Jonathan Midgley

"But we just need something simple..." 👀 Famous last words before a software project spirals out of control! Here's what REALLY needs to happen before you kick off that bespoke software project: Define your ACTUAL problem 🎯 Not just "we need an app" - but what's genuinely broken? What's costing you money? What's making your team curse under their breath? Map your current process 📝 Even the ugly parts. Especially the workarounds Including Sharon's special spreadsheet that somehow keeps everything running Think 5 years ahead 🔮 How fast are you growing? What might change? Who needs to use this system? Get real about hidden costs 💰 Ongoing maintenance. Training time. Integration headaches. Future changes. Support costs Talk to your ACTUAL users 🗣️ Because Karen in accounts does things differently than what your management thinks happens... trust me 😅 The truth? A good bespoke software project starts way before the first line of code. Skip these steps and you'll join the "it seemed simple at first" club - and trust me, nobody wants to be in that club! 🙈 Want to avoid the common pitfalls of custom software development? Let's chat! #SoftwareDevelopment #BusinessSoftware #CTO

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I do love a good stat. Of the 654,000 interactions on our live platform last week, 40,800 were over our API. If your supplier doesn't offer open APIs included in the base product, and you're thinking "meh maybe we don't need em" then you are stuck in legacy la la land. API's bring the efficiency and interaction products need in a modern adaptive platform. That 1992 CSV FTP Ping Pong you are pretending works fine will bite you on the behind one day. If you'd like to learn more about how Rubixx interacts with third party systems, slide in my DMs or ask one of our clients who used to have whatever you have now.

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Fantastic to see NUAR mentioned in the King's Speech briefing 😁 👑 "The [Digital Information and Smart Data] Bill will enable new innovative uses of data to be safely developed and deployed ... [including] National Underground Asset Register, a new digital map that is revolutionising the way we install, maintain, operate and repair the pipes and cables buried beneath our feet. It gives planners and excavators standardised, secure, instant access to the data they need, when they need it, to carry out their work effectively and safely."

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A QA engineer walks into a bar. Orders a beer. Orders 0 beers. Orders 99999999999 beers. Orders a lizard. Orders -1 beers. Orders a ueicbksjdhd. First real customer walks in and asks where the bathroom is. The bar bursts into flames, killing everyone. A QA engineer walks into a bar, WITH a team of QA AI agents. Asks AI agents to test the app while drinking an ice-cold Modelo Especial. Trained AI agents order X factor of Y elements in Z universes, in parallel using customer behavior data to identify common patterns in the test coverage. The QA engineer keeps drinking and curates the strategy. Real customer walks in, and shares a Modelo with the QA engineer. Lessons: 1. AI is here to help QAs, not just replace them 2. Modelo Especial es muy deliciosa y refrescante

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I've spent the last 2 years at Standd putting agent based ai systems into production. As part of that journey I've migrated to almost exclusively coding using agents. Less than 10% of my day is in an editor the rest is bouncing between aider on sonnet 3.5 or o1 depending on the task and Claude web as a thought partner. If you're using cursor or not using AI at all and wonder when would be a good moment to try agent based coding these systems are at their best when making a small thing. Think under 500 lines. Self contained. Even better when it's in tech you aren't fluent in day to day. I wish I had a script that did x. Boom now you do. A common task that looks like this is GitHub actions workflows. If there are things you wish your ci stack did or checked that's the moment to see if the agent could kick out a new workflow. There are so many little patterns and tricks I've learned to stretch these machines out of that sweet spot. but this is a good place to start.

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if you are going to LeadDev London in a few weeks make sure you attend this talk. Parul has some amazing insights to share which will help you understand neurodiversity and how it can enlighten your work relationships and team dynamics, consider it like gaining a superpower and Parul is Professor X!

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John Rouda and I covered so much in our conversation on his podcast - A Geek Leader - but, as usual, it was great to have a chat about how to have better conversations. We covered listening including asking genuine questions, carefully planning interactions, and using methods like 'Say what you See' and TDD for People. Even better, this is just one of many topics we covered! Listen in full and let me know what was most useful to you. https://lnkd.in/ePqHRebg

