Tobi(as Mende)

The 5 Processes Every Business Should Automate First

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 05:00:00 +0000

The 5 Processes Every Business Should Automate First

Most businesses I work with know they should automate more. They have heard the promises. They might even have an n8n instance running somewhere with one or two small workflows that someone set up a while ago.

AI Made Me 10x More Productive – Now What?

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 05:00:00 +0000

Thoughts on AI, Productivity, and What We Should Do Differently

In the last couple of months, I got to use Claude code a lot for software development, and I am at a point with it, where it gives me consistently high-quality results at incredible speed. In 99.5% of all cases, I get the results that I expect/desire. In other areas of my life, (other) AI tools have a drastic influence on my productivity and (sometimes) even my ability to do certain things, too.

Building Diving Nomads in Public Part 3

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 05:00:00 +0000

Building in Public – Part 3: How We built the Diving Nomads Partner Map

This is part three of the Building Diving Nomads in Public series.

After sharing how we automated outreach for dive centers and coliving / coworking partners, this chapter is about the thing people actually use – our Partner Map.

Building in Public: How Diving Nomads Automates Coliving & Coworking Partner Outreach

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 05:00:00 +0000

At Diving Nomads, we’re building something special for digital nomads who love scuba diving. Our mission is to make it easy for them to find great places to work, live, and dive — without having to choose between beautiful dive spots and solid remote work setups.

Building Diving Nomads in Public Part 1

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 05:00:00 +0000

Building Diving Nomads in Public: How We Onboard Dive Centers and Automate Memberships with (Almost) No Code

TL;DR
We’re building a platform for digital nomads with a passion for scuba diving. Our lean, automation-first tech stack allows us to move fast, deliver value early, and maybe inspire other early-stage founders to rethink how they build.

Transforming Developer Experience: Lessons from Building a Platform Team

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Creating a superior developer experience is key to motivating and streamlining engineering teams, serving as a strategic pillar for business success. Focus areas include optimizing workflow, reducing cognitive load, and establishing efficient feedback loops. As technology grows more complex, achieving these becomes increasingly challenging.

Rethinking Leadership in B2B SaaS: Lessons from Self-Managing Organizations

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 05:00:00 +0000

Rethinking Leadership in B2B SaaS: Lessons from Self-Managing Organizations

Two months ago, I joined the Corporate Rebels Masterclass – a hands-on exploration of how pioneering companies like Buurtzorg, Haier, Viisi, and others approach leadership, structure, and collaboration. These aren’t companies tinkering at the edges. They’ve built entire systems that challenge our default assumptions about how work should be organized.

Making Better Decisions – How we can decide better together.

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

With the number of daily decisions increasing significantly over the past ten years, effective decision-making is crucial. Decisions need to be made as fast and as good as possible. This talk focuses on the value of collaborative decision-making, highlighting benefits such as improved problem-solving through diverse perspectives and enhanced commitment from team members. We will explore various group decision-making methods supported by real-world examples.

Why Delegation Fails – and What to Do About It

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Fri, 30 May 2025 05:00:00 +0000

“You don’t have a delegation problem. You have a clarity and trust problem.”

I used to think I was helping my team by staying involved. Answering every question. Checking every detail. In reality, I was slowing everyone down – including myself.

From OK-ish to Outstanding – How any team can become a high-performing one.

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Wed, 21 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Most software engineering teams operate far below their capabilities. They perform okay, good enough, or average. But what if any team can reach higher productivity, joy, and excellence?

In this session, we will discover why most teams do not use their full potential and what every one of us can do to lead our teams toward high performance and engineering excellence.

Being the Leader Your Team Actually Wants to Follow

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 05:00:00 +0000

There’s no shortage of leadership advice out there. Everyone has a framework, a matrix, or a magic quadrant. And honestly? Most of it feels disconnected from the messy, real-world challenges of building a company – especially when your team is growing, priorities are shifting weekly, and you’re just trying to keep your calendar from eating you alive.

Deciding Better in Organizations

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 29 Mar 2025 05:00:00 +0000

Deciding Better: How to Make Faster, Smarter, and More Effective Decisions in Your Organization

The quality of your decisions influences the quality of your life. The quality of the decisions in your organization determines your company’s future.

The Leadership Dilemma – When Times Change and Generations Collide

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 01 Mar 2025 05:00:00 +0000

The Leadership Dilemma – When Times Change and Generations Collide

Your leadership style is heavily influenced by the leadership you have experienced yourself. The way how you run and build a company is the result of the companies you have worked in, your experiences, and your considerations.

