Coaching is an indispensible part of the engineering leader's work. Knowing how to lift people with respect to both deep technical concerns and difficult people concerns can seem daunting. Though it really boils down to simply being interested in people - and in seeing them meet their potential.

Join us as we discuss this important topic with Danny Kirchmeier on this month's edition of The Kyle Rowland Podcast.

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Danny has 17 years of engineering experience and has a passion for solving problems and mentoring others to grow their passions. He enjoys most working in startups where he has the opportunity to lead, drive impact and make meaningful contributions to a goal.

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Mentioned in the podcast:

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - https://a.co/d/1cxdCfa

Good to Great - https://a.co/d/bae7VMg

Wheel of Life - https://positivepsychology.com/wheel-of-life-coaching/

Join in as we discuss with Molly Jaggers the implications we face as we adopt cutting edge AI technology.

A key takeaway from this episode is what the adoption implies about the most constructive behavior for members of the workforce in these turbulent days.

Ultimately, it's a time of great opportunity and hope - though as in any epoch - those that are lazy or slow to change will quickly be left behind.

The biggest difference now is found in the definition of "quickly" - which will be much more severe than in prior days.

>> Books Mentioned in the Episode <<

• A More Beautiful Question - by Berger
• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - by Covey
• Good to Great - by Collins

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Here at The Kyle Rowland Podcast we like to focus on the "Plateau of Productivity" (see Gartner's Hype Cycle) - as such, we bring you our latest episode on actually useful, highly practical artificial intelligence.

If you've ever asked yourself the question - "On what and how might I actually use this AI tech in real life?" This is the episode for you.

We start with basic definitions and move on to some real world examples, along with some principles that you can apply in your context.

So join me and my guest Jeff Mergler as we unpack this useful technology.

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Jeff Mergler is a data scientist and educator at Altair, now part of Siemens. He first began developing data analytics solutions in 2000, and began teaching in 2004. With master's degrees in Information Systems from Webster University and Statistics from Colorado State University, he has enjoyed developing and delivering solutions and courses across mathematics, software development, engineering, and the data sciences. Jeff has a passion for facilitating innovation, by empowering and enabling people.

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Book mentioned in the episode:

Powerful, Profitable Software Products - by Kyle Rowland - https://a.co/d/2klqbDD

In the late 2000's the phrase "breaking down the monolith" was being uttered in every corner of the tech universe. The passion was connected to technical features like scalability and performance - even spawning a number of techniques and technologies for operating these isolated runtime components.

The real win seemed to have been largely missed - the ability for teams to be separate and thus faster in their delivery.

Organizations were ridding themselves of the need to coordinate all change and delivery across all teams. They were beginning to realize their potential.

That beautiful awakening has stalled out somewhat - join Bob Provencher and I as we discuss the benefits and some of the tricks to bringing it freshly into your organization.

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Bob Provencher is the Chief Technology Officer at PDHI, a Health and Wellness Platform-as-a-Service provider. With a career spanning software craftsmanship, cloud architecture, and AI innovation, Bob leads initiatives that bridge traditional .NET and Azure development with cutting-edge artificial intelligence.

He has a deep background in game development and low-level device driver engineering, giving him a rare blend of creative and systems-level insight. Bob is passionate about building scalable, intelligent solutions and exploring how emerging technologies can enhance real-world health and wellness platforms.

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Books mentioned in the podcast:

Monolith to Microservices: https://a.co/d/0gJxvsm

The Mikado Method: https://a.co/d/3424eBK

Our guest today is Sean Merron - a seasoned software engineering leader. Together we dig into some of the unique challenges involved in remote work - a capability that has developed rapidly over the last several years. Because the expansion has been so rapid, it's useful to ask questions about its efficacy as a method for delivering software. With the agile manifesto, the idea of the superiority of in-person communication took hold. As we got experience with building asynchronously, and possibly more importantly, with the advancement of the tooling, that superiority may hold, but perhaps in a less absolute sense.

Join us as we ask these questions and mine out some of the useful related techniques that come from the software development trenches.

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With over 25 years of experience in software engineering, 17 working remotely, Sean Merron is a seasoned technology leader currently serving as VP of Software Engineering at Cloud Theory. He's also the founder of Zeal Technology, a consulting firm focused on scaling businesses through cloud-based automation and custom software solutions. Sean's career spans roles as software engineer, engineering director, CTO, and podcast host with millions of downloads. He's passionate about solving complex business problems with innovative tech, having led teams that delivered solutions for Fortune 100 enterprises and startups alike. Rooted in faith and community service, Sean brings a purpose-driven approach to leadership and innovation.

For questions or conversations about software engineering, you can contact Sean at:
seanmerron.com (his linkedin account).

From change management to marketing and product management, our guest Egil Østhus and I hit on a wide array of topics in our quest to understand and illuminate the humble feature flag. The idea of the feature flag is an important one because it's one of the primary supports to *actual* continuous delivery - it enables engineering teams to deliver with minimal friction. This multiplies creativity (that is to say "innovation"), the impact we're bringing to the lives of our customers, and through that, our own happiness and satisfaction with our work.

While surprisingly powerful in their consequence, feature flags can - at times - also be surprisingly difficult to put into play.

Egil helps with tangible, practical advice on how to get over some of these challenges - and of course offers a powerful tool ("Unleash") that we can all immediately leverage.

To start with the open source tool - or to even jump in all the way with Unleash - go to getunleash.io.

About Egil
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Egil Østhus is the founder and CEO of Unleash. Unleash is the largest open source FeatureOps platform globally today, and is used by massive enterprises across the globe. Prior to founding Unleash, Egil has worked in different corporate jobs including Cisco, Accenture and Visma as an SVP. Egil is super excited about software engineering leadership and is all about building high efficiency organizations that have a lot of fun together. A fun fact: Egil holds 2 patents in the video conferencing space. When not at work, Egil loves to run and spend time with his wife and two boys, age 13 and 17.

Taking the step from focusing on tactics to delivering a well-crafted, world-class engineering organization isn't as difficult as you might think. It's a lot like improving your health, though - easy to talk about but takes relentless discipline to do.

Listen this month for some clarity on this topic - as we explain the move from Executive Tactician to Executive Craftsman.

Join in as our guest, Molly Jaggers, and I dive into the details of an emerging best practice - structuring organizations around a holistic product-engineering approach. Disappearing are the days when engineers can crawl into their coding corners only to emerge days or weeks later with some new bit of functionality. Disappearing also are the days when a product management organization disappears offsite only to reappear at a later time with a grand roadmap.

The act of building a product - something that is actually useful to a human being - is an experimental one. It's an iterative thing. So those joining in on the invention must have imaginations and intellects that are joined - otherwise the invention they pursue will be ungrounded in either need or technical possibility....or both.

We hope you are as excited as we are to start this important discussion - and hash out some of the details about how such an integration might be practically pursued.

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Molly is a seasoned product and marketing leader with over 11 years of experience driving revenue growth, scaling teams, and leading cross-functional initiatives across diverse environments, from nimble growth-stage startups to established corporations. What truly sets Molly apart is her unique ability to bridge the gap between product strategy and market impact, while keeping a close eye on the process and ensuring teams are focused on getting the right work done efficiently. She has been instrumental in establishing the go-to-market process and integrating it seamlessly into the product development lifecycle.