Software Engineers. The Hidden Heroes!

Throughout my career, I have been fortunate enough to work with amazing software engineers.

I am convinced that in today's digital world, software engineers are often the hidden heroes of many organizations.

I have two recommendations for any organization that wants to compete in the digital world:

1. Empower your software engineers to solve business problems by collaboratively engaging them earlier in the process.
2. Invest in the developer experience (DX) with the same rigor that you are focused on for the customer and overall employee experience.

Software engineers build and maintain the complex systems that power businesses, and customer experiences. Yet, their contributions often go unnoticed or underappreciated.?

This may be due in part to the fact that their work is often behind the scenes and not immediately visible. Additionally, the complexity of software engineering can be difficult for non-technical individuals to fully understand and appreciate.

What makes software engineers truly valuable to organizations is their ability to translate complex business problems into solutions that deliver business outcomes. This requires not only technical expertise, but also strong business, communication, and problem-solving skills.

Almost every business process runs on systems that have been designed, developed, and built by software engineers.?They understand the inner workings of every business process and business function. This knowledge is powerful, and can be an amazing advantage if leveraged to its full potential.

Software engineers are great at context switching and multitasking.

They constantly face new complex challenges and shifting priorities - often with impractical timelines, budgets and resources. This is an essential skill in today's fast-paced, ever-changing work environment.

Software engineers often have to work with fragmented sets of tools and processes. This is often inefficient and frustrating for them.?It also results in poor visibility, collaboration, and coordination across the organization. Implementing developer experience platforms (like backstage.io) can go a long way to solve these challenges. Most importantly, it really helps accelerate time to value, while maintaining standards, quality, compliance, and security, all while retaining knowledge.

The best organizations have figured out how to unify design, product, and software engineering teams.

Everyone works as one team with a common purpose.?Software engineers are not viewed as an internal service provider.?They are viewed as core members of the same team, focused on serving the external customer.

I have always worked towards empowering software engineering teams and involving them upfront in the process to solve business problems.?Whenever I've been successful, team morale, engagement, energy, and focus have been amazing…

...and the business outcomes have been outstanding!

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Conversations with Myself - A Blog Series

We are the sum of our life’s experiences. Throughout my life, I have been fortunate to have learned some lessons about humanity, and I have applied those lessons to leadership. I am sharing them with the hope that it can make a positive impact on someone, somewhere—starting with my two daughters.

#veresh?#leadership?#stayhumble?