Libsyn Directory

How to Implement Good Software Development Processes with Eric Elliott

Release Date: 03/09/2020

Diversity & Inclusion in Tech with Christine Awad

SimpleLeadership Podcast

What are the challenges that accompany being a woman leader in technology? How can you be an ally for women in your workplace? How do you overcome imposter syndrome? These are just a few of the questions Christine Awad—the Director of Engineering at Facebook—so kindly answers in this episode of Simple Leadership.

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SimpleLeadership Podcast

How do you build an engineering team of A-players? What does a well-rounded high-performing team look like? Why is engineering for impact more important than solving hard problems? In a world where engineers are looking to pad their resume and solve cutting-edge problems, Ashish Aggarwal shares the one thing that is far more important: solving your customer’s problems. In this episode of Simple Leadership, he walks through building high-performing teams, solving customer problems, and the best way to maintain technical excellence. Do not miss this one. Ashish Aggarwal is the Co-Founder...

A Discussion of Good Technical Debt with Jon Thornton

SimpleLeadership Podcast

Jon Thornton worked at some small companies in NYC before he ended up at Squarespace. He’s been able to build a new product and new team—their email marketing product. He launched that and has since been supporting other products. Throughout his career, he’s learned how to manage technical debt. What is the difference between technical debt and good technical debt? What is a framework for using technical debt? Listen to this episode of Simple Leadership for Jon’s advice on managing technical debt. Jon has been solving problems with software for over 20 years and leading...

Redefining Parental Leave with Matt Newkirk

SimpleLeadership Podcast

Being in a management position in any industry can often leave you overwhelmed. Striking a balance between your work and personal life is already difficult. So how does a manager take parental leave? Matt Newkirk—the engineering lead for Etsy’s International Customer Experience initiative—has worked out some of the kinks. I’m the father of three girls. During their birth, I was fully involved in startups and was never able to take parental leave. Not only did I miss out, but as a manager I feel I can’t help my team plan a successful leave because I never experienced it. So in...

Hiring Engineers: Junior, Senior, or Boot Camp Graduates? Johnny Ray Austin Shares His Take

SimpleLeadership Podcast

If you’re an engineer in a leadership role where you’re dealt with the task of developing teams, the hiring process can be daunting. Do you hire junior engineers that you can shape and mold? Or senior engineers who are experienced, but come with baggage? And how do you throw boot camp graduates into the mix? Johnny Ray Austin joins me to lend his thoughts on the hiring process, including what he looks for in an engineer. Don’t miss it! Johnny is an experienced engineering executive and international public speaker. Johnny claims he got into leadership by sheer luck—but he ended up...

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SimpleLeadership Podcast

Today’s guest—Emad Georgy—is passionate about technology leadership. He’s a CTO Consultant and the Founder and CTO of Georgy Technology Leadership. Emad has been in the tech industry for over 25 years. His hybrid approach to technology management—focusing on both the practical and cultural elements of leadership—makes Emad a trusted and valued partner helping both domestic startups and global enterprises scale and grow. In this episode of Simple Leadership, we chat about what cultivating leaders looks like. Sometimes, it involves making difficult decisions for your team. You...

Overcoming Engineering Leadership Challenges with Farhan Thawar

SimpleLeadership Podcast

Transitioning an engineering leadership position to a work-from-home model can be a challenge. For some engineers, working remotely is the norm. For others, such as those working for Shopify, being forced to work from home because of the Coronavirus is a whole new ballgame. In this episode of Simple Leadership, Farhan Thawar joins me to chat about his transition into working from home and how Shopify has made the process manageable. We talk about the benefits of coding in pairs, whether or not managers should still code, and what he looks for when hiring engineering leaders. Farhan...

How to Manage Remote Teams [and Help Them Thrive] with Dana Lawson

SimpleLeadership Podcast

If you’re in a leadership position in the engineering industry and have suddenly been thrust into working remotely, it may feel like your world has been turned upside down. In this episode of Simple Leadership, Dana Lawson and I discuss a few tips to help you manage remote teams. You want your team to thrive and be successful during a time of great uncertainty. Dana describes herself as an atypical engineer. She wanted to attend college to be an artist but soon realized the ‘starving artist’ lifestyle wasn’t going to cut it. She took the ASVAB test when she joined the military and...

How to Implement Good Software Development Processes with Eric Elliott

SimpleLeadership Podcast

A management role in software development can be difficult to navigate. You need to keep a high-level perspective on projects while making sure they go smoothly. Eric Elliott, today’s guest on the show, believes that you need to implement coding quality practices such as test-driven development. In this episode, we talk about why software development processes such test-driven development makes an impact and why it’s important to remove bugs. We’ll also talk about how to train developers and keep them happy—and why it’s inherently important not to rush the process. Eric Elliott has...

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SimpleLeadership Podcast

If you are transitioning into an executive or leadership role in an organization, you can find yourself dealing with incredible loneliness. You also deal with a change in power dynamics, gaps in information, and a lack of support systems. It is difficult to prepare for the change from “getting work done” to being an “influencer”. As a former COO, today’s guest, Suzan Bond, understands the struggle of the transition. She joins me today to share some ways you can combat loneliness and ease the transition. Suzan is an executive coach and organizational strategist who has...

