Don't miss my next post! Subscribe to my newsletter and learn a host of useful tips about coding with agentic AI, as well as learn a bunch of useful stuff about effective technical leadership.
[Tech Leads] How do I make the most of this shitty legacy code base?
|
Oh no! You’ve been given a new team to lead, and they’re working on this horrible legacy code base that everyone hates! Nobody enjoys working on this code. Team members are going through the motions with no interest in what they do, repeating the same terrible patterns and either counting the days to retirement or actively looking for more exciting work elsewhere. Here are three things you can do to make things better, for yourself and for your team: 1. Identify the value being delivered.It might seem like there is none, but this is unlikely to be the case. The code exists for a reason, right? What’s it doing that makes it worthwhile to the rest of the company? 2. 80:20: Find the SMALL thing that can be improved INCREMENTALLY to make a big difference.Get the whole team involved. This can be a fun exercise. Find the SMALLEST thing that will make the BIGGEST difference, then break it down into even smaller steps, and do them. Together. One at a time. 3. Throw something away!There’s got to be at least one thing in there that nobody actually needs. Find it. Throw it away. Then throw a party and celebrate. Want to talk through technical leadership in more detail? Join the workshop!On Fri 4th July '25 in Cornwall in the UK, at 11am, I'll be running a workshop at Agile on the Beach, titled Technical Leaders for Humanity – the helpful card game. Click here for more info. Agile on the Beach countdown: |
Clare Sudbery
Don't miss my next post! Subscribe to my newsletter and learn a host of useful tips about coding with agentic AI, as well as learn a bunch of useful stuff about effective technical leadership.
Matt Squire on stage at Manchester Tech Festival I was at the always-informative Manchester Tech Festival the other week, where I saw a great talk by Matt Squire, CTO of Fuzzy Labs, with the title "Are We the Last Programmers? AI and the Future of Code". Matt covered several areas in his talk, so my goal is to write three posts on the back of of it: What's the best way to build software? How does agentic AI affect the next generation of coders? If just anyone can build software, will...
You’re constantly balancing competing demands — supporting your team, meeting delivery expectations, advocating for engineering health, responding to leadership and general admin. The result can be a relentless cycle of context switching, long hours, and the sense that you’re never quite doing enough. You may suffer from irritability, concentration difficulties, or even resentment toward the role you once enjoyed. At the same time, the constant stream of meetings, messages, and tickets in...
Participants in a coding workshop I’ve started experimenting with using LLMs to help me build software. One of the first things I did was to watch the video of Llewellyn Falco’s talk about using process files as blueprints for Agentic AI, from Craft Conference 2025. I learnt a lot from this, and it was a great starting point to get me going with LLMs. In that video, Llewellyn does over an hour of live augmented coding on stage. And one of the first things I noticed was that he uses the LLM...