hope that this talk will not only help you to find a mentor and to derive value from that relationship, but also to be a better mentor yourself.

This is a lightweight lightening talk based on a more detailed session (and accompanying article) that I presented a few years ago.

It's aimed at a broad audience (early-career to senior employees) and intends to offer practical advice.