Building With People For People: The Unfiltered Build Podcast Nigel Finley

Ding ding... It's 3 am and your phone has just sent you multiple P1 alerts. Your site is down and you need to find out what the issue is and fast, but your log data is all over the place, metrics on your services are sub par and it's really hard to know where to go to find the issue. What if there was a way to leverage AI to help you make sense of your data in a clear and concise way, making your 3 am alert wake up call a walk in the park? This is exactly what our guest, David Wynn, is doing at Edge Delta, an automated observability platform that monitors your services, alerts you when something is wrong, and guides root-cause analysis. Today, we dive into observability; what it is, the data pieces that make up this ecosystem, tips on how to start your data collection journey, ways our guest is integrating AI with human expertise to enhance system observability and more.

David received his Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from Duke University and with over 15 years in the industry he has worked at companies like Intapp, Sumo Logic and formerly was Head of Solutions at Google Cloud for Games. Currently, a Principal Solution Architect for Edge Delta, an automated observability startup, he applies his visionary approach to automated observability, ensuring systems are not only monitored but also intelligently guided through root-cause analysis when issues arise.

When our guest is not making your production monitoring a breeze, he is reading philosophy and participating in the vibrant geek culture in Atlanta attending events like DragonCon. In his LinkedIn profile he calls himself the “People Machine Liaison”, enjoy the conversation!

Connect with David:


LinkedIn
Ftwynn.com
EdgeDelta

Sponsor:


Get Space: Are your engineers happy? Productive? Install Get Space’s real-time survey iteration tool now with code buildwithpeople and get 20% off your first year to find out real insights about your engineers experience.

Show notes and helpful resources:


Definition of observability: Understanding what the system is doing and whether it's doing what it's intended
Three pillars of observability are Logs, Metics and Traces
Logs are like notes to yourself from the code, and are only as structured and useful as the notes you write
Metrics are numbers, usually counts or measurements, that represent what you want to track
Traces tie together the different components of a distributed system into one object, capturing the flow and timing of a transaction or operation
Events are narrative-level components that describe key occurrences in the environment
MELT is the acronym for Metrics, Events, Logs, and Traces
Context as a 4th pillar


Three layers of Context; 1. Team context (developers, what maps to code), 2. Architecture context (how services are architected), 3. Business intent context (what the system is supposed to do)
Collection is step number 1 - getting the data into a place where you can understand it
Automated observability: Makes the collection process easier by automating aspects of it and makes the analysis process easier by using techniques like clustering algorithms


Edge Delta uses the k-means clustering algorithm to group similar events and apply sentiment analysis to identify issues.
Engineers should focus on understanding and implementing the business requirements correctly, as that will lead to better observability signals


Large Language Models (LLMs) are not reasoning machines; they are associativity machines that cannot truly understand or reason about concepts
Reality has a surprising amount of detail article - by John Salvatier


ReBoot cartoon - The main character Bob acts as the Guardian of Mainframe. Correction from the episode: he has a keytool named Glitch (not Gadget as mentioned) that he wears on his left wrist

Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at jointhepodcast@unfilteredbuild.com

Podcas

You know that feeling when you are in the zone and time seems to standstill? You’re on fire, completely focused, and distractions vanish? That feeling is FLOW.  In today's world with constant interruptions and demands on our attention, achieving flow can feel impossible. But what if there was a way to cultivate this state and optimize your productivity? That's where "flow as a practice" comes in. It's the art of getting in and staying in that magical flow state.  We are joined today by a Flow Experience expert to help us understand what Flow is, why it’s important for our joy, ways we can achieve it and more.

Our guest, Arty Starr, has been a software engineer for over 20 years doing work in various areas like semiconductor factory automation, supply chain optimization, data pipeline automation and helping companies identify and solve their biggest problems with data. Today she is a recognized Flow Experience expert, researcher, speaker and thought leader, and author of the book Idea Flow: How to Measure the PAIN in Software Development. During the pandemic our guest decided to get her PhD at the University of Victoria, where she is now a researcher at CHISEL - The Computer Human Interaction & Software Engineering Lab, working with Dr. Margaret-Anne Storey.  Her thesis project is developing a theory of Developer Flow, and the two cognitive processes of Momentum and Troubleshooting.

