The QUEST for Better Software: Happier Teams and Happier Customers

Richard Bown: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to the Loving Legacy Podcast.

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My name is Richard Bown.

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I've been working pretty hard on a talk, which I'm gonna be giving

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in a few weeks time at the We Are Developers Conference in Berlin.

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It's called The Quest for Better Software, and it's.

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Based around the framework that I came up with earlier this year, although I

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don't wanna call it a framework, I just wanna call it a word, a mnemonic If you,

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if you like a way of remembering how we can make our software better every day

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and how we can make our software teams maybe a little happier every day too.

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So today I'd just like to go through the presentation.

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In short, , I'm also sharing this on YouTube, so feel free

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to look at the slides and gimme some feedback on there too.

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The subject of this talk is about creating better software.

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And over the last year or so, I've been catching up with many of the

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theories or the books, podcasts, talks around creation of quality software.

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Um, after many years of actually building software and being

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in the trenches, so to speak.

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Um, working with teams, working in teams, working as a software developer myself.

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I've seen many things that enable us to improve quality, deliver features

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faster to production with more clarity over what the expected outcomes will

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be, better results, essentially.

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So I have some practical experience, quite a lot of practical experience with this.

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I also have now have read quite a lot of theory on this and

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listened to various other opinions.

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And at one point, or rather towards the end of last year, maybe earlier

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this year, I thought, well, this is great having all of these books,

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but how do we remember all the stuff that we have to do as an individual?

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Because typically when we go into an organization, we're working in a team.

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To build some software.

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There are very many opinions based on people's experience and

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what they've understood, learned, read their education and so on.

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Um, and it makes it sometimes muddy.

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It makes it sometimes quite difficult to understand how we can get the

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best out of our software and the best out of ourselves and our team.

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Um, every day it becomes sometimes just a case of we are building something, but

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we don't know quite why we are doing a certain task, like a quality related task

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or maybe a code review or, um, analyzing a pool request or creating an environment

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or loading some data for testing.

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Some of these things, we just kind of fall into a routine around them.

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So in this talk, I wanted to explore some of the best practices that we have in our

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industry and which are given to us by our experts, , and maybe make things a little

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bit clearer for us every single day.

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So the talk is the quest for better software, daily habits, for happy

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software teams, and happy customers.

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Um, so quite a bold statement, I suppose you'd say, and regarding the talk.

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I also want to discuss fear as well, because fear is something which

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in a day to day way of working, we shouldn't really come up against.

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We don't want to, to feel that.

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We want to feel that we can express ourselves in our best way,

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especially in a software development job, which is quite creative.

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We wanna be able to feel that we can.

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Do what we like, um, within certain guidelines, maybe within

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certain guardrails in order to express ourselves safely.

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, another way of looking at, this is the phrase psychological safety,

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which is currently very popular in the world of software engineering,

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which enables us, again, to describe a way of expressing ourselves without

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feeling that we will encounter fear or without fear of something bad happening.

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Um, Also because this is a presentation I'll be giving on a stage in front

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of potentially 500 people, fear is something I will be feeling.

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I'm pretty sure when I get up on a stage and I heard a great quote,

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from Dara O'Brien, the Irish comedian the other day, saying that it's the

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prospects of failure that lights the fires, the cold, unused stare of

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the audience is a great motivator.

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So that's his view on fear.

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I think he.

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Many, probably 30 years ago, turned a switch in his head to

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say, okay, well I might fail, but this is a way that I can motivate

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myself to be a success on a stage.

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So that's a standup comedian's view of how fear can influence them or

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encourage them to produce better work.

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However, day-to-day as a software engineer, we don't

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want to be encountering fear.

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We want to be able to feel safe and be able to.

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Execute to the best of our abilities.

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So how can we do this?

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So one of the books I've read over the last year or so has been Kent Beck's,

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test Driven Development by Example.

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Um, and whilst I wasn't really an XP or T d d follower in any way or at

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all, I didn't know very much about it.

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I wanted to open my mind and my ideas to.

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Different ways of approaching how you build software.

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And I have to say, when I read this book, when I read test driven development,

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um, by example, I suddenly thought, aha, okay, this is what I've been missing.

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Because test driven development is all about writing tests

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before you write the code.

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So writing a failing test first, then writing, , a piece of code which will

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pass the test and then refactoring that code to make it better and make it more.

