Leaders Lab with CoreCom recruiting

I recently attended the Leaders Lab with Corecom Consulting held in Leeds on 16/04. Ignore the title image, it wasn't a James Bond Villain's den of iniquity.

The first half was a talk given by Simon Bee about Autodesk's Digital Twin technology.

The application - Tandem, is a platform that allows building owners and operators to create comprehensive digital representations of their physical spaces and assets. These "digital twins" incorporate data from the building's design and construction phases, as well as real-time sensor data monitoring things like occupancy, energy usage, temperature and other environmental attributes.

According to Simon, Tandem was built on years of research at Autodesk through projects like Dasher, which explored novel ways of interacting with 3D building models and visualizing sensor data.

It was pretty impressive how the research turned it into a viable product requiring solving major challenges around scalability, handling massive amounts of data from diverse sources, and achieving seamless interoperability between different file formats and classification systems used across the construction industry. The disparate file formats looked like a particularly tricky problem when Simon elaborated on the problems they encountered.

Tandem's key components included data connectors to integrate with IoT systems to build management systems and tools to normalize and map all the incoming data sources to a standardized classification system.

All this allows visualizing the digital twin, performing analysis and simulations, and surfacing actionable insights. It is a mammoth piece of software.

We used to use Autodesk's 3d Studio a long time ago when I was in the games industry at Team17, and thought that was amazing at the time, but Tandem is on a whole new level by comparison.

Simon really did an excellent job of showing the tool in the short period of time that was allowed, so well done!

The second half of the meeting was a roundtable discussion for all the attendees.

It was a diverse group from the engineering departments of various sized companies, all of which had some really good points to make about the development processes used in their own companies and some observations on the industry as a whole.

The following notes are a precis from this roundtable transcript I recorded and come from those leaders. They're presented as a list of guidelines since the volume of text for the discussion lasted over and hour and a half, so the main points kind of got lost in the static.

This is from a transcript so not my own words other than where the transcription broke down and I've had to paraphrase for it to make sense. Also, because we were all seated, I couldn't get the names of the commenters. Comments and additions from me are (italicised in brackets).

On to the list.

1. Leveraging Bleeding Edge vs. Mature Technologies

- Wait for technologies to reach a certain level of maturity before adopting them, rather than being on the bleeding edge.

- Successful software spends more time in production than in development, so focus on what works well in the long run. At Chevin Fleet Solutions , FleetWave is a canonical example, it's 30 years old and still being actively developed.

- BUT be conservative , tend towards leading edge rather than bleeding edge.

2. Allow for Experimentation and Innovation

- Provide developers and engineers with the freedom to try out new technologies or approaches, even if they fail.

- Encourage sharing of learnings and experiences, both positive and negative, successes and failures, through tech shows or knowledge-sharing sessions.

- Embrace the concept of "failing fast" and being able to revert changes if experiments don't work out.

3. Balance Innovation with Calculated Risks

- Whilst encouraging innovation, also consider calculated risks and the ability to revert changes if necessary.

- Adopt a conservative approach to innovation.

4. Innovate Within Well-Defined Constraints

- Taking Apple as an example, they innovate within the context of well-defined product form factors or constraints.

- Providing constraints or boundaries can sometimes foster more creativity than an open-ended approach.

- To innovate outside the box, you first need to know how big the box is.

5. Leverage Inspirational Individuals and Bottom-Up Innovation

- Identify and leverage inspirational individuals within the team who can drive innovation from the bottom up.

- Bottom-up innovation can be more effective in smaller, agile teams or organizations where communication is easier.

- don't leave anyone without access to support from these individuals!

6. Implement Structured Innovation Programs

- Implement structured programs like "20% time" or hackathons to encourage innovation and cross-disciplinary collaboration.

- These programs allow employees to work on their own ideas or projects for a dedicated period.

- They aren't used solely to enhance company product, but to enhance individual's abilities leveraging (See #5)

- This fosters a true developer community within a company.

