Engineering Collaboration
How competitive teams ship competent software.
Compared to other industries, software products benefit from low upfront costs and low distribution efforts, enabling us to create cheap prototypes and deliver them to users globally with little overhead. Successful software companies adapt to rapid technological, economic, and political changes to viably compete in any market.
Within Engineering Collaboration, we uncover intramural strategies that have proven useful for a broad spectrum of organizations. We consider how we build autonomous, flexible, and collaborative teams and solve the apparent paradox of providing a stable and low-latency experience while continuously responding to user feedback and regulatory compliance.
A book of two parts
Engineering Collaboration is structured into two sections, addressing engineering processes at two levels within our organization. Both parts anchor their respective topics in our ultimate objective: market competitiveness.
We only make changes to our development processes to improve discrete metrics (i.e., development cost or time, market share, or revenue) or holistic metrics (i.e., employee experience, satisfaction, or retention).
Part I
Collaborating within a Codebase
The first part of Engineering Collaboration analyzes good practices to frequently deliver software products. We cover workflows and automation concepts that enable engineers to "do the right thing" and write stable software out of the box.
Engineers across all levels apply these solutions to build and grow products sustainably.
Read Part I
Part II
Collaborating within a Company
covers strategies to sustainably grow a product into a team, and teams into an organization. We consider how to foster purposeful collaboration and reduce distractions within teams.
We discuss problems encountered by senior employees and upwards, in both the management track and individual contributor track.
Read Part II
The only kind of writing is rewriting
Version v0.21.0
Last published on 2026/02/01
167 pages (41653 words)
I typed the first lines of this book in late 2021. They were not very good. Over the last years I sporadically inconvenienced myself to redress those words and add others. Now, as of early 2026, I catch glimpses of work I would describe as passable. Close to done, almost.
The first Preview My final crusade has me editing the book one more time from cover to cover. During this process I am sending out advanced reading copies (ARC) to volunteers. Help me cross the last 't' with the finishing line and get in touch.
Finishing up After the brief arc of the advanced reading copies, I'll publish the status quo at a reduced price. Expect some flaws in prose and content as I continue the cover-to-cover rewrite.
One last Hurrah With all chapters completed and organized, I'mma go polish the language and make sure Engineering Collaboration becomes a good read. Once I done did that, I'll bump the price a little.
Version v1.0.0 Hallelujah, the book is done. With any luck Engineering Collaboration becomes available at full price towards the end of 2026.