Organizational Change Leadership

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 01 Feb 2025 05:00:00 +0000

Organizational Change and Leadership — Driving change effectively within organizations

Many people believe that you have to be in an official leadership position with official authority and power to lead change in organizations. This is far from the truth. I would even argue that it is easier to drive successful change if you do not have that formal authority. This is because without formal authority, you have to lead the change right (we will get to that in a bit). With formal authority, on the other hand, you can force the change, which can lead to frustration, resignation, and damage to the organization overall. Even worse, people might not speak up against change that they do not understand or that does not make sense to them. Therefore, whenever being in a leadership position with formal power, be extra cautious about how you drive change. In my article about organizational tension processing, I already tapped into an approach how we can initiate change in organizations without formal (hierarchical) authority. In today’s article, I explore the topic of how to drive the actual change and how to ensure that it becomes a success, in greater detail.

Better Alternatives to Performance Reviews

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 07 Dec 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Better Alternatives to Performance Reviews

Traditional performance reviews often fall short of delivering the value they promise. Even worse: They can have disastrous effects on motivation, engagement, and performance of teams and individuals. I have explored the reasons for this in detail in my last newsletter. In today’s article, I would like to explore what we can do instead to satisfy the actual needs companies and individuals might have.

Performance Reviews Considered Harmful

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 02 Nov 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Performance Reviews Considered Harmful

Performance reviews are widely accepted in software companies to provide feedback, justify or object to promotions, and discuss compensation increases. Typically, they occur between an engineering manager and their reports, often cited as a necessary function of management within an organization. They are simply “how the world works.” Big companies do them, small companies do them, and highly paid consultants develop new and better ways of conducting them.

From Code to Customer – How Continuous Deployment can Accelerate Your Software Development Cycle

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Many organizations struggle with streamlining the software delivery process, resulting in slower delivery, lower quality, and decreased customer satisfaction. They also face challenges in establishing efficient CD pipelines and implementing cultural changes necessary for successful CD implementation.

Organizational Tension Processing – Driving Change in Self-Organizing Companies

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 05 Oct 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Organizational Tension Processing – Driving Change in Self-Organizing Companies

Newcomers to self-organization often mistake the lack of a people-hierarchy for complete chaos. The term “flat” can be misleading, as it suggests that self-organizing companies lack any structure. In reality, this is far from the case.

Don’t motivate people

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 24 Aug 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Don’t motivate people

Now and then, when working with leaders, I get the question of how they could motivate their people. From their perspective, their people seem not motivated, not driven enough to bring the results they want to see.

How to give outstanding code reviews (if you have to)

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 20 Jul 2024 05:00:00 +0000

How to give outstanding code reviews (if you have to)

Most software companies use code reviews to ensure that at least two people check each part of the code base and maintain its quality. Although I prefer pair or team programming over asynchronous code reviews, I recognize that this isn’t always possible. In such cases, asynchronous code reviews are the next best option.

Increase Engineering Productivity by 50% Through Focus and Flow

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Increase Engineering Productivity by 50% Through Focus and Flow

Creating an environment where developers can maintain focus and achieve flow can lead to a 50% increase in productivity, as research suggests. But how do we create such an environment?

Value-Stream-Oriented Kanban

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 20 Apr 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Value-Stream-Oriented Kanban

Many teams, especially in the startup environment, move away from Scrum and use a leaner Kanban-based approach. This is a good thing. I don’t think Scrum is a suitable framework for modern, fast, agile companies. – Especially not in the SaaS field (the reasoning behind this statement will become another article, eventually).

Things I love and hate about the state of software companies in 2024

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Things I love and hate about the state of software companies in 2024

Disclaimer: This started as a rant, not meant to be published. But sticking to my “New Year’s resolution” to write about what triggers me most, I decided to publish it anyway. I wanted to publish it as a LinkedIn post, but it got too long. So here is the unshortened, unpolished and authentic original version of this document, most of which I wrote on my phone after waking up on a Sunday at 5:45am. 😬

11 Aspects Most Startups Get Wrong About OKRs and How to Fix it

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 24 Feb 2024 05:00:00 +0000

11 Aspects Most Startups Get Wrong About OKRs and How to Fix it

Objectives and key results (OKRs) can be a powerful tool. But as with any framework or methodology out there, just applying it as others do will likely not yield the best results. It can even harm your organization.

Self-organizing companies don’t need managers but coaches

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 20 Jan 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Self-organizing companies don’t need managers but coaches

If you are a manager or consider managing teams and organizations a significant part of your profession, the title will likely cause a feeling of rejection or a strong disagreement. I invite you to read on anyway.