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Neat, tidy, um, cleaner and so forth.

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That's essentially what test driven development is about.

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So you change, you flip, change the dynamic, you flip it around so that

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you will create the tests first.

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So inevitably you will have good coverage because you'll have tests.

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Covering every single piece of code that you write.

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You will also think about your design.

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It forces you to think about your design as you go because you will encounter

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way that your code is being used as the first thing you need to think about.

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And a lot of the time as coders, as software engineers, we see a

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requirement or someone's asked us to do, to do a piece of work, and we will

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go and write some code to do that?

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So we'll create a class or a couple of classes and we'll hook them

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together and they will do something.

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But we don't typically think about, okay, well how is it gonna

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be used further down the line?

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Essentially, unless you do make that flip and you say, flip in your

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head and you say, okay, I'm gonna deliberately write the test first.

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This is what TDD is all about.

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It forces you to design as you go along.

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And consequently, I watched a, I recently watched a YouTube of his,

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it was around his stuff, all his good stuff, he was talking about a new

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book, which he's writing at the moment.

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Um, and this was a quote from the beginning of that book, , which

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really struck home with me as well, which is software design is an

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exercise in human relationships.

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, and that.

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Tallys with a lot of the feelings that I have around how software, good software

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is built and deployed, and also how customers come to see that software too.

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So as, a quote that I could be use to maybe sum up this talk, it's essentially

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this software design designers and excise in human relationships.

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, so test driven development by example, as I've mentioned by Ken Beck.

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Okay.

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Onto the subject of my talk, which is something that I also saw the other day,

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um, and I'm not sure if it's entirely serious by the author, but I do have a bit

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of a problem with lists of things to do or not do, and you, what you'll see as we

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get into this talk is that essentially, I've got lots of lists in there.

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Yeah.

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Lots of lists of things that we should think about, things that we should

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probably consider, things that we should do, best practices, et cetera.

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And it becomes quite unmanageable because we can only keep a few things

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in our head, as I'm sure you know.

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Um, and as a man you end up having even fewer things in our head cuz we

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get very easily distracted by stuff.

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So.

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How can we possibly hope to keep all of these best practices, all these

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ideas, all of these things that we read no matter how good the quality of the

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source, and how well intentioned and well presented, all of these various

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ideas are, how can we keep them all in our head, keep them all practical.

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So today I'm gonna be focusing on three pieces of work.

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These are.

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The manifesto for Agile software Development, the Unicorn Project by

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Gene Kim, who's also, um, co-author of Accelerate, is also co-author

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of the Phoenix Project all around DevOps maven and very sensible

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guy who knows a lot about DevOps.

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Um, There's the DevOp Enterprise Summit that he's always appearing at.

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I think his company also runs that as well.

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So he's a name in the world.

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World.

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DevOps, the Manifesto for Agile software development, obviously.

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Um, I hope you've all heard of that.

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If you're working in.

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Professional commercial software development today.

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It's kind of underpins a lot of the things that we do day

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to day, the way that we work.

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Um, scrum, lean, Kanban, et cetera.

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Um, individuals over interactions and also signed by many great software

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engineers, although all of them unfortunately I noticed are male.

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But it was, you know, 20 years ago before apparently female

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software engineers existed.

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That was a joke.

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Sorry.

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Um.

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No, that's the, that's also the point as well.

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It's not a joke.

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But including Kent Beck, um, and Robert C.

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Martin and many others, famous people and the.

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The person down on the bottom right there you'll see is John Romero, who was

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one of the founders of its software.

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And together with other couple of other guys, they wrote Doom and

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Quake and many other games, which I spent way too much time playing when

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I was at university, when I should have been working on other stuff.

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Um, but his 10 programming.

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TIPS or 10 software development tips also feature in this torque.

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So without further ado, onto the first one, which is the Manifesto

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for Agile software development

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. So Agile is something which has

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for do we need to it anymore?

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And previous to that, it's always been, um, before Agile existed,

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before the idea of Agile existed, it was Prince two or other software

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management philosophies, which tended to be very waterfall in their approach

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to software delivery, which meant.

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That you would get, gather some requirements from a customer, turn those

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into specifications, and then drop them down to maybe design a design phase, work

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alongside some developers or designers to create some designs and then drop

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it down into a phrase of development, which when some code would get written

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and then that would stop, and then that would fall off into a phase of testing,

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and then some testing would, or quality assurance, and then that would continue.

