I like to simplify things. Unfortunately, everything is always too complex, and I'm not satisfied until I explain things in a few words. Software building is complex, too complicated for now. There are too many things to learn from coding best practices to project management, and good practices are not well synthesized or well known.

I started fresh with a new team this year. It challenged me to find out what is essential and needed to succeed. The pace is accelerating, we are working remotely, and the market is hot for developers. So how can a small business fight and keep a great work environment?

Here are a few ways. Of course, this list is still far from being simple, but I think these are among the essential ingredients you need in your team:

• Let your team opt-in projects/systems instead of assigning them.
• Make your team independent and autonomous. The team should make all decisions and have the expertise to deploy and maintain their application in production successfully.
• Experts of the same field (developers, ops) should talk across those autonomous teams and find out what is helpful to share. Not the other way around.
• These experts should have strong leaders that always strive to develop their field of expertise. Let them organize presentations or coffee clubs. The influence will create a contagious learning wave.
• Architects and technical leaders should only be responsible for making these discussions happen, not making those decisions.
• Aim for maintainability first for your critical systems. For example, do you need to upgrade all your tools manually? How fast will you be able to apply a security fix in a year? Will developers like working with it in six months?
• Listen to your team, and they will tell you how they want to maintain and improve the systems. Help the team plan the schedule and objectives with that feedback.

I look forward to another year of learning to make software development the most fulfilling career.