Cutting through the noise – becoming myself again

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 13 Jan 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Cutting through the noise – becoming myself again

In the last two years, I got tons of advice about how to start my own business, how to find clients, how to market myself, how much to charge, how to position myself, … you name it.

May the LLM be with You – On Planes and German Trains

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 05:00:00 +0000

May the LLM be with You – On Planes and German Trains

This might be the unofficial seventh part of the “AI for DevEx” series. LLM tools are a great help during the entire software development process. But what if we are offline or if data privacy concerns disallow using ChatGPT and similar tools?

LLMs for General Productivity Improvements (AI for DevEx, Part 6)

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 23 Dec 2023 05:00:00 +0000

LLMs for General Productivity Improvements (AI for DevEx, Part 6)

Welcome to part 6 of AI for DevEx. In this last part of the series, I will give some inspiration on how AI, namely LLMs, can help engineers with their everyday tasks.

What AI Tools Mean for Deployment, Operations and Security (AI for DevEx, Part 5)

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 16 Dec 2023 05:00:00 +0000

What AI Tools Mean for Deployment, Operations and Security (AI for DevEx, Part 5)

Welcome back to AI for DevEx, Part 5. In the last part, we explored how AI tools can help us to improve our collaboration and communication. Today, we’re focusing on an often ignored aspect of software engineering: the importance of deployment, operation, monitoring, and security for teams that manage their software from creation to running it in production. Terms like DevOps, DevSecOps, and DevOps have been created to emphasize the need for teams to own their software completely.

How AI Improves Collaboration and Communication (AI for DevEx, Part 4)

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 09 Dec 2023 05:00:00 +0000

How AI Improves Collaboration and Communication (AI for DevEx, Part 4)

Welcome to part 4 of AI for DevEx. In this article, we will explore how AI can help us improve how we communicate synchronously and asynchronously, how we collaborate, and how it can even increase the value of documentation.

How Testing and Quality Assurance Change Through AI (AI for DevEx, Part 3)

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 02 Dec 2023 05:00:00 +0000

How Testing and Quality Assurance Change Through AI (AI for DevEx, Part 3)

Part 3 of the AI for DevEx series examines testing and quality assurance. It builds on Part 1, where we saw how AI and Large Language Models can assist in coding. We focused on how AI can generate test cases for unit and integration tests there.

Custom GPTs as a Developer Companion (AI for DevEx, Part 2)

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 05:00:00 +0000

Custom GPTs as a Developer Companion (AI for DevEx, Part 2)

Part 2 of “AI for DevEx” focuses on the new GPTs announced by OpenAI on November 6th and how they can enhance the experience for developers.

Writing and Improving Code with AI (AI for DevEx, Part 1)

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 18 Nov 2023 05:00:00 +0000

Writing and Improving Code with AI (AI for DevEx, Part 1)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is here to stay. It’s become a part of our daily lives through ChatGPT, Midjourney, or even the occasional frustrating chatbot. Despite their imperfections and the mix of risks and opportunities they present, AI tools are transforming the way we create, manage, and improve software.

Collaboration for Introverts: The Myth of the solo-working Introvert

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 11 Nov 2023 05:00:00 +0000

Collaboration for Introverts: The Myth of the solo-working Introvert

Almost all the teams I met throughout my career were collaborating too little. Productivity, quality, alignment, and the feeling of belonging rose in every team where we increased the amount of collaboration.

Benefits of Collaboration

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 04 Nov 2023 04:00:00 +0000

Benefits of Collaboration

In my career, I’ve seen many “teams” that mainly collaborate only when the work gets tough or if someone has been stuck for days. In these cases, teamwork is more of an exception than a regular practice. This approach is backward. Collaboration should be the standard way of working, and we should only choose to work independently for good reasons.

How outstanding teams form without team-building exercises

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 28 Oct 2023 04:00:00 +0000

How outstanding teams form without team-building exercises

Building outstanding and high-performing teams is the dream of every engineering leader. But how do you do it? And how do you do it when people work remotely, and getting everybody to the same place is difficult and costly?

Selling DevEx Initiatives in Purpose vs. Profit-oriented Companies

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 21 Oct 2023 04:00:00 +0000

Selling DevEx Initiatives in Purpose vs. Profit-oriented Companies

For years, a conversation has been ongoing on naming in the DevEx community (and within myself). Of course. Naming is hard, and why shouldn’t it be any different for this domain?

Why We Need to Stop Measuring (Developer) Productivity — Part 2

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 23 Sep 2023 04:00:00 +0000

Why We Need to Stop Measuring (Developer) Productivity — Part 2

This is part two of my article on measuring developer productivity. In part one, we discussed the dangers of measuring productivity in general and why the need for productivity metrics for management and leadership is based on flawed assumptions.

