Steve Bennett - Engineering Leader

iPad + Obsidian + WorkingCopy => My Site

Thu, 10 Oct 2024 17:43:00 +0100

Gotta test that workflow from the iPad! This works through the magic of WorkingCopy!!

Write in Obsidian, push via WorkingCopy… and boom, you’ve got a new note on the site.

I’ve also modified the template used when auto-creating the new note to set a Unix flavoured timestamp as the name. These notes are intended for quick publishing!

POSSE

Thu, 10 Oct 2024 16:55:26 +0100

These short notes are my first moves into POSSE - Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. I’ve made it easier to post by having Obsidian as my editor and a convoluted build set-up with GitHub actions moving content around.

Next steps are to fix up my site theme and then work on the syndication over ActivityPub (+ other API).

A Quick Note

Thu, 10 Oct 2024 10:00:00 +0100

This is a quick note written in my (current) favourite note-taking app Obsidian and published out via Hugo to my site. More details on the set-up to follow.

Wireless Logic

Tue, 01 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Group lead for Software Engineering teams, practices, tooling and delivery processes.

Can One Team Do It All?

Tue, 10 Jan 2023 20:36:38 +0000

Once you’ve worked on a few different software projects, you notice that different processes tend to work better for some and not others.

For example, you may have experienced the pace and immediate feedback of working on a brand-new capability, made possible by the seeming lack of process and a focus on writing “just enough” code to make the feature a reality.

In a different software project, you may have spent time sweating the details and producing code with a perceived high level of quality. You did this because you understood the feature, the goals were clear, and the constraints guided your development.

Stash

Fri, 01 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Responsible for UK Engineering, Operations Tooling, Identity Verification, Authentication, User Profiles, Subscription Tier Management and Fraud prevention.

I'm new to Engineering Management, what books should I read?

Wed, 22 Apr 2020 13:24:21 +0000

There are so many great books that I could recommend for a new manager. Narrowing down the list has been challenging!

We’re fortunate that much is written on the practice of management. In addition to that, many Engineering Managers have detailed the specifics of working with technology teams. However, this makes it difficult to know what to focus on first.

I’ve picked the first 10 I would recommend to a new manager. These are all books I’ve read and have influenced how I think out management and leadership. As ever, if you disagree or want to add your recommendation then please let me know!

I'm new to this, what do you recommend?

Tue, 21 Apr 2020 12:42:50 +0000

Recently I was asked what resources I would recommend for someone moving from an engineering role and taking on a management role. Many people become a manager without clear training and development plan in place from their employer.

“Congrats - you’re now a manager. Good luck!”.

In this environment, finding your own sources for development is critical, yet, there’s so much out there that it can be challenging to know what to prioritise.

Are you ok?

Wed, 15 Apr 2020 09:54:02 +0000

Life is weird right now. It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced before and everyone reading this is likely to have undergone significant changes to the way they live, work and play.

I started at Stash a week before the UK lockdown was announced. Stash took the decision the week before to move all their staff to remote work, so for the first time I’ve been through a remote onboarding process. This has continued, and as I write this, I’m half-way through my fifth week of working 100% remote. Once again, something new to me. New skills to learn, new ways to work.

On Leaving Alfresco

Thu, 20 Feb 2020 17:31:34 +0000

This week, after over 3 and a half years, I left Alfresco. The decision to leave was a difficult one, but ultimately, it’s the right move for both the company and me.

My connection with Alfresco goes back further than the recent years working for the company. Back in 2010, while working at Yell, I was part of a team tasked with creating a knowledge base based on (the now deprecated) Alfresco Web Content Management. It’s fair to say that 10 years ago, I wasn’t exactly enamoured with the software.

Getting better feedback

Mon, 03 Feb 2020 17:23:33 +0000

In many organisations, the request for feedback comes as part of a performance review cycle. During this process, an individual will review their goals, assess their career development plan and reflect on feedback from their peers.

As humans, we have a bias to want to be near people that look and work as we do. This bias means that we tend to notice when people act or behave differently from the way we do. We also have a preference for assuming that people ascribe success in the same way we do and want to follow the same path we are on.

