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Dragan Stepanović

@dstepanovic.bsky.social

470 followers 130 following 270 posts

Trying hard not to think about small batches, bottlenecks, and systems. In the meantime: XP, ToC, Lean, Systems Thinking. Moved here from that other place for good.

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Reposted by Dragan Stepanović

Mark Dalgarno @markdalgarno.bsky.social · 14d

Reminder: the Call for Sessions for next year's Agile Manchester conference in May is currently open: agilemanchester.net/call-for-ses...

/ @agilemanc.bsky.social #agilemanc

Call for Sessions

Our Agile Manchester 2026 Call for Sessions is open

agilemanchester.net

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Dragan Stepanović @dstepanovic.bsky.social · 14d

I wanna join!

Dragan Stepanović @dstepanovic.bsky.social · 15d

But then I won't have the chance to practice my skills for reverse engineering understanding from the implicit code!

Dragan Stepanović @dstepanovic.bsky.social · 17d

Sorry, it was a response to this LinkedIn post, which provides more context.

Reposted by Dragan Stepanović

David Amador @djlink.bsky.social · 18d

True!

plush.city/@JellyTBeagl...

@JellyTBeagle@plush.city
20 years ago, normal people avoided technology and techies would jump on the newest gadgets as soon as they could
now, normal people buy smart toasters & coffee mugs while every techie I know is on the verge of retreating to the forest

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Dragan Stepanović @dstepanovic.bsky.social · 18d

There's a feedback loop that feeds from making the changes to the quality of the mental model of the problem and domain

In doing the work, and if you listen carefully, you get to discover more about the domain and problem that feeds back into the way that you do the work.

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Dragan Stepanović @dstepanovic.bsky.social · 18d

One important questions to ask is: "What amount of domain insights are you missing out on by handing off creating the changes to the machine?".

Can you quantify that? :) Way more difficult, if not impossible, compared to "saved X hours creating this feature using AI".

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Dragan Stepanović @dstepanovic.bsky.social · 18d

fuck yeah

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Dragan Stepanović @dstepanovic.bsky.social · 18d

So, the point is not reducing the cost per se. It's fixing the problem that the high cost of change pointed at, which in turns dissolves the problem of the high cost.

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Dragan Stepanović @dstepanovic.bsky.social · 18d

In a bunch of cases, the high cost of change serves a purpose. It points to a problem, addressing which reduces the cost that was pointing at it.

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Dragan Stepanović @dstepanovic.bsky.social · 18d

And my experience tells me that there are a lot of the latter ones that for lots of teams/orgs go under the radar, deferring addressing painful problems for a way longer time than they should.

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Dragan Stepanović @dstepanovic.bsky.social · 18d

I often ask myself if a technology, beside lowering the costs for which lowering the costs is beneficial, is also lowering the costs for which lowering the costs is detrimental.

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Dragan Stepanović @dstepanovic.bsky.social · 20d

I can notice the pattern, next talk is "Beyond UUIDs"

Dragan Stepanović @dstepanovic.bsky.social · 21d

I heard there's this GOTO conference.
I think it's trying to popularize long forgotten tool of great software designers: GOTO statements.
You should try those as well.

I think SonarQube should also add it to one of their mandatory rules.

Dragan Stepanović @dstepanovic.bsky.social · 21d

Amazing. That's already 5 Jira tickets done.
Hope you also tested some constructors and getters along the way.

Dragan Stepanović @dstepanovic.bsky.social · 21d

That's all fine and dandy, but Nick did you test private methods?

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Dragan Stepanović @dstepanovic.bsky.social · 21d

Again those pesky reinforcing feedback loops and exponential behavior that humans are so good at understanding...

Dragan Stepanović @dstepanovic.bsky.social · 22d

If you manage to do that, it's already a huge competitive advantage that is a blind spot for most, if not all, of your competitors.

Dragan Stepanović @dstepanovic.bsky.social · 22d

Quantifying direct costs of multiple people working together is way easier than quantifying this one, but I'd bet my money that the latter is less expensive. And it's not the only one that you'd incur.

Don't get fooled by a bias of focusing only on the metrics that are easy to measure.