Human-Centric Engineering

We need to talk more about the human side of engineering. Every day, engineers ride waves of emotion from the thrill of solving complex problems to the sting of rejected solutions. Yet this human side rarely gets a share of the spotlight. Too often, we focus solely on technical skills and forget that engineers are human beings first. They bring their hopes, fears, and ambitions to work every day. I recently talked with John Durrant, co-founder of Human-Centric Engineering, about this overlooked reality. He's seen how pressure and expectations in engineering teams can create tensions that need careful handling. Teams aren't machines you can optimize by tweaking parts. They're living systems where behaviors and norms emerge through natural interactions as they face challenges together. In his own words: "Engineers are often depicted as rational beings who apply their intellect and logical thinking to complicated problems, but the inner world of the engineer is frequently an emotional rollercoaster, enjoying the moment of victory from conquering a coding problem suddenly falling into a sense of powerlessness when a colleague rejects their solution in the code review." Check out my full interview with John for more insights on building engineering teams that understand and embrace their human dynamics: https://lnkd.in/e4xxPRSC

We've recently interviewed 8 industry leaders to hear their thoughts and approaches to engineering culture and team dynamics. We've written these interviews up into a comprehensive report which we will publish in early January. One of the topics that came up is Systems Thinking, and how difficult it is as a leader to know all of the possible effects of a change in the complex ecosystem of software engineering. It was widely acknowledged, however, that the hearts and minds of the people in the engineering team - their attitudes and beliefs - had a large influence over the system as a whole. This thinking aligns with Donella Meadows' 12 Leverage Points in a System. She has been very influential in popularising systems thinking and her work on the effectiveness of different leverage points helps to illustrate why some changes work well in organisations, why some changes have little effect, and how some changes backfire to have unintended consequences. In today's article at https://lnkd.in/eWxBWTe8 I've explored how her 12 leverage points might apply to a software engineering environment. Hopefully, this will be a good primer for anyone who has been wanting to know more about systems thinking. #SystemsThinking #SoftwareEngineering

Your engineering team is a living system. Are you nurturing it, or just maintaining it? This week's Exec Engineering Dialog guest is John Durrant, Co-Founder of Human-Centric Engineering, a consultancy helping engineering organizations understand and navigate the human aspects of software development. With over two decades of experience in tech, John has developed a unique perspective on software development that goes beyond technical excellence to explore the human dynamics that make or break engineering teams. In my chat with John, we discussed: 🟡 Rethinking team composition beyond individual excellence 🟡 Understanding tech teams as living systems, not machines 🟡 Navigating the emotional landscape of software engineers 🟡 Transferring side project enthusiasm to core work 🟡 Building strong teams in uncertain times Check out the full interview below 👇

For personal reasons I've been researching ADHD, some of the common symptoms, their causes, and how to manage it. Going through this I had a sudden moment of clarity, where I saw many parallels between the common coping strategies and various management strategies I used running software engineering teams. It's quite uncanny. Take interruptions and distractions for example. Okay, so how many notifications interrupt you on a daily basis? ADHD brains are wired to be highly distractable, and surprisingly so are many engineering teams. Two of the biggest culprits are email and Slack. Both are invaluable tools for running a business and running a tech team, but left unmanaged you quickly drown in the noise. It’s great that so many things integrate into Slack. Git commits, PRs, code review requests, build status, and service interruption alerts … they all live alongside your DMs, team channels, project channels, meme channels, org broadcast channels and more. (I freely admit that I’m still slightly triggered by the default Slack notification sound!) Extremely useful for work, but if you want to get work done you have to spend time and energy working out how to manage those potential interruptions and distractions, whilst allowing the important ones through. And so it is with the ADHD brain. Left unmanaged it is subject to overwhelm by interruption. I've explored 7 of the biggest parallels that I've seen in the latest article on the Human-Centric Engineering substack. Check it out: https://lnkd.in/ezivUHYa Do these resonate with you? Any examples from either perspective to share? #SoftwareEngineering #EngineeringLeadership #adhd

A lovely metaphor that demonstrates the duality of humans is that of the blade and the chalice. The blade symbolises - The destructive power to take life - Hierarchical and authoritarian relationships - Conquest and control - Decisiveness The chalice symbolises - The creativity of life-giving and nurturing powers - Egalitarian relationships - Cooperation and linking together - Receptivity To be a good leader, to be a good engineer, to be a good human, we need to build the capacity to operate in both of these mindsets, coupled with the awareness to discern which is appropriate when. Most of us have a favoured side, and so the challenge is to actively develop the other side. My natural instinct, for example, is towards the chalice. I love ideas, innovation, and building things together. That said, when I was younger and starting my career, I was likely more of a blade mindset. Less open-minded, rather opinionated, and unlikely to back down. Ah, the arrogance of youth! Which one do you naturally favour? Check out a deeper dive on this from John Durrant in our latest HCE article: Learning by the Blade or From the Chalice Detaching from our need to be right, so we become open to possibility https://lnkd.in/etX9xatg

I was lucky to get two publishing deals in under 12 months. But it was engineered luck. I was lucky to get promotions, pay raises, and invites to the most interesting projects. I was lucky to meet the right business partners at the right time. All engineered luck. Using the concept of Luck Surface Area, I engineered more career opportunities into my life. Like many great ideas, the concept is deceptively simple: your Luck Surface Area is a product of doing stuff and telling people about it. Meaning that you have a way of increasing the serendipity you experience, increasing the number of opportunities that come your way. And this can work inside and outside the work environment. I published an article on the Human-Centric Engineering Substack this morning, which is part how, part why, and part my story. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/eFaTVKiy The timing of this article was inspired by John Crickett and his recent post talking about Luck Surface Area in the context of personal branding - the two are very closely related.