How BRYTER Achieved Increased Developer Experience, Ownership, Product Quality, and Engineering Effectiveness through Continuous Deployments

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Fri, 22 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

How BRYTER Achieved Increased Developer Experience, Ownership, Product Quality, and Engineering Effectiveness through Continuous Deployments

BRYTER, a German LegalTech scale-up, faced challenges with its monolithic deployment process and limited understanding of the deployment process within its engineering teams. Deployments occurred only twice a week and were managed by the QA team, leading to a lack of visibility and ownership among the other teams.

Why We Need to Stop Measuring (Developer) Productivity — Part 1

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 16 Sep 2023 04:00:00 +0000

Why We Need to Stop Measuring (Developer) Productivity — Part 1

Leaders are obsessed with productivity metrics. This is at least true for leaders who learned to lead in the last century. The ones that follow a command-and-control or carrots-and-sticks leadership approach. They need to measure each department individually to make the right decisions top-down.

Company Culture determines Product Quality

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 09 Sep 2023 04:00:00 +0000

Company Culture determines Product Quality

You have probably heard the claim that improving developer experience and company culture will lead to higher product quality and satisfied customers.

But is this true?
How are company culture and product quality related?
Are product quality and customer satisfaction side effects of a great company culture?

While it would most likely go too far to call customer satisfaction a side effect of great company culture, the connection between company culture and product quality is more substantial than you might expect.

Improving Developer Experience, Level 4: Optimizing Feedback Loops: Tools, Tests, and Teamwork

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 02 Sep 2023 04:00:00 +0000

Improving Developer Experience, Level 4: Optimizing Feedback Loops: Tools, Tests, and Teamwork

Last week, we dove into focus, clarity, and flow. Today, we will delve into the top layer of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (DevEx Edition). Here, it gets a bit technical. While the three bottom layers are mostly concerned with culture, structures, and processes, the top layer includes technical and cultural aspects. This shows how important and foundational non-technical aspects are for outstanding developer experience.

Improving Developer Experience, Level 3: The Triad of Clarity, Focus, and Flow

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 26 Aug 2023 04:00:00 +0000

Improving Developer Experience, Level 3: The Triad of Clarity, Focus, and Flow

Last week, we delved deep into “Belonging, Collaboration, and Communication“. Further up in the Maslow Pyramid of DevEx, we have the factors that affect focus, clarity, and flow. This article will explore how we can improve those factors.

Improving Developer Experience, Level 2: Belonging, Collaboration, and Communication

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 19 Aug 2023 04:00:00 +0000

Improving Developer Experience, Level 2: Belonging, Collaboration, and Communication

As part of the ongoing series about improving Developer Experience (DevEx), the last article highlighted the significance of psychological safety, stability, and work-life balance.

Improving Developer Experience: Starting with Psychological Safety, Team Stability, and Work-Life Balance

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 12 Aug 2023 06:00:00 +0000

Improving Developer Experience: Starting with Psychological Safety, Team Stability, and Work-Life Balance

As companies strive to foster an environment that promotes creativity, motivation, and productivity, they increasingly recognize the role Developer Experience plays in these efforts.

Measuring Developer Experience – A Balanced Approach

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 05 Aug 2023 06:00:00 +0000

Measuring Developer Experience – A Balanced Approach

Developer Experience is one of the most essential factors for high-performing teams and organizations. Thus, the obvious question is how to measure, assess and understand the status quo within your organization and team.

11 Tips to Prevent Survey Fatigue in Your Organization

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 29 Jul 2023 04:00:00 +0000

11 Tips to Prevent Survey Fatigue in Your Organization

Surveys are a vital tool to measure and understand the perceived developer experience within a team or organization. People who run surveys often face the challenge of decreasing responses. Survey fatigue can be a huge problem when trying to get meaningful data about the state of the developer experience within an organization.

Ways to Decrease Performance: Daily Standups

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 22 Jul 2023 06:00:00 +0000

Ways to Decrease Performance: Daily Standups

In this second article of my series, “Ways to Decrease Performance”, I will dive into the exciting topic of “daily standups.” Daily standups are an important ritual of many agile teams, which makes them a worthy subject in this series.

Ways to Decrease Performance: Velocity Tracking

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 15 Jul 2023 06:00:00 +0000

Ways to Decrease Performance: Velocity Tracking

This is the first article of my series, “Ways to Decrease Performance”, which intends to trigger critical reflection on common “Agile” practices, that is, practices that I see many ”agile” teams doing.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs — DevEx Edition

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 08 Jul 2023 04:00:00 +0000

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs — DevEx Edition

Do you know how to prioritize your developer experience investments? You might have read about the three dimensions and 25+ factors of developer experience (see below). But what to do about that? — Maslow’s hierarchy of needs gives the answer.

