My First LeadDev LDX3 2025 Experience - Day 2

I finally had some time to reflect and capture my Day 2 highlights. The energy on Day 2 was just as energetic as it was for Day 1, but I decided to take things at a slightly slower pace intentionally.

I kept some time aside from my day to explore the sponsor booths and speak with the vendors. Many of the names were completely new to me, so I was curious to learn about them. Slowing down helped me absorb more. 

Leader or Engineer? Navigating Our Technical Identity Crisis by Marcus Gardiner

The first talk I attended on Day 2 was by Marcus Gardiner Technical Capabitity Head at Softwire, and wow this one really resonated with me. The theme of navigating identity between leadership and technical expertise is something I’ve constantly reflected on in my own journey as a quality engineering leader.

Marcus opened the talk with a series of thought-provoking questions that many of us have asked ourselves at some point:

• Am I a leader or am I an engineer? Am I technical enough? Am I of value?
• The best version of you as a leader means not meeting your full potential as an engineer. And the best version of you as an engineer means not meeting your full potential as a leader.

This really stuck with me. He explained that we often try to be everything at once, be it a technical expert, architect, team lead, business partner, and it does sound good, but it’s a one-way road to imposter syndrome and burnout. He spoke about the danger of drifting instead of deciding. When we don’t actively choose our path, we try to hold on to every identity we’ve ever had. But in doing so, we spread ourselves thin and lose clarity on who we want to become.

Marcus shared four different ways to be technical leaders:

• engineer
• architect
• team lead
• business partner

 

He mentioned that many might want to be all of these at once. It does sound great, but it's a one-way trip to imposter syndrome and burnout if you try to do everything.

One metaphor that Marcus shared was about how farmers in India dealt with monkeys raiding their crops. They’d drill holes in coconuts and place a banana inside. The monkey would reach in, grab the banana, but wouldn’t be able to pull its hand out while holding it. All it had to do was let go to escape—but it didn’t. It held on with a death grip and trapped itself.

“I was holding on to the comfort of my engineering title and knowledge, rather than embracing my new role.”

We all have deep-running insecurity about being “technical enough”. Many of us hold onto old versions of ourselves, whether that’s being ‘technical enough’ or feeling like we need to prove our value when in reality, letting go might be the key to growing into the roles we’re in now.

Marcus reminded us that our job title is just a temporary badge you’re wearing. It’s not who we are. It’s not the position we need to defend. And it's not permanent. It's not YOU.

What idea of your own self are you holding on to a little too tightly? The industry is still going to need expert leaders and expert engineers. Be part of or form a peer coaching group. Don’t hold onto your image of yourself with a death grip. 

View each new role as an experiment that you choose for your own values & reasons. It’s your story. 

And left us with this beautiful closing thought:

“Choose lightly. And then choose again.”

A truly powerful talk that gave me the space to pause and rethink how I see myself and the choices I make.

The million dollar bug: Quality leadership lessons from costly failures by Christine Pinto

This talk was special for many reasons, it was one of the very few testing related sessions at LeadDev, and it was delivered by Christine Pinto, someone I know and respect from the testing community. It felt refreshing to hear a topic that I'm passionate about being discussed on a leadership stage. 

Christine framed the talk as a four‑chapter journey:

• Mythology: How faulty narratives undermine quality strategy
• Mathematics: What quality actually costs and how those costs compound
• Mechanisms: Practical frameworks that turn quality into competitive advantage
• Metamorphosis: Why quality leadership isn’t a checklist, it’s a mindset

She began by challenging common myths that undermines quality efforts especially the belief that teams must choose between speed and quality. Using real-world examples, she showed how this mindset leads to reactive firefighting, where engineers are caught in patching loops instead of innovating. Rather than slowing teams down, quality should be the foundation that enables speed.

Next came the cost of quality and how invisible risks compound over time, draining momentum, trust, and innovation. Christine described how poor quality decisions often lead to a downward spiral, and once that begins, recovery becomes harder. It reinforced the idea that quality failures never stay small but from the chain reaction which can build up to the death spiral. No body wants to bet on a system that is constantly breaking . Now how do you break this loop so she went onto the chapter three

The third chapter focused on practical mechanisms to make quality visible and actionable. She explained how binary thinking like deciding if something is "ready or not" doesn’t work in complex systems. Instead, she introduced approaches like quality confidence matrices and risk-aware discussions that help teams evaluate impact and uncertainty early. Christine emphased on early conversations and reframing technical issues in ways that resonate with business leaders.

Christine emphasised that there is no need of a new process , there is a need to have better conversations earlier. and as quality leaders your role is not to answer all of these but to create the culture where peopple feel safe to ask them. It is about making risk visible because quality discussions die in translation.She gave brilliant examples , if you say oauth callback intermittenly fails for new users, it sounds like a testing ticket for a jira sprint but not for a leadership meeting. But if you say instead we are seeing a customer churn risk in onboarding , now your're on the boardromm , yourre talking about conversion growth. . Its not about exxagerating the situation but making it more relevant. Translate like a strrategist from tech framing to strategic framing. 