More Episodes

Eric Elliott has been in software development for the better part of his life. He co-founded EricElliottJS.com and DevAnywhere.io, which aim to teach developers essential software development skills. He is also the author of the books, “Composing Software” and “Programming JavaScript Applications” He builds and advises development teams for crypto projects, and has contributed to software experiences for Adobe Systems, Zumba Fitness, The Wall Street Journal, ESPN, BBC, and top recording artists including Usher, Frank Ocean, Metallica, and many more.

Outline of This Episode

[2:08] Eric’s background in software development
[4:28] What’s happened in the last year?
[6:17] Tangible benefits to reducing bugs on the front-end
[9:34] How much time should be spent on fixing bugs?
[11:43] What happens when you rush engineers?
[13:35] What happens when a manager steps in
[19:50] How to communicate with your leadership
[25:11] What tangible things should you measure?
[29:55] Top 3 things to do to improve quality of code
[34:30]Measure pull requests and open bug tickets
[40:49] Test-driven development (TDD)
[43:50] Resources Eric recommends

What are the tangible benefits to reducing bugs?

If you are able to reduce bugs on the front end, you spend less time fighting fires. According to Eric, “Fixing bugs is not work that’s delivering direct value to your customers—it’s rework”. Customers don’t look at your software and think being “bug-free” is a benefit. They just assume that it’s a given that there will be no bugs.

Secondly, Eric points out that you will lose customers if you produce buggy software. Struggling client retention and turnover means you’ll have to increase your marketing budget in order to attract new business.

It is the most expensive and time consuming part of producing software. But it is imperative to deliver a stellar product on the front end. Because, per Eric, “Every hour spent in code review saves 33 hours of maintenance”. The hardest part is understanding that this process takes time and cannot be rushed, but it is well worth it in the end.

What happens when you try to rush your engineers?

Those in leadership positions often have to deal with pressure from higher-ups to rush a project or push a timeline. This is the worst thing that could happen, and you’ll start to see significant negative results of rushing your developers.

Eric points out that bugs will pile up, testing will get skipped, and communication will suffer. Your team will feel like they don’t have adequate time to mentor each other, and knowledge sharing is left behind. Productivity levels will plummet.

Even worse, your developers can reach the point of burnout—with effects that can be long-lasting. The Japanese struggle with a culture of over-working to the point that they have a coined term for people who die because of overworking—”Karoshi”. While this is an extreme example, it’s something you want to steer clear of. Pushing your team to rush will bring to fruition the opposite of what you intend.

What is your role as a manager/leader?

Eric uses a manufacturing analogy to drive this point home:

“ There's a floor manager who is usually perched up high above a factory floor so they can see everything happening on the factory floor. They can see where things are piling up. So on an assembly line work comes in one end of a line and goes out the other end of the line, but then all these different processes thrown in the middle that take different amounts of time to complete. Optimizing that process is the job of the floor manager”.

The moment a manager steps in and gets themselves involved in the work they lose perspective of the overall process. No one is doing quality control. The assembly line will start to have pile-ups with no one able to step in and smooth the process.

It’s a manager’s role to ensure the process is slow and smooth, but efficient. The key is proper communication—If you show your superiors that progress is being made on a regular basis, it eases their anxiety. If every part of your code includes code review and test-driven development (TDD) it is just another part of delivering software responsibly.

Improve the quality of your code with good software development practices

Eric recommends using a non-predictive burndown chart (a graphical representation of work left to do versus time). A predictive chart can set unrealistic expectations for a project, which is a developer’s #1 complaint.

He also believes you need to track developer happiness and improve it when needed. Know what makes them happy or satisfied with their work. Developers deal with time pressure, unrealistic expectations, and problems they don’t know how to tackle on a daily basis. They need to be empowered and given permission to spend time on mentoring, learning, and quality control.

Happy developers perform their jobs up to 20% faster.

Secondly, you must implement test-driven development. In Eric’s experience, TDD is crucial to delivering a great product. Universally, the teams that test first work better. Eric researched studies on the topic and found that testing reduces bug density by 40-80%. You will always see the test fail before it passes, which allows you to debug and find improvements. It leads to continuous delivery, which keeps everyone happy.

What you should and shouldn’t measure

Everyone has heard the phrase “What gets measured gets managed”, but it isn’t always in your best interest to measure everything. Eric shares his take on what NOT to measure as well as what you should track.

Eric points out that you shouldn’t measure individual developers' number of closed tickets. Why? The developers closing the least amount of tickets are the ones with all the answers that everyone else comes to. They’re spreading their knowledge which will multiply the productivity of the organization.

You DO need to measure bug commit density instead of bugs per line of code. If you have a file with 51 commits and 14 are bug fixes, that’s a 20% bug commit density. You also need to look at recency of the rework. Doing these things allow you to see what is causing bugs now and allows you to fix what needs fixing.

DO measure how many open pull requests there are. Your team needs to be able to have the time to do code review. It needs to be prioritized. It allows your teams to learn from each other and get everyone on the same page.

DO measure the number of open bug tickets. Bugs reproduce, and critical bugs will interrupt developers. When they're interrupted, it takes twice as long to complete the tasks they were working on—and they end up with more bugs. This comes full circle, back to the software development practice of test-driven development. This mitigates the number of bugs that will creep up and changes the cycle.

Eric delivers a lot of solid advice for developers and managers in this episode. Listen to the whole episode for all the important details.