Joshua Kalis

One of my favorite topics, as the first article for June, how to get projects unstuck, when something gets in the way. Something every project manager deals with at some point in their career. #projectmanagement #pmi https://lnkd.in/gpBTEZqG

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Developer downtime: don’t overwork your devs. It’s memorial weekend and I’m lazily sitting on my porch. My kids keep coming in and out of the house, but get stuck because the sliding door keeps coming off the rails and won’t open. Well, since I’ve got nothing else scheduled for the afternoon I investigate the issue. Turns out sliding doors have a bunch of adjustment screws. I adjust them till the door slides smooth. Left in the broken state my kids learned to hit top left side of the door before opening it. Bringing this back to work, I know customer success teams that have a cheat sheet of these maneuvers. Give devs space to observe, we naturally fix these issues.

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I recently facilitated a workshop where a classic "know-it-all" senior developer reluctantly participated. The goal of the day-long Kata Culture Intro workshop was to guide teams in discovering the benefits of TDD and Pairing through a hands-on, Coyote Teaching style collaborative approach. Predictably, this developer voiced common objections throughout the day to TDD, claiming it was unsuitable for complex problems, start-up environments, fast-paced projects, and his personal coding style. My responses aimed to address his misconceptions: Complex problems: I highlighted how TDD excels in these scenarios, actually streamlining the development and discovery process saving valuable time. Start-ups/fast-paced environments: I shared a relevant anecdote from our time at Premera, where we rapidly delivered 13 functional prototypes (these were more than just prototypes) while simultaneously learning Azure. Jim Speaker remember that? Personal coding style: By the end of the day, the developer surprised me by acknowledging, "I had the wrong idea about TDD. Seeing it in action, I realize it could be a huge time-saver for us." While I'm constantly seeking out new methodologies, TDD still remains the most effective tool I've found. When combined with pairing or ensemble programming, its impact on software development is undeniable. TDD is easy to gain awareness of, deceptively challenging to gain proficiency with, and very rewarding/timesaving to have gained fluency with. #TDD #TestDrivenDevelopment #SoftwareDevelopment #Programming #Coding #Agile #ExtremeProgramming #Pairing #EnsembleProgramming

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I know so many developers who follow best practices without questioning if they truly are the best practices. A prime example is `eslint-config-airbnb`. I know many developers adopt these "best (not) practices" because they believe Airbnb uses them. But who said Airbnb is the standard in the dev world? The story gets even more interesting. Recently, I discovered that Airbnb don't use `eslint-config-airbnb` internally. 😊 #dev #js

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Informal leadership in software engineering is a critical part of becoming more senior in your role What's involved in informal leadership? Why is it so beneficial? As an individual contributor, you don't have direct responsibilities called out for managing others. And often people associate leadership traits with management responsibilities. These are *not* the same. Informal leadership is all about leveling up those around you - Even when not in a formal leadership role. 👇Check out the comments for the link to the article!👇 ---- 📨 Sign up for my email newsletter! 🗣️ Share with your network! #SoftwareEngineering #Leadership #Developers

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📚 I can't believe I didn't read "The Pragmatic Programmer" sooner. Published 20 years ago, it made a significant impact on the software industry and remains as relevant today as it was then. No matter how quickly the tech industry advances—think AI and new trends—the core principles of coding endure. Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt's insights in this book are timeless and applicable not only to software development but also to Computational Design. If you're curious, just the first two chapters offer valuable lessons. The authors' approach is profound and offers practical guidance that stands the test of time. One of the assertions from the book that deeply resonated with me is: "𝗛𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗮𝘀, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗱𝗲, 𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝘂𝗻𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲." 𝘋𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘛𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘈𝘯𝘥𝘺 𝘏𝘶𝘯𝘵 https://lnkd.in/g7vrfY-C #BookRecommendation #SoftwareDevelopment #PragmaticProgrammer #ComputationalDesign

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Not specific to coding screens so forgive me for going off-track but I feel like there can be a "you won't always have a calculator" discussion that might be interesting. In regards to open-book or closed-book, it is difficult to remember everything so referencing something you might have forgotten isn't uncommon but there is a distinct difference between refreshing your memory and searching for a solution. However, being able to research effectively is also a great skill. With access to this information so readily available and the growing popularity of AI, I can definitely see engineers trending toward having less technical fundamentals and critical thinking in favor of yielding quick results. Is it efficiency or laziness? Will it be damaging? I'm curious how it will affect the industry.

