Don't aim to be an architect… Try to be a Lego Master
You might have got what I am trying to say just by reading the title. If not, bear with me for 2 minutes.
We are part of platform-engineering in Bazaar and we don't call or consider ourselves “the mighty solutions architects”. What we are is Lego masters.
Laser Focused
Lego builders have a bigger picture and clear vision of what they are aiming for. But they build it block by block. They put all efficiency and precision on placing block they hold at that moment perfectly. Once it's placed, they pickup another block and continue the loop. You can say Lego masters are very good at focusing on task at hand.
We as platform team have same mindset. We know where we want to end up. So we spend more time on how we can literally break that object into as many small pieces as possible and that small piece we call our task.
Specialize in agility
Lego builders have a specialty in creating Lego sculptures, they are not specialist for creating, say: Pacman or Lego Batman or pyramids.
So we have to be as agile as Lego masters and ensure we are working with reusable components just as they use same blocks for unique creations.
Don't create complex solutions
don't create complex solutions, but focus on creating simple solutions for complex problems.
Lego masters literally create master pieces, dare I say complex objects? But they don't create complex solutions. Their focus is to place the right block in the right place at right time, and that's it.
We, as an engineering team, also have the same mindset:
“What is the simplest solution we can provide for the problem?”
I am not recalling any instance where this approach comeback to haunt us. Instead, it helped us to do iterations and improve upon since we rollout quickly with simple solutions we get feedback even faster to improve upon.
Helping hands for someone’s task at hand
Lego builders are amazing team players. They might have different tasks but everyone has the same object and because of that, they know only as a team they can succeed.
Because we break our objects into small tasks, we often get time to help/mob with others once we are done with our tasks. This not only speeds up the progress but also keeps the knowledge sharing continue.
One neat trick we do is a target to release something at the end of the day. This trick coached by our mentor Ammar Rizvi bhai.
Conclusion
Have bigger and complex objects but make them simple by breaking them into smaller ones. Don't overburden your iterations, be practical, have some bandwidth and room for mobs and cross collaborations. Avoid complex solutions start with simple implementation and iterate over it evolutionary. Endorse organic knowledge sharing . Do lots of experiments, find the happy place for your team and most important have fun and trust on each other! 🙌
Disclaimer:
Bazaar Technologies believes in sharing knowledge and freedom of expression, and it encourages it’s colleagues and friends to share knowledge, experiences and opinions in written form on it’s medium publication, in a hope that some people across the globe might find the content helpful. However the content shared in this post and other posts on this medium publication mostly describe and highlight the opinions of the author, which might or might not be the actual and official perspective of Bazaar Technologies.
