ZeroBlockers
Helping teams remove the blockers that hurt the effectiveness and efficiency of software development.
Latest Posts
A Product is not the Sum of its Parts
When Henry Ford revolutionised manufacturing with the assembly line, he didn't just create a new way to build cars, he proved that there was a better way to structure and manage companies in the mass manufacturing era. But a century later, the world has shifted from hardware to software, and with it the rules have changed. Software companies are a different beast, and they need a new blueprint for success.
The Inefficiency Crisis in Software Development
The disturbing truth that most organisations prefer to ignore is that most new features not only fail to improve products – they actively make them worse. This isn't just a theory; it's backed by over a decade of rigorous A/B testing at some of the world's leading technology companies.
Archive
A Product is not the Sum of its Parts
When Henry Ford revolutionised manufacturing with the assembly line, he didn't just create a new way to build cars, he proved that there was a better way to structure and manage companies in the mass manufacturing era. But a century later, the world has shifted from hardware to software, and with it the rules have changed. Software companies are a different beast, and they need a new blueprint for success.
The Inefficiency Crisis in Software Development
The disturbing truth that most organisations prefer to ignore is that most new features not only fail to improve products – they actively make them worse. This isn't just a theory; it's backed by over a decade of rigorous A/B testing at some of the world's leading technology companies.
Evolutionary Architecture: Because Change is the Only Guarantee
One of the big risks of empowering teams is that you lose the centralised control over the system architecture. Empowered teams require the ability to go from idea to satisfied customers without relying on external approvals like architecture reviews. So how do companies prevent their systems degrading into a big ball of mud?
How to Decide Where to Focus your Engineering Efforts (using Wardley Mapping)
"It's just a few requirements, we can knock that out really quickly". The famous last words of many a developer before a project begins its painful death march. The problem is that things tend to be a lot more complex than we initially expect. Fortunately, there are tools that can help us understand the landscape of a project and make better decisions about where to focus our efforts.
Breaking a Complex Solution into Multiple Releases using User Story Mapping
We've been handed a high quality and detailed validated prototype to build. The only problem is that it will take weeks or months to build out the full solution. We need to release value to the business quicker, so we need to break our solution into multiple releases.
Managing Test Case Explosion with Feature Flags: Strategies and Solutions
Feature flags let development teams commit code while still working on a feature to reduce the risk of merge conflicts, and to enable them to release features incrementally.. However, they come with a significant challenge: test case explosion. As each feature flag essentially creates a duplicate version of the system, the number of potential paths requiring testing grows exponentially.
DevOps: A Cultural Change, Not a Technical Revolution
DevOps is often framed as a technical solution: continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, automated testing, and infrastructure as code. These practices indeed form the backbone of DevOps but the technology would be pointless without the necessary cultural changes.
The Hidden Costs of Big Design Up Front (And How to Avoid Them)
When you're building a software system a single new requirement can result in a complete redesign of the solution. While Agile software development advocates for iterative design, this risk of rework leads a lot of companies to continue the Waterfall practice of completing a Big Design Up Front (BDUF) before beginning development. But it's not as straightforward as it seems. BDUF can be a double-edged sword because, while it can help you avoid rework, there are downsides to this approach as well.