“Emotional intelligence is about knowing yourself, empathizing with other people, and always defining a win-win outcome in everything you do." Trenton Moss is the founder of Team Sterka and the author of “Human Powered”. In this episode, Trenton shared the importance of having good emotional intelligence and people skills in digital product teams. He shared the 6 key skills we need to succeed as outlined in his book: conflict resolution, building strong relationships, leading and influencing, fa...
Jan 16, 2023•58 min•Ep. 116
“An engineering manager should make sure that the team has a good balance of delivering things that the business needs with enough capacity to do it sustainably over time." Today's clip is from episode 94 with Patrick Kua. In this clip, we discussed Pat’s latest course, Engineering Manager Essentials. We discussed what an engineering manager role is, how it differs from a Tech Lead role, and the common manager versus IC career track. Pat also shared his view on why being an engineering manager i...
Jan 02, 2023•20 min
“Interactions with domain experts play a key role in implementing software. You have to make sure that you understand the problem you’re solving. You cannot provide a software solution without understanding the problem first." Today's clip is from episode 76 with Vladik Khononov, the author of “Learning Domain-Driven Design”. In this clip, Vladik shared why understanding business domain is crucial in software engineering and how DDD can help build the shared understanding between the domain expe...
Dec 26, 2022•18 min
“The simplest way to describe craftsmanship is pride of workmanship. It is the mindset that you are working on something important and you are going to do it well." Today's clip is from episode 90 with Robert C. Martin, more widely known as Uncle Bob. In this clip, Uncle Bob shared some insights from his latest book, “Clean Craftsmanship”. He shared the current major challenge of the software development industry as a young discipline, which drove Uncle Bob writing the book to help define discip...
Dec 19, 2022•19 min
Instead of being given a roadmap of features, an empowered team is given a problem to solve and they get to figure out the best way to solve that problem." Today's clip is from episode 102 with Marty Cagan, the founder of the Silicon Valley Product Group and the author of “Inspired” and “Empowered”. In this clip, Marty explained the importance of building the right product and shared the two inconvenient truths about building products. Marty then elaborated on the traits a good product team has ...
Dec 12, 2022•18 min
“Engineering discipline is the most effective, efficient way of doing high-quality work. If our software development practices do not allow us to build better software faster, we should really change them because they are not engineering." Today's clip is from Tech Lead Journal episode 100 with Dave Farley, the one who runs the popular "Continuous Delivery" YouTube channel, and also the author of "Continuous Delivery" and the latest book, "Modern Software Engineering". In this clip, Dave explain...
Dec 05, 2022•16 min
“Every organization has a mission, a vision, and a set of values. As a leader, your number one task is to live those values and talk about them at every opportunity with your team to create alignment." Manoj Awasthi is the CTO at JULO and previously the SVP of Engineering at Tokopedia. In this episode, Manoj shared engineering leadership lessons from his recent experiences. Manoj started by describing the role of a senior engineering leader before then explaining some important aspects of engine...
Nov 28, 2022•45 min•Ep. 115
“Intrinsic motivation is a great predictor of success. When people are doing things they feel intrinsically motivated to do, they tend to be much more successful." Matt K. Parker is the author of “A Radical Enterprise”. In this episode, Matt started by sharing his views on the underlying causes of the great resignation trend, which includes the dominator hierarchies. Matt then explained in-depth the four key imperatives mentioned in his book that organizations must practice for establishing radi...
Nov 21, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 114
“An ADR is a simple text file describing the context, the decision, and the consequences of a single architectural decision stored in the version control repository." Michael Keeling is an experienced software engineer, architect, and the author of “Design It!: From Programmer to Software Architect”. In this episode, Michael shared in-depth about ADR. He first shared his story of discovering ADR before describing what an ADR is. Michael then shared the objectives and benefits of using ADR to rec...
Nov 14, 2022•41 min•Ep. 113
“Developer experience is an approach to thinking about engineering excellence and maximizing engineering performance by increasing the capacity and performance of the individuals and the team as a whole." Abi Noda is the CEO & co-founder of DX. In this episode, Abi started by sharing what developer experience is, why it is becoming an industry trend nowadays, and the different ways of how it is being implemented in the industry. Abi explained why the traditional metrics normally used to meas...
