
The Engineering Room with Dave Farley
Welcome to the 'Engineering Room’ a podcast hosted by Dave Farley! Join us on a journey through the world of software development, as we listen in to conversations between Dave and other influential experts from the field. Discover how to provide top-notch software that sets new standards for quality. Tune in and unlock the secrets to mastering Continuous Delivery and learn what it takes to achieve excellence in the software industry.
Latest episodes

Feb 1, 2024 • 1h 3min
The Poor Standard Of Teaching In Computer Science | Aino Corry In The Engineering Room Ep. 17
Aino Corry is an agile expert, a teacher and a consultant. She is an expert on how teams work, and how to help them to do better. She is also an extremely popular public speaker with a wickedly dry sense of humour. Aino has been a prolific conference organiser and has been involved in selecting the content for some of the worlds major software conferences over many years, including GOTO, YOW! and QCon. From her 25 years experience teaching computer skills in academia and industry, Aino talks to Dave about what is wrong with Computer Science teaching at Universities (or at least why it often isn't helpful to actually working in IT), her research into this problem and her work to help teachers improve their teaching. In this episode of "The Engineering Room" Dave Farley and Aino Corry discuss the eductation of software developers, and how we can all learn to do better.xx⭐ PATREON: Join the Continuous Delivery community and access extra perks & content! JOIN HERE ➡️ https://bit.ly/ContinuousDeliveryPatreon📖 Retrospectives Antipatterns, by Aino Corry ➡️ https://amzn.to/2Py8BxT 📖 Dave’s NEW BOOK "Modern Software Engineering" is available as paperback, or kindle here ➡️ https://amzn.to/3DwdwT3 and NOW as an AUDIOBOOK available on iTunes, Amazon and Audible. 📖 The original, award-winning "Continuous Delivery" book by Dave Farley and Jez Humble ➡️ https://amzn.to/2WxRYmx 📖 "Continuous Delivery Pipelines" by Dave Farley Paperback ➡️ https://amzn.to/3gIULlA ebook version ➡️ https://leanpub.com/cd-pipelinesEqual Experts is a product software development consultancy with a network of over 1,000 experienced technology consultants globally. They increase the pace of innovation by using modern software engineering practices that embrace Continuous Delivery, Security, and Operability from the outset ➡️ https://bit.ly/3ASy

Feb 1, 2024 • 1h 8min
The FIRST Testing Frameworks, TDD, Waterfall & MORE | Kent Beck In The Engineering Room Ep. 16
In this episode of the Engineering Room, Dave Farley and Kent Beck have a wide-ranging discussion about the return of waterfall development in software, TDD, Software Design and lots of other things along the way. Kent Beck is the first signatory of the Agile Manifesto. He is the author of the industry-changing book "Extreme Programming Explained". Kent popularised Continuous Integration and TDD and wrote the first version of xUnit, the unit testing framework that has informed the design of unit testing frameworks ever since. It is hard to imagine people who aren't familiar with Kent Beck's work, but even if that is the case, his work has had an impact on how you think about, and practice software development and software engineering.xx⭐ PATREON: Join the Continuous Delivery community and access extra perks & content! ➡️ https://bit.ly/ContinuousDeliveryPatreon🔗 "TCR (Test && Commit || Revert)", Kent Beck: ➡️ • TCR test && commit || revert -- Rope ... 🔗 "Tidy First", Kent Beck: ➡️ https://tidyfirst.substack.com 🔗 Small Steps - "Explore, Expand, Extract", Kent Beck: ➡️ • Video 📖 Dave’s NEW BOOK "Modern Software Engineering" is available as paperback, or kindle here ➡️ https://amzn.to/3DwdwT3 and NOW as an AUDIOBOOK available on iTunes, Amazon and Audible. 📖 The original, award-winning "Continuous Delivery" book by Dave Farley and Jez Humble ➡️ https://amzn.to/2WxRYmx 📖 "Continuous Delivery Pipelines" by Dave Farley Paperback ➡️ https://amzn.to/3gIULlA ebook version ➡️ https://leanpub.com/cd-pipelines 📖 "Test Driven Development: By Example (The Addison-Wesley Signature Series), Kent Beck" ➡️ https://amzn.to/2NcqgGh 📖 "Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change", Kent Beck ➡️ https://amzn.to/3K5fhg6 📖 "Implementation Patterns (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Beck))", Kent Beck ➡️ https://amzn.to/3K4VWvz 📖 "Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns", Kent Beck ➡️ https://amzn.to/3JKyfYgEqual Experts is a product software development consultancy with a network of over 1,000 experienced technology consultants globally. ➡️ https://bit.ly/3ASy8n0

