Preface

What is this?

It’s a book that is intended to be posted as a blog. Or maybe it’s a blog that is structured like a book. So I guess it’s a blok. Or maybe it’s a boog. I don’t know. We’ll see eventually what would come out of it.… Continue Reading ->

Ridiculously Abstract: The Problem with Abstract Thinking

Abstract thinking is hard to do and even harder to communicate. Thinking in a concrete manner on a concrete solution, for an abstract problem would lead to a tightly tailored solution. This was a gap for me to cross. Something for me to get better at. We came up with several approaches and mental/mind tricks to help my team and I to get through the abstract/discovery phase of the system.

A Line in the Sand: System Borders

What is The System? It may sound like a simple question. Whatever the answer may be, it would have a lot of consequences, some of which would be hard or even impossible to change further down the road. Some would say that long term consideration of consequences is exactly what software architecture is for. The very definition of the job.

Abstractly Complex: Verticals

One of the hardest things I had to do as Silo’s CTO was to explain how complicated this project was. It drove me insane. I did however manage to partially convey the complexity of the system, while keeping it abstract as I had no idea what’s it’s going to do, using Verticals.

Not Company Values

“You are entirely correct but you’ve also horribly failed your task. You are way off track. These are not values”. Gal said after I showed him The Triangle, what would become the philosophical layer and guidelines of Silo’s architecture.

Impermanent Continuous Chaos: Customer Experience and [In]stability

The boog’s first article, I don’t know, ended with the one one thing we knew for sure - the customer expectations. Not only that, Silo’s device design, patents and future marketing were all about the customer experience. I remember the first time we showcased the device, repeating again and again “Silo is the world’s smartest and easiest vacuum sealer - ever!”. There are other vacuum sealers in the market, but ours is the most user friendly that will ever be.

We Were Born to Run: [In]stability and Velocity

As I expected an endless stream of tasks, one of the first things I needed as an engineering manager was to manage them. I needed to manage tasks and my team. As I was sprinting (pun intended) towards signing up to Jira, I halted my horses thinking to myself “you know how to use Jira, do you know why you use Jira?”. Historically speaking the answer is because until now I’ve always joined a company that already used Jira, so naturally I wanted to go with what I know.

The Road to Know-where: Velocity and Customer Experience

The effect Velocity has on Customer Experience/satisfaction is quite the obvious. You must keep your customers, internal (product, management) and external (end users) alike, satisfied through the years. That would require either perfecting/optimizing/tuning current experiences or creation of new ones. That is work to be done. A drop in Velocity means not meeting customer demands in time, better known as milestones and deadlines.

The Self Inspector: Culture Drops

I’ve opened this series of articles with a conversation I had with my mentor about Company Values. Another interesting conversation we had was iterating and optimizing the company’s workflows and culture. As an industrial engineer it was no news to me, but as an engineering manager it was. I had to ask myself what is it in our development culture that causes Velocity drops. When was the last time you questioned yourself… about yourself? What is it that you as a manager do that causes Velocity drops? What can you do to prevent them?