Comparing the performance of agile teams

Thu, 30 Jan 2020 15:42:23 +0000

Recently I got into a conversation about measuring the performance of Engineering teams. The teams in question are following the Scrum framework and have decided to use story points for estimating the complexity of the work.

In the conversation, we were talking about the validity of measuring individual team performance and whether one should use this data to compare the performance across teams.

Now, for anyone that’s even taken more than a passing glance of any of the literature surrounding agile development, Scrum or estimation, the idea of measuring team performance and comparing performance between teams is a clear anti-pattern. Specifically, we’re told, “don’t compare velocity between teams”.

9 months! Really?

Fri, 20 Sep 2019 15:59:43 +0000

It’s been almost nine months since my last blog entry. I’ve never been a prolific writer as you can see this in the gaps between posts. I think I’ve found the reason why.

Recently I came across the article Speed Matters by James Somers. Right there, in the second paragraph of the article, Somers summed up exactly my relationship with this blog:

“If every time you write a blog post it takes you six months, and you’re sitting around your apartment on a Sunday afternoon thinking of stuff to do, you’re probably not going to think of starting a blog post, because it’ll feel too expensive.”

Removing Facebook (again)

Fri, 04 Jan 2019 15:24:16 +0000

Late in March 2018 I decided to delete my Facebook account.

This isn’t the first time I’d decided to do this. In 2014, as Facebook turned 10, I decided to put my own usage of the social network on pause.

This didn’t last too long and only a few months later I’d decided to reactivate my account.

In 2015, in another attempt to reduce my usage of Facebook, I removed the apps from my phone.

Career Paths and Circles

Mon, 07 Aug 2017 16:38:15 +0000

I’ve been spending a fair amount of time recently reworking our career paths. Our current documents are heavily based on the work by Radford, which defines 6 levels for each job family. Whilst our career path was very well defined and comprehensive, we are finding that the documentation is a little incomprehensible and causes difficulty as people try to self-assess their position on the career path.

Through conversations about this, it’s clear our team members want something simpler against which they could measure their progress and plan their development. This is one of my key tasks for the coming weeks, and I’ll drawing inspiration from the many public career paths that exist, such as the one from Rent the Runway.

Owning your mistakes

Sun, 30 Jul 2017 16:03:08 +0000

I believe that one of the most powerful things you can do as a leader is to own your mistakes. Nobody is perfect, and therefore it’s inevitable that you will make mistakes. Often, holding a leadership or management position means that these mistakes are magnified and have a impact on many more people.

So why admit your mistakes?

Wouldn’t this be showing a weakness? Wouldn’t it show that your infallible? Won’t people judge you closer? Surely, you’ll lose their trust and respect.

The Power of Sensible Defaults

Mon, 24 Jul 2017 19:41:44 +0000

Choosing the “best tool for the job” is a mantra that many software engineers repeat when asked to explain their choice of tool, language or framework. In some cases, this choice is right, however far too many times in my career I’ve seen “best tool for the job” loosely translate to whatever was top of Hacker News this week.

The unintended consequence of always choosing the “best tool for the job” is a software inventory which spans multiple languages, frameworks, build systems and deployment tooling. The fractured ecosystem of development occurs as each developer or team makes their decision in isolation, only considering their immediate consequence. The silos and diverse technology stack reduces the opportunity for reuse, leading to teams reinventing boiler plate code for testing, monitoring, instrumentation, and perhaps even business logic.

Lead Dev London 2017 Field Report

Mon, 12 Jun 2017 19:35:11 +0000

I was fortunate enough to spend the last couple of days at Lead Developer 2017 in London. The conference has been described as a leadership and management conference dressed up as a technical conference. It’s one of my “must-attend” conferences of the year.