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I read this amazing blog post over the weekend from Zack Urlocker & thought there were some interesting parallels to empowering decision making on QA teams. My takeaway: Pushing decisions down to the people closest to the work is one of the most powerful ways to increase ownership, accountability, and speed of execution. As QA professionals, we are intimately familiar with the products and systems we test. We understand the requirements, user flows, edge cases, and potential risks better than anyone. By empowering QA teams to make more decisions around testing strategies, prioritization, risk assessment, and quality gates, organizations can unlock several key benefits: Increased Ownership and Accountability - when given autonomy to make decisions, QA teams take greater ownership over the quality of the products they deliver. This drives a sense of accountability and responsibility to ensure thorough testing and high standards. Empowered teams are motivated to proactively identify and mitigate issues. Leveraging Expertise - QA professionals have deep domain knowledge from their hands-on experience with the product. Empowering them to make decisions allows this expertise to be fully leveraged in determining effective testing approaches tailored to the specific product needs. Faster Execution - with the ability to make decisions autonomously, QA teams can streamline testing processes, adapt quickly to changes, and provide timely feedback. This accelerates identification and resolution of issues, enabling faster delivery of high-quality products. Fostering Innovation - when given the freedom to make decisions, QA teams are empowered to get creative and innovative with their testing methodologies. They can experiment with new tools and techniques to continuously improve quality processes. Of course, empowering QA teams requires a foundation of trust from leadership and an investment in training to build decision-making capabilities. But the potential benefits of increased quality, efficiency, and innovation make it well worth the effort. Pushing decisions down cultivates an environment of trust and accountability that unlocks incredible potential. Let's embrace this mindset and empower our QA teams to make more decisions - the quality of our products will be better for it. #QualityAssurance #QATeams #EmployeeEmpowerment #AutonomyAtWork #DecisionMaking

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Building off of yesterday's fictional book announcement (https://lnkd.in/gBAU8nyZ) Here's the next book in the Nate Taylor Management Series.

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As I continue to work on building my personal website in public, its been fun to try to bite off small improvements and get them shipped. I thought I'd get further on the actual design, but its been harder to get started on that than I expected. I'm sure there are a lot of factors, but one of them I realized has been a result of my journey from being "a designer who can code" to a "coder who occassionally designs" I wrote about it on my in-progress website and titled it "The Other Side of Growth": https://lnkd.in/emv6BKSN

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Great article by Ray Carnes. In my 20+ years in the software industry I've seen companies learn and relearn the basics again and again because each generation of leaders think things are "different this time" because of such and such technology. The frameworks, platforms, underlying technology changes but the principles and foundations are still the same. #softwareengineering

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Not sure why the Vue community was and (pretty much) is, scared of the composition API. I was too, to be honest. But I have loved it for the past few weeks as I use it more and more. If you are still hanging in limbo, there is a great series on Laracasts by the great Jeffery Way, himself. There are also a couple of free courses on Vue School for Vue3 composition API. You should be up and running in 2-3 days if you have used Vue 2 in the past. #vue #vue3 #compositionapi

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One of my favorite quotes from Zach White is "Knowledge without action is failure." Only those that act on the knowledge they have see results. I see this every day in my Skool community. There are tons of amazing resources in there for people, and yet only a few see the results they say they want. The ones that do are the ones that act. --- ➡️ 𝗟𝗼𝗼𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲𝘀? 𝗝𝗼𝗶𝗻 𝗺𝘆 𝗙𝗥𝗘𝗘 𝗦𝗸𝗼𝗼𝗹 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆 >> https://bit.ly/mcc-skool #mcc #engineering #leadership #jobinterviews #careers

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Ope, another blog post. For those of you that work with me, consider this my soft-launch of talking nonstop about job stories, consider yourself warned! job stories > user stories https://lnkd.in/g2KTxuKB

