A (totally unbiased) software engineer's perspective on working with software engineers. Delivered 10/18/18 at "How to Launch a Startup" event with strtupboost.

1. How to Work with Software Engineers
A (totally unbiased) software engineer’s perspective
Kate Travers | @kttravers

3. Much successSo joy
Such business
Very smiles
Wow
Super yes

4. Misconceptions
Kate Travers | @kttravers

5. "Engineers... do not like speaking with people.
Coding all day is good fun, talking with people is
torture." [1]
Kate Travers | @kttravers

6. Kate Travers | @kttravers
Engineers are just as social as your average co-worker.
We’re just very protective of our precious (and limited)
attention span.

7. Know how your
team builds.
Kate Travers | @kttravers
● Roadmap
● Agile (iterative)
● Waterfall (fully spec’d)

8. Respect chain of
command.
Kate Travers | @kttravers
● Feature request?
Product manager
● Technical issue?
Engineering manager

9. Kate Travers | @kttravers
URGENCY TIMEFRAME CHANNEL
Low Need answer within a few days or longer Email
Medium Need answer by end of day Email / public Slack
High Need answer within an hour DM
Emergency Things are on fire *DM, then tap on shoulder
Communication Channels x Urgency

10. When you ask for something from an engineer, don't
get too detailed. They're the experts, so let them
decide how to do it.
Kate Travers | @kttravers

11. Engineers are detail-oriented problem solvers.
Ambiguity slows us down.
Kate Travers | @kttravers

12. Kate Travers | @kttravers
Be precise. ● Don’t make assumptions
● Eliminate guesswork
● Put all your cards on the
table

13. Kate Travers | @kttravers
● Define the desired
outcome(s), not the
means
● Set priorities
● Ask for tradeoffs
Provide
requirements, not
implementation.

14. Engineers love details and hate meetings, so don’t
bring them into a project until you’ve mapped
everything out completely in advance.
Kate Travers | @kttravers

15. Bring developers in early.
Kate Travers | @kttravers

16. Work better
together.
Kate Travers | @kttravers
● Don’t insulate engineering
team from the “business”
● Better context leads to
better results
● Catch problems early
enough to fix

17. Exercises
Kate Travers | @kttravers

18. Product Manager:
How’s the password reset feature going?
Developer:
I started looking into the Postmark API and installed
their client library, but I started running into some
issues in my development environment because of
an outdated library we’re using for image handling.
???
< />
Kate Travers | @kttravers

19. Marketing manager to developer:
Can you please build us something to address the
sign-up conversion rate by the end of the day?
???
< />
Kate Travers | @kttravers

20. CEO:
Ok, but what about the landing page update?
Developer:
I just used a really cool algorithm to guess similar
words using something called “Levenshtein
distance”. The data consistency problem should be
fixed by EOD.
???
< />
Kate Travers | @kttravers

21. ???
< />
Developer to product manager:
I’m working on the search feature and noticed that
some of these filtering options don’t make sense
together. What if we did it like this instead?
Kate Travers | @kttravers

22. Takeaways
Kate Travers | @kttravers

23. DO DON’T
Talk like you know something when you don’t
“What if we just…”
Be intimidated by jargon
Assume your problem isn’t interesting enough
to solve
Ask lots of questions
Dream out loud in user stories
Connect your asks back to business wins
Build rapport (attend demos, volunteer for
testing, or just grab coffee)
Kate Travers | @kttravers

24. Thank you!
Kate Travers | @kttravers

25. Questions?
Kate Travers | @kttravers

26. Resources: Articles
1. Krzysztof Rakowski - How To Communicate Effectively In IT Projects
2. Julie Zhuo - How to Work with Engineers
3. Nicholas Zakas - The care and feeding of software engineers
4. Cliff Gilley - How to Work Effectively With Engineers
5. June Cohen - How to Work with Engineers on a Web Development Project
6. Stella Garber - 5 Best Practices for Working with Developers
Kate Travers | @kttravers

27. Resources: Videos
1. Ron Lichty - How to Get Your Development Team to Love You
2. Laura Klein - Building Happy Product Teams like Heist Teams
3. Ryan Hughes - Bridging the Gap between Designers and Developers
4. Salesforce Case Study - How Admins And Developers Can Collaborate
Kate Travers | @kttravers

28. Appendix 1:
Vocabulary
Kate Travers | @kttravers

29. Developer ProgrammerEngineer
PEOPLE WHO WRITE CODE
Kate Travers | @kttravers

30. Feature Development
Kate Travers | @kttravers

31. Stories / Tickets
Kate Travers | @kttravers

32. The “Stack”
Kate Travers | @kttravers

33. The “Stack” Much simple
So nbd
Such easy
Very no problem
Wow
Kate Travers | @kttravers

34. Backend vs. Frontend vs. Full Stack
HTML
CSS
Javascript
Ruby
Python
PHP
C#
Java
Javascript (!!)
Kate Travers | @kttravers

35. API
Kate Travers | @kttravers

36. :shipit:
Kate Travers | @kttravers

37. :ship: :it:
Kate Travers | @kttravers