Bunkers Blog

How can you "go faster" as a software engineering team?   Throughout my career, I’ve invested a significant amount of time helping engineering teams maximize their effectiveness—getting them into processes that are both efficient and impactful. Inevitably, my boss will come to me with the challenging question, “How can we get the team to do more and go faster?” Given my experience and after evaluating the best teams I’ve ever worked with, I’ve come to understand what made those teams special. These high-performing teams were always clear on what they were working towards, had taken steps to make their development process easier, and had a strong support structure in place to help them when needed. This reflection has shaped the way I now evaluate and approach my own teams, looking through the lens of three critical areas: Clarity, Development Experience, and Collaboration & Teamwork. When these three areas are optimized, teams not only move faster but also deliver higher ...

TL;DR   AI tools like ChatGPT-4 and GitHub Copilot, in their current state, have incredible potential to boost productivity. While they still require substantial hand-holding, reviewing, and slight alterations at nearly every step, they enabled me to complete my project 75%-80% faster thanks to my coding expertise. By using these tools, I was significantly more capable of getting features done in far less time. Though AI coding companions are promising, they are not yet fully autonomous—engineers remain essential in guiding and refining the work to achieve optimal results. It will be interesting to see how long it takes before these tools evolve to a point where engineers may not be needed for the majority of the development process.  For the full story, continue reading below. Introduction: My Objective  As an engineering leader with 20 years of development experience, I aim to help my engineering teams work faster and more efficiently. To do that, I wanted to explore th...