She is also the founder of FlowInsight, helping developers thrive and find joy through more time in the flow state.  Additionally, she is on the advisory board of CodeScene, a painter, a 2D/3D animator, and is working on a new play-based approach to learning coding and animation with a 3D character, called "Learning with Fervie".

Our guest believes that we as software engineers are the magicians of this world because we can bring our dreams to life. When our guest is not finding ways to bring the invisible to the forefront, and bring joy and hope back to our work, she is spending her time outside, hangin’ with the trees.

Enjoy the conversation!

Connect with Arty:


LinkedIn

Sponsor:


Get Space: How do you know if your engineers have time in the day to experience flow? Install Get Space’s real-time survey iteration tool now with code buildwithpeople and get 20% off your first year to get real insights in your your engineers experience.

Show notes and helpful resources:


Bridges Summit - YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS THIS
Flow Insights - Sign up for BETA to use the tools Arty talked about during the show - join her to help build a better product
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
The Computer Human Interaction & Software Engineering Lab at the University of Victoria run by Dr. Margaret-Anne Storey
Arty is speaking at UberConf
Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework by Douglas C. Engelbart
The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First by Jeffery Pfeffer
The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization by Peter Senge
Getting into the optimal performance state by Robert Nideffer
What Makes Interruptions Disruptive?: A Process-Model Account of the Effects of the Problem State Bottleneck on Task Interruption and Resumption, by J. P. Borst, N. A. Taatgen
Shape UP by Ryan Singer
Prerequisite conditions to get into flow state: Clarity of the goals and rules of the task, challenge skill level balance and unambiguous feedback.
Intrinsic motivation is a very important piece to flow
Setting clear goals and breaking down work into micro intentions will help you achieve flow
If we focus on experience and thriving we ought to get productivity for free
Other talks by Arty: Enabling Powerful Software Insights by Visualizing Friction and Flow and Keynote at SpringOne on Flow State

Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at jointhepodcast@unfilteredbuild.com

Podcast produced b

Metrics are hard. Identifying which metrics to measure is even harder. So how do you get started? And how do you know when you have achieved true developer productivity zen? Like anything in life the path to mastery is a journey and today we are joined by a passionate staff engineer from Meta to share with us his theory on a developer productivity maturity model which paints a wonderful mental picture on knowing where we stand in our developer productivity journey and how companies can move through the stages. We also discuss productivity dashboards, if you actually need dashboards, how Meta thinks about developer productivity and more.

Our guest, Karim Nakad, has his Masters of Computer Science from University of Wisconsin and previously worked for Amazon for SageMaker and Prime. He is currently a Staff Software Engineer at Meta making an impact in the productivity organization. He is dedicated to improving developer efficiency across the board and paving the way by generating and exposing productivity and code quality metrics across the tech industry and alongside leading experts and researchers. His excitement around improving the daily working lives of software engineers is palatable and contagious and I can’t wait to dig in. I met our guest at a developer productivity engineering conference last year and when he summarized back to me the purpose of a project I was working on in such an eloquent manner I knew then he had to come on the podcast to share his thoughts and efforts around bringing happiness to engineers and building products for people.

When our guest is not helping engineers move fast and be productive, he games and travels the world. He also two Macaws a green wing and a blue and gold.

Enjoy!

Connect with Karim:


LinkedIn
Twitter
Threads

Sponsor:


Get Space: Do you know what pain points exist in your company? Install Get Space’s real-time survey iteration tool now with code "buildwithpeople" and get 20% off your first year

Episode correction:

Karim wanted to clarify the difference and intersection between qualitative/quantitative and objective/subjective:


Qualitative: Non-number data such as the subjective free-form text in surveys.
Quantitative: Data that can be counted, such as subjective multiple-choice in surveys or objective system measurements.