15 snips
Feb 1, 2024 • 1h 21min
How Software Architects Transform Large Enterprises | Gregor Hohpe In The Engineering Room Ep. 15
Gregor Hohpe, an expert in software architecture and author of "Enterprise Integration Patterns," joins the discussion about transforming large enterprises. He shares insights from his role at AWS and the challenge of developing new architectural models in the cloud. The conversation delves into the evolving role of software architects, emphasizing collaboration and adaptability. Gregor also discusses the importance of effective abstraction and communication, while highlighting the need for alignment between IT and business goals for successful transformation.

Feb 1, 2024 • 1h 6min
Systems Theory For Software Engineering | Jessica Kerr In The Engineering Room Ep. 14
Jessica Kerr talks to Dave Farley about a bunch of topics ranging from cybernetics, to systems theory, complex adaptive systems and the importance of data visualisation to observability. Jessica, known by many as @jessitron is Engineering Manager of Dev Relations at Honeycomb, a well known speaker and a symmathecist in the medium of code - which she describes as seeing development teams as learning systems made of people and running software. Jessica and Dave share a love for software development in all its complexity and in the complexity of its socio-technical setting.xxJessica's Website: ➡️ https://jessitron.com "Systems Thinking for Developers" ➡️ • Systems Thinking for Developers • Jes... Jessica Kerr on Medium: ➡️ / jessitron ⭐ PATREON: Join the Continuous Delivery community at access extra perks & content, join in our CD Discord discussions and support the CD YouTube channel. JOIN HERE ➡️ https://bit.ly/ContinuousDeliveryPatreon📖 Dave’s NEW BOOK "Modern Software Engineering" is available as paperback, or kindle here ➡️ https://amzn.to/3DwdwT3 and NOW as an AUDIOBOOK available on iTunes, Amazon and Audible. 📖 The original, award-winning "Continuous Delivery" book by Dave Farley and Jez Humble ➡️ https://amzn.to/2WxRYmx 📖 "Continuous Delivery Pipelines" by Dave Farley Paperback ➡️ https://amzn.to/3gIULlA ebook version ➡️ https://leanpub.com/cd-pipelinesEqual Experts is a product software development consultancy with a network of over 1,000 experienced technology consultants globally. They increase the pace of innovation by using modern software engineering practices that embrace Continuous Delivery, Security, and Operability from the outset ➡️ https://bit.ly/3ASy8n0