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Until it stopped and fall off into a another phase of testing or qu

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or customer acceptance or another round of development, who knows?

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You know, it was waterfall it, it went in steps essentially through our process.

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Agile was a reaction to that, and it said, well, We understand fundamentally that

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we're not gonna get specifications, right?

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So therefore, why don't we make it faster?

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And why do we make this that feedback loop quicker?

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How can we make that quicker?

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And to do that, we prefer to un to work with, um, prefer to work

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iteratively closer together with our customers, closer together with

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our release in our release cycles.

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Um, and the various.

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Tips, I suppose you call it, or principles that came from this

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are preferring individuals and interactions over processes and tools,

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working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration

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over contract negotiation, responding to change over, following a plan.

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So basically keep it nice and loose, but let's focus on delivering stuff.

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Great idea.

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A great idea, which has somehow become.

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Lost maybe over the last 20 or more years and to a point now where we have kind of

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seen a bit of pushback from around Agile processes around Scrum to just, well,

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let's just build some code that works.

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However, agile still underpins a lot of what we do and a lot of the terms there,

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maybe familiar to a lot of you, so.

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To analyze it in more detail.

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I looked at the principles, the 12 principles behind the

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manifesto, the four main points.

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I don't think there is any argument about that.

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We do want to work with people better, and we do with e with each other.

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We do want to have better software, uh, working software.

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We want to work closer with our customers, and we want to respond to change faster.

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Those are all great points.

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I can't argue with those.

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So, okay, so the manifesto for Agile Software Development, um, which

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has 12 principles as part of it.

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We have the five ideals of the unicorn project, which are locality

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and simplicity, focus, flow and joy, improvement of daily work,

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psychological safety, and customer focus.

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Plus we have John Romero's 10 programming Principles, and I'm gonna go through

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all of these in turn and break them down and then reassemble them.

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So starting with the manifesto for Agile software development, we see number one.

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Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous

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delivery of valuable software.

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And I think you'll agree that this is a good priority.

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It needs to be early, it needs to be valuable, and continuous delivery.

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Well, we can debate that one, but I think this is a good

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one to take along with this.

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Number two, welcome changing requirements.

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Even late in development, agile processes aren't as change for the

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customer's competitive advantage.

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Well, I think in some ways this is a restatement to the first one, um, but

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it's a good one to maybe take along.

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We'll keep it in amber, which means we'll take it along with us.

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Number three is deliver working software frequently from a couple of

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weeks to a couple of months with a preference to the shorter timescale.

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Well, I think we've already said this in number one, so

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we're gonna discard this one.

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Number four, business people and developers must work together

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daily throughout the project.

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I think this is a good one.

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Let's keep it.

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Number five, likewise build projects around motivated individuals.

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Give the environment and support they need and trust them to get the job done.

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Yeah, we keep on on Number six.

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The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within

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a development team is face-to-face.

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Okay, we say that's screen for the minute.

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We will tweak it slightly later because a lot of us are remote these days.

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Number seven, working software is the primary measure of progress.

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Well, I would disagree with this.

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I think working software is great, but it needs to be working

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software, which is actually doing what the customer needs it to do.

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That's more important, so we will ignore this one.

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Likewise, number eight, agile processes promote sustainable development.

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The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain

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a constant pace indefinitely.

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I don't think this is useful.

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I believe agile processes promot a way of maybe promoting themselves as part

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of the way that we, you move forward.

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They don't themselves promote sustainable development, whatever that actually means.

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Um, when constant pace is a little bit, I would say overrated.

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We want to be able to change pace for sure.

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We want to be able release stuff when we want to, but I don't think constant pace

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is particularly useful or achievable.

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Number nine, continuous attention to technical excellence and

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good design enhances agility.

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I think we can agree that that's a good thing to think

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about and take along with us.

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Number 10, simplicity.

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The art of maximizing the amount of work not done is essential.

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Agree.

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Um, 11.

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The best architecture's, requirements and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

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I would say maybe, but definitely not true.

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And finally, at regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become

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more effective than tunes and just its behavior accordingly.

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Now, I agree with this in concept.

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However, I believe what I'm trying to propose is that we

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don't make it a regular interval.

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We make it continuous.

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So I'm not gonna take this along, I'm gonna build it into our process.

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So those are the 12 Agile principles.