There were some clear themes from the talks this year, with perhaps the strongest message coming across that as technical leads and managers it’s own responsibility to build safe, inclusive environments where people can thrive. Carly Robinson delivered her excellent talk on “Mentoring Junior Employeers at Slack HQ” which included references to the importance of a supportive environment for entry-level developers. Also on this theme, Jill Wetzler used empirical evidence in her talk “Tips for Building Diverse Teams” to show the issues that under-represented people face in STEM environments.

Career Development Planning Questions

Mon, 27 Feb 2017 12:00:02 +0000

Part of the role of an Engineering Manager is to help others to achieve their career aspirations. However, it’s not always easy for people to articulate the direction they hope their career will take them. For some, it can be difficult to describe their ideal future role, or to answer that “where will you be in 5 years time?” question.

I have struggled with this question too. I wanted to share a technique one of my previous managers used with me to uncover my aspirations. During the session, he asked a number of questions about my current role and then asked me to transport myself to a point in time in the future. Once there, we discussed what my day-to-day work looked like, and uncovered some of the aspects I considered important for any future role.

Finding great places to work

Fri, 17 Feb 2017 14:07:03 +0000

Early today I tweeted this, and I thought it was worth giving a little more detail as to what was underlying this pithy sound-bite.

Over the last year, I’ve changed companies twice. At the start of 2016 I left eBay and started a new role with Marks and Spencer. Later in the year I left Marks and Spencer to join Alfresco.

In both cases, I’d become frustrated with my current company and thought that there existed better options for me to progress as part of a different team. I left eBay because I was fed up with the international travel required in the position, something which was becoming more frequent as my role became more senior. I left M&S when it became clear that my ideas of what great engineering teams look like didn’t align with the way the senior leadership wanted to take the team.

Books from 2016 - Part Two

Wed, 14 Dec 2016 17:19:31 +0000

This is part two of my review of books I’ve read in 2016. Part One can be found here.

My complete “Year in Books” can also be found on Goodreads.

Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation by Jez Humble, David Farley 🔗

Quite simply, this is a must read for any modern software engineer, or for anyone associated with building software. The nitty-gritty of implementation isn’t really covered, so don’t expect to finish the book with all the answers. It talks from a high level of abstraction, and it’s clear that it’s somewhat targeted to managers as well as developers.

Books from 2016 - Part One

Mon, 12 Dec 2016 11:55:36 +0000

At the start of 2016, I made a resolution to read more. I managed to do this, and read more this year than I’ve been able to do in recent years. Most of my choices have been leadership or management books, or those related to sport. It’s also been mostly non-fiction.

Over the coming posts, I’m going to share the books I’ve read this year, and my thoughts on them. Part one, starts below.

Micro-Frustrations

Fri, 23 Sep 2016 15:59:08 +0000

What are the little things that annoy you in your current role?

What are the things, that when they get in the way, make your job just 10% more difficult than it needs to be?

If your workplaces have been anything like mine, I bet there’s at least one thing that you can come up with that annoys you. Even if it is something little.

Let’s look at an example. These are the kind of annoyances I’ve come up against in previous workplaces.

Engineering Managers Slack Team

Wed, 10 Aug 2016 13:57:10 +0000

🗣 Calling all Engineering Managers! 🗣 🔗

Engineering Management can be an incredibly lonely place. This is especially true if you are new to the role.

You’ve probably moved from a role where the 1’s and 0’s were the key thing you were worried about. You focussed on the technology, and obsessed over the product. You measured your output in features, bug-fixes or commits. At the end of a good day, you could say, “I did that”.

An API for Teams

Thu, 04 Aug 2016 15:45:54 +0000

“In computer programming, an Application Programming Interface (API) is a set of routine definitions, protocols, and tools for building software an applications A good API makes it easier to develop a program by providing all the building blocks, which are then put together by the programmer.” – Wikipedia

Anyone writing code will already be familiar with APIs. Whether it’s the API exposed by the standard library of your favourite programming language, or a REST API exposed by a third party service, it’s a necessity to understand the concept for building more than a “Hello, World!” application.

An updated Joel Test

Fri, 22 Jul 2016 11:22:43 +0000

Wow.