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I've recently finished the Dale Carnegie's book 'How to win friends and influence people... I find it an excellent and engaging read. Some things may be a little out of date, specifically from a British culture point of view, but the base idea is sound. Everybody wants to feel important, and this book is an excellent example of how to do just that, without lying, and avoiding those arguments that nobody will win. My next read is 'Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading and Public Speaking' by Mehdi Hasan. This book at times tends to be the antithesis of Carnegie's book. However, it is just as engaging and insightful...2 Chapters down on this already. What are other peoples favourite books when coming to getting buy in / influencing people? #PersonalDevelopment #ProfessionalGrowth #BookRecommendations #DaleCarnegie #HowToWinFriends #InfluencePeople #MehdiHasan #PublicSpeaking #DebatingSkills #Influence #SelfImprovement #LeadershipSkills #CommunicationSkills #ReadingList

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So, at lunch today, I was asked how I run my dev team, given that it's 100% remote and fractional. The honest answer is that I don't run them. We set priorities and standards, and they liaise amongst themselves and the tester to ensure the work is done and the code is reviewed and tested. Each week, we check in on chat with a status update on what is done and what is next. Everything is offline, done via chat and email for a good reason. We have people in the UK, Vietnam, Australia and NZ. The image below is from last night's meeting at 8 p.m., our first real-time meeting in months, to accommodate the time zones. It explains why I don't want to have meetings. Not because the person was late but because they should be spending time reading their kid a book rather than working.  Now, in reality, no one in the meeting cared. There were three of us there: two dads and one soon-to-be dad. The first 10 minutes were spent talking about our first kids. After 20 minutes, the background on the next piece of work was explained, tasks were set, and the meeting was over. #Leadership #RemoteWork #WorkLifeBalance #TechTeams

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Want to know how to grow your Internal Develop Platform? Join me at CIOXUK next week where I'll be revealing the blueprint I've successfully used to help catapult their platforms from niche interest to mainstream adoption. GitLab #idp #platformengineering #devex

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I met up with Dave a couple of months ago in Leeds to show him the latest bit of magic I created. It's just some creative use of Terraform, DevOps and some out of the box usage of existing Python libraries, but Dave thinks this stuff is otherworldly! So we're staring into my cauldron, skimming through my book of magic, and he says something to me like, and I'm paraphrasing here... "How do you handle being so unbelievably clever and having this much knowledge and capability?" To which I replied... "You know I'm only operating at about 20% in this job right?!" Which in hindsight is a ridiculously arrogant thing to say, I didn't mean it like that. And of course, folks out there would gasp "Oh only 20% effort, pay him less!!" but my point is that most days I don't even have to try. Even when I push myself to learn something new or do something in a different, more efficient way, working in tech just isn't that difficult. For me. And I still churn output that would make most folks in tech envious. I've been trying to think about why since that day. I still don't have an answer. All I know is that I absolutely love working in this field. I love working with tech, making computers go boop boop beep beep, solving business problems, wowing people every day without much effort. Although I still don't think I'm even close to a 10x developer, those guys...wow! But it's not all sunshine and roses, believe me! Often I find being efficient and highly impactive has a downside. Business people expect more. Too much. Imagine a task takes 8 hours and I do it in 1. The next task takes 12 hours and the business complains when it's not in done in 1. This is a regular occurrence for me. Even though for someone else it might take anywhere between 4 and 16 hours to complete, because I take 2 I get grief for the delay. I try to take it as compliment that people just don't like me if they just think I'm smug, arrogant, too clever, a girly swot etc. I wouldn't have it any other way, and I think at 43 I'm finally starting to accept that and stopping dumbing myself down just to be liked.

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If you are a #Sage50 user, you've probably heard of #SageIntacct by now - one of the fastest growing finance systems in the UK (and beyond). If you've not heard, then you're probably asking, why should you have? Well in short, because many businesses using Sage 50 are moving to Intacct. But why? Well, a recent report from #Sage, based on feedback from their customers, identifies five common reasons businesses are transitioning from Sage 50 to Sage Intacct. If any of these issues sound familiar, it might be worth considering the switch: 1. Relying too much on Excel for reporting – it’s time-consuming and hard to maintain 📊 2. Multi-entity consolidations – which can take hours, if not days 🕒 3. Limited remote access – a big issue in today’s flexible working world 🌍 4. Manual workarounds – where there really should be proper integrations 🤦‍♂️ 5. Processes that don’t scale – leading to errors as the business grows ⚠️ Take a look at the report attached for more detail. It includes some really useful questions to help you assess if Sage Intacct might be a better fit for your business. #finance #erp #SmallBusinesses