Over the last couple of years, the Tech industry has seen a swathe of brutal layoffs. Amidst the bloodbath, one could be forgiven for assuming that the sector is uncaring and that the people working in Tech are expendable. At Human-Centric Engineering, we have been interviewing industry leaders to hear their perspectives on creating the conditions for software engineering teams to thrive in difficult times. The senior engineering leaders we’ve spoken to have each honed their own approach to building and managing teams according to their values and the situational challenges they’ve faced. What is emerging through our conversations is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach in engineering practices as all organisations evolve differently through a unique set of circumstances. While practices and their implementation vary we are seeing some common principles and values that are held by the leaders we are speaking with. They care about the well-being and personal growth of engineers, they value the autonomy of cohesive teams working towards clear goals, and have the strength to show humility and vulnerability in their leadership style. This approach helps to build trust and good relationships in teams where difficulties can more easily be exposed and addressed. Those we are speaking with feel that engineering culture is a strong predictor of performance during challenging times. We've found the leaders we’ve interviewed to have thought deeply about engineering practices, especially around the complexities of people and their relationships. It’s heartening to know that even during tough economic times there are leaders in the industry who care and who have developed approaches to create high-performing teams where the subjective experience of individual engineers matters. We’ll be wrapping up our interviews during the next week or so and publishing our report in a few weeks with much more detail and analysis. It’s not too late to take part if you’re a senior engineering leader who would like to share your own approach - we have 5 questions that we share with you before the interview. Send me a DM if you’re interested. We hope that publishing this report will encourage more conversations and inquiry into how to set up teams for success by understanding the complex aspects of engineering culture and tending to the needs of people and the quality of relationships between us in working situations that demand high performance. In the meantime, Simon Holmes and I would like to thank the participants we’ve spoken with in the last few weeks and look forward to sharing the insights that emerged from the conversations.

At Human-Centric Engineering, we've been thinking about making what we do more easily accessible. While we love to get stuck into deep consulting projects we acknowledge that people need to dip their toes into the water before taking the plunge. With this in mind, we are creating a few light-touch workshop-based offerings to bring engineering teams together to explore themes that matter to them. One example is our Engineering Culture Workshops and Survey offering: https://lnkd.in/ecDGSJzW Here we are taking the pulse of the team, understanding engineer sentiment, listening for unmet needs, identifying hotspots of tension, understanding how information flows between teams and people, and finding where people need help and support. Much of this used to be visible and happen organically through our day-to-day interactions in the office, but is now less visible with remote and hybrid working. The survey approach explores the subjective engineer experience through the lens of Mastery, Autonomy and Purpose - and the workshops offer a chance to come together to reflect on the data exposed through the survey. This provides a rich context upon which to decide sensible actions to unlock more of the team's potential. We can easily get stuck in a rut in our engineering teams - we're happy to jump on a call if you'd like to try something different to re-energise your team.

In the past, I would struggle with small talk. As a young lad, there wasn't much I could contribute to the important topics of football, rugby, sports cars or other trivia - so alcohol would be my crutch at social events. Social affiliations at work were hard to understand, especially all of the hidden political manoeuvres and other competitive shenanigans. Why couldn't people just be straight and upfront, and say what they mean? I wanted deeper conversations, to talk about real stuff that mattered, but those more intimate conversations seemed elusive - hard to break into. I'm much better at navigating the unwritten rules of social rituals and conventions these days, partly thanks to the book Games People Play by Eric Berne - I've written about this in today's article, Games Engineers Play: https://lnkd.in/eUpN3ZMi Berne describes various structures of our social encounters. We can withdraw as I used to with alcohol. We participate in highly structured rituals by talking about the weather, pastimes such as talking about sports or celebrities, and activities such as golf or fitness classes. But these are all preludes to game playing into which Berne suggests we indulge most of our time. Berne attributes humorous names to the games we play such as "Now Look What You Made Me Do", and "I'm Only Trying To Help You" which follow predictable patterns of dominance and submission - the social dramas of persecution, victimhood and rescuing. These games are a barrier to the intimacy we all seek. We see these dramas played out in families, at work, and especially in politics and while there are much deeper psychological factors at play the lens of games gives insight into the structural dynamics of social drama. I've personally found Berne's descriptions helpful in being more self-aware of my own reactions in social situations - when I'm acting up like a child, or acting like an overbearing parent, I realise it's time to bring the situation back to an adult-to-adult interaction. We are offering Games Engineers Play as a fun and insightful workshop for software engineering teams. See https://lnkd.in/e5CXPDgC

We all struggle and suffer in life. But it's by reflecting on our struggles that we grow and overcome. Too often we rush to action and miss the insight we would get from reflection, so we go back to struggling with the same problems. We struggle individually and in teams. We avoid the issues and we often miss the insight to move forward. In today's article at https://lnkd.in/eKREw7Ng, I delve into some approaches to dealing with struggle, touching on the need to create uncomfortable SPACE to lean into tensions and also explore the idea of Bohmian Dialogue as a practice for collective insight. Allen Wheelin, author of How People Change proposed that change follows a sequence: Suffering -> Insight -> Will -> Action -> Change At work and in life we are so eager to take action, that we miss the insight that would lead to the committed action required for effective change. We are 'reacting' rather than 'sensing and responding'. "To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles..." - Hamlet, Shakespeare 'Life is difficult', as the opening sentence in 'The Road Less Travelled' goes.