Slide 1
Slide 1 text
Naren
🐦@DudeWhoCode
Engineering Excellence
RubyConf 2022
Slide 2
Slide 2 text
🐺 Full time adventurer with
Tensoon
👨💻 Software Consultant
🛠 Engineering Lead @
Arcana.Network
☕ Chief Co
ff
ee O
ff i
cer @
La Vita Cafe
🐦 @DudeWhoCode
About
Slide 3
Slide 3 text
How to make espresso ☕
Slide 4
Slide 4 text
Dose
Slide 5
Slide 5 text
Distribute
Slide 6
Slide 6 text
Tamp
Slide 7
Slide 7 text
Extract
Slide 8
Slide 8 text
Enjoy
the coffee
🙈
Slide 9
Slide 9 text
• Software engineering is writing code that changes with TIME, PEOPLE
and SCALE
Software Engineering
Slide 10
Slide 10 text
• E
ffi
ciently delivering to customers and taking pride and satisfaction from
the work
• Non functional requirements that keep the system running
• Improves the daily work and productivity of the engineers
• It’s a journey, not the end goal
Engineering Excellence
Slide 11
Slide 11 text
Product
Slide 12
Slide 12 text
• Ship prototypes and prove your product to gain early adopters
• No early users?
• Get back to the whiteboard
• Pivot
• Repeat until you
fi
nd your PMF or shut down
• Until you get your early adopters, engineering excellence doesn’t matter
Pre-PMF
Slide 13
Slide 13 text
Pre-PMF
Product
User
Slide 14
Slide 14 text
• Go from early adopters to early majority - more users in short time
• Add new features from early adopters’ feedback
• Fix screw ups from prototypes - product and engineering
• Refactor the prototype or rewrite the prototype in rare cases
• All these while catering the existing users and expanding the team
PMF
Slide 15
Slide 15 text
• Gain late stage adaptors
• Expand the business by building di
ff
erent product verticals
• By this time if there is no engineering excellence, then either product will
be miserable or team will be miserable
Post-PMF
Slide 16
Slide 16 text
• Engineering excellence will take back seat sometimes
• A long living cash cow product - a.k.a Legacy Code
• Fight for survival - Product or business is at risk because of runway,
funding or competitors
Exceptions
Slide 17
Slide 17 text
• CHANGE - product, code and team
• Nothing’s gonna change is a risky bet
• Unstoppable change inducers:
• Passage of time
• Entropy
Common factor
Slide 18
Slide 18 text
Organization
Slide 19
Slide 19 text
• “Move fast and break things” happens if you are able to undo the broken
things
• Change is the only option for any product
• Faster the change is undoable, more con
fi
dent the team is to make
mistakes
Why engineering excellence?
Slide 20
Slide 20 text
Breakpoints
Slide 21
Slide 21 text
• Real world is messy and chaotic
• 80% of the engineering problems you (will) face would be solved by
fi
xing 20% of the problems
Minimum Viable Process
Slide 22
Slide 22 text
Handling Change
Slide 23
Slide 23 text
• You take decisions and tradeo
ff
s on daily basis
• Should we have cake cutting for everyone’s birthday?
• 10 people
• 30 people
• 300 people
CD - Continuous Decisions
Slide 24
Slide 24 text
• Measurable
• Quanti
fi
able inputs
• Ex. CPU cycles
• Measurable outputs
• Direct costs
• Immeasurable
• Unquanti
fi
able inputs
• Ex. Lack of tests, docs or API
contracts
• Immeasurable outcomes and
impacts
• Indirect costs
Decision I/O
Slide 25
Slide 25 text
• Ways to handle change
• Find the change ASAP
• Undo previous change
• Find change by reducing the feedback loop
Detect and Undo
Slide 26
Slide 26 text
Always shift left
Slide 27
Slide 27 text
• Policy is easy, changing minds are di
ff i
cult
• Policy = Extrinsic. Mindset = Intrinsic
• Examples
• Documentation - needs writing habit
• Remote team - needs e
ff
ective communication
• Change brings resistance and people develop immunity to change
• Retrospect how team embraces the change
Mindset over policies
Slide 28
Slide 28 text
Healthy Engineering
Slide 29
Slide 29 text
• Form writing habit. One pagers and meeting notes are good start
• Deliberately refer the written docs
• Helps mitigating all or nothing expertise
• Internal talks helps to avoid information islands
Knowledge sharing
Slide 30
Slide 30 text
• Constantly encourage to communicate
• Silent team is a dangerous team
• Encourage proactive learning
• Eliminates parroting
Proactiveness
Slide 31
Slide 31 text
• Individual productivity, prioritization, time and energy management are
unlisted part of
• Prioritize heavily to reduce the streams of work. So that anyone can have
a mental model of the work
• Create psychological safety for the team
• Don’t measure lines of code or number of issues closed, evaluate the
impact of the team on the product or release
Productivity
Slide 32
Slide 32 text
• Let the team believe in expertise
• If there is no ability to take continuous tradeo
ff
s, then team copies
patterns without understanding them
• Incentivize for long term e
ff
orts
• A stretched team will put engineering to back seat
Dynamics
Slide 33
Slide 33 text
• Time and entropy makes sure the process you put degrades
• Slip ups which aren’t addressed will be propagated and it will become a
norm
• Leave no broken windows
• Stay vigilant about slip ups
Process decay
Slide 34
Slide 34 text
Keep It Simple and Stupid
GREAT ADVICE… HURTS MY FEELINGS
EVERY TIME.
MICHAEL ALWAYS SAYS,
K.I.S.S - KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID!
Slide 35
Slide 35 text
Engineer
Slide 36
Slide 36 text
• Helps to grow in your career. Either to get promoted inside the company
or get more opportunities outside
• Product mindset and collaboration > Churning code
• In
fl
uence without authority
• Natural leadership
Why it’s important for engineer
Slide 37
Slide 37 text
• Few of my talks and writings for reference:
• Becoming pragmatic
• What’s next
• Software craftmanship
How to show excellence
Slide 38
Slide 38 text
You Dev who’s gonna maintain your code
Slide 39
Slide 39 text
Conclusion
Slide 40
Slide 40 text
Variables in coffee
Slide 41
Slide 41 text
Variables in engineering
Slide 42
Slide 42 text
• Catchy terms and analogies are inspired from books
• “Pragmatic Engineer” Newsletter by Gergely Orosz
• “Build” book by Tony Fadell
• “Software Engineering at Google” book by Winters, Manshreck & Wright
• “Leaders Eat Last” by Simon Sinek
• “Cute pictures” from Tensoon 🐺
Reference & Credits
Slide 43
Slide 43 text
Thank you
Naren, Software Consultant
Twitter: @DudeWhoCode