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Naren 🐦@DudeWhoCode Engineering Excellence RubyConf 2022

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🐺 Full time adventurer with Tensoon 👨💻 Software Consultant 🛠 Engineering Lead @ Arcana.Network ☕ Chief Co ff ee O ff i cer @ La Vita Cafe 🐦 @DudeWhoCode About

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How to make espresso ☕

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Dose

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Distribute

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Tamp

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Extract

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Enjoy the coffee 🙈

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• Software engineering is writing code that changes with TIME, PEOPLE and SCALE Software Engineering

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• 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

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Product

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• 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

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Pre-PMF Product User

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• CHANGE - product, code and team • Nothing’s gonna change is a risky bet • Unstoppable change inducers: • Passage of time • Entropy Common factor

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Organization

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• “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?

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Breakpoints

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• 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

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Handling Change

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• 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

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• 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

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• Ways to handle change • Find the change ASAP • Undo previous change • Find change by reducing the feedback loop Detect and Undo

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Always shift left

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• 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

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Healthy Engineering

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• 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

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• Constantly encourage to communicate • Silent team is a dangerous team • Encourage proactive learning • Eliminates parroting Proactiveness

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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Keep It Simple and Stupid GREAT ADVICE… HURTS MY FEELINGS EVERY TIME. MICHAEL ALWAYS SAYS, K.I.S.S - KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID!

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Engineer

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• 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

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• Few of my talks and writings for reference: • Becoming pragmatic • What’s next • Software craftmanship How to show excellence

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You Dev who’s gonna maintain your code

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Conclusion

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Variables in coffee

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Variables in engineering

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• 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

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Thank you Naren, Software Consultant Twitter: @DudeWhoCode