In this note we bring you the latest trends and best practices in technology from the most knowledgeable experts.
We have been talking to 3 major references from the world of product development and technological solutions. Learn about the work and latest activities of the most disruptive companies in the sector.
Question: "Given your professional trajectory and your current role as CTO, what do you consider to be the most significant technological trends today? How are these trends impacting the development of products and solutions?"
Sebastian Rosenbolt, the current CTO of Modo maintains that one of the trends that has been growing for a few years is the use of LLMs (Large Language Models) and AI for different purposes: "Beyond offering something completely different in the field of customer experience, the use of tools such as Chat GPT and Github Copilot are empowering and facilitating the tasks of development teams."
On the same line, Mercedes Basavilbaso CEO of Wolke adds: "Without a doubt the most relevant thing nowadays is the advancement of artificial intelligence. I think we are still unaware of how much it will transform our lives. We are facing a radical change in the way we see things. Robotics will advance a lot and so will predictions."
Question: How do you evaluate and decide on the adoption of new technologies in software development with your team? Is there any emerging technology that you are particularly excited about integrating?
Sebastian Rosenbolt CTO of Modo "For several years now there's been a very interesting match played in the field of data, where several tools and products allow any organization, without the need for large resources, to perform analyses and obtain insights from their business, managing more and more information and with greater level of detail."
Mercedes from Wolke confidently states that she wants to incorporate more AI. "Especially so we don't fall behind. In some cases it is helping to program and develop better products. I think that those who don't get on this new wave will be left behind."
Regarding the management of development life cycle and practices that have proven to be the most effective in ensuring high quality and efficient deliveries, Sebastián Kaiser CTO of Strike and former VP of Engineering at Despegar emphasizes: "We avoid fitting into timeboxes. We understand the development flow as a continuous process and we keep taking weekly snapshots of how we're doing at the stakeholder level and in general per quarter. At the same time, each stakeholder presents a very general planning per quarter that is detailed as it progresses. We understand estimates as estimates, not as contracts that cannot be moved, so if projects are delayed there's no problem, but we try to provide clarity in time and explanations to the rest about the delay. Each dev is responsible for ensuring that the task they take meets the specifications of the stakeholder and the expected quality in production, we do not have QA teams separate from the development teams. Regarding quality, our focus is on monitoring + ease of deployment. The problem is not to break production, the problem is not having enough agility to realize it and solve it in a matter of seconds".
Mercedes tells us that they use a practice called "Adaptive". It's agile methodology at its core. But since their clients still want to purchase a finite scope, they have to adjust to a certain scope and she adds "So we do a initial survey stage that helps us to 'set the title of the song' for each sprint. Then we do sprints but with a quite defined scope. And finally we close with a validation stage by the customer, data migration, training and deployment to production"
Regarding the efficiency and development life cycle at Modo, Sebastian Rosenbolt considers that the main challenge is cultural, and it's about the whole team having ownership and being the main actors interested in quality. Following this and hand in hand with the philosophy of devops to streamline work and reduce manual labor, the key is to have automated test batteries at various levels, from unit tests, integration, end to end and load, among others. And he adds, "The teams must be able to have the tools at their disposal to develop, run and monitor all types of tests in a cost-effective and simple way".
Moving forward with the conversation and delving deeply into the challenges of the teams, what are the most common challenges your team faces in software development today? How do you approach them and what strategies have proven successful?
Sebastian Rosenbolt tells us that a challenge he has found in several organizations is the evolution of the business in parallel to the technical evolution. And that managing those two backlogs is always an important issue. That's why he believes the best strategy is to bring business reasons from the engineering area as to why he believes it's necessary to invest in technical matters, and then, make decisions together with the rest of the stakeholders and he highlights "from my new role as CTO at MODO and in a context where the ecosystem is constantly moving with technology in the lead, I have the challenge of accompanying the business in order to boost the evolution in the management of money.
Sebastian Kaiser complements us with his startup business vision "Like all startups we move fast and many initiatives become obsolete after a short time. The challenge is to keep organizing the platform so that there is no legacy code left behind after failed business attempts and development of something new does not become more and more difficult. With...
Related advices
9 Tips for success in salary negotiation
Adobe Alternatives for Merging PDFs Online
How to create a portfolio to get a job in technology
Questions you need to ask in an interview to truly understand the company.
Leer "Tendencias en tecnología 2024" en Español