Throughout my career as a software development leader, I’ve established principles guiding my decisions, interactions, and technical choices.

I have pages on my software development philosophy, leadership philosophy, and personal principles. This page focuses on the professional principles that guide my work as a software engineer and team leader, demonstrating how I apply my leadership philosophy to technical and business decisions.

Business-Technical Alignment

Every decision has a business impact. I act as a business owner while maintaining technical excellence.

Return on investment (ROI)-focused development. I ask if features solve key user or business problems before building.
Cost-conscious architecture. I design systems considering operational costs from day one.
Business value measurement. I [measure technical improvements][measure-software-roi] with business metrics.

Team Enablement Through Systems

I create systems that boost team effectiveness, not just functional code. The best code is useless if the team can’t maintain or improve it.

Documentation as code. I ensure knowledge is shared, not locked in meatspace.
Automation for consistency. I automate repetitive tasks to reduce errors and free up creative energy.
Standardized processes. I create reusable patterns for teams to apply consistently.
Knowledge democratization. I build platforms that make information accessible.

Pragmatic Perfectionism

Good enough beats perfection, but quality is essential. Shipping working software quickly allows faster learning.

Ship to learn. I prioritize delivering working software over perfect architecture.
Quality gates, not quality walls. I focus on building quality early instead of testing at the end.
Fail fast, learn faster. I run experiments that quickly and cheaply validate assumptions.
Continuous improvement. I treat every moment as a learning opportunity.

Stakeholder Communication Excellence

Technical excellence is meaningless if stakeholders don’t grasp its value; clear communication is as vital as clean code.

Translate technical to business. I explain technical concepts in terms of business impact.
Expectation management. I set realistic timelines and communicate blockers, changes, and delays early and often.
Visual communication. I use [data visualizations][learn-data-visualization] and prototypes to bridge the gap between technical and non-technical understanding.

Strategic Technical Debt Management

Technical debt is inevitable; strategic debt is a choice. I distinguish between debt that enables progress and that which cripples it.

Debt for speed. I accept technical debt to deliver business value faster when necessary.
Debt repayment plans. I include technical debt reduction in regular cycles.
Debt visibility. I make technical debt visible to stakeholders to explain trade-offs.
Debt prevention. I design systems to reduce technical debt.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Software development is a team sport that extends beyond engineering. The best solutions come from diverse perspectives.

Product partnership. I collaborate with product managers to grasp user needs and business limits.
Design collaboration. I involve designers early to ensure solutions support good user experiences.
Development and operations (DevOps) mindset. I design systems with operational requirements in mind.
Business stakeholder engagement. I seek stakeholder input to align solutions with business goals.

Data-Driven Decision Making

I build systems that deliver actionable insights, focusing on data quality and accessibility to improve business decisions.

Extract, transform, load (ETL) as a foundation. I design data pipelines that convert raw data into insights.
Performance optimization. I optimize database queries and data processing for real-time insights.
Data validation and quality. I build systems ensuring data accuracy and consistency.
Scalable data architecture. I design scalable data models that meet business needs without sacrificing performance.

The Evolution of Professional Principles

These principles have evolved through my career from successes, failures, and others’ wisdom, representing their essence.

25+ years of software development experience across multiple industries and company sizes.
Multiple industry transformations from on-premise to cloud-native architectures and migrations to and from diverse technologies.
Leadership roles in organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies, from leading 13-person distributed teams to enterprise-wide initiatives.
Continuous learning through certifications (FinOps Certified Practitioner, Amazon Web Services (AWS) certifications), conferences, and community involvement as an InnerSource Commons board member.
Diverse technical environments from Windows Azure ecosystems to Linux, AWS, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) cloud-native architectures.

How These Principles Connect

These professional principles align with my brand and put my personal principles into practice in professional contexts. The philosophy pages provide the foundation; these principles guide day-to-day decision-making in technical and business contexts.

Applying These Principles

To develop your professional principles, reflect on what has helped in challenging technical situations, how you balance technical excellence with business needs, what guides stakeholder and team interactions, and how you approach technical decisions with business implications. Writing them down and revisiting makes them easier to live by and refine.

References