Software systems rule our world. My regular newsletter explores the human factors that make software engineering so unique, so difficult, so important and all consuming.
Friday 1st March - Learning to say No is Hard
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Yesterday, someone got me on a call and was trying to force me something to do something that I didn't want to do. I told them this wasn't in line with how our team worked. I also told them that wasn't something that I felt comfortable doing. -- You tend to think that the older you get, the easier it is to navigate the relationships you're in at work. In truth, it becomes more complex because the more we know, the more we have to give and the more useful we are to others. Therefore it can often be a challenge to blend the time we're spending helping people rather than focusing on the techincal things. And that's a good thing. -- Richard Too Busy To Do It RightPublished on February 19, 2024  DevOps transformations can often become a checklist of tools and processes we need to assemble, like so much Ikea furniture. But DevOps is not a kit of things you can apply to your organisation. It’s a mindset. And you can’t force an organisation of people to think the same way. I recently listened to an… Read More »Too Busy To Do It Right
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The Human Software
Software systems rule our world. My regular newsletter explores the human factors that make software engineering so unique, so difficult, so important and all consuming.
Writers are terribly impatient. We are so fragile, we crave attention all the time. So, for us, writing into a vacuum and not getting anything back is the worst. We will happily take anything including "wow, it really sucked" or "how could you be so old and so feeble at writing?" At this point in the journey of Human Software, I'm so desperate for feedback, I'm even willing to pay for it! So that's what I did. In January, I hired an editor, and he's been great. He helped me with the...
Over the last week, I drew a map of Kent reimagined as if the 1286/7 floods hadn't happened. According to the history books, those large storms and tidal events significantly changed the coastline of eastern England. The former Wantsum Channel became blocked with alluvial mud and sand, turning the once important seaport of Sandwich into a landlocked town too far away from the sea to accept large boats. Further afield Dunwich in Suffolk suffered a similar fate: In the Anglo-Saxon period,...
Three years ago, I started a podcast without much idea of its future. Before that, I'd started writing, wandering through automation, programming techniques, infrastructure, DevOps, and thoughts about management, leadership, and how companies are organised. Where was I going? While I'd read a few books, it was clear that I was searching for something. Was I just talking for the sake of it? It sometimes certainly seemed that way. And then, about eighteen months ago, I started writing a novel....