7. Align Innovation with Business Goals and Constraints

- Innovation efforts should mostly align with the overall business goals, product lines, and constraints (e.g., budget, regulations etc).

8. Challenge the "We've Always Done It This Way" Mentality

- Question the "we've always done it this way" mentality, as it may indicate a lack of understanding of the underlying reasons.

- However, also acknowledge that there may be valid reasons for established practices, such as costs or risks associated with change.

- Use new team members to voice opinions on established code or practice.

9. Align Innovation with Profit and Growth Goals

- Innovation efforts can be used for personal growth should ultimately contribute to the organization's profit and growth goals.

- Communicate how the proposed strategy or approach will positively impact key business metrics to gain management's support.

(ROB: Personally, not so sure about this one, I think having better more skilled developers helps the business in ways that might not be immediately visible to the bottom line)

10. Continuous Improvement and Problem-Solving

- Adopt a mindset of continuous improvement and problem-solving. Push the boundaries within the bounds of #2 & #3

- Identify areas for improvement and explore new solutions, even if the current approach is not inherently "broken."

11. Understand Existing Processes and Rationales

- Before proposing changes, understand the rationale behind existing processes and workflows. (See #8)

- There may be valid reasons for certain practices that should be considered before making changes.

12. Invest in Technical Education for Non-Technical Executives

- Educating non-technical executives on the importance and value of investing in technology can be crucial.

- Help them understand how technology investments can drive business growth and efficiency.

(ROB: This is super important, its difficult for any idea to gain traction unless the SMT are on board)

13. Foster a Culture of Continuous Learning

- Encourage and support ongoing learning and professional development for both managers and developers.

- Purchase individual learning resource like Pluralsight , Lynda.com , Udemy , LinkedIn for Learning etc.

- Provide opportunities for attending conferences, workshops, or online courses to stay up-to-date with the latest technologies and best practices.

(ROB: A personal learning budget is a good employee value proposition!)

14. Implement Effective Code Review Practices

- Establish a consistent code review process to ensure code quality, knowledge sharing, and adherence to coding standards.

- Encourage constructive feedback and treat code reviews as learning opportunities for the entire team.

- utilise cross team code reviews where appropriate, where minimal impact exists.

15. Prioritize Technical Debt Management

- Regularly assess and prioritize the management of technical debt to maintain a sustainable codebase.

- Allocate dedicated time and resources for refactoring, code clean-up, and addressing known issues.

(ROB: This is also an opportunity to add value through new technologies, replacing an application web page with a SPA like React, as in Chevin's FleetWave SmartForms. Curing the debt and improving something, #winwin)

16. Implement Effective Documentation Practices

- Establish guidelines and best practices for documenting code, architectural decisions, and project knowledge.

- Leverage tools and platforms for centralized documentation and knowledge sharing. Remember sharepoint isn't a useful developer doc hub.

(ROB: Also, remember, if documentation isn't painless, it won't get done. Gitbook is one of my favourites)

17. Embrace Automation and DevOps Practices

- Implement automated testing, continuous integration, and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.

- Collaborate with DevOps teams or professionals to streamline development and deployment processes.

18. Promote Work-Life Balance and Avoid Burnout

- Encourage developers to maintain a healthy work-life balance and avoid excessive overtime or burnout.

- Implement practices like flexible schedules, remote work options, and team-building activities to support employee well-being.

19. Invest in Mentorship and Career Development

- Establish mentorship programs to facilitate knowledge transfer and career growth for both junior and senior developers.

- Provide opportunities for leadership development and career progression within the organization.

Closing

This event held by CoreCom was well worth the evening. Well, if you don't include navigating through Leeds city centre! It was great meeting like minded industry leaders and the discussion flowed easily. I'd definitely recommend attending the next one especially for the discussion round table after the main event.

Thanks to Corecom Consulting , especially Jamie Harvey (and others) for organising this valuable event. Also, a personal shout out to Savannah Derbyshire for her tireless help in trying to find my wife a Manual QA role. If anyone can help with an entry level remote/hybrid role, let me know!