I’m passionate about software. Even after three decades of exposure to software engineering in its various forms, the medium still fascinates me: The immense range of problems it can solve. The ever evolving ways in which it is created, deployed, and operated. The joy of the creative act that software development is at its core. And the complexity that unfolds when we are trying to build software at scale.

My mission is to help organizations and teams, small and large, to create impactful software.

Core principles Link to heading

Over the years, I’ve worked with countless software-centric organizations and have been observing and learning from our shared successes and failures. I have come to believe that there are a few core principles that successful software organization, implicitly or explicitly, consciously or unconsciously, have accepted as the foundation of their way of working:

• Delivering software is complex and highly context-sensitive: We need to constantly probe, sense, and respond.
• Software is peopleware: Team dynamics, motivation, and psychological safety can make it or break it.
• Software development is a craft: It requires deliberate practice and attention to details.
• Software by itself is necessary but not sufficient: Value creation requires strong cross-functional collaboration.

Conclusion Link to heading

Accepting these core principles has shaped the way I work with software delivery organizations: I am convinced that success is a consequence of holistically tending to all of the above. Consequently, when leading or coaching a software organization, I tend equally to the “inside” and the “outside”.

I closely collaborate with all stakeholders of the software delivery organization, to …

• … understand what services it needs to provide to achive the desired impact.
• … deliberately design the interfaces to those services with the best possible stakeholder experience in mind.
• … measure the service delivery performance as observed from the outside.

I then align the software delivery organization with those external needs by …

• … creating a shared understanding of the strategic goals and way the software delivery organization plays in achieving them.
• … constantly evolving team structures and processes to optimize service delivery.
• … identifying and closing gaps in delivery capabilities.

Since the foundation of all of the above are motivated, capable, and healthy people, within the software organzation, I will foster …

• … transparency and psychological safety.
• … a culture of constant and deliberate learning.
• … a strong sense of ownership, empowerment, and accountability.

Throughout my career, I have accumulated the tools and the experience to do any of the above at various levels of detail: I feel equally comfortable as player-coach working tactically with teams and inidivuduals and as senior leader, projecting my influence through working with engineering managers and establishing principles, structure, and processes.