Show notes and helpful resources:


DORA
The SPACE framework
Karim’s best advice: “Anyone can be an expert you just need to read the code”
Karim’s everyday tool: Obsidian - note taking app
Reflect note taking app
The Hack language
Karim says developer productivity is about creating an efficient and enjoyable experience as that is what encourages devs to do their best work
To measure, rely on frameworks our there like DORA or SPACE and Karim recommends using metrics you already have to start with
AutoFocus paper: Workgraph: personal focus vs. interruption for engineers at Meta - improved personal focus by over 20%
KPIs rule of thumb takes two forms: Latency and Reliability
An example of latency is test latency and how quickly do they complete
An example of reliability is test reliability and how often your test delivers good signal
Productivity Engineering Maturity Model (5 stages):


Ignorance: Not know about or not prioritizing developer productivity
Awareness: Forming a team focused on addressing highest pain points for example around continuous integration or testing
Initiation: Merging KPIs into a common productivity goal and creating dashboards
Refinement: Making recommendations on dashboards to improve productivity
Mastery: Automating and integrating productivity improvements into workflows


Advice for smaller companies: Keep an ear on the ground for industry research from companies like Google and Microsoft, and leverage frameworks like SPACE and DevEx to measure and improve productivity.
The importance of nudging teams in the right direction rather than mandating productivity s

Our work could be more fun if…. My engineers could be happier if… Is this the right problem to solve?... Software development is all about solving hard problems in fun and creative ways and asking these questions in the work we do allows us to think more creatively. Our guest, Brit Myers, loves to ask these types of questions and solve them with her high performing teams.  Today, we dig into how we can make sure we are asking the right questions to ensure we are solving the right problems, learning from failure, how to build high performing teams, how we can think about metrics as feedback loops and more!

Brit was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio and has 4 kids. She received her BS in Mathematics from Carnegie Mellon and has recently completed her Executive MBA from University of Michigan. During undergrad she had no intentions of getting into tech but during an internship she fell in love with programming. With over 15 years of experience now under her belt, she is a technology leader with experience in scaling high-performing engineering teams and building platforms across various industries. She worked at Hyland as AVP of Cloud Engineer, at Firebolt Analytics as Head of Cloud Engineering, and currently is the VP of engineering at System Initiative where she leads a team of talented engineers creating a new collaborative power tool designed to remove the "papercuts" from DevOps work.

When our guest is not eliminating "papercuts" from DevOps she is spending time with her family,  building DIY projects with her kids, or working outside in her garden. Her passion is building amazing things with amazing people, so it was only fitting she join us on the show today.

Enjoy!

Connect with Brit:


LinkedIn
Discord
Twitter
System Initiative and Open Beta Signup

Sponsor:


Get Space: Want to collect feedback directly from your engineers? Install Get Space’s real-time survey iteration tool now with code buildwithpeople and get 20% off your first year to get real insights in your your engineers experience.

Show notes and helpful resources:


Brit Myers Readme
Second Wave of DevOps blog post by System Initiative’s Co-founder and CEO, Adam Jacob
Important advice she got from her grandfather: Figure out what people in power want and find a way to give it to them
She views metrics and trends more as signals to ask questions rather than definitive answers; you need to look at context
Strongly values empowering teams and giving them autonomy to make decisions
Asks for feedback often to model good practices and help teams develop skills
Focuses on facilitating the right conversations and alignment through process
At System Initiative, she is building a collaborative DevOps platform to create infrastructure simulations and remove friction from workflows
System Initiative is described by Adam Jacob (CEO) as if Figma and Miro had a DevOps Baby and it is changing how we collaborate
Overall advice: Keep focused on the outcomes you want to achieve in software development and don't lose sight of them amidst new technologies and frameworks

Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at jointhepodcast@unfilteredbuild.com

Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.

Today on Building With People For People we delve into what and how we make our workspaces not just productive, but also joyful. Have you ever wondered what elements contribute to that feeling of fulfillment in your job? Is it flow state, or the immediacy of feedback, or the camaraderie of an exceptional team? These aspects are pivotal for anyone's career satisfaction and effectiveness, no matter their field. But our focus is how do we gauge and enhance the developer experience? It's more than just crunching numbers on things like build times or pull request cycle time. While these quantitative metrics have their place, they only paint part of the picture. The true essence lies in understanding the human factor behind these numbers, because, at the end of the day, we create tools for each other, as people.

We are joined today by Justin Reock, an extremely passionate software engineer who makes it his daily mission to help engineers find happiness and joy in their work. We dive into his involvement in the Developer Experience community, frameworks you can use to help think about how and what data to collect to increase developer experience, and providing environments where developers can thrive like an internal developer portal.

