Blog
Articles, guides, and notes on software engineering.
CTO''s Thinking: Decision Making, Strategy, and Leadership to Drive Technology and Organization
A review of a book on the CTO's way of thinking. It reveals what a technical leader needs to truly function as part of executive leadership, from three angles: technology, business, and relationships. It emphasizes translating technology into business value, the trap of clinging to the 'right' technical answer, and making strategic decisions under uncertainty.
Recent Posts
Everything About Digital Identity: Knowledge for Realizing a Secure and User-Centric Identity System
A review of a comprehensive book on digital identity. It explains everything from concepts to implementation systematically and broadly, covering OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML, zero trust, and decentralized identity, giving engineers who design and operate authn/authz platforms a wide perspective.
Dynamic Re-teaming 2nd Edition - Effective Team Structuring with 5 Patterns
A review of Dynamic Reteaming, 2nd Edition. A book on five patterns for managing and leveraging changes in team composition. It categorizes real-world shifts such as adding one person at a time, splitting, and merging, and offers a view that treats change as an opportunity rather than disruption.
Guide for Engineering Executives: Technical Leadership to Drive Organizational Success
A review of a guide for engineering executives. A book on the mindset and practice of leading a technical organization as a VP of Engineering or CTO. It covers hiring, org design, technical strategy, and alignment with executives, centered on running the whole organization as a system.
The Work of an Engineering Manager: How to Become the Manager Your Team Needs
A review of The Work of an Engineering Manager. A book on practical methods for making a team function as an EM. It prescribes remedies for the real challenges EMs face, such as 1:1s, feedback, hiring, and culture, plus delegation that separates accountability from execution.
Leading Engineering Teams: A Practical Guide for Individual Contributors and Managers Learned from Google
A review of Leading Engineering Teams. Drawing on Google's engineering culture, it covers how to lead teams effectively from both IC and manager perspectives. It systematically addresses topics rooted in daily work such as career ladders, code review, and handling technical debt, useful from senior engineers to EMs.
Five Dialogues to Transform Organizations - Creating an Agile Organizational Culture Through Dialogue
A review of Five Dialogues to Transform Organizations. A book on five kinds of conversation needed to cultivate an agile culture. Presenting patterns around goals, constraints, progress, process, and learning, it fosters cultural change through dialogue rather than top-down mandates, toward teams that act autonomously.
Getting Started with Domain-Driven Design: Practical Techniques for Connecting Software Implementation and Business Strategy
A review of Learning Domain-Driven Design. A book on the thinking and implementation patterns for applying DDD's strategic and tactical design in practice. From identifying subdomains to bounded contexts, aggregates, domain events, and event sourcing, it explains where each fits, bridging DDD from introduction to practice.
Introduction to Digital Identity: Essential Authentication, Authorization, and ID Management for Web Services
A review of Introduction to Digital Identity. A book that plainly explains the basics of authentication, authorization, and ID management for web services, with real examples. It spans the mechanisms of OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and SAML through single sign-on, social login, and using IDaaS, an ideal primer.
The Art of Leadership - Attending to the Small Things
A review of The Art of Leadership. A book arguing that an engineering leader's small daily actions shape organizational culture and team trust. Shining a light on easily overlooked interpersonal skills and habits, such as how you speak in meetings, give feedback, and run 1:1s, it prompts you to revisit your everyday behavior.
A Practical Textbook on Logging: From Basic Knowledge to Collection Methods, Analysis Techniques, Troubleshooting, Performance Optimization, and Applications in Machine Learning
A review of A Practical Textbook on Logging. A book that systematically explains logging from basic knowledge to collection methods, analysis techniques, troubleshooting, performance optimization, and even applications in machine learning. It broadly covers the foundations for working with logs in practice.
Career Portfolio Creation Guide
Create a strategic career portfolio to clarify skills, assess market value, set goals, and optimize daily decision-making.
Differentiating Architecture Strategy, Tactics, and Design
Differentiate architecture strategy, tactics, and design using 5W1H framework to clarify why, what, how, when, where, and who decisions.
Good Architecture Strategy, Bad Architecture Strategy
Even when you write an architecture strategy, it sometimes fails to work, ending up as a strategy in name only or never being executed. Drawing on the book Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, this article organizes the difference between good and bad strategies through the lens of diagnosis, guiding policy, and coherent actions.
Why and When to Write an Architecture Strategy
Develop architecture strategies to eliminate ad-hoc technology decisions and establish technology standards across teams.
OAuth 2.0 Explained: Complete Guide to Flows, Tokens, and Implementation
OAuth 2.0 explained from the specs (RFC 6749 and RFC 6750): the four roles, the four grant types, access and refresh tokens, endpoints, scopes, Bearer tokens, security considerations, and what OAuth 2.1 changes.
Summary of OpenID Connect 1.0 Specifications
Understand OpenID Connect specification, JWT structure, ID tokens, claims, and authentication flow details.
SAML 2.0 Explained: How SSO and Federated Identity Work
Understand SAML 2.0 and how it enables Single Sign-On (SSO), the roles of Identity Provider and Service Provider, and how it compares to OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect.
Key Points to Consider When Writing an ADR
Master ADR writing by focusing on atomic decisions, documenting trade-offs, team discussions, and technical writing principles for architecture.
Requirements vs Constraints: What's the Difference? (ISO/IEC/IEEE 29148)
Requirements vs constraints, defined by ISO/IEC/IEEE 29148: requirements describe what stakeholders want and stay negotiable, while constraints limit the design space and rarely change. With examples, how to tell them apart, and why non-functional requirements act as constraints.