What is the Human Side of Things?

Welcome to CTOFellows, the podcast where we explore the intersection of leadership, engineering, and tech culture in the realm of small businesses. Our discussions go beyond just the tools and methodologies to delve deep into the human elements that make or break an engineering culture.

In this week's episode, we focus on "The Human Side of Things in Software Development." We'll talk about the core technical aspects like Pull Requests, Code Reviews, Trunk-Based Development, and CI/CD. But more importantly, we'll examine the people behind these processes—the engineers and tech leads who live with the decisions they make daily.

🌟 Key Highlights:

The Importance of Progress: We discuss why progress is not just about ticking off tasks on a checklist, but an essential component of happiness in the workspace. A smooth workflow, regardless of the development method, contributes significantly to team morale.

The Downward Spiral: We delve into the repercussions of a toxic work environment caused by review backlogs, merge conflicts, or constant deployment issues. We'll discuss ways to maintain a healthy flow to ensure a positive impact on everyone, from stakeholders to product owners and developers.

Learning and Mentoring: In our tech-driven world, the importance of mentoring is often underemphasized. We shed light on why mentoring is a valuable form of training, one that fosters a culture of continual learning.

Maturity Matters: How does team maturity contribute to effectively implementing methodologies like trunk-based development? We discuss the crucial balance of maturity and responsibility in creating a quality software product.

Human Skills Over Soft Skills: As Marc van Neerven puts it, 'human skills' are not to be undermined. We discuss how they are just as essential as technical skills for effective project execution.