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And from my, from my opinion, the important ones are the ones in green.

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The ones in orange are ones that we should definitely

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consider and take along with us.

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And the ones in red are either duplicates or perhaps misstate something, or

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perhaps are already wound up in our, or bundled into our process that we're gonna

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take forward just to simplify things.

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And we're gonna get rid of the ones in red.

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Okay, so moving on to the five ideals.

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These come from the book, the Unicorn Project and the Unicorn Project is a

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work of fiction written by Gene Kim, and it is the follow up to the Phoenix

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project book, which was based on same company called Parts Unlimited, who are.

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A American company who are selling car parts, secondhand car parts, I think

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also new car parts, um, through a, through a chain of stores in the US

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and they also have an online presence.

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And they've realized that they're a company which is kind of at the mercy of

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its software and IT systems and for too long has still pretended that it's, it's

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just a car parts company rather than a.

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An internet business or a business that sells online, therefore, it's

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kind of realizing too late that it needs to improve its systems.

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And the first book, the Phoenix Project, is all about the operations of the IT

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operations and also systems thinking.

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A lot of talk around, um, ideas that are created, um, or, or discussed in

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the goal by you, like gold rat, um, systems thinking like I mentioned, also

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lean, uh, Toyota production system.

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Lots of those ideas come into the first book, in the second book is

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more around software development.

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So the Unicorn project is more around software development process, how

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teams work together, how individuals feel, , or how they can express

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themselves in the context of the system.

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So some systems thinking does in as well, but Unicom project is

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very much more about software development, but both are excellent.

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I would recommend you read both of them.

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, I found both books.

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As someone who's had experience in these kind of projects

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are very relatable as well.

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They're kind of like, get out of my brain.

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You know, because they do provide such insight into the

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way things work in industry, the, ideas that people have around.

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Imposing more structure to make things better, um, is kind

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of counter counterproductive.

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That that idea is core to certainly, well probably both books, but certainly

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the Phoenix project as well, around how the, the default reaction in lots

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of circumstances is to create more process around our, for example, release

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processes or our quality processes.

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so the five ideals of software development are number one, locality and simplicity.

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So this means being able to make changes.

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As a team in your own scope, that is building, testing and deploying without

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being dependent on other teams or their work, which means a simple code base

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which is not tightly coupled to the rest.

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, so ideally, maybe again, you could think about architectures.

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You could work in a scope where a team has complete control over their context.

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A lot of these ideas discussed in books like Team Topology or perhaps we

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can understand some SOLID principles or perhaps even architectures such

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as microservices architecture.

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So that's locality and simplicity, how teams can get delivery

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towards the customer quickly.

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And secondly, related to that, comes from the first.

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Focus, flow and joy.

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If the work is decoupled and independent, then teams can feel they're

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achieving flow through their work.

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And this means being able to get stuff through to production quickly and again.

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Number three, improvement of daily work means that the teams or the

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individuals can address technical debt and architecture decisions every day to

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make their own code better, to make their improve, their feeling that every day they

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can do something to improve the next day.

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There's a great quote from Gene Kim in Accelerate where he says

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it's important to raise awareness amongst technology leaders about how

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technical debt and legacy systems slow down valuable development work.

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And number three is all about addressing that as we go.

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So number four,

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psychological safety.

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And as we mentioned earlier, it is being able to work without fear.

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To try without fear, and according to accelerate, according to the um,

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Dora reports and the research that goes on every year around teams

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and high performing organizations when it for software delivery,

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psychological safety is one of the top predictors of team performance.

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It's a good thing to, that people can express themselves essentially in teams.

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Finally, customer focus.

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So this is of course providing solutions to customers with minimal possible

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overhead, continuous delivery of value.

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, basically , putting the customer at the center of everything that we do.

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And what I've done is I've gone through these and renamed them

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slightly or reworded them in order to make them fit in with the other

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concepts that we already have.

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So locality and simplicity.

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I've changed this to scope to ensure that the team can work on a context of

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which they have comp, complete control.

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See team topologies, solid principles.

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D, D, D, focus, flow, and joy.

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Flow work in small batches with a complete mastery of our domain

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improvement of daily work.

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This is around agility, making our context better every day,

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improving our experience.

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Psychological safety, freedom to experiment, to try without

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fear, and customer focused.

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This is about delivery, providing solutions to customers with

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minimal possible overhead, continuous delivery of value.

