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Dans l’esprit d’un TechLead: une vidéo qui fait date

Le but de ces « posts » sur mon rôle de TechLead est pour moi de mieux le comprendre et le développer, pour les mois (années?) à venir.

Par le plus pur des faux hasard au temps d’Internet (le suivi de certaines catégories de personnes sur Twitter amène forcément à des rencontres utiles), je suis tombé sur une vidéo d’Arnaud Lemaire.

Je ne suis pas un fan de YouTube. Personnellement, je préfère de loin la lecture pour apprendre quoi que ce soit. Mais là, il faut bien le dire, Arnaud explique avec énormément de pertinence et de maturité le métier de développeur à l’intérieur du contexte de cette jeune industrie (contexte qui manque cruellement à la plupart des quelques vidéos que j’ai tenté de visionner…).

De bout en bout, Arnaud déroule un discours censé, pertinent, intelligent. Cette vidéo fera date pour moi, et je vais en reparler sur ce blog.

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Dans l’esprit d’un TechLead: décollage

[Access the English version of the article initially published at the end of december 2018]
[Accéder à toute la série d’articles en français]

J’ai tout juste débuté il y a mois à travailler comme « leader technique » dans une équipe de développeurs pour un projet logiciel ambitieux. Ce rôle n’est pas entièrement nouveau pour moi, puisque j’ai travaillé comme « Head of Software » pour une startup durant 2 ans. Mais à ce moment là, j’ai surtout été submergé par les aspects opérationnels du département de la « R&D » (c’est-à-dire 90% de l’entreprise). Cette fois, je peux me concentrer sur ce rôle intéressant uniquement.

J’aimerais prendre l’occasion de cette nouvelle aventure pour partager quelques unes de mes réflexions, en essayant d’explorer autant que possible tous les aspects. C’est-à-dire la technologie, bien sûr, mais aussi, la confiance en soi, la communication, l’architecture, la progression de carrière, le mentoring, la politique…

(Un petit peu de contexte: j’ai 44 ans. J’ai commencé ma carrière comme astrophysicien, puis j’ai basculé dans le développement logiciel en 2011, travaillant pour des petites entreprises, mais aussi pour des organisations plus grandes. J’ai eu l’occasion de faire pas mal de code scientifique, de modélisation, de traitement d’images, mais aussi une application « desktop » professionelle, des bibliothèques scientifiques, des composants applicatifs, des APIs REST et finalement une app front-end. Peu importe les détails, mais disons que j’ai « mangé » passablement de languages, dans passablement de contextes différents, et – le plus important – livré en production passablement de projets.

La première idée qui me vient, quand je regarde en arrière le déroulement de ce premier moi est la suivante: le TechLead doit avoir un sens aigu de l’équilibre. De nombreux espoirs, rationnels ou non, sont souvent mis sur les épaules de ce rôle, de la part de personnes techniques mais aussi non-techniques. Cela était particulièrement le cas que je suis arrivé: un projet qui a 6 développeurs juniors, un scrum master, un architecte, deux « Product Owners » scrum (et un directeur de projet), and qui a commencé déjà depuis 3 mois. Mais tout le monde dans l’équipe de développement et le management alentour partageait le même sentiment que le projet avec un besoin impératif de « séniorité », étant donné le contraste entre la jeunesse de l’équipe et l’ambition du projet (qui est un sujet en soi).

Quand je suis arrivé, j’ai ressenti fortement le besoin d’équilibre entre de nombreuses forces. Mais concentrons-nous sur la partie la plus pertinente, selon moi, durant ce moment spécial que sont les premières semaines.

J’ai ressenti le besoin d’un sens de l’équilibre entre l’urgence de me couler le mieux possible dans la nouvelle organisation, d’un côté, et d’user de mon ignorance des détails pour questionner les hypothèses existantes du projet, d’un autre. Avec un management très ouvert d’esprit (une chose dont l’importance est cruciale), les gens sont souvent très ouverts à entendre quelles sont les choses qu’elles auraient pu faire autrement, ou quelles éventuelles erreurs elles ont fait. C’est un pouvoir que vous avez seulement durant les première semaines, et il n’y en a qu’une quantité limitée. Il vous est donné de parler librement, mais avec prudence malgré tout, pour partager vos impressions.

