Scaling Full-Stack Team in 2023 (Spoiler Alert - Not By Size) - The Pledge (Part 1)
Tags: productivity, testing, management, codequality
Published: 2023-03-08 03:07:55

Note that everything written here is solely mine and it does not represent any of my past/present/future employers.

This three-part series will walk through my mini journey in search of a new holy grail for latest software development/delivery techniques
- Part 1 - The Pledge (this post)
- Part 2 - [The Turn](https://dev.to/chknim/scaling-full-stack-team-in-2023-spoiler-alert-not-by-size-the-turn-part-2-5clc)
- Part 3 - [The Prestige](https://dev.to/chknim/scaling-full-stack-team-in-2023-spoiler-alert-not-by-size-the-prestige-part-3-2jmf)

## The Pledge
It is roughly 2 months into 2023 and I have been thinking about summing up what I learned since last year about my journey embarked in search of a newer holy grail for latest software development/delivery techniques out there.  My context is what's suitable for a full-stack bite-sized squad of 7-10 engineers.

My criteria is quite simple; how to support such team to constantly produce a series of winning products, releases or feature in the new economic environment.

Metaphorically, if the US Federal Reserve's dual mandate is maximum employment and price stability, my search sure comes with one.

> **Maximum Quality and Optimized Time.**

Unlike the past decade of free money with low interest rate and growth-first-cash-flow-later, nowadays investors are looking for more return (cash flow).  The principles to producing winning products from engineering perspective in this era should also adapt. Actually it should have always been the case but the past decade might have enticed different behaviors.

As a matter of fact, when I first thought about quality and time, they're usually on the opposite end for the fact that more often than not, more time is required for better quality and vice versa. There is another quote popping in my head about 4 years ago that seems to better describe the relationship between the two when it comes to software development.

> **Quality is paramount. But Time is sacrosanct.**

I was inspired by a remarkable dialogue between two persons on a Netflix series Frankenstein Chronicles and it goes as

> **A man's rights are paramount. But a gentleman's rights are sacrosanct.**

By the way, if you're a fan of fiction series like me and have not watched The Frankenstein Chronicles on Netflix (It's from 2017 so it may already be taken down), I truly enjoy this type of period crime and it is fun to watch.

Out of a lot of reading and searching, I found 2 sources to my inspiration for this article that also got me reshaping my perspective about Quality and Time.

The first is a series of article from Lyft Engineering (you can start with the first part [here](https://eng.lyft.com/scaling-productivity-on-microservices-at-lyft-part-1-a2f5d9a77813) and continue to the rest of the series from there.  In this series, a group of Lyft Engineering teams shared their learning from the early day until 2018 where Lyft grew from 100 engineers to 1000+ engineers and how they attained maximum quality as well as optimized time with different approach to testing paradigm.  The key takeaway for me is predominantly the paradigm shift of the importance and roles of local testing, integration testing and production testing.

The second is a set of articles by Lucas F. Costa; [Engineering Metrics](https://lucasfcosta.com/2022/08/31/engineering-metrics.html), [Finish What You Start](https://lucasfcosta.com/2022/07/19/finish-what-you-start.html), and [Measure Queues Not Cycle Time](https://lucasfcosta.com/2022/06/12/measure-queues-not-cycle-time.html).  I ran into his name from listening to a podcast which at the time got me really excited that eventually somebody provided me a very convincing case that **_Time_** in the context of software development in general or even in Agile principles is not about being the fastest that always matters.

In my next article of this series - [The Turn](https://dev.to/chknim/scaling-full-stack-team-in-2023-spoiler-alert-not-by-size-the-turn-part-2-k0g-temp-slug-935801), I will walk you through what's my learning and how I came up with a set of practices I believe is the best way to scale a full-stack team in 2023.