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So we have now done the 12 Agile principles.

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We have done the five ideals of software dev development by Gene Kim.

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Now we're on to the last leg, John Romes 10 programming principles.

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Thank you for keeping with me this long.

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I didn't realize this talk was so long.

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It is now way too long, but I will edit it down and I will use

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this podcast to give myself some feedback, which I can take into my

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talk, which is only 25 minutes long.

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So thank you for sticking with me.

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And here's the last third.

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So John Romero's, 10 programming principles, no

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prototypes, polishes, you go.

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But I've renamed this deliver stuff quickly and continuously.

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Number two, make it always deployable, runnable, and it in

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this case is your software, which I've renamed as focus on robustness.

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Number three, keep your code absolutely simple, which is simplification,

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helps the code stay more maintainable.

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Number four, great tools.

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Make great software.

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Use or build the right tools.

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Time to get important tools, right?

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Number five, test your own code, deliver quality.

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Number six, if you see a bug, fix it quality all the time,

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or you incur technical debt.

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Number seven, use the right tools to help you build the right code.

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Number eight, write your code for this piece of software only code in the now.

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Focus on what you're delivering.

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Number nine, encapsulate functionality to ensure design,

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consistency, architectural decisions.

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Should enable good customer experience, design, and code for the customer.

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Number 10, code transparently, code for the team.

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And I've said on this one, be thoughtful towards others in your team.

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So those are rewording of John Romero's 10 programming principles done Very quickly.

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I will link his talk below as well.

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You should check it out so we have.

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The 10 programming principles of John Romero.

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We have the five ideals of Gene Kim.

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We have the 12 Agile principles.

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What do we do now?

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Well, what I did is I grouped them and I grouped them like this, so we will see.

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Be thoughtful towards others in your team.

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Ensure that the team can work in a context over which they have complete control.

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Work in small batches with complete mastery of our domain.

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Freedom to experiment, to try without fear.

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Work with motivated players.

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I've lumped these all together under the name team.

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Number two, keep workflow simple and focused.

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Focus on robustness.

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Keep improving our code base and design simplification helps the code

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stay more maintainable code in the now use or build the right tools.

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I take time to get the important tools right, et cetera.

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I've put these under simplicity.

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Number three, Accepting changes late in the process, delivering

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stuff quickly and continuously.

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And you'll see this one, this is the third part of the acronym.

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This has the a mixture of all three.

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Source materials in here as well.

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So we have accept changes late in the process, which

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is from the Agile manifesto.

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Deliver stuff quickly and continuously from John Romero.

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We have delivery, provide solutions to customers with minimal possible

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overhead from the five ideals along with continuous delivery value.

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Um, and I've lumped these together under the customer label, but

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I've called it end user because it works better with the acronym.

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That's our third number four, freedom to experiment, to try without fear.

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Be thoughtful towards others in your team, working in small

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batches, working within your scope.

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Within the scope you have complete control over.

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This is obviously about being, in this case, what I've call Call is unrestricted.

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Unrestricted means that you as a team, Have the ability to do whatever you like.

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You have , lack of fear.

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So this is certainly around psychological safety.

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And within your world, you can do whatever you like to express yourselves

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in order to, , meet your goals and deliver better quality software.

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And finally, I.

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There's just two points here, both from John Romero, which is not really

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necessarily brought up in the others.

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Maybe implied and maybe this is the end result of what you get.

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But this is all around delivering quality, quality all the time.

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So the final letter is Q for quality.

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Therefore, you see we have quests, Q U E S T, quality, unrestricted

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end user simplicity, and team.

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Somehow we got there through.

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All of those pieces of work and those pieces of work are

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in themselves, summations of lots of other pieces of work.

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So I hope in some ways this has provided a a way that we can consider every

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day how we can think about ourselves, how we can think about our team,

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how we can think about our software, and how we can act on it as well.

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So quality first Q, first end user in the middle.

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Customer end user at the center of everything.

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If you just remember those two points, then perhaps I'd have done my job.

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Quality unrestricted end user simplicity team, thank you

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so much for sticking with me.

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It's been a real honor to go through this.

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For you for the first time ever, and I hope you find this useful.

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Please let me know in the comments and please get in touch if you're having some

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success applying this to your daily work.

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This is Richard Bown for the Loving Legacy Podcast, wishing