Sweet, adding 'Read Me' to the title of my Newsletter worked...

TL;DR: You, your team, your boss, and the user of your software all have limited mental bandwidth (Cognitive Load). Each has specific needs. Break the information down into decision-making criteria that support Action.

If you know (the user, the business, the team) and you know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred Sprints... Inspired by Sun Tzu

I've always been inspired by this quote from Sun Tzu (I'm not being terribly original, but it is a great quote when you meditate on it).

It is an example of creating a Principle that distills a complicated subject that you have spent a lot of time digging into.

To put it into Software Engineering terms, a Principle is like a Pointer in C++ (except for the human brain) and Cognitive Load is like Memory:

Think about how this applies in other contexts.

The act of distilling something down into something simple to conserve cognitive bandwidth can be applied to many things:

1. I write documentation to distill a complicated process down, so that my teammate has the energy to finish a feature request.
2. We automate deployments to decrease the energy the team consumes doing manual deployments.
3. I use a repeating pattern in the user interface design of my App so that my user only has to learn the pattern once.
4. By writing tests, I promote writing testable code.

Don't forget to keep notes that link to your principle. That way if you (or someone else) challenges it, you have the original reasoning to fall back on. (psst, that is one of the reasons I write stuff on LinkedIn, don't tell anyone)

Finding Mentors

To build on the concept listed in the previous section, consider building a repertoire of Mentors. These are people you've found to be exceptionally good at distilling the complexities of software (or anything, really) into Principles. I myself like to follow Dave Farley due to his approach on modern software engineering.

I've listed Software Engineers, but also consider finding a Design mentor if you even look at a Frontend.

Here's a list of folks you might consider checking out, in addition to 'Heads up, there's a cool Conference coming up November 22nd with the following speakers' - Conference URL: https://lnkd.in/eiczBVFX

• Dave Farley
• Kent Beck
• 🇺🇦- Laïla Bougriâ
• Alistair Cockburn
• Alessandro Di Gioia
• Sonya Natanzon
• Susanne Kaiser
• Vlad Khononov
• Jimmy Bogard
• Nick Tune
• Marco Consolaro

Sage's Bookshelf

This is the grab bag of cool things.

1. My post on 'Demos, not Memos' in Case you Missed It (Thanks to the Mentorship of a few folks at Rosenblatt AI, I further defined this as 'Closed & Open' Demos - Closed when just demoing to your team, Open for demoing Milestones to the Company)
2. New AWS AI Certification left Beta, and there's a Deal
3. DORA Released AI Guidance (They produce the State of DevOps Report, which has been going for nine years/surveyed 36,000 folks in Software.)
4. Scribe is amazing for generating Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and Documentation by recording what you Click on (Just be careful you don't accidentally record sensitive information.)
5. Paths to Product Market Fit (PMF) (Another form of Mentorship is Retrospectives.)
6. AWS 'Well Architected' (Great page for anyone that is handling AWS Cloud Architecture decisions - Whitepapers are a form of Mentorship.)
7. Artificial Intelligence is not optional: Execs on stage at Ad Week (It's interesting to hear what is being said about AI. I think as a tool it can be powerful, but leveraging it properly takes expertise - if you generate a starting point, that starting point may bias you.)
8. AI Empowering Solopreneurs (Similar to how Game Engines like Unity helped Indie Devs, I've wondered how AI might help small Startups and Solopreneurs compete.)
9. Did you know you can convert the Unity Game Engine into an AI Learning Environment? (I used this back when I was taking some Masters' classes, replacing procedural generation algorithms with an AI Agent)
10. Trunk Based Development Website (Always good to have a reference)

Feel free to leave me feedback in the comments, suggest a change, or share your own really cool thing! Your link could show up in the bookshelf, and I'll credit you as an honorary bookshelf contributor. 🙏

Interested in help building Software? Check out Rosenblatt AI via Website, or check out the Upwork.

#startup #cto #fullstack