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❓ Is the UK Primed to Birth the Next Generation of Tech Decacorns, and if Yes, What's the Blueprint? Jody Ford, CEO of Trainline, drew attention to the UK's illustrious past in industries such as steel, oil, and banking, followed by successes in pharmaceuticals and consumer goods. However, he pointed out a glaring gap: the tech sector's underperformance compared to the US counterparts. Ford stressed the urgent need for the UK to foster an environment where tech companies get easy access to capital, a fair regulatory framework that companies can flourish, expand, and compete worldwide. But here's the exciting part: We have the potential to birth tech giants not only in traditional sectors but also in innovative areas like oral health. Take Presto Dental, for instance—a pioneering startup poised to revolutionize oral healthcare globally. Let's seize this opportunity to propel the UK's tech scene to new heights. Time to make it happen! #techEntrepreneurs #companybuilders #UKTechRevolution #Innovation #PrestoDental #Oralhealth #Dentaltech #preseed #funding

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One of my goto lines: "What if we just spent a day building a nice spreadsheet?" If it brings 80% of the value for 1-2% of the cost, maybe we should just start there. In time, if the spreadsheet evolves and matures, and the business process evolves and matures, and it becomes clear EXACTLY how the custom software should be designed/built, THEN it might make sense to solidify that into a custom solution. -- Related, my other first suggestion for automation is: "Do you have a checklist for this process, yet? It's a really low cost way to get a ton of early automation value." Existing employees can use the checklist. The checklist can evolve as more edge cases are discovered about the process. Eventually, it's so clean and stable, but taking longer than it ought to, that crystalizing the logic of the checklist into an actual program might make business sense. -- Start small. Only build custom when you really need to, and after exhausting the low-hanging fruit options. You might discover that you don't need custom at all. But if you do, you'll at least benefit from significantly reduced development costs due to having a rich algorithm clearly written down already.

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Nice to see my little article on the humane aspects of #TeamTopologies being picked up by this week's TechManagerWeekly from CTO Craft - thanks Andy Skipper Link to the TechManagerWeekly: https://lnkd.in/eDM823jx The newsletter includes results from a recent poll of senior engineering leaders regarding whether any of their team members are paid more. Echoes of the news this week where special advisor Sue Gray is being paid a salary of £170K which is £3K more than PM Kiers Starmer receives (excluding 'gifts' and other privileges) The results raise some interesting perspectives around hierarchies, status games, and resentment. Personally I have been in a situation as a leader where a team member was on a higher salary than I was but it didn't really bother me - the other person was technically way smarter than I was and brought a lot of value. Maybe it's because I often reflect on growing up as a kid when money was always a problem and I could never have imagined earning the kind of salaries that are commonplace in software engineering - I just appreciate having had the chance to break free money anxieties for most of my career (although they have returned a little since deciding to go all-in on getting Human-Centric Engineering off the ground). Feelings of jealousy, resentment, fear, and shame - they're often sparked by comparing salaries. I wonder if the underlying resentment is actually stronger than the 12% revealed by this survey?

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As CTO of Agilebase, I'm excited about the potential of No Code to transform Bristol tech. Here's how. 1. No Code reduces development costs and time-to-market for startups and established businesses alike. 2. It democratizes software development. It puts powerful tools in the hands of non-technical founders and teams. 3. No Code enables rapid prototyping and MVP creation, crucial for startups seeking investment. 4. Flexible No Code solutions like Agilebase create scalable back-office systems. They grow with your business. Agilebase helped CH Foods in South Wales grow from a startup to a 200+ employee company. We're proud of this success and are eager to replicate it here in Bristol. To kickstart a No Code movement in Bristol, we need: 1. Regular meetups and events focused on practical No Code applications 2. A supportive community for knowledge sharing 3. Collaboration with existing tech support organizations like Techspark and SetSquared No Code isn't just about efficiency - it's about changing who gets to build and innovate. Let's work together to make Bristol a No Code hub and unlock the potential of our diverse tech community. Who's interested in joining a No Code Bristol initiative? Comment below or reach out to me. #NoCode #BristolTech #Innovation #Startups #Agilebase https://lnkd.in/epuUCcDm

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This is a fascinating graph showing a stark change in how many applications there have been for care workers applying for visas to live and work in the UK. Care providers are as well recruited as they have been for years but how will this impact that?

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Does anyone care more about Developer Experience than Kieran Mountford ? Not in my eyes. At Paddle we've been on a journey to putting DX at the heart of our new platform's design. It's now easier to integrate Paddle than it ever has been before, but it hasn't been easy to get to this point. So if you're interested in how we got there, read Kieran's thoughts in the link 👇 https://lnkd.in/e5aPkuqC

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