4 snips
Feb 1, 2024 • 1h 24min
Kubernetes & Cloud Computing | Kelsey Hightower In The Engineering Room Ep. 13
Kelsey is a pioneer in cloud computing and has led many advances in the implementation and adoption of cloud based software. He is a significant contributor to open source software, involved in many incredibly popular open source projects, including, but not limited to Kubernetes. Kelsey not only helped implement Kubernetes, but also helped to promote and spread its adoption and to build the community around it. In this episode Kelsey and Dave discuss a range of topics, centred on cloud computing, but also exploring software engineering and its nature in more detail. Find out if Dave and Kelsey disagree about stateful serverless and asynchrony.xx⭐ PATREON: Join the Continuous Delivery community and access extra perks & content! JOIN HERE ➡️ https://bit.ly/ContinuousDeliveryPatreon📖 Dave’s NEW BOOK "Modern Software Engineering" is available as paperback, or kindle here ➡️ https://amzn.to/3DwdwT3 and NOW as an AUDIOBOOK available on iTunes, Amazon and Audible.📖 The original, award-winning "Continuous Delivery" book by Dave Farley and Jez Humble ➡️ https://amzn.to/2WxRYmx 📖 "Continuous Delivery Pipelines" by Dave Farley Paperback ➡️ https://amzn.to/3gIULlA ebook version ➡️ https://leanpub.com/cd-pipelines 📖 "Kubernetes - Up and Running: Dive into the Future of Infrastructure", by Brendan Burns, Joe Beda, Kelsey Hightower, Lachlan Evenson: ➡️ https://amzn.to/3Q72ETtEqual Experts is a product software development consultancy with a network of over 1,000 experienced technology consultants globally. They increase the pace of innovation by using modern software engineering practices that embrace Continuous Delivery, Security, and Operability from the outset ➡️ https://bit.ly/3ASy8n0

Feb 1, 2024 • 1h 15min
Team Topologies, Cognitive Load & Complex Systems | Matthew Skelton In The Engineering Room Ep. 12
Matthew Skelton is co-author of "Team Topologies: organizing business and technology teams for fast flow". He is Head of Consulting at Conflux and specialises in Continuous Delivery, operability, and organisation dynamics for modern software systems. In this conversation with Dave, he talks about the ecosystem necessary to build and nurture software, and the wide range of topics that impact on the effectiveness, and performance of development teams. The approach that his book "Team Topologies" describes is to use team structure as a tool, guided by the idea of managing the cognitive load of the team. This talk ranges from how to deal with the complex adaptive system that we inhabit when undertaking software development, to the structure of software development being more like an ant colony than an organised, predictable hierarchy.xx⭐ PATREON: Join the Continuous Delivery community and access extra perks & content!📕 "Team Topologies" by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais ➡️ https://amzn.to/2Y0NdSO🔖 Matthew Skelton on "Why are Deployment Pipelines Important" ➡️ http://bit.ly/3UhrNLG📖 The original, award-winning "Continuous Delivery" book by Dave Farley and Jez Humble ➡️ https://amzn.to/2WxRYmx🔖 Get my FREE guide "How to Organise SW Teams" when you join the CD Mail List ➡️ https://www.subscribepage.com/organis...Equal Experts is a product software development consultancy with a network of over 1,000 experienced technology consultants globally. They increase the pace of innovation by using modern software engineering practices that embrace Continuous Delivery, Security, and Operability from the outset ➡️ https://bit.ly/3ASy8n0

Feb 1, 2024 • 1h 10min
Continuous Delivery vs. Gitflow & CD At Scale | Bryan Finster In The Engineering Room Ep. 11
If you haven't come across Bryan Finster before, you can thank me later. Bryan was one of a small enabling team of 5 people who introduced Continuous Delivery to over 18000 developers at Walmart. He is now working with Defence Unicorns to do the same kind of thing for the US Airforce. Adopting CD at scale is a complicated problem, but Bryan has done it repeatedly, and with intelligence, humour and whit. Amongst many other things, Bryan has started the parody site "Scaled Agile DevOps Maturity Framework" (SADMF) which is worth checking out it you would like a laugh.Here are a few quotes from Bryan: "Developing with CD is fun and productive: not developing with CD is like punching yourself in the face everyday" "It's hard to explain CD to people who have never done it. Like flying cars, If you’ve never seen CD done, it's hard to believe that it can be true." "Continuous Delivery is not the goal though, it is THE tool for your Excellence Strategy, and to secure your software." "Why do some people fail at adopting CD? You can't just hand people the tools without the training - they will hurt themselves."xx"STOP PUNCHING YOURSELF IN THE FACE"! Learn how to get the CD Mindset, Create Value and Have More Fun, with CD.Training course: "CD: Better Software Faster" ➡️ https://courses.cd.training/courses/c...Get Dave's award-winning book "Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation" ➡️ https://amzn.to/2WxRYmxBryan's Blog Site ➡️ / bdfinst Equal Experts is a product software development consultancy with a network of over 1,000 experienced technology consultants globally. They increase the pace of innovation by using modern software engineering practices that embrace Continuous Delivery, Security, and Operability from the outset ➡️ https://bit.ly/3ASy8n0