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Does anyone else remember sitting in class thinking, "Am I ever going to actually use this?" 🤦‍♂️ I still ask myself this weekly when reading blog posts, listening to podcasts, catching up on massive Slack threads, or diving into documentation and feature listings. I don't always use the info, but it feels great when a memory from six months ago suddenly becomes relevant. I always think of that original Jurassic Park Unix scene. This often happens when discussing DevOps and Serverless, where boundaries blur already. Trying to keep all of the AWS documentation in my head while discussing the design of new features and optimizations feels like a superhuman task. What are some things you wish you had remembered when solving an issue or problem? For me, we designed a Lambda function to fail purposefully instead of attempting to recover for efficiency. Unfortunately, the Lambda control plane self-throttles a function once a failure threshold is reached... slowing our processing to a crawl and forcing some quick code changes. 😅 #AWS #lambda #serverless #learninginpublic #hugops

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These are great tips for an junior dev. Especially the suggestion to become the "go-to person" in a particular topic. It's a great way to become an elevated contributor on a team. https://lnkd.in/gqUZSn39

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Time to be fair.... In past posts, I have been less than complimentary of the DLC regulations that now make it more difficult to implement SMS into an application. I understand that all sorts of organizations use (and misuse) SMS millions (billions?) of times daily. I get that the new regulations make an attempt to reduce, as much as possible, SMS Spam. All in all, it just seemed like another example of hand-cuffing the good guys while trying to put some limits on the bad actors. My experience at the time was with #Twilio... and I tried to make it very clear that my frustration wasn't necessarily with them - they were doing the best they could to handle an avalanche of organizations trying to comply with new rules that everyone was stumbling their way through. I've been using Twilio for years and can't complain AT ALL about the platform performance for my particular small-scale needs. It was the nearly impossible approval process that really soured me. After nearly a year of living without application-based SMS (email only), I decided to revisit. The application was already all wired up for the feature - it was just dormant. This time around I was able to get up and running in 3 days... 99% of which was the DLC approval - which happened today. Kudos #Twilio for suffering through the tough days and making SMS once again something that can be done with very little pain. #twilio #sms #dlcapproval

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I'm going to post a few challenges I have had as a software QA. I should be relaxing today but those that know me, know my brain is always in thirty places at once. To developers: Trust your QA. Y'all don't know how many times I've heard, "Well, it works on my local". I don't care. In the test environment, it breaks. I do my due diligence to investigate why, present evidence in logs and from the database, present recordings, and meticulously document steps of reproduction and results. And even after, I still get, "It works on my local". Get off the dang local. NO ONE knows this software, app, platform, etc. better than the QA because we live it more than anyone else does. To business analysts: I know you all are overwhelmed. But please stop copying and pasting Acceptance Criteria for similar features. It makes a mess for developers and QA because the AC doesn't match or conflicts with not only the developed feature but integration as well. Which brings me to my next point... What QA is: Everyone thinks of us as just testers. I am sick of that. I spend half my time working with the product owner, BAs, and Devs, just making sure the AC reflects the solution needing to be resolved. I can't tell you how many times I have had to address with the BAs conflicts in a story over AC, nonsensical AC, WTF verbiage, etc. So then the developers get confused and we are in long meetings addressing what is messed up. We are here to help you ask the questions you didn't think to ask. We don't just test..... we look at future issues too. We like process improvements. Automation: Stop asking me to automate a one-off feature test that hasn't even gone through UAT yet. It's time wasted. Too many companies do this. Might as well give me the day off for the time it takes to do that because the automation is useless after UAT. Learn the purpose of automation. Product Owner: When I tell you before a demo not to demo certain things because there are still issues, don't shred me after the demo because you decided to demo them anyway and they break. I TOLD YOU not to do that, and why. Data: QA worst nightmare. My last position I would get two test records to test against 20 AC when I first started. I said "Helz no". I built up a catalog of test records I could use, positive and negative, as I progressed because I want multiple records against every AC. Which I often shared with the developers for their unit tests who loved it. QA needs data, all. You give me two records, don't yell at me that coverage isn't thorough. Probably sounded more a rant. But I'm opinionated. Where many QA are not. And these are common issues. Want to improve QA, improve the above.

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As a C# developer I found this informative; it’s about an alternative way to structure unit tests. I would certainly try this. Here’s a blog by my colleague.

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