Justin has held roles like Solutions Architect and Chief Architect, previously worked at Gradle as their Field CTO and Chief Evangelist and is currently the Head of Developer Relations at Cortex.io, focusing on transforming businesses through internal developer portals. He is also a part of a movement to pull together multiple disciplines to discuss ways in which we can improve engineering productivity.

When our guest is not helping engineers find joy in their work he is playing games of any format (board, video, etc), running, reading, grilling, and he and his wife are renovating their RV!



Connect with Justin:


LinkedIn
Twitter

Sponsor:


Get Space: Do you know if your engineers experience joy in your organization? Install Get Space’s real-time survey iteration tool now with code buildwithpeople and get 20% off your first year to get real insights in your your engineers experience

Show notes and helpful resources:


Theory of Constraints as defined in The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt
The Phoenix Project book
Justin’s early tech toys - Atari 2600+ and the Tandy 1000 EX Personal Computer
He is creating a programable relay system for his RV using Rust
Other videos of Justin: DevOps, 12 Factor, and Open Source and Breeding 10x Developers
Beauty of open source is its ability to enable and equalize the playing field
Internal Developer Portal - A system that attempts to pull disparate system data and put it in one place to make a predictive and personalized space
The SPACE of Developer Productivity - A holistic developer productivity framework combining both workflow metrics and perception metrics.
Developers mostly think about “Activity” metrics like lines of code or number of builds but we need to give equal weight to the perception metrics, the "Satisfaction" and "Communication" dimensions of SPACE
If you curate a better experience for your developers you will lead to better productivity outcomes
DORA - is only one part of the value stream, it is the creation and deployment of an artifact and captures throughput, but it doesn’t capture everything before that like writing the code, or meetings or slack messages
SPACE is seeking a balance between the five metrics and wants to tell a story about the tension that exists between the different dimensions.
The secret of SPACE is it is immune to Goodhart’s law - “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”
Gitlab DevSecOps 2022 Survey
The DevOps Handbook



Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at jointhepodcast@unfilteredbuild.com

Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.

Products are designed and created for their users right? Well at least they should be. A 2021 McKinsey Global Digital Sentiment Insights survey sites that 56% of users of digital services state they are dissatisfied by the user experience.  Today, we are joined by Satyam Kantamneni, a master of design thinking to shed some light on why this might be and to share his insights on how we can create user-centric organizations that leave users delighted while also driving business growth through the practice of User Experience Design.

Satyam has a Bachelors in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Osmania University, an MS, of Human Factors Engineering from Wright State University, has attended Stanford, the School of Design Thinking, and received his Executive MBA from Harvard Business School.  He is currently the Managing Partner and Chief Experience Officer at UX Reactor.

He has developed and curated the PragmaticUX framework, which is a scalable, consistent, replicable, and measurable approach to innovation in a digital world.  A subset of the framework is captured in his book:  User Experience Design: A Practical playbook to Fuel Business Growth.

As our guest says Good Design is Good Business.

Connect with Satyam:


LinkedIn
Website
Email

Sponsor:


Get Space: Do you know if your developer’s user experience is a good one? Install Get Space’s real-time survey iteration tool now with code "buildwithpeople" and get 20% off your first year to get real insights in your your engineers experience

Show notes and helpful resources:


User Experience Design: A Practical Playbook to Fuel Business Growth
Bv.d = m.p.p.e; Business value by design = Mindsets, Process, People and Environments
The Experience Value Chain
The 5 Mindsets
Design is Business - Google Design Presentation by Satyam
Collaboration Trinity - Magic happens when you have an Experience Strategist, a Product Owner, and an Engineering Architect
As apart of Experience Transformation, everyone in your organization should be able to tell you four things: 1. Who are your top users; 2. What their top 5 pain points are; 3. What the org is doing to solve these pain points; 4. Knowing how the organization measures outcomes
You should be collecting 3 research Insights: formative, sensorial and validation
Formative: collecting insights on biggest user pain points
Sensorial: collecting continuous real-time data about my users so I can adjust in real time
Validation: collecting insights around where I have solved my top user pain points
The power is knowing your user, tracking their journey, and constantly delivering user delight

Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at jointhepodcast@unfilteredbuild.com

Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.