C’est aussi l’occasion de fournir déjà ce que sera les grandes lignes de votre action. Ce dernier point ne vous permet pas de vous sentir parfaitement dans votre rôle facilement, mais au moins, cela aide à le remplir…

En d’autres termes, si vous entrez dans un environnement essentiellement problématique (comme c’était le cas pour moi), vous devez rapidement révéler les blocages (mais sans les exagérer) et ouvrir des possibles pistes de solutions (sans les imposer!). C’est un équilibre assez fin. Si vous insistez trop sur les problèmes, ou apparaissez trop rapidement impliqué émotionnellement, c’est facile de comprendre que vous ne servirez pas bien votre rôle, ou que vous ne serez simplement pas une part de la solution. Le risque existe d’être poussé hors du projet très peu de temps après votre entrée.

De plus, si vous imposez des solutions, vous perdez rapidement du crédit: comment pouvez-vous avoir une idée de l’ensemble du projet dès le début ? Des problèmes qui n’ont pas été réglé après de nombreuses semaines, voire mois sont forcément interconnectés avec d’autres forces, et impliquent d’autres gens. Les gens présents sont certainement de bonne foi, esayant de faire de leur mieux. Vous ne pouvez pas faire plus que suggérer des solutions, et si possible, des solutions que le management vous a suggérer au début, plus ou moins explicitement (vous êtes nécessairement un peu « utilisé » par quelqu’un pour modifier l’état existant des choses – c’est parfaitement normal).

Si vous invoquez votre « énorme » expérience pour essayer d’imposer vos solutions, vous semblez devoir vous justifier, et cela affaiblit votre position encore neuve. (Les démonstrations de virilité dans des environnements tech auront besoin d’un post dédié). And vous devez rester ouvert aux solutions suggérées par d’autres; solutions qui ne vous satisfont peut-être pas, alors que vous continuez à vous ajuster à un nouveau contexte, une nouvelle place de travail, une nouvelle pile technique… Tout cela est difficile.

Dans le cas opposé d’un environnement essentiellement positif, ces premières semaines sont, je pense, un bon moment pour construire des pistes de développement à la fois technologiques mais aussi humaines, de long-terme. Ce qui est sûr, c’est que dans les deux cas vous pouvez engranger de grandes quantités de crédit, si vous réussissez à acquérir rapidement la confiance de l’équipe de développement en lui fournissant de l’aide rapidement sur des points difficiles (ce qui est finalement le coeur de votre rôle). L’équipe de dev est le terreau sur lequel quelque chose se construit, et c’est à vous de le cultiver.

Comment réussir à ressentir ce sens aigu de l’équilibre ? Il n’y a pas de magie. Personnellement, je ne vois que deux choses: écouter et dormir, dès le premier jour. Ecouter est absolument clé. Ecouter tout le monde, faire attention un peu au language non-verbal, mais surtout pour confirmer des impression, écouter dans toutes les occasions, les réunions, les déjeuners, écouter tout le temps. C’est épuisant. C’est pourquoi, assurez-vous de dormir assez. Vous aurez certainement l’occasion de profiter de temps plus calmes après quelques semaines.

J’espère que vous aurez trouvé cet article intéressant. Il souligne un peu les sujets à venir dans cette série: comment acquérir la confiance d’une équipe, comment gérer la présence de figure autoritaires, l’équilibre entre être fort, et être une partie d’un tout que vous ne contrôlez pas… A bientôt !

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Inside the mind of a TechLead: dev or not dev ?

[Access all articles of this serie in English].

This is one of the main questions that arises when starting to work as a TechLead inside a team, if this role is new to you: « Should I spend time coding with the team? But shouldn’t I also spend time not coding, and coaching the team? »

In fact, in my humble opinion, this question rapidly becomes obsolete. It may be a relevant one when you just start, and the TechLead role is brand new to you. But as time flies, this question becomes less and less relevant, because it is too simple. And also because everybody knows the answer: of course, you must spend time coding! And of course too, you must not spend all your time coding!