Next month it’ll be 16 years since the original publication of the Joel Test. In case you’re not aware of the Joel Test, it’s a simple 12 question check for evaluating how good a software team is. It’s not meant to be exhaustive, and scoring is simple - 1 point for each question you can answer yes to. If you’re scoring 10 or lower, you’ve got serious problems.

In the last 16 years, software engineering has changed a lot, and I think it’s time to update Joel Spolsky‘s “highly irresponsible, sloppy test” (Joel’s words, not mine).

Alfresco

Fri, 01 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Leading a team of 70+ Engineers to deliver the Alfresco Digital Business Platform, which brings together Content, Process and Governance Services to enable some of the worlds largest enterprises to improve the efficiency of their businesses. The Platform Engineering team is accountable for delivery of the platform and services on which applications (both in-house and external) are built.

Living in the Echo Chamber

Sat, 25 Jun 2016 08:09:49 +0000

Yesterday was a momentous day in British history.

It was the day after the EU Referendum, and the day we all found out that the people of Britain had voted in favour of leaving the European Union. I’ve never been affected by the result of an election as much as I was yesterday. Britain felt different, and I didn’t feel part of it. I voted Remain, but it’s not the way I voted which I feel compelled to write about.

What are Acceptance Criteria?

Tue, 26 Jan 2016 10:42:22 +0000

How do you know when something is “Done”?

What do you use to measure “completeness” of the thing you are doing?

In agile development, User Stories are often used to define the thing to be done. The user story outlines the goal that a user wants to achieve, and the reason why a user wants to achieve this goal. It provides the who, what and why for the thing to be done. User stories vary from team to team, however one of the more popular formats is “As a… I want to… So that…”.

Marks and Spencer

Fri, 01 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Engineering manager looking after 16 developers in the shopping (marksandspencer.com) area of M&S Digital. Responsible for pastoral care, career development and mentoring of primarily back-end developers working on applications supporting the marksandspencer.com platform.

Developing without a Safety Net

Wed, 16 Dec 2015 13:38:21 +0000

Recently, an article about the changes to the development process at Yahoo caught my eye. In a move to improve quality, speed and efficiency, Yahoo removed the “QA Team” from their development process. According to the article, the change resulted in an increased focus on automation. Checks previously completed by “error-prone” humans were now done by code. If the checks passed, the code went live.

The article goes on to report that this “paradigm shift” caused the number of errors to go down.

Navigation and Pair Programming

Thu, 26 Nov 2015 16:32:29 +0000

I’ve become a bit of a fan of pair programming over the years. I enjoy working through problems with another developer, as I find it usually leads to a deeper understanding of the problem, the domain and the improves the quality of the code that is produced. I also almost always learn something.

Pair programming is the name of a development practice where two developers work together to solve a problem in code, usually using a single computer, with shared input devices.

My guide to technical telephone interviews

Fri, 18 Sep 2015 08:28:59 +0000

Such is my life at the moment, I started writing this article on my smartphone whilst commuting home from work. The reason for this? I’m busy at the moment because my team is hiring.

I spend most of my time in the office reviewing CV, speaking to recruiters, headhunting candidates, and, of course, conducting interviews. I’ve written about what I look for in a good CV, so I thought it was only logical to write about the next stage - the technical telephone screen.

Book Review: Extreme Programming Explained

Tue, 04 Aug 2015 08:09:39 +0000

I’m lucky enough, at least in my opinion, to work in a team that values extreme programming practices. It’s not true of every team at eBay, but it’s a growing trend. Extreme Programming (XP) is something I’m comfortable with, and I hope to help other teams see the benefits, and start to put some of the practices into play.

As part of helping other teams, I thought it’d be prudent to refresh my knowledge of Extreme Programming. To do this, I started with the “white book”, Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck. It’s an old book; it’s now more than 15 years since the first version was published. Is it still relevant today?

Screening technical CVs

Tue, 23 Jun 2015 10:53:36 +0000

Recently I’ve been spending a great deal of time screening technical CVs. What struck me during this process is generally how bad engineering CVs are.

