The Kyle Rowland Podcast

Looking into the future with our guest Erik Erichsen. AI is already making a huge impact on our craft, changing the way we solve problems and even how we conceive them. As Engineering Leaders it falls on us to prepare our people, and to keep our perspective broad enough so that the ongoing evolution of our industry is something that we can leverage and not something that crushes us. This means understanding the timeless principles that make for great software development - for great value add to our customers. It simultaneously means not ignoring the new context or how those principles are expressed in the new environment. Join us as we explore this and more in this month's episode... --- Our guest Erik Erichsen: Erik has over 25 years of experience in the technology industry ranging from startups to the enterprise organizations in both the public and private sector. During this time, he's served in a variety of roles including software engineer, architect, technology leader, product manager, and Divisional CIO for a Fortune 500 organization. His passion is leveraging technology to transform Mission-Led organizations and empowering individuals to have transformative impact. While he has been in various management roles for more than a decade, he stays closely connected with emerging technologies and trends.

Join us as seasoned engineering leader Chuck Goss pops the hood on his eminently practical but quite refined engineering practice. Currently leading the engineering organization at the innovative Kizen Technologies, Chuck will share some key tactical tools that he's used to create a powerful and productive engineering machine - even in a highly distributed context.

2025 is all set to be an epic year. As 2024 is coming to a close the question is - what can I be doing to make sure my organization and I are nice and early to the party. How can we be setting ourselves up to maximize the impact and growth that will be coming to us from this bright future. As John Maxwell says, everything rises and falls on leadership. That's even more true in technology, where we regularly define and redefine the nature of our business. How can we be Executive Craftsmen that build and lead great organizations. Join us this episode as we dig into this. (Powerful, Profitable Software Products, The Executive Guidbook - https://a.co/d/gyRwMWj )

Ask 5 people this question and you'll likely get 5 different definitions - "what is software architecture?" It's a challenge because it originates from an very interesting metaphor; one that explains a lot, but that simultaneously opens a number of questions. In this episode with guest Erik Erichsen, we dive into what software architecture is, how it provides value for an organization, and some thoughts about how our practical approach has to be deeply considered in the face of theory. Our guest Erik has over 25 years of experience in the technology industry ranging from startups to the enterprise organizations in both the public and private sector. During this time, he's served in a variety of roles including software engineer, architect, technology leader, product manager, and Divisional CIO for a Fortune 500 organization. His passion is leveraging technology to transform Mission-Led organizations and empowering individuals to have transformative impact. While he has been in various management roles for more than a decade, he stays closely connected with emerging technologies and trends.

This month we dive into the tricky topic of dealing with jerks. Eric Williamson teaches us some tricks for dealing with difficult people. More importantly, of course, he sheds some light on how to not be difficult people ourselves. I hope you enjoy listening in on this conversation as much as Eric and I did having it. Just for some background, Eric is a professional development consultant, business coach and keynote speaker. He is the author of the book, How to Work with Jerks: Getting Stuff Done with People you Can't Stand, and co-author of the best-selling book, When Work Works: Cutting Edge Solutions for the Contemporary Workplace. He has over two decades of professional development experience, speaking, and most importantly, real-life, hands on in-the trenches business experience in both the private and public sectors. He works with organizations to build more collaborative and harmonious workplace environments by building stronger customer and workplace relationships. (Brené Brown book mentioned in the podcast: Dare To Lead)

Improving in the art of software development can be intimidating. With this month's episode we dive quickly into the basic algorithm that we've used repeatedly to realize powerful improvement on software teams!

Join us this month as we dive further into team make-up - asking the difficult question, what is a senior engineer? And more practically - how do we create and/or discover them? We have Bob Provencher - CTO at PDHI - with us again to help tackle these tricky but tactically terrific questions. Last month he coined and defined a great term - SINO - senior in name only. This month he will help us learn to discern between top-shelf talent and the seat-warming knock-off (the SINO). He will also provide us with some in-the-trenches advice to promote growth in those with potential and to discover premium talent as we look to hire. So sit back and enjoy - and be ready to be taken to the next level in your leadership journey.