Nov 07, 2022•53 min•Ep. 112
“The people who are the communicators are the ones visible within companies. Just being technically proficient is not enough. You have to be an advocate for yourself." Neil Thompson is the founder of Teach the Geek and a public speaking coach. In this episode, Neil explained the importance of public speaking for technical professionals. Neil shared tips and advice on we can start and improve our public speaking skills. We also discussed some common challenges when speaking publicly and tips on h...
Oct 31, 2022•40 min•Ep. 111
“As a team leader, you will become more successful and valuable if you are no longer a bottleneck for the people who are working with you and under you." Roy Osherove is the author of “Elastic Leadership” and “The Art of Unit Testing”. In this episode, we discussed leadership insights from “Elastic Leadership”. Roy first shared how he came up with the concept and described what elastic leadership is. He explained the different leadership styles based on the 3 team phases (survival mode, learning...
Oct 24, 2022•56 min•Ep. 110
“The most responsible thing a human can do, either personally for their own development or the development of others, is play to a person’s strengths." Brandon Miller is the founder and CEO of 34 Strong and one of the first 7 certified Gallup Clifton StrengthsFinder coaches in the world. In this episode, we discussed Clifton StrengthsFinder, also known as CliftonStrengths. Brandon introduced what CliftonStrengths is and why it is important for us to recognize and focus on our strengths. He also ...
Oct 17, 2022•48 min•Ep. 109
“Companies that are successful in getting the most out of the cloud embrace the fact that distributed application architecture is a first class application architecture concern." Joe Duffy is the co-founder and CEO of Pulumi. In this episode, we discussed cloud engineering concept and how Pulumi is helping to shape its future. Joe started by sharing his story founding Pulumi and the evolution of the cloud adoption. He shared his view on why cloud should be a first class application architecture ...
Oct 10, 2022•50 min•Ep. 108
“If you want to unlock the value of your data by generating data-driven values, and you want to do it reliably and resiliently at scale, then you need to consider data mesh." Zhamak Dehghani is the author of the “Data Mesh” book. In this episode, we discussed in-depth about the data mesh, a concept she founded in 2018, which has then been becoming an industry trend. We started our conversation by discussing the current challenges working with data, such as the data centralization approach and wh...
Oct 03, 2022•57 min•Ep. 107
“There’s no leading without following. We are only a leader because somebody is following us." Jutta Eckstein is a coach, consultant, and trainer who has helped many teams and organizations worldwide making an Agile transition. In this episode, we discussed ideas from her book “Company-wide Agility With Beyond Budgeting, Open Space, and Sociocracy”, also widely known as the BOSSA nova. Jutta started by sharing today’s company challenge in terms of collision of values between shareholder, custome...
Sep 26, 2022•57 min•Ep. 106
“If you want to become a better and more effective leader, then one of your core skills should be coaching skills." Bob Galen is the President & Principal Agile Coach at RGCG and a prolific writer, blogger, and podcaster. In this episode, Bob and I discussed coaching and leadership from his latest book “Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coaching”. Bob started by explaining the concepts of agile leadership and agile coaching. He shared about the different coaching stances and why he suggests that ...
Sep 19, 2022•57 min•Ep. 105
“The most important part about building an experiment-driven culture is to make it safe to fail and to fail in good ways." Lisi Hocke is an active figure in the global testing community. In this episode, Lisi shared her lessons learned growing an experiment-driven quality culture in her recent years. Lisi shared why it is important to have an experimentation mindset before we adopt something new or any good practices and to have a safe environment to execute those experiments. Lisi shared her ad...
Sep 12, 2022•59 min•Ep. 104
“A way to boost productivity is to create high-quality software from the outset, so that teams can spend less time on rework, both during development and after the release." Karl Wiegers is the author of “Software Development Pearls” and the Principal Consultant at Process Impact. In this episode, Karl shared some lessons he has learned over the past five decades of his career. We first discussed software requirement, its role for communication, and the importance of defining the right requireme...
Sep 05, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 103
“Instead of being given a roadmap of features, an empowered team is given a problem to solve and they get to figure out the best way to solve that problem." Marty Cagan is the founder of the Silicon Valley Product Group and the author of “Inspired” and “Empowered”. In this episode, we discussed how companies ought to build great products by learning from the best product companies. Marty explained the importance of building the right product and shared the two inconvenient truths about building ...
