Pulling off a multi-month tech debt paydown project with Alice Bartlett from Financial Times

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Engineering Unblocked

Swarmia

27 episodes

5 days ago

Keeping software engineers in flow and unblocked is one of the key responsibilities of software development leaders. In each episode of the Engineering Unblocked podcast, Rebecca Murphey interviews leaders who have navigated challenges of scale, complexity, and growth. You’ll hear from people with lived experience across the software development ecosystem, from CTOs and VPEs to directors and line managers to product managers, program managers, tech leads, and more.

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Pulling off a multi-month tech debt paydown project with Alice Bartlett from Financial Times

Engineering Unblocked

42 minutes 42 seconds

1 year ago

Pulling off a multi-month tech debt paydown project with Alice Bartlett from Financial Times

Alice Bartlett, Tech Director for Customer Products at the Financial Times, shares what it takes to introduce modern technology to a 136-year-old company and how to successfully lead significant efforts to re-architect understandable but unfortunate decisions of the past.

In this episode, Rebecca and Alice dig deep on one of those decisions and how she got the work funded and how she got the work done.

Find the transcript at: https://www.unblocked.fm/episodes/alice-bartlett-financial-times/

Timestamps (0:00) Introductions (1:06) Alice’s journey to the FT (5:17) About the FT’s pink paper (7:20) The FT’s history of innovation (11:52) Organizational changes at the FT (13:54) How Alice fixed an architectural flaw (19:34) The importance of communication (24:21) Changing an overly-complicated system (27:02) Blameless culture (29:15) How Alice keeps engagement high (32:40) Maintaining the new system (34:53) All-use cases and bugs (39:19) Alice’s take on tech

Follow Alice on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alicebartlett/

Follow Rebecca on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rmurphey/

Links and mentions • Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/ • The Pragmatic Programmer: https://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-Journeyman-Master/dp/020161622X