From Conflict to Collaboration in Engineering Teams

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 01 Jul 2023 04:00:00 +0000

From Conflict to Collaboration in Engineering Teams

In any team setting, conflicts are inevitable. They can arise from various sources, such as differences in perspectives, competing priorities, or communication gaps. Engineering teams are no exception.

How to Measure Developer Experience: The Danger of Metrics

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 24 Jun 2023 05:00:00 +0000

How to Measure Developer Experience: The Danger of Metrics

Whenever I talk with people about developer experience or developer productivity, one question is never far: How do we measure it?

Developer Experience at Risk: Red Flags for Engineering Leaders

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 17 Jun 2023 05:00:00 +0000

Developer Experience at Risk: Red Flags for Engineering Leaders

Developer Experience is the most important driver behind productivity, engagement, and job satisfaction. Therefore, improving the perceived experience of their engineers should be the top priority for engineering leaders at all levels.

Engineering Strategy: Actionable and Specific Guidance for Growing Engineering Teams (High-Purpose Environments, Part 6)

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 10 Jun 2023 05:00:00 +0000

Engineering Strategy: Actionable and Specific Guidance for Growing Engineering Teams (High-Purpose Environments, Part 6)

In the previous articles of my high-purpose environments series, we have explored the importance of vision, values, guiding principles, and engineering mission in creating a thriving and purpose-driven engineering culture. In this final article, I will delve into engineering strategy — a crucial element that translates high-level objectives into actionable and specific guidance for growing engineering teams.

Engineering Excellence through Mission-Driven Teams (High-Purpose Environments, Part 5)

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 03 Jun 2023 05:00:00 +0000

Engineering Excellence through Mission-Driven Teams (High-Purpose Environments, Part 5)

In software engineering and product development, high-purpose environments are vital for driving innovation, creativity, and collaboration. A strong sense of purpose, clear values, and a commitment to continuous growth and improvement characterize these environments.

The Importance of Values and Guiding Principles for Distributed Decision-Making (High-Purpose Environments, Part 4)

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 27 May 2023 05:00:00 +0000

The Importance of Values and Guiding Principles for Distributed Decision-Making (High-Purpose Environments, Part 4)

Values and guiding principles are crucial in enabling distributed decision-making within an organization. They empower individuals to make decisions autonomously, without constant supervision or hierarchical approval. This leads to increased efficiency and agility and fosters a sense of ownership and responsibility among team members.

Crafting a Compelling Engineering Vision (High-Purpose Environments, Part 3)

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 20 May 2023 05:00:00 +0000

Crafting a Compelling Engineering Vision (High-Purpose Environments, Part 3)

Creating a solid engineering vision is essential to building a high-purpose environment. A well-defined vision acts as a guiding star for your team and ensures that everyone is working towards the same goal.

The Importance of an Engineering Vision (High-Purpose Environments, Part 2)

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 13 May 2023 05:00:00 +0000

The Importance of an Engineering Vision (High-Purpose Environments, Part 2)

Have you ever seen organizations and teams spinning in circles, having endless discussions, and never seeming able to make progress? Have you witnessed environments where every decision was made by a leader in the hierarchical sense? Or even worse, by someone able to exert a specific power and overrule others?

Creating High-Purpose Environments (High-Purpose Environments, Part 1)

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 06 May 2023 05:00:00 +0000

Creating High-Purpose Environments (High-Purpose Environments, Part 1)

High-purpose environments are cultural spaces that inspire, motivate, and empower individuals to work toward a common goal. A strong sense of purpose, clear values, and a commitment to continuous growth and improvement characterize these environments.

Managing Technical Debt in Software Development

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 29 Apr 2023 07:00:00 +0000

Managing Technical Debt in Software Development

Organizations often accumulate technical debt as the pressure to deliver customer value quickly increases, systems grow, and extending functionality the right way becomes more difficult.

Default-to-Open: A Principle for High-Performance Organizations

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 22 Apr 2023 06:00:00 +0000

Default-to-Open: A Principle for High-Performance Organizations

Sharing, communicating, and persisting knowledge, information, and decisions is a challenge that most companies have. This challenge may become even bigger in remote-first companies.

The Inverse Conway Manoeuvre in Existing Systems – It does not work!

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 15 Apr 2023 06:00:00 +0000

The Inverse Conway Manoeuvre in Existing Systems – It does not work!

