Guus Keunen’s Post

Had a great week at LeadDev NYC showing off a new gold standard tool: Datadog Feature Flags! By integrating flagging directly with observability data, not only can engineering teams ship releases faster and more safely, but experimentation teams can catch issues in real time instead of waiting weeks to discover that experiments need to be restarted. You can read more about Datadog Feature Flags here: https://lnkd.in/eviBxNfV and request access to our preview program here: https://lnkd.in/ea-CN4vB

Great products aren’t built in isolation. They’re built by people who stay curious, move fast, and ship with purpose. Meet Clay Tondreau, one of the engineers helping shape the systems behind Middesk’s growth. From hackathon ideas turned into core infrastructure to building a team that learns and scales together, Clay’s story captures what makes engineering here different: real ownership, real impact, and real collaboration. As Clay puts it: “Engineers here aren’t just closing tickets. They’re expected to think like product owners.” Read Clay’s full interview on how our engineering team is building trust — one line of code at a time: https://lnkd.in/gGSVez-E

𝗧𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗿 𝗱𝗲𝘃𝘀 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴? At Trifork Amsterdam we break that cycle, in days, not weeks. Before we step in, we often see: 🔻 Senior devs stuck in “legacy explain” loops 🔻 New features slowed by outdated frameworks 🔻 Focus drifting from business value to firefighting Our approach flips that script. We don’t advise from the sidelines — we build with you. From day one, our teams: → Sit with your devs (not just during handover) → Plan, code, and test together → Tackle compliance questions live — logging, eventing, audit-proof → Deliver features, not slide decks With decades of modernization experience, we’ve learned: ✅ Modernization must happen inside daily work ✅ Reduce tech debt immediately — not “after go-live” ✅ Less explaining, more creating ✅ Governance questions solved on the fly ✅ Testability up, build times down ✅ No surprise costs from proprietary middleware Result: 🚀 Projects move faster 🧩 Compliance and modernization run in parallel 💡 Teams stay focused on business value How do your teams keep from getting stuck in legacy churn? Let’s trade notes, and we show how it's done.

We joined a client who thought they had a technical problem. They didn’t. They had a communication problem. The project was late, the team was frustrated, and no one knew exactly why. Everyone blamed the tools. But the tools were fine — the process wasn’t. So instead of rewriting code, we rewrote how they worked. Weekly syncs turned into clear milestones. Slack chaos became structured priorities. Everyone finally knew what “done” meant. One month later, delivery time dropped by 40%. No new software. No new hires. Just clarity. In software, problems rarely start in the codebase. They start in the conversations around it. 💡 Fix communication, and you’ll fix half your “technical” issues before writing a single line of code. #MGOIT #SoftwareProcess #DevelopementCycle

We're thrilled to have partnered with the techexcellence.io founders to deliver an exclusive hands-on workshop series for their software engineering community. These aren't theoretical exercises — they're battle-tested scenarios mirroring the complex, evolving problems experienced developers face daily. The kind that can't be solved by prompting an AI. The first three workshops will culminate in a real-world refactoring challenge designed to stretch experienced software engineers. Participants will not only discover what works, but why certain approaches succeed while others create technical debt. Let's go! 🚀

We are excited to be partnering with techexcellence.io to provide their community with access to our real-world AI-resistant challenges. The first set of workshops will be an introduction into how challenges work. But then we get stuck into two meaty challenges: 1. Greenfield AI-resistant challenge: Participants will tackle a brand-new project designed to be resilient against AI automation – focusing on the human skills that matter most in software development. 2. Real-world refactoring challenge: Participants will put their refactoring expertise to the test with an authentic legacy code scenario that demands strategic thinking and clean code principles. Developer challenges done right. Where software engineers test their skills and learn from others.

Creating GenAI solutions isn't just about choosing and plugin tools and documents; it's fundamentally a software engineering challenge. The true success of a GenAI project is based on its implementation as a reliable, production-ready system. This means: adhering to rigorous software development standards: - ensuring robust product quality - implementing comprehensive security measures - guaranteeing scalability - establishing proper data governance to manage and protect sensitive information. Without this engineering discipline, even the most innovate tool will fail in the real world. 🛫 🇺🇸 I'll be in Miami next week. If anyone of my network want to follow this conversation, just let me know and we can keep talking over a coffee.

What sets high-performing platform engineering teams apart from the rest What makes some platform engineering teams truly excel? In this session, Annie shares research and real-world insights on the behaviors and responsibilities that drive stronger business and developer outcomes. Learn how high-performing teams deliver greater impact and how leaders can foster these traits to elevate performance across their own organizations. 👉 Watch the session here: https://lnkd.in/e-U-ySKa This post is part of the PlatformCon series. Join the 2026 edition and be part of the world’s largest platform engineering community: https://lnkd.in/edbNWZiS

Have you been wondering how concurrent agents can boost productivity in real-world dev workflows? At the TRAE Meetup in San Francisco, Zackary Jackson (Infra Architect at ByteDance and creator of Module Federation) shared his perspective on concurrent agents and how they can dramatically enhance product output. In this talk, Zack covers: • Why concurrency is becoming essential in modern software development • How AI coding tools like TRAE SOLO accelerate developer workflows • Best practices for building and managing concurrent agents in real-world projects This session is part of the TRAE Meetup Series, where leading engineers, founders, and AI builders explore the future of AI Coding, Agents, and Human–AI collaboration. Watch full video of this tech talk at: https://lnkd.in/g4k8Bcqd

Hassan Tirmizi asked the question that keeps me up at night: "How do you keep momentum after initial adoption?" Here's the brutal truth: Getting the first win is easy. Sustaining momentum? That's where 90% of "transformations" die. I've seen it happen: Week 4: Everyone's a believer Week 8: Half the team slipping back to old habits Week 12: "Remember that thing we tried?" Here's what I learned the hard way: The Momentum Killers: ❌ Treating it like "mission accomplished" ❌ Stopping the celebration too early ❌ Not giving people new mountains to climb ❌ Letting it become "just another process" What Actually Works: 🔥 Turn Believers Into Evangelists I stopped being the teacher. Sarah (the first convert) now runs onboa treerding. Why? Because peer influence > boss mandate. Always. 🎯 Create Internal Competition (The Good Kind) "Backend team shipped 3 features this week using the new approach. Frontend team... 👀" Suddenly everyone wants to flex their velocity. 📊 Make The Data Impossible To Ignore Every sprint review: - Time saved this week - Bugs prevented - Features shipped faster Numbers don't lie. Skeptics can't argue with metrics. 🚀 Expand The Battlefield Just when people get comfortable: "Can this work for mobile?" "What about our microservices?" "Could we apply this to infrastructure?" New challenges = sustained engagement. 💎 The Nuclear Option When momentum starts to fade, I do something controversial: I ask the biggest skeptic to present the methodology to another team. Forces them to either commit or admit they don't believe in it. Works every time. The Real Secret? Momentum doesn't fade because the methodology stops working. It fades because WE stop making it interesting. What's your go-to move when team energy starts dropping?