Building products is so much fun—at the same time, it’s equally exhausting and challenging with so many peers to work with, the market needs to look into, and a lot of processes to go by. While frameworks and techniques can be compelling to share, they are hard to standardize for different software teams and their cultures. So what are some ways to navigate these complexities and build better software?
Allen Holub, an internationally recognized software architect and consultant, and I recently chatted about the ways product teams can work on small experiments and ship things iteratively so there's value and impact. We spoke about a range of topics—adopting the 'agile' mindset, why it's misleading to think agile as a methodology, the pitfalls of processes in large orgs, how to operate as pods within large orgs, staying outcome focussed and user obsessed, thoughts against 'commitment' and 'accountability' in a team setup, and more.
Connect with Allen at - https://holub.com/
00:00 Intro to Allen and his work
01:00 Allen's transition from hardware to software building
03:38 Why Agile is not a methodology but mindset
06:04 'Fail fast' and how it's no longer effective as it's done wrongly
09:40 Deciding not to build certain things
10:38 Getting better at understanding what to build and ship
14:24 Communication within team and with customers
19:14 How to keep in pace with growing teams
23:23 Conway's law and how it applies to software architecture
25:58 Eliminating complexities for a software team
30:12 What remains the same between startups and large orgs
33:02 Counterintuitive approach to 'accountability' and 'commitment'
38:24 What's a better way than using frameworks?
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