As an Engineering Manager, you often take up different roles: a leader, a coach, a moderator, or just a team member. And you constantly balance between being decisive enough and trusting your team.

As a leader of an ever-strengthening team, I believe that it is necessary to set a focus on reduction of mentoring and increase of coaching component in your leadership style. Solution Focused approach is a reliable instrument which supports you on your way to a right blend of mentoring and coaching.

We were a group of 6 put together on a mission to deliver a highly-secure yet flexible, modern and a lightweight mobile component, compliant with the newest payment security standard and easily integratable in iOS & Android shop apps.

Distributed between two countries and four office locations, with everyone collaborating with each other for the first time - for some in the group, it was the very first professional assignment, the others debutants in their role and for the company the first product of that kind.

This talk shares the journey of becoming a team, the joys and sorrows of embracing the unknown, overcoming the distance, leveraging everyone's skills in tackling tough security and technical challenges, to meet the hard deadlines. It shares the steps and rituals of our way to uncovering the passion-driven development and successful launch of the product.

This talk examines two critical elements to software-based organizations – people and code, including the complexities they present: people having complexities of backgrounds, interpretations and personalities, and code having complexities of running time and structure. The motivation of this talk is to present ideas that could add value to the teams of the audience through real-world experience and examples.

Every time I cook with my mom I am amazed at how a simple recipe on paper can turn into a medley of substitutions, time-sensitive adjustments, and opportunities informed by the occasion, the taste of the dish and her experience with thousands of breakfasts, dinners, and parties.

Just like cooking, we have an assortment of methods that are supposed to help us build fast and dependable teams; but going from the recipe to the actual dish is not as straightforward. Why are these processes not living up to our expectations?

Creating a great team is all about balancing the process we have, the process we want and the process we do; through observation, context and best praxis, we might just be able to find the process we need.

One of my team leads once told me that having a 1-1 with me feels like having a session with a therapist. This was a huge compliment for me. Having 1-1s helps me to understand my team, to recognize problems early on and to support my employees and the team to grow.

Getting to a point where a one on one meeting feels like a good use of time for the involved is not easy and takes some training. I had a good mentor and some years of (sometimes awkward) training and will give the audience a head start by sharing my experiences.

First I will explain why 1-1 meetings are important for me as a team lead but also as a direct report. How they provide a channel for employees to raise issues to a higher level and to make them feel taken seriously. In the second part, I will speak about the practical things: How to schedule a 1-1? How to prepare and follow up on a good one to one meeting? What to do in a one on one and what not, how to guide the conversation and make the 1-1 a safe space that is dedicated time for the team member you are with. Finally, I will talk about specific questions that I ask and how to use this information. I will also explain why the second most important question for me is: What is your favourite baked good?
 

At Zalando, Stacia Carr leads a cross-functional team of experts who harness vast amounts of data using machine learning, to make intelligent predictions on variations in size across the industry. Find out how she approaches creating, scaling and supporting a high performing cross-functional data product development team for important customer problems.

As a software engineer, you will have learned that "naming things" will remain one of the most difficult tasks in our industry. It is, therefore, no surprise there are multiple meanings when companies use the term, "Tech Lead."

After interviewing many people playing technical leadership roles, establishing a European-wide Tech Lead training program in his last company, and training 150+ Tech Leads around the world, Patrick will share his lessons learned about what exactly a Tech Lead is, and what it takes to make the role successful. If you currently have or would like to take on a leadership role for an engineering team, come to this session to hear some practical tips that will make you a more successful Tech Lead.

Have you ever had troubles understanding a comment in a code review? Made a joke, and it fell flat with half of your teammates? Struggled to get a clear response from a teammate who’s three floors down, or on the other side of the planet? — Communication is the foundation of how we all work together. The way we communicate has an enormous impact on each of us individually, for teams and organisations. But communicating well is incredibly hard.

The great news is that communication is something all of us can always get better at, so let’s learn together, and from each other. Based on learnings from work with different engineering teams, this talk aims to inspire you to be more deliberate in how you communicate, and find better ways to hear others, and be heard. Leave this talk knowing the golden rules of emoji use, why every team should have communication guidelines, and what steps you can take to communicate more inclusively, empathically, and effectively with your teammates—and about the great effects it can have on you and your team."