The real question is: how do you make my time the most fruitful for your team(s), and around it? The answer is: it depends. It depends on multiple factors, because in addition to take care of your own work inside a collaboration – your main concern as a developer – the TechLead must sense the outside of this collaboration on one side, and how the whole group is moving (is it moving fast/well enough, etc…) on the other side.

And sometimes, to let the team move better or faster, it is by coding. But what the key thing that has changed is this: you don’t code anymore to deliver yourself (as part of a team). Your coding activity becomes a tech-coaching activity: you must teach coding in the projects code. It’s time to produce your best code, in small chunks, in places where the team need to progress somewhere. It is also coding, but a lot more challenging. You won’t be able to come back a lot and re-think what you’ve written. Because it’s better to hand over it to your team.

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Understanding Gravitational Waves in 4 steps

You want to understand Einstein’s gravitational waves in 4 steps? No picture, no equations? Easy. Here it is.

Step #1, Year 1905: Einstein publishes the theory of Special Relativity. It says, among other things, and for reasons too long to explain here, that ‘space’ and ‘time’ must not be considered separatedly (as we always do), but actually are the components of one thing, called the … ‘space-time’. Practically, it means you can’t just make computations with space or time. But you must consider both together. Especially if you have a speed close to the speed of light (which is not infinite). In this new theory, that speed of light has a peculiar role: it is absolute. When you measure your speed relative to the source, no matter where you look at (if you look right into the beam or along it), you always get the same value: the same speed of light. Always. Really, always. You simply can’t go faster than that.

Step #2, Year 1907, Berne: The famous « most thoughtful » idea of Einstein: acceleration is indistinguishable from gravitation. Physicists call this the Equivalence Principle. We all stand in out feet on Earth’s surface. We feel gravitation. In fact, this can be re-stated as feeling a permanent acceleration, since Earth physical surface prevent us to follow a free-fall trajectory in space… Astronauts, assuming they have the eyes closed and forget for a second that they are in space, and there is truly no air, follow in fact a free fall trajectory. They don’t feel the gravitation. They feel no acceleration. Hence gravitation, similary to linear motion, can be « cancelled » in the right reference frame. When you travel in a plane, you don’t feel the motion during all the flight right? But people looking at you see clearly you move. Same thing, for acceleration. Einstein imagined this that a man inside a closed elevator having an acceleration equals to the value of Earth gravitation will feel exactly the same as a man not moving, but on Earth standing on his feet. Gravitation is equal to acceleration. And vice-versa.

Step #3, Year 1911, Prague: Imagine the same man inside that elevator going up with a constant acceleration (hence its speed is constantly increasing). Imagine a small hole in the side of the elevator where a beam of light can enter. Since speed of light is not infinite, and size of the elevator is non zero, it takes some time (pretty small, but still) for the light to enter the elevator and reach the other side. Since the elevator is going up, the point reached by the light is thus lower than the entry point. Hence the trajectory of light inside the accelerated elevator is … curved. But remember that acceleration and gravitation are equivalent?

Well, that is General Relativity, ladies and gentlemen: gravitation is curved space-time, period. And space-time is curved because of the presence of matter. All dynamically, which makes things even more beautiful…

Step #4, 1916, : In particule physics we know that when we shake electrons, waves are created. Electromagnetic waves, the other name for « light ». Einstein predicted that when shaking masses, this should also create waves. Gravitational waves. That was the prediction of the existence of gravitational waves. But Einstein never thought possible to detect such waves. Since one must need an enormous, in fact ultra-giganomous, amount of energy released to produce these waves, and even then, the effect would be ridiculously small.

Guess what LIGO detected? A merging of two 30-solar-masses black holes, releasing as much energy in a few microseconds as all stars in the visible universe, and the effect detected on Earth is of the size of one 10 000th that of a proton!

You can’t beat science in the awesomeness.

If you like this post, tell me about it! I may be to prepare some more. This one in particular is a worked out and personnally twisted transcript of the explanations of  french scientist and educator, Etienne Klein. Here is the video (in french).