She also mentioned that while most companies only realise they are “on fire” after a post-mortem, the best teams run pre-mortems they surface potential risks before they become costly failures.

In the final chapter, Christine shared real transformation stories from companies like Spotify and Amazon. Each took a different path to scale quality whether through automation or team autonomy but the common thread was that they made quality a growth engine, not a bottleneck. These examples highlighted that there’s no single blueprint or playbook, but what matters most is embedding ownership and making quality a shared responsibility across the organisation.

This talk was a strong reminder that quality isn’t just a practice—it’s a mindset and a leadership responsibility. Christine ended the talk with closing statement of quality is speed and quality is your competitive advantage. It was inspiring to see this message land so clearly at a conference like LeadDev.

Theory to action: Architecting and implementing your team operating system by Meg Adams

Another brilliant talk from Day 2. Meg used a really helpful analogy of a team operating system something I hadn’t thought about in this way before.

She started with a problem that I’ve seen too: people often feel disconnected from what’s happening outside their own teams. Especially in cross-functional projects, it’s common to hear things like, “I don’t know what that team is working on.”

Meg had asked people how they might solve this visibility problem. They shared some great ideas:

• More demos
• Celebration forums
• Personal relationships
• Team rotations
• Cross-team mentorship
• Better alignment meetings

All of these ideas worked but not just because they were good on their own. They worked because they fit that team’s specific way of working, their structure, their people, and their culture. What worked for one team wouldn’t automatically work for another as it depends on context. That’s when Meg introduced the idea of the team operating system (OS).

She defined a system as a group of connected parts working toward a shared goal. A team OS is made up of people, structure, setting, and norms all working together, whether we design it or not. If we don’t design our OS, then one just forms on its own by default.

Meg gave us a great framework to document our current OS. She shared a template too (bit.ly/os-template), so we could look at our own teams and reflect honestly.

She walked us through each of the four parts of a team OS:

1. People

Every person brings their own background - communication style, habits, values, past experiences, even power dynamics. All of this shapes the team in different ways.

2. Structure

This is about how we spend our time and how we organise it. Are our calendars showing what we truly value? If we say we value learning or focus time but there’s no time blocked for it then we may not really value it in practice. Structure includes meetings, events, and business rhythms (like planning or reviews).

3. Setting

This includes our environment:

• Physical (remote or office?)
• Digital (Slack, Jira, Zoom, etc.)
• Time zones and working hours
• The energy or tone in the space

4. Norms

These are the rules we follow, both spoken and unspoken.
Some are written in onboarding docs. Others are learned just by watching how the team behaves. Meg encouraged us to observe without assumptions. Do people speak up when there’s a blocker? Is conflict welcomed or avoided? Who talks in meetings? Is it a safe space?

By writing these things down—not what we wish was happening, but what’s actually happening—we get a real snapshot of the team’s current OS. Not a big vision statement, just a clear picture of reality.

Meg then talked about how we can improve our team OS in three steps:

• Act on small wins
• Debug the real issues
• Keep iterating and improving

She closed the talk with a powerful message: every team already has an operating system. The real question is did we design it, or did it just happen? To be true architects of our team culture, we need to start by documenting what exists today, and build from there.

This talk gave me so many practical ideas. More than that, it helped me see team dynamics as something we can shape intentionally not just react to.

That's a wrap on my reflections from Day 2 of LeadDev LDX3 a day filled with amazing talks, inspiring ideas, meaning conversaitons. Until next time, LeadDev!

My First LeadDev LDX3 2025 Experience - Day 1

 I’ve been trying to attend LeadDev for the last three years. I’ve submitted CFPs every time, hoping to be selected as a speaker, but it hasn’t happened yet. I’m not giving up, though; I’ll keep trying. This year, I finally got the chance to attend in person, and it felt special. Big thanks to CFC for making this happen.

As it was my first time attending LeadDev, I wanted to be well-prepared and make the most of the experience. Checked my travel route, laid out my notebook and favourite pen (yes, I still love handwritten notes!). The organisers had an app where I could plan my schedule in advance. That really helped me as it meant I didn’t have to make last-minute decisions during the day and could just focus on being present. I found that really useful. 

I spent some time looking up the talks and the speakers ahead of time and built my schedule based on what I was most interested in. The event had three main stages—Ways of Working, Organisational Leadership, and Technical Strategy. There was also a Solutions Stage with vendor demos, community spaces, office hours, and a chance to meet authors. I didn’t manage to attend everything, but I’ll share what I experienced.

🧡 The day started with a lovely catch-up with Christine Pinto. We’ve met before, but it’s always such a joy to connect in person, especially with someone who’s part of the quality community I deeply value.

Day 1 kicked off with the session I attended first: “How to Keep Everyone Happy (on a Shoestring)?” by Neslihan Şirin Saygılı.