There are some great candidates with fantastic, concise and to the point CVs, yet these are few and far between. In the main, I’ve found that I’m faced with a multi-page document, which, despite it’s size, tells me little about the candidate. Perhaps most importantly, it doesn’t make me want to pick up the phone.

Stop mocking me

Fri, 27 Feb 2015 15:44:40 +0000

Unit testing can be hard. And it gets harder when you have to test code with with external dependencies. The way you deal with this will depend on whether you are a classical or mockist programmer. Most people don’t exist at the extremes, but instead are somewhere along the line. This isn’t a bad thing. Being pragmatic in your decisions shows that you’re a mature engineer.

Dealing with legacy code is also a thorny problem that most of us will encounter. I don’t believe that anyone can avoid this in their career. In a recent blog post, Federico Tomassetti describes his approach to this problem. He talks about a minor change that he made, and the testing he wrote to support it. The problem is, the change he needed to make is in a private static method - dealsToDisplay. And as he found, writing unit tests for that wasn’t straightforward.

The future for manual testing

Mon, 09 Feb 2015 14:18:01 +0000

Is being a manual tester a dead-end career as @jsonmez says in his video response for Simple Programmer?

I’m a developer and I’ll admit that I’ve looked down on testers in the past. It’s not something I’m proud of. I was wrong.

The argument that you need to be a developer to progress with a career in technology is harming our industry. Videos and comments like the ones from John are not helping to get rid of the stigma associated with testing.

Thinking about Senior Engineers

Mon, 26 Jan 2015 14:00:29 +0000

What makes a person a Senior Software Engineer? Is it their technical knowledge? The amount of languages, libraries or development techniques they know? Or maybe it’s just an indicator of the number of years experience they have?

In so many cases, you become a Senior engineer through a combination of these reasons. The best “Senior” engineers I’ve worked with have got there because of their attitude and not their aptitude.

You can keep your bug-tracker, just use it less!

Sun, 18 Jan 2015 17:36:11 +0000

I recently published an article on my blog titled “You don’t need a bug tracker”. This article was also syndicated on DZone. Following the publication I received some feedback on it’s contents. I’d like to take this opportunity to clear up a few things.

The title 🔗

I’m aware that the title is inflammatory. It’s also a little disingenuous. Of course, our development teams use issue trackers. Like source control, any good development team will use an issue tracker. Ours in Jira (although some teams are experimenting with Trello).

You don't need a bug-tracker

Thu, 15 Jan 2015 11:20:27 +0000

If you’re writing software, chances are you use some sort of issue tracking tool. Or to be more precise, you most likely have a bug tracker. Jira, Bugzilla, heck, even an Excel spreadsheet. If you’re diligent every time you find a bug you’ll create a ticket in the tool. Most bug-tracking tools will guide you to add a severity and assign a priority. The aim of classifying a defect in this way is to help you know what to work on next. In most systems, the two aren’t related. This means you can create defects with “Critical” severity, assigned a “Low priority”.

Øredev 2014 - Day Three

Tue, 25 Nov 2014 14:14:11 +0000

I’ve finally got round to adding my notes from the final day of Øredev 2014. It’s taken a little longer than I anticipated due to travel and work commitments. You can find the rest of my notes in part one and part two.

Opening Keynote: The most human human - Brian Christian 🔗

Brian opened the final day of Øredev with a talk focussed on the Turing test and the different approaches that have been taken over the years in an attempt to beat the test. From the early efforts of using NLP to create a fake physiatrist to more recent efforts such as Cleverbot, computer scientists have tried to create an AI that mimics a human to hold a conversation. We’re getting closer each year, but it’s clear that there’s still a way to go.

Øredev 2014 - Day Two

Wed, 12 Nov 2014 15:07:37 +0000

This is the second in a three part series giving an overview of the sessions I attended at Øredev 2014. Part one of the series can be found here.