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In the mind of a TechLead : kickoff

[Access all articles of this serie in English].
[Accéder à l’article en français].

I started just a month ago to work as TechLead inside a developers team for a ambitious software project. This role isn’t entirely new to me, since I worked as « Head of Software » for a startup during 2 years. But at that moment, I was overwhelmed with all operational aspects of the « research and development department » (that is, 90% of the company at that moment). This time I can focus on that interesting role.

I would like to take the occasion of this new adventure to share some of my thoughts, trying to explore as many apsects of it as I can. That is, technology, of course. But also, self-confidence, communication, architecture, career paths, mentoring, politics…

(Just a bit of context: I’m 44. I’ve been starting my carreer as an astrophysicist, then switched to software development in 2011, worked for small companies and startups, as well as larger organisation. I did quite a lot of scientific coding, modeling, image processing, but also a professional desktop app, iOS apps, scientific libraries, app components, REST APIs and a front-end webapp. Whatever the details, I’ve eaten quite a few langages, in quite a few contexts, and most importantly delivered in production quite a few products.)

The first idea that come up to me, when I look back to this short month is: a TechLead must have an acute sense of balance. A lot of rational and less rational expectations are put on the shoulders of that role, both from technical and non-technical people. That was particlarly true when I arrived: the project has a team of 6 juniors developers, a scrum master, an architect, two product owners (and a project manager), and was already working since about 3 months. But everybody in the development team and the management around it shared the feeling that the project strongly needed some « seniority », given the contrast between the juniority of the team, and ambition of the project (a subject on its own).

Thus I quite strongly experienced the need of balance between various things. But let’s focus on the most relevant one for this special moment that the few first weeks are.

I mostly felt the need of an acute sense of balance between the urge of fiting myself into the new organisation on one hand, and using my ignorance of the details to challenge existing hypothesis, on the other hand. With a very open-minded management (a thing that I can’t stress more the importance), people are very keen to hear you about what they could have done better or even wrong. This is a power you have during the first weeks, and there is only a very short supply of it. You have to use it wisely to speak out and share your impressions carefuly.

It is also the occasion to provide already what you think will be the overall direction of your action. The latter point don’t make you fit into the role right away, but at least it helps you fill it.

In other words, if you enter a mostly problematic working environment (as it was, in my case), you should rapidly reveal issues (but without exaggerating them!) and draw possible lines of solutions (without imposing them!). That’s a very fine balance. If you insist too much on problems, or appear to be too rapidly emotionaly involved in these problems, it’s easy to understand you might not fit for the role, or that you won’t simply be part of the solution. The risk exists of being pushed out of the project right at the start.

Moreover, if you try to impose solutions, you rapidly loose credit: how can you have a sense of the big picture already now? Problems that haven’t been solved after a few weeks or months are necessarily interconnected with other forces and/or people. People that are certainly of good faith, trying to do their best. You cannot do more than suggesting solutions, and if possible, solutions that are based on hints the management might have given you, more or less explicitely (you are necessarily ‘utilized’ by someone to modify an existing state of things – this is normal).

If you invoke your « huge » experience to try to impose solutions, you appear to justify yourself, and weaken your position already. (Virility demonstrations in tech environments will require its own post.) And you must remain open to solutions suggested by others, and solutions that don’t make you necessarily happy, while at the same time you are still adjusting yourself to a new context, a new place, new people, new tech stack… It’s hard.

In the opposite case of a mostly positive environment, this time is good to draw long-term guidelines of your action too. In both cases, you can earn a large amount of credit if you manage to rapidly acquire trust from the team, and both provide rapid help for existing issues.

How to achieve this sense of balance? There’s no magic. Personally, I can see only two things: listen and sleep, from day one. Listening everything is key. Listen to everybody, pay attention a bit on the body langage, but mostly to confirm impressions, listen in every occasion, meetings, lunchs, listen all the time. This is exhausting. Thus make sure to sleep enough. You’ll probably have time to rest a bit more after a few weeks.

I hope you found this post interesting. It outlines a bit the subjects to come in this serie of posts: how to acquire trust from a team, how to deal with autoritative figures, the balance between being strong, and being a part of something you can’t control… Stay tuned!

