Software development is a societal sport with Hendrik Esser

In this conversation, Hendrik Esser, a senior leader at Ericsson, shares his thoughts related to

• His love to construct stuff, even as a kid, to make stuff that others can use
• Starting to play games with his friend and then writing games
• Preferring electrical engineering, as the feeling was that computer science is just programming and he already knew that!
• Then, learning communication protocols and getting closer to software
• His understanding of software work as art and the importance of craftsmanship
• The need to develop one’s talent into mastery
• And how with mastery you can be an engineer
• And one more level is to become an artist, when you transcend what you have learnt and move to express yourself creatively
• How he would like to use his artistry to make the world a better place
• How he got interested in the people aspects of software development, as work happens in teams
• Applying for a group manager position, when had about 1.5 years of experience and the career advice he got, that he considers as one of the best he has received
• The transition from game development to telecom software
• About programming by indirect observation
• How understanding the purpose of a program gives him the motivation to solve
• From working on standalone machines where one has full visibility and control over everything that happens to working in teams and cloud based environments where most things are only indirectly felt
• From team sport, software development has become a societal sport
• How, working in a multicultural team has helped understand that people are the same across the world
• How to treat a disturbance as an invitation for learning
• Using curiosity to understand and explore other cultures
• How a cross-national team worked on a very tricky technical problem and cracked it in 2 days
• The effectiveness of getting everyone into one room for richer interactions and the impact of the forced dispersal mode His interest in actively participating in communities and what he derives from such interactions and contributions
• How to reconcile the need for experimentation and progressive evolution approaches inspired by agile principles and the corporate expectations to be very predictable from the beginning
• How to predict in an unpredictable world
• Using ranges, rather than precise dates, as leading indicators to track projects
• His career advice - develop social skills in addition to technical skills

Hendrik Esser is a senior transformation expert, coach, driver and catalyst with more than 20 years of leadership experience at Ericsson. He is also internationally active in communities advancing business agility across industries.

Hendrik is continuously exploring new ways to create better results and greater organizations.

That journey started when he joined Ericsson in Germany in 1994 as a SW developer. Soon his passion brought him to a leadership career from being a Technical Coordinator through project management, project office management, portfolio- and technology management towards being the "COO" of one of Ericsson's large, internationally distributed development units with over 8000 people. In 2008 he was a key driver to the agile transition of a large organization. Through this engagement he became a recognized and sought expert not only in the Ericsson enterprise transformation, but also a strong contributor to the international agile community, exchanging and expanding knowledge and spreading agile mindset and ideas across industries. Part of his time he also works as a trainer for leadership programs within Ericsson.

In parallel to his work at Ericsson, he is - as a volunteer - Program Director of the Agile Alliance's initiative "Supporting Agile Adoption". He has worked together with ICAgile on Learning Roadmaps for agile Finance. Also, he is an internationally active speaker at numerous conferences and company events on agile product development, HR and project management.

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/hendrik-esser