The Lead Developer UK 2017
2017-06-08..2017-06-09
London, United Kingdom
who it's for
lead developers, tech leads, engineering managers, senior engineers, people managers, engineering directors
topics
daily tech lead responsibilities; stakeholder communication techniques; managing project deadlines; Agile leadership principles; good API design features; failure-driven development practices; skunkworks innovation teams; fearless feedback techniques; handling large code rewrites; automated accessibility testing; building and scaling distributed inclusive teams; mentoring junior engineers
| title | author | length |
|---|---|---|
| Highlights | Meri Williams | 01m |
A two-day, single-track conference on 8 & 9 June is sold out and twice the size of the 2015 event, co-curated and chaired by Meri Williams. Sessions compile… | ||
| The Constant Life of a Tech Lead | Patrick Kua | 29m |
Argues that tech leads face repeatable realities not trends and gives concrete moves: adopt principles outlast tools and keep reading refactoring and the 1972… | ||
| How to Talk to Earthlings | Adrian Howard | 29m |
Argues that management is about building people not products and borrows concrete user-research techniques to make one-on-ones usable: stop talking and count… | ||
| Things You Wish You Shared With Your Team Before They Agreed on That Deadline | Dominika Rogala | 09m |
Claims specific enough to act on: a year has about 250 working days, a month is under twenty days and a week is often under five useful days because meetings… | ||
| Leadership Lessons from the Agile Manifesto | Anjuan Simmons | 30m |
Maps Agile values to leadership with concrete examples and outcomes: uses Slack as a culture tool then pins community guidelines after a dignity complaint and… | ||
| 5 Features of a Good API | Rob Allen | 27m |
Lists five features of a good API—malleability, correct HTTP usage, error handling, documentation, security—and explains concrete practices: decouple… | ||
| Time to Focus on Your Goals | Maria Gutierrez | 13m |
A concrete personal-development process appears: one day a year reserved for goal-setting; score current versus target and choose a limited list; embed… | ||
| Fail Fast, Fail Smart, Succeed | Kevin Goldsmith | 29m |
Describes building and launching "Spotify Now" where a New Zealand cohort test shows early promise then a full press rollout to 1% cohorts in UK SE DE flips… | ||
| The Original Skunk Works | Nickolas Means | 53m |
Stories focus on concrete choices and outcomes: a prototype P-80 is assembled in 143 days using on-the-spot fabrication and minimal drawings; the U-2 hits… | ||
| Better: Fearless Feedback for Software Teams | Erika Carlson | 32m |
Claim: well‑given feedback measurably improves team performance and trust. Evidence: an apprenticeship program graduates 60 people and still employs 84% of its… | ||
| Big Rewrite Strikes Again | Sabrina Leandro | 27m |
Runs three major rewrite projects at Songkick, decoupling front-ends and services and using a strangler approach to replace legacy features incrementally… | ||
| Continuous A11y - Automate the Hell Out of It | Patrik Karisch | 13m |
Claims a repeatable pipeline that runs a11yM locally or on Jenkins/GitLabCI/Travis, crawls logged‑in pages, and saves detailed reports to S3 with a dashboard… | ||
| Building and Scaling a Distributed and Inclusive Team | Mathias Meyer | 31m |
Travis CI runs a distributed team of 40 builders across eight countries speaking nine languages from 15 home countries, with roughly 50% remote and a 12‑hour… | ||
| Making the Leap from Execution to Strategy | Sally Jenkinson | 33m |
Argues that moving from day-to-day development into strategy requires different skills not vague ambition and shows concrete wins: uses prototypes and… | ||
| Rethinking the Developer Career Path | Randall Koutnik | 25m |
Argues career progression should measure autonomy not years and defines three concrete stages: Implementer, Solver, Finder. Gives concrete work examples — a… | ||
| Mentoring Junior Engineers @ Slack HQ | Carly Robinson | 34m |
Transition from theater via Codecademy and Hackbright Academy yields rapid engineering growth at Slack through regular one-on-ones, concrete quarterly goals… | ||
| Ask vs. Guess Cultures | Katherine Wu | 31m |
A clear claim: workplaces suffer friction from Ask vs Guess norms — some people ask directly, others hint and wait for offers — demonstrated with a household… | ||
| Leading by Speaking | Lara Hogan | 29m |
Concrete tactics for public‑speaking fear: a Twitter survey surfaces common anxieties; use a clear structure (landscape → issue → options → best choice) and… | ||
| Centralising the Right Things | Tom Booth | 14m |
Claim: centralise knowledge and coordination but not ownership. uSwitch moves from a three-week release cycle to continuous deployment, creates a small central… | ||
| YOLO Releases Considered Harmful | Cate Huston | 28m |
Argues that platform realities, not ideology, drive mobile velocity: compiled apps mean no rollback on iTunes, users delay updates, app-store review and… | ||
| The Inclusive Leader: Tips for Developing Diverse Teams | Jill Wetzler | 29m |
Shows concrete claims and tactics: underrepresented groups leave tech "in droves" and 77% of Black women report repeatedly proving themselves; men are ~45%… | ||
| Tech Hiring: Sometimes (Often) Failing Us All | Crystal Huff | 15m |
Tech hiring fails often and with concrete harms: a candidate who clears an hourlong phone screen loses a job over clothing when hiring panelists react to the… | ||
| We're Agile, We Don't Do Documentation | Birgitta Boeckeler | 26m |
Argues that documentation is useful when it delivers concrete outcomes: five practical purposes are named — creating a wall of common understanding (about six… | ||
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