Opening Keynote: Getting comfortable, being uncomfortable - Keavy McMinn - Github 🔗

Day 2 started with a Keynote for Keavy McMinn, a self-described maker from Github. Keavy has a passion for fine art and used the keynote to walk the audience through some of the pieces she has created for recent exhibitions. She used this exploration to help explain the importance to her of finding a way to keep making, and the importance of this in her role at Github.

Øredev 2014 - Day One

Fri, 07 Nov 2014 20:28:53 +0000

I attended Øredev 2014 to present a talk with Ben Kelly on the relationship between testers and developers at eBay. The details of the talk we gave can be seen here.

Whilst at the conference, I took the opportunity to attend a number of other sessions. Øredev is a conference with a wide range of talks covering topics such as agile development, Java, .Net, testing, user experience and front-end development. As such, the sessions I attended were varied, although I did attend a fair number targetted at front-end development.

Waiter, there's test in my dev! - Øredev 2014

Thu, 06 Nov 2014 22:04:17 +0000

This week I completed my first talk at a major developer conference, Øredev in Malmö. I found it both nerve-racking and exciting in the lead up to the talk, but once I got started I soon settled in and concentrated on the content.

I was extremely fortunate to be able to do this talk with Ben Kelly, an experienced tester and fellow development team lead. His experience of doing these kind of talks was invaluable.

Setting goals for effective iterations

Thu, 26 Jun 2014 07:52:21 +0000

All agile teams building software do it every day. The time might vary. Ours is at 9.45am. Some do it just before lunch, others at the end of the day but if you’re working in an agile team, it’s likely that you have a daily stand-up.

As an estimate, I think I’ve attended over 1000 daily stand-up meetings over the past 5 years. With all the agile teams I’ve worked with in this time I’ve noticed that the quality of these stand-ups has varied.

A tester in development

Thu, 06 Mar 2014 15:14:23 +0000

Ben has superpowers. He’s no different to any of us in that way.

I consider my superpowers to be in the area of agile team development. Other engineers on my team have superpowers in mobile web. Another lists javascript whilst someone else counts algorithms and data structures as theirs.

Ben’s superpowers are a little different. They’re something which sets him apart from the rest of us. You see, Ben lists his powers as “software testing and finding fault with stuff”. Ben comes from a group of people sometimes known as testers.

Putting Facebook on Pause

Tue, 25 Feb 2014 14:51:41 +0000

In the week that Facebook turned 10, I decided to rethink my own use of the social network.

I’ve been a Facebook member since 2006 at a time when you needed an academic email address to join. Eight years ago my Facebook friends contained other academics and alumni. Following Facebook’s decision to open up registration my lists swelled with family members, co-workers and old school-friends.

Since then, Facebook has been losing value for me. I don’t post status updates regularly. My photo’s aren’t synced. I haven’t scheduled many events. I don’t use Facebook Messenger.

Life at hibu

Sun, 23 Feb 2014 16:00:42 +0000

This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for almost a year now, and the relaunch of my blog is a great opportunity to get it out there.

I’ve made some edits to make it more relevant to today, but the main points still stand.

About 18 months ago I decided to leave hibu. This was a difficult decision to make as I got on well with my colleagues and especially with my team.

eBay

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Agile team lead, with line management responsibility for 6 engineers. Active coder, practicing TDD, ATDD, and pair‐programming. Delivering software through a mixture of Scrum, XP and Lean engineering. Acting as team coach for people development, and process improvement through introspection and adaptation.

Yell

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Technical team lead for agile product delivery team with line management responsibility for 3 engineers and Scrum team delivery. Accountable for Yell.com releases, managing multiple team integration, deployments and experiential testing.

BT

Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Graduate software developer building Windows client applications using C#, Java and Eclipse Rich Client Platform. Managed summer internship students investing the development of Android apps using Agile and XP techniques.

Engineering Managers Slack

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

An open community for Engineering Managers, Team Lead, Tech leads or any other role which involves managing people working in technology.

Find out more

Lead Dev London Meet-up

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m one of the hosts of the London Lead Dev Meet-up. We aim to deliver at least 4 meet-ups per year with speakers talking on topics relevant to Engineering Leaders of all levels.

Find out more