Aug 29, 2022•51 min•Ep. 102
“As a servant leader, your number one job is to serve the people around you. You succeed together with your people, and that’s why serving them first would give you the best opportunity to succeed together." Henry Suryawirawan is the host of your beloved podcast. In this episode, hosted by Jerome Poudevigne, we uncovered lessons from Henry’s career journey and from running the Tech Lead Journal podcast. Henry shared his career turning points that included multiple transitions between individual ...
Aug 22, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 101
🎙️ CELEBRATE the 100th EPISODE by submitting your story/message at techleadjournal.dev/celebrate-100 🎉 “Engineering discipline is the most effective, efficient way of doing high-quality work. If our software development practices do not allow us to build better software faster, we should really change them because they are not engineering." Dave Farley is the co-author of the Jolt award-winning book “Continuous Delivery” and runs the popular “Continuous Delivery” YouTube channel on software en...
Aug 08, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 100
🎙️ CELEBRATE the 100th EPISODE by submitting your story/message at techleadjournal.dev/celebrate-100 🎉 “Acceptance test is any test that a system must pass in order to be accepted. If you can’t ship a system without passing a test, then it is an acceptance test." Kenneth Pugh is an acclaimed author and thought leader in acceptance-test driven development (ATDD) and behavior-driven development (BDD). His works include the 2006 Jolt award winner “Prefactoring” followed by “Lean-Agile Acceptance ...
Aug 01, 2022•50 min•Ep. 99
“Empiricism is at the heart of agility. The fundamental foundation of agility starts with some assertion about value. Every sprint or iteration is really an experiment about value." Kurt Bittner is the author and editor of many books on agile product development, including co-authoring the recent “Professional Agile Leader” book. In this episode, we started our conversation discussing the common misconception of Agile in the modern day and Kurt emphasized that empiricism should be at the heart o...
Jul 25, 2022•51 min•Ep. 98
“A highly functional team defines the right environment and has what they need to be the best professionals they can be. And that always includes agency and psychological safety." Jim Benson is the co-author of “Personal Kanban” and is currently working on his upcoming book “The Collaboration Equation”. In this episode, we started by discussing Personal Kanban, how it differs from a to-do list, and its two main rules, i.e. visualizing our work and limiting our work-in-progress. Jim also shared p...
Jul 18, 2022•57 min•Ep. 97
“Reliability is the most important thing. Your users define your reliability, so make sure you’re measuring the right thing. And 100% is out of the question, so pick the right target." Alex Hidalgo is the Principal Reliability Advocate at Nobl9 and author of “Implementing Service Level Objectives”. In this episode, we discussed the practical guide on how to implement SRE and SLOs. Alex started by explaining the basic concept of service reliability and service truths. He then explained the concep...
Jul 11, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 96
“You are your greatest asset in your career and in your life. Invest in you personally in all areas of life in order to live your best life." Jeff Perry is an engineering coach, the founder of More Than Engineering and the co-host of the Engineering Career Coach podcast. In this episode, Jeff shared the important role of a coach or mentor in our engineering career. We first discussed Jeff’s engineering career clarity checklist and why it is truly important to find the clarity in our career journ...
Jul 04, 2022•49 min•Ep. 95
“An engineering manager should make sure that the team has a good balance of delivering things that the business needs with enough capacity to do it sustainably over time." Patrick Kua is a seasoned technology leader with a passion to accelerate the growth and success of tech organisations and technical leaders. In this episode, we discussed Pat’s latest course, Engineering Manager Essentials, which covers all the building blocks required to be an effective Engineering Manager (EM). We first dis...
Jun 27, 2022•55 min•Ep. 94
“We want to write as little software as possible, and we want it to have as much value as possible. If you actually focus on that, it means you have to be close to your customer." Dave Thomas is the founder & chairman of Bedarra Corp, creator of IBM Smalltalk, VisualAge for Java, Eclipse, Kx Analyst workbench and Skills Matter YOW! Australia conferences. In this episode, Dave shared about his personal research, 42D, on ideas we can use to develop high-value software rapidly. He started by de...
Jun 20, 2022•58 min•Ep. 93
“Testing is an activity that happens throughout. It is not a phase that happens at the end. Start thinking about the risks at the very beginning, and how we are going to mitigate those with testing." Janet Gregory and Lisa Crispin are the co-authors of several books on Agile Testing and the co-founders of Agile Testing Fellowship. In this episode, Janet and Lisa shared the agile testing concept and mindset with an emphasis on the whole team approach, which was then followed by an explanation of ...
Jun 13, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 92