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The v0.8 software malediction (and resolutions for 2019)…

Life in Software-land follows the rhythm of version updates. And big jumps in numbers is usually reflecting what happens under the hood (except for the Linux kernel sometimes): big changes, big rewrites, big decisions, all of them at the same time. Long ago in my own Astro-Software-land, I was developing my famous macOS app: iObserve, which remained in the swamp of the beta phase for a long serie of months. (The beta phase is this period of time before the confidence on the capability of the mentionned software being actually useful reaches an « acceptable » level for the developer.)

iObserve never reached the v0.9. I had to stop development, rewrite a big part of the app, and jump right into 1.0 (I then submitted it to the Mac App Store).

v0.7.16. That’s the current version of arcsecond.io (see the changelog). Arcsecond.io was meant to become my new flagship software for the years to come. Still, I hit the v0.8 malediction. I hit it hard. I feel that a lot has to be rewritten. The good news is that the backend is solid, I’m very happy with it.

But I need to not only rewrite lots of the front-end, but actually rethink the whole shape of the webapp I intend to build. Too many things in the pipeline, but at the same time, nothing really finished. Damn.

I don’t know why it always happens around the v0.8. A kind of teenager crisis for a software. The time where you have exhausted your young energy, and start to think this isn’t the right direction, and something must change.

It’s hard to convince a developer he didn’t develop the right thing. But when this developer is yourself, and you invested a big chunk of a whole year into it, it is rough. At least, I must say I am not denying it anymore. It took quite a few months to really ask for feedback, but I did it, and the results of the votes are clear: I must continue to build new versions of iObserve…

Everything’s inside the meaning of « new versions »… This is where it is interesting to think as a product maker. What is iObserve ? An app that embedd into the same « workspace » a bunch of finely-crafted algorithms and visualisations combined with professional archival data, to let people think and prepare better their astronomical observations.

(Okay, okay! I heard it. It must work offline too.)

Fine. Let’s do that. But the success of iObserve is also the result of a few unplanned features nobody asked for. Say, I have a few in my pocket.

Resolutions for 2019. Actually, only one, which encompasses all others: focus. Really focus on the right thing, and nothing more.

Clear skies to everyone!

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iObserve 1.7.3 now available

Just a quick update to inform you that iObserve 1.7.3 is now available. It is a bugfix update to bring the app to a slightly higher level of correctness, easyness and stability. And as always, gorgeous in Dark Mode. Clear Skies to every one!

iObserve 1.7 in Dark Mode

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iObserve 1.7

My hope was to bring iObserve users to the web, and let me continue the journey with arcsecond.io. A vote took place in arcsecond.io, and iObserve users have spoken loudly ! They love the app. Well, I must say it’s nice to hear too.

So to the contrary of what I said before to some of you by email, I decided to make the non-trivial update and support for macOS 10.14 Mojave, for the app. The app will continue to be supported, but no new features will be included.

So here it is.

Open the Mac App Store
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Arcsecond.io 0.6: Team Size Doubling + iObserve on the web !

This is a milestone for Arcsecond ! I am happy to announce that Eric Depagne, currently astronomer at SAAO/SALT has agreed to join his forces to arcsecond.io. His expertise with Python will help a lot on the backend, but I don’t expect him to remain within the boundaries of it!

Moreover, we releases iObserve on the web ! Not as feature-rich as the macOS app yet. But already new features that will belong only to Arcsecond: Night Logs (in prep) and Data !

Freely regsiter in www.arcsecond.io and tell us what you think !

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iObserve on the web is coming

Well, winter is already there, anyway. So now, iObserve is coming … on the web. #GameOfCurves

For those who don’t know yet, iObserve on the web is called arcsecond.io. You can already checkit out here.

I am very proud of the progresses. But there is a lot to iron out (I had to work on various API endpoints to make it work: /observingsites, /observingruns, /nightlogs, /observations, /users, /telescopes).

But I can’t wait to share with you a (debug) screenshot of the current state of it on my machine. Feel free to spread the word!