Lightning Talks at Orange & Bronze

For me, mentorship plays a very big role for any kind of leader. One, you need to be able to motivate your team and pass on what you have learned throughout the years in your practice, whether that's engineering, management, technology or learning. And by doing mentorship, you don't only impart knowledge, skills and abilities to your team. As a mentor, you also learn from the feedback and sharing that you get from your teammates.

I think the most difficult decision, and it never gets easier, is when you realize that you have to let go of a team member. It won't be fair to keep that person in the team if it's not working out. And it's difficult, because this person may have been working with you since you started the project, so there's already an emotional bond. But as a manager and as a leader of that organization, you have to make the right decisions. And the right decisions are not always the easy decisions.

I think one of the things that I've been trying to advocate, especially these days that everybody knows what Agile is, is to better understand the engineering part of Agile. I'm trying to share a more holistic way of getting quality, predictability of delivery, and of course maintainability: being able to respond to change. And of course, it's always a multifaceted approach.

I believe what's important first is to collate what the needs of your team are. Before you even think about the vendor, what would be the demands that you would require? Make a list to make sure everything is neat and organized. Next, you should make a methodology. Before picking a vendor, how are you going to assess them? Is it fair? Is it bound by quantitative measures? Are there qualitative aspects? Those are things you have to determine first. Only then should you begin testing or assessing any vendor. If you follow those principles, I believe you will make the right pick eventually.

Regarding philosophy, I believe that working at your best is the objective of being in a technical field like software development. That being said, you don't need to sacrifice your health or other commitments just to really bring the best. Being able to give your best, and being there for your friends outside of work, is good for your overall health.

I really encourage the team to be involved in the project. That's the strategy I built: I made them very comfortable with the team and the organization, to give them the courage to participate and speak up with their ideas. Then, of course, we acknowledge and validate their ideas. We don't invalidate any ideas from any engineers in the team. Basically, encourage everyone to give their suggestions, feedback and ideas.

When considering technical solutions, I always make sure that the way I build a solution never drifts from what the clients really want to do. At the end of the day, the clients are the ones using your tools, so it's really important to solve their problems specifically. We as architects could be building anything, but if the solution doesn't really deliver them value at the end of the day, then it's not worth doing in the first place. If you're not able to evaluate that, the project will just fall short of their expectations.

For me, staying motivated means always trying to be at my best, in every aspect of my job. Because I think leadership isn't only tested at work, but in every aspect of our lives. Whenever I feel that I'm doing my best, that's where I get motivated. As for leadership style, with my team I don't really need to tell them what to do or give orders. Whenever they see that their leader is doing her best, they also do their best. So we try to focus on our strengths, and do things based on our strengths, but also know and work on our weaknesses.

Each technology is getting deeper, at least the stable ones that last, so being an expert in them is going to get harder and harder. We will need more specialized individuals. At some point in tech, we'll need very highly specialized training per technology. Right now, there's a boom of generalists, I would say. Yes, your current developer can do some gen AI, can do some infrastructure. But as technology develops and becomes deeper, you need more specialty in this field.