In 1968, Melvin E. Conway postulated a law about a connection between organizational design and system structure, which got pretty famous. The paper has the title “How Do Committees Invent?” and the law goes as follows:

Weekly Kickoff: Reconnect and Kickstart as a Team

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 08 Apr 2023 06:00:00 +0000

Weekly Kickoff: Reconnect and Kickstart as a Team

It’s Monday! 🚀 Developer Experience Kickoff

This was the title of a blocker in the calendars of members of the DevEx team at BRYTER, spanning from 9:00 CET to 12:00 CET every Monday. Three hours. Quite some time for a meeting. Unless: This was not a meeting, as you may know it.

Deep Work and Collaboration in Platform- and Enabling-Teams

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 01 Apr 2023 06:00:00 +0000

Deep Work and Collaboration in Platform- and Enabling-Teams

This is the fourth and last articles of my series about deep work. The first article was about the value of deep work for peak performance. The second article was about seven tips for more deep work for individuals. The third articles was about deep work for teams.

Deep Work is a Team Effort

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 25 Mar 2023 06:00:00 +0000

Deep Work is a Team Effort

This is the third article in my series about deep work. The first article was about the value of deep work for peak performance. In my last article, I gave seven tips on how to get more deep work time as an individual.

7 Tips for more Deep Work for Individuals

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 18 Mar 2023 06:00:00 +0000

7 Tips for more Deep Work for Individuals

In my last article, I highlighted the importance of deep work to achieve high productivity and quality of work. Today, I will follow up with seven tips for more deep work as an individual.

The Value of Deep Work for Peak Performance

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 11 Mar 2023 06:00:00 +0000

The Value of Deep Work for Peak Performance

As somebody who juggled various roles and responsibilities as a software engineer, architect and tech lead, I certainly understand the importance of deep work and how difficult it can be to get it when working with other people.

Happy without hierarchies: Who cares for employee happiness if there are no hierarchies?

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 04 Mar 2023 06:00:00 +0000

Happy without hierarchies: Who cares for employee happiness if there are no hierarchies?

Working with different clients has the benefit of discovering many contexts and with that, different perspectives, observations, and questions.

Dysfunctional without knowing: 5 signs that your team might have a problem

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 25 Feb 2023 06:00:00 +0000

Dysfunctional without knowing: 5 signs that your team might have a problem

In the last 10+ years, I have worked in and with many teams. And I was fortunate to experience working in many fantastic teams. Teams where people cared for each other, trusted each other and were committed to deliver the best results together. People, where conflicts and disagreements were beneficial and important to achieve better results.

The Benefits of Remote Work for Developer Teams: Increased Productivity and Better Work-Life Balance

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 18 Feb 2023 06:00:00 +0000

The Benefits of Remote Work for Developer Teams: Increased Productivity and Better Work-Life Balance

In today’s fast-paced and constantly changing world, many organisations are rethinking traditional work arrangements and embracing the benefits of remote work.

Make three friends with one gift: Why developer experience is key to productivity, engineering excellence and stakeholder satisfaction.

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 11 Feb 2023 06:00:00 +0000

Make three friends with one gift: Why developer experience is key to productivity, engineering excellence and stakeholder satisfaction.

In today’s fast-paced, technology-driven world, software development has become a critical aspect of many organisations. However, with increased demands on development teams, it’s easy to overlook the importance of developer experience.

The Importance of Developer Productivity in a Recession

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 26 Nov 2022 13:30:00 +0000

The Importance of Developer Productivity in a Recession

When times get rough, companies and investors get more cautious with how they spend and invest their money. Many companies reduce their spending on employees and salaries by laying off large numbers of people.

How to do Architecture Mapping Workshops in a Remote Setup

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 23 Jul 2022 13:27:00 +0000

How to do Architecture Mapping Workshops in a Remote Setup

Mapping the architecture of the system that you are building in your company, is a worthwhile activity. The worth does not come so much from the end-result, the map, but much more from the activity itself, if done right.

Is “Not deploying on Fridays” an outdated practice?

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 09 Jul 2022 13:25:00 +0000

Is “Not deploying on Fridays” an outdated practice?

Every person working in a field somehow related to software development probably has heard the term “Don’t deploy on Fridays”. For years, I considered this as a wise recommendation.

Scratch the Backlog – There is a better way to plan your work

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 25 Jun 2022 13:22:00 +0000

Scratch the Backlog – There is a better way to plan your work

Every approach of making work visible has some kind of “Open Column”, “Backlog” or something similar with a more fancy name. This thing tends to fill up over time, while more and more ideas and tasks get added. Eventually, this container turns into a graveyard for ideas, hopes, and promises.