Neslihan shared her journey managing teams without formal management training, facing many real-world constraints: limited budget, limited headcount, limited time, limited life and the added pressure when C-level executives want Friday launches. She described these as “dominoes vs avalanches,” highlighting how small issues can cascade into bigger crises if not managed well.

Her approach starts with taking a wide view. She created a “happiness sparse matrix”. She also talked about “rotating priorities” like pizza trade-offs where each sprint prioritises a different team’s needs, with a “time currency” paid upfront(people respected the fairness)

A bigger perspective came from framing the challenge as a “constraint satisfaction problem,” one without a perfect numerical solution but solvable through heuristics and teamwork. She reminded us it’s okay to have “good enough” plans, It's better to be 70% right today than than 100% right too late. Keep the stakeholders informed all the time.

Her practical advice included focusing on root causes, not blaming individuals, and fixo ne thing fully, not 10 things badly. Keep the big picture, don't let the crisis blind you to the others. She encouraged establishing some principles like casual coffee breaks, sharing credit, listening, being accessible, and supporting personal growth through books and side projects to keep the “emotional bank account” topped up.

Quote from Regina Phalange:

“Our experiences are similar in pattern but unique in detail. I believe we need tailored solutions.”

Managing tech crisis on a shoestring isn’t about being a hero, but being a human.

What resonated most with me was how much this isn’t about having all the answers or being perfect. It’s about understanding the real, messy challenges teams face every day and finding practical, human ways to navigate them and you don't have to do it alone, find help!

The next session I attended was “Better Software, Faster” by Laura Tacho.

Laura opened strong with a clear message: “We need to think about using AI on an organisational level to see the organisational benefits.” She quickly made it clear that AI isn’t about producing more lines of code—because we already know lines of code aren’t a meaningful measure. Instead, it’s about improving the developer experience.

She described how many leaders right now are sitting in a “disappointment gap”—expecting AI to replace engineers or bring instant transformation, but the reality doesn’t match the hype. That contrast was summed up with humour: “The milk is actually shaving cream,” which got a good laugh in the room.

This hype around AI is the biggest barrier for adoption. Engineers might even start seeing it as competition, which only builds more resistance. But as Laura pointed out: data beats hype—every time. Leaders need to set realistic expectations about what AI can and can’t do, and be able to explain those clearly to boards, execs, and development teams alike. While AI can be transformative, that’s not what most companies are seeing in their day-to-day work—yet.

Quote from Brian Houck (SPACE framework co-author):
“The hype around AI is in many ways the biggest barrier for adoption.”

She shared stats showing that advanced organisations in the top quartile have about 60% adoption of AI tools on a daily or weekly basis—but there’s still a huge gap between them and the rest. Laura stressed that if you invest the effort and resources into AI adoption, usage will go up. The average reported time savings is already about 3 hours and 45 minutes per developer per week in the first half of 2025.

Still, she was honest about how hard it is to lead in this space right now. The landscape is evolving rapidly, and many leaders feel like they’re constantly guessing. But we’re not alone in that. Laura wants to equip us to show up with clarity and confidence, especially when it comes to separating hype from what’s actually happening.

She reminded us that we have a hard job to do as organisational leaders. Our role and responsibility is to educate around the hype. It’s easy to get distracted by shiny new tools, but when leadership asks “what are we doing with AI?” — we need to have a clear, honest answer. And when we ask “what does it actually take to build better software?” — the answer isn’t just writing code faster. It’s making sure the code is reliable, maintainable, and valuable.

Laura outlined two things we need to do this well:

1. A common definition of engineering performance
2. Clarity on how AI is influencing that performance

We also need AI-specific measures, not just the usual engineering metrics.

Despite all the newness, she reminded us that the fundamentals of software delivery still hold—collaboration, fast time to market, quality, reliability, and security. AI might help accelerate delivery, but without care, it can also accelerate the wrong things. We need to protect our organisations from delayed damage, like producing more poor-quality code, faster.

One big takeaway for me was around aligning the organisation on a shared definition of excellence. Laura introduced DX Core 4, a framework developed by people like Abi Noda and Dr. Nicole Forsgren (from the DORA team), which has already been used by hundreds of companies. It’s been battle-tested, and it shows that Developer Experience (DX) is one of the biggest levers we have to improve engineering performance.

She shared that around 20% of developer time is lost to friction from inefficient tools and poor internal systems. Since time is such a scarce commodity, mapping DX improvements back to saved time and recovered salary makes a solid business case for investing in better developer experience. Biggest wins for utilisation is going from non-using to using AI. Top metric to track in terms of Impact = time savings per week.  AI Measurement Framework = Utilization + Impact + Cost.

As Azra from Block put it:
“These improvements helped us move faster without sacrificing quality or focus.”

Laura wrapped up by debuting an AI Measurement Framework. This session was a real eye-opener. It helped me see how, as leaders, we need to take ownership not just of tools and tech, but of the narrative around them.