Berlin

November 4 & 5, 2024

New York

September 4 & 5, 2024

London

June 16 & 17, 2025

Technical Direction

Making better technical and architectural decisions

  • Content sponsored by Chainguard

    Does ‘shifting security left’ really work?

    “Shifting security left” is a term in modern DevOps that refers to the practice of integrating security measures earlier in the software development lifecycle (SDLC).

On our Technical Direction playlist

Lutz Hühnken

Managing architecture

Lutz Hühnken talks about the importance of a strategic approach to software architecture, that prevents teams from becoming architecture firefighters, who spent an excessive amount of energy applying short-term fixes to architectural problems.

Jonathan Maltz

Technical Vision vs. Technical Strategy: The difference and why it matters

Jonathan Maltz digs into the nuts and bolts of setting a successful technical strategy. Startin by talking about the difference between technical vision and technical strategy.

Content sponsored by CoderPad

Writing your technical strategy

Bruce Wang talks about Writing your technical strategy (psst, it doesn’t have to feel like a Squid Game) at LeadDev Together in February 2022.

Jon Thornton

Good technical debt

Jon Thornton discusses how this framework was used to rapidly build and ship Squarespace’s Email Campaigns product in less than 15 months. Along the way, you’ll get several practical guidelines for how tech debt can supercharge your technical investments.

Creating, defining, and refining an effective tech strategy

Having a defined tech strategy creates alignment and keeps everyone on the same page. So how can you ensure yours is most effective? Panelists Anna Shipman, Randy Shoup, Papanii Nene Okai, Nimisha Asthagiri and Anand Mariappan share their tips.

November 4 & 5, 2025

The leadership conference for tech leads and engineering leaders.

More about Technical Direction

Top Technical Direction videos

  • Defining a technical vision

    Defining a technical vision

    Eamon Scullion discusses the role of a technical vision in creating a roadmap for your organisation’s technology evolution. We will cover how to assess your current technology architecture, defining your target state and identify next best steps for getting closer to your goal.

  • Practical Systems Thinking for Software Engineers

    Practical systems thinking for Software Engineers

    Laura Nolan covers methods such as EAST-BL, System Dynamics, and the Energy Barrier perspective, with a specific focus on how these methods can be applied to the development and operation of distributed software systems. 

  • Build a data-driven on-call workflow for your team with atomic habits

    Build a data-driven on-call workflow for your team with atomic habits

    Bianca Costache will walk you through a data-driven on-call framework, clearly derived from first principles. You will get the WHY, our journey towards adoption, and the results after more than 2 years of implementation.

  • Feature flags unleashed

    Feature flags unleashed

    Roger Gros will show you how you can use feature flags to run complex data migrations, enable canary releases, easily build plans on top of your product, customize for specific clients, and much more.

  • How to effectively “Spike” a complex technical project

    How to effectively “Spike” a complex technical project

    Aditya Bansal explains what a spike is, how to successfully spike a project, and lessons learned from leading several technically complex projects across 3 different companies, and various different teams.

  • Platform engineering is all about product

    Platform engineering is all about product

    Gal Bashan wants to make sure you leave this talk with an understanding of platform engineering and how it relates to DevOps; what makes an IDP and a platform team successful; and finally, practices you can use to build a successful platform, and pitfalls to avoid.

  • Sarah Wells

    Building an effective technical strategy

    Sarah Wells looks at the many things your team could do over the next year or two. How do you decide which of them to prioritize? Documenting your strategy is important, but it’s only the first step. You need to communicate it effectively so that people can use it to make decisions. And finally, you need to track your progress: are you delivering what you need to? Is the strategy still the right one?

  • Vic Vijayakumar

    From zero to “Brands that Matter” – improving scientific discovery during a pandemic

    Vic Vijayakumar tells the story of building a world-class platform starting from zero, and how technical decision-making isn’t always glamorous.