From two manual monolithic deployments a week to 15+ automated deployments a day

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 11 Jun 2022 13:18:00 +0000

From two manual monolithic deployments a week to 15+ automated deployments a day

We did it. Roughly two years after I joined BRYTER and one year after we started the developer experience team, we finally ended the era of manual deployments for roughly 15 teams.

What Developer Experience Engineers can learn from User Experience Engineers

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 28 May 2022 13:15:00 +0000

What Developer Experience Engineers can learn from User Experience Engineers

While developer experience is a relatively new term, user experience is not. In fact, the term user experience was probably first coined in 1990 by Don Norman:

DRY – DO repeat yourself

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 30 Apr 2022 13:13:00 +0000

DRY – DO repeat yourself

When I started my career as a software developer and already during university, almost no principle was mentioned as often as the DRY principle: “Do not repeat yourself”

Interaction modes of a developer experience team

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 26 Mar 2022 13:10:00 +0000

Interaction modes of a developer experience team

In my last article, I wrote about how we shaped our developer experience team and why we decided for this team constellation. In this article, I will focus on how this team interacts with the other software development teams and which aspects are particularly important.

Shaping developer experience teams for autonomy

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 19 Mar 2022 13:08:00 +0000

Shaping developer experience teams for autonomy

Once you have decided, that a developer experience team would provide value to your organisation, the question is, how such a team should be set up, how it should be shaped, and how it should interact with other teams.

Why a developer experience team can help your company

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 13:05:00 +0000

Why a developer experience team can help your company

Great developer experience is directly linked to great developer productivity and an important factor for company success. Therefore, as explained in my last articles, companies should care and attempt to improve developer experience.

Why companies should care about great developer experience

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 05 Mar 2022 13:02:00 +0000

Why companies should care about great developer experience

Companies might fall into the trap to believe that developer experience is a nice-to-have luxury rather than a necessity. However, this is not the case. As I argued in my last article, high developer productivity results from a great developer experience and thus, the companies’ success ultimately relies on this.

Should we focus on developer experience or developer productivity?

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 26 Feb 2022 12:57:00 +0000

Should we focus on developer experience or developer productivity?

When talking about developer experience, there are a couple of other names thrown into the conversation that all kind-of mean the same, but IMHO have a slightly different touch / focus and can be perceived quite differently.

Code ownership conflicts as a signal for structural mismatch

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 12:54:00 +0000

Code ownership conflicts as a signal for structural mismatch

In my last article, I explained why I believe that individual code ownership is bad and why weak code ownership on a cross-team level can be highly beneficial.

Code Ownership: Keeping the balance between structure and agility

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 12 Feb 2022 12:53:00 +0000

Code Ownership: Keeping the balance between structure and agility

Code ownership is an important topic when it comes to enabling your teams and allowing developers to improve the system while keeping the overhead of changes low.

A platform team for next-level developer experience

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 05 Feb 2022 12:49:00 +0000

A platform team for next-level developer experience

In this article, I am sharing my experience (and opinions) of how a platform team should be set up to provide great developer experience for other development teams.

Remote can be synchronous, too!

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 29 Jan 2022 12:47:00 +0000

Remote can be synchronous, too!

When speaking with different people about their reasons for moving back to office-work or about their concerns about remote work, it often boils down to that they do not believe, that asynchronous works.

OKRs are NOT guaranteed deliveries

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 22 Jan 2022 12:44:00 +0000

OKRs are NOT guaranteed deliveries

Objectives and key results are a great tool for collaborative goal-setting and for aligned on a company-wide direction. While the key objectives or north-stars might be handed down from C-level management, the concrete objectives and key-results are discovered by the teams. Only they know best, how to achieve the bigger goals of the company. Thus, all teams needs to figure out, how they can best contribute to the company goals.

Blameless Post-Mortems: Incidents are a learning opportunity

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 15 Jan 2022 12:42:00 +0000

Blameless Post-Mortems: Incidents are a learning opportunity

Blameless post-mortems are an effective tool to facilitate learning from failures, to share knowledge and to significantly improve the entire system, including software, infrastructure, and processes.

Bonuses are bad – change my mind

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 08 Jan 2022 12:39:00 +0000

Bonuses are bad – change my mind

Compensation is a difficult topic. And depending on the domain and type of work, various models can make sense. Many companies rely on bonuses based on performance, ranking, or commission. Those bonuses usually revolve around clear goals or metrics that can be measured, such as finishing a project in time or closing deals with a certain total valuation.