Jan 31, 2024 • 1h 14min
Legacy Code, OOP vs Functional Programming & MORE | Michael Feathers In The Engineering Room Ep. 10
When Michael Feathers talks it’s usually worth listening. Michael is thoughtful about software and software design, for example Michael is the person who invented the term SOLID as an approach to software design. Michael is also the author of a book that is on the “must read” list of nearly every real-world programmer “Working with Legacy Code”. In this chat, Michael Feathers describes this book as "scare tactics for TDD" - When you know how hard it is to write tests for existing code, you’ll write tests from the beginning! Michael and Dave talk broadly about automated testing, software architecture and design principles for quality code, and Michael claims that “OO, when it's done right, looks a lot like FP”.xxIf you want to learn Continuous Delivery and DevOps skills, check out Dave Farley's courses ➡️ https://bit.ly/DFTraining📖 The award-winning "Continuous Delivery" book by Dave Farley and Jez Humble ➡️ https://amzn.to/2WxRYmxMichael Feathers’ twitter ➡️ @mfeathers📧 JOIN CD MAIL LIST 📧 Keep up to date with the latest discussions, free "How To..." guides, events, online courses and exclusive offers. ➡️ https://bit.ly/MailListCDEqual Experts is a product software development consultancy with a network of over 1,000 experienced technology consultants globally. They increase the pace of innovation by using modern software engineering practices that embrace Continuous Delivery, Security, and Operability from the outset ➡️ https://bit.ly/3ASy8n0

12 snips
Jan 31, 2024 • 1h 13min
Agile & Scrum Don't Work | Allen Holub In The Engineering Room Ep. 9
Allen Holub, a computer scientist and agile expert, discusses the misconceptions of agile methodology and the importance of critical thinking. They delve into rethinking metrics, the value of qualitative feedback, and optimizing software development teams. The discussion critiques faux agile coaching practices, advocates for continuous improvement, and challenges traditional hiring approaches for team success.

Jan 31, 2024 • 1h 7min
The Value Of Big Data Engineering | Jesse Anderson In The Engineering Room Ep. 8
In this episode of the “Engineering Room” Dave Farley talks to Jesse Anderson about Big Data and Data Engineering exploring what it takes to implement effective big data solutions and explore what data engineering is and why it matters. Jesse Anderson is a Data Engineer, author and trainer who runs a company called the Big Data Institute where he helps companies all over the world with their Big Data problems. His company also runs training courses to help people to learn, and extend their skills in Data engineering and data science, targeted at helping software engineers to understand and use big data more effectively.xxJesse Anderson's Blog Site: https://www.jesse-anderson.com Jesse Anderson's Data Engineering Courses: https://www.jesse-anderson.com/courses/ The Data Dream Team Podcast: https://dreamteam.soda.io Hidden Tech Debt in Machine Learning Systems: https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper/...If you want to learn Continuous Delivery and DevOps skills, check out Dave Farley's courses ➡️ https://bit.ly/DFTraining📧 JOIN CD MAIL LIST 📧 Keep up to date with the latest discussions, free "How To..." guides, events, online courses and exclusive offers. ➡️ https://bit.ly/MailListCDEqual Experts is a product software development consultancy with a network of over 1,000 experienced technology consultants globally. They increase the pace of innovation by using modern software engineering practices that embrace Continuous Delivery, Security, and Operability from the outset ➡️ https://bit.ly/3ASy8n0
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