Hey! ๐ Itโs been a while; I hope you and yours are doing well. Work has been a neverending parade of thing after thing. I struggled through an entire week with the flu. Do NOT recommend. ๐ท
However, after watching the Twitter drama unfold from the sidelines, Iโm just thankful that I have some stability at work right now. My heart goes out to my friends there whoโve been wrapped up in the turmoil for months. โค๏ธ It doesnโt even seem real to me what Iโm hearing in the news.
Outside of work, Iโve been doing some mentoring again. Working with the Road to GDE program to assist a very deserving engineer on her path to becoming a Google Developer Expert. Itโs rewarding to watch how in just three months, sheโs become much more confident in her expertise. Itโs one way I get to pay it forward.
Other than that, my latest course, Introduction to Career Skills in Software Development, has been translated into multiple languages. This is the first time Iโve had a course translated. Hereโs the Spanish version if youโre curious. Iโm excited to see what type of traction the course receives in other languages.
Now on to the books and cool tech. ๐
Books Iโm Reading
Running Lean - Ash Maurya
Our CEO recommended I read this book as Iโm launching a new business unit at Meetup. Iโve heard of the Lean Canvas before. I thought this book might only be a detailed explanation of creating one. I was wrong.
It goes into detail about how you can validate a business idea. Using models and mathematical calculations to determine how feasible your goals are. Some of the terminologies, like acquisition, activation, and retention, were already familiar to me. However, I now understand how they all play together to achieve your โsuccess criteria.โ
I created a traction roadmap for our new business unit following the advice in the book. It helped me to have even more confidence in its success. If youโre working on a new idea, read this book before you start to build anything. You wonโt regret it.
Good Strategy, Bad Strategy - Richard Rumelt
Once you learn what constitutes good strategy, you only see bad strategy everywhere. ๐คฆ๐ฝโโ๏ธ This is now my curse. You ever have that feeling when something doesnโt quite feel right, but you donโt know how to articulate it? Well, yeah, thatโs how Iโve felt about a lot of โstrategiesโ over the years.
In his book, Richard Rumelt clearly distinguishes between good and bad strategy. He does this by beating you down with dozens of examples in both camps. ๐ I feel like I would have gotten the point with half as many examples. Nevertheless, the examples highlight the importance of having a โgoodโ strategy.
โ[Bad strategy] assumes that goals are all you need. It puts forward strategic objectives that are incoherent and, sometimes, totally impracticable. It uses high-sounding words and phrases to hide these failings.โ
Rumelt, Richard. Good Strategy Bad Strategy (pp. 35-36).
Key takeaway: A goal does not a strategy make! You need to understand your current situation, the problem, what actions are feasible, etc., to create a good strategy. Itโs not easy and takes hard work.
Cool Tech
I was recently introduced to the C4 model for visualizing software architecture. The 4 Cโs stand for Context, Containers, Components, and Code. The goal of this model is to provide a developer-friendly way to diagram architecture.
Iโve been thinking of the best way to model the new project Iโve been working on. Decided to give C4 a try as there is a PlantUML integration. PlantUML is used to draw UML diagrams using a human-readable text description.
To get everything working together, I had to do the following:
Install Graphviz via Homebrew
Install the PlantUML VSCode extension
Update my
settings.json
to match the requirements for C4-PlantUMLCreate a sample .puml file
Love the clarity of the resulting diagrams. Will put it to the test on an existing system to gauge the extensibility.
Until next time, thanks for reading! ๐
"My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.โ
- Maya Angelou
Links:ย
https://www.linkedin.com/in/annycedavis/
https://twitter.com/brwngrldev