Why teams need slack – not the tool

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 12:37:00 +0000

Why teams need slack – not the tool

At BRYTER, we were hiring a lot. Therefore, we were of course also discussing how many people of which profession we really need. While management trusted us completely to make the right decisions here, sometimes I encountered that other people were afraid, that we hire people who are not 100% busy.

Focus Week Case Study: Bringing E2E Tests into the CI Pipeline

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 25 Dec 2021 12:34:00 +0000

Focus Week Case Study: Bringing E2E Tests into the CI Pipeline

In my last article, I wrote about focus weeks and how my team is currently doing them at BRYTER. Today, I want to share a case study of our latest focus week.

Focus Weeks: How to collaboratively crack difficult problems with joy

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 18 Dec 2021 12:32:00 +0000

Focus Weeks: How to collaboratively crack difficult problems with joy

Focus weeks are a tool for cracking difficult or complex topics as a team while fostering team collaboration and improving team culture.

There is no system like production: Why you should test in production

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 11 Dec 2021 12:27:00 +0000

There is no system like production: Why you should test in production

Shipping software without testing sounds scary. And this is also, what this article is not about. Organisations spend a lot of time and money to make sure that code is as much error-free as possible, when it reaches production and affects users.

Adopting Continuous Delivery: More a culture change than automation of processes

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 04 Dec 2021 12:07:00 +0000

Adopting Continuous Delivery: More a culture change than automation of processes

Continuous delivery, the process of automatically delivering changes of a system without human interaction, is one of the most beneficial practices that software teams can adopt. In Accelerate, the authors Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble and Gene Kim, discovered a strong link between using continuous delivery and organisational performance: Teams that continuously deliver their changes have a stronger sense of ownership, get faster feedback and need to rework their code less. Furthermore, deployments are less stressful and the risk of burnout is reduced.

Crucial developer practices: Decoupling deployments and releases

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 27 Nov 2021 12:02:00 +0000

Crucial developer practices: Decoupling deployments and releases

When systems are small and the risk of introducing defects when changing its behaviour is low, these changes can happen during deployment. However, when systems grow, the behaviour becomes more complex and more people are working on the system, it is essential to decouple behaviour changes, the releases, from deployments.

Do you have walls in your deployment process?

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 20 Nov 2021 11:59:00 +0000

Do you have walls in your deployment process?

Enabling units to quickly deploy and release new features to their customers is one of the goals of cross-functional units and the “you build it, you run it” DevOps mentality.

The value of team programmings

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 13 Nov 2021 11:35:00 +0000

The value of team programmings

In this article, I want to explain, why team programmings across units with developers from many backgrounds and areas of the codebase are extremely valuable for companies and individuals, but often undervalued and deprioritized by developers. I will focus on this specific type of team programmings, not about team programmings within a cross-functional unit, even though most of the benefits apply there as well.

Just care less about not being aligned

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Sat, 06 Nov 2021 10:12:00 +0000

Just care less about not being aligned

If you work in a company that is aiming for fast growth, being overly aligned will slow you down as the number of stakeholders increases. If every time I want to introduce a new linting rule I would need to agree with 55 other developers, I will likely not do it. Instead of forcing all units to use the same tech stack, the same code style, the same testing framework and so on, we need to learn to just care less. Of course, the ability to care less depends on the architecture and the company structure. In a monolithic application, it is far more difficult to reduce the impact of units on each other, than in an environment of properly structured microservices. Thus, the goal is to identify and create structures that allow you to care less about alignment. The entire idea of cross-functional units is aiming for units to be independent. This is achieved by having units own vertical slices of the system completely, which reduces the need for alignment with other units to a minimum. However, sometimes even cross-functional units can influence each other because of technical dependencies or suboptimal structuring of these units.

Cross-functional units and uni-functional teams

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 09:08:00 +0000

Cross-functional units and uni-functional teams

Many modern companies put a high emphasis on having multiple functions within one unit or team. The goal: The unit should be able to function with a high degree of autonomy, working on its area and owning everything in this area from beginning to end.

Increasing Deployment Efficiency at PAYONE: A Case Study

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Wed, 01 May 2019 07:20:00 +0000

Increasing Deployment Efficiency at PAYONE: A Case Study

PAYONE, a leading payment service provider (PSP, FinTech) specializing in B2B SaaS solutions, offers merchants the ability to integrate various payment options seamlessly. Their services extend beyond mere transaction processing to include advanced fraud prevention and multichannel checkout systems.

Imprint

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Wed, 31 Oct 2018 09:47:56 +0100

Information provided according to Sec. 5 German Telemedia Act (TMG):

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Privacy Policy

tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) — Wed, 31 Oct 2018 09:47:56 +0100

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