Planning-Upfront

Life Happens Almost two full years have passed since the point when I had “the energy” to write content. And, as most podcasts fail after just a few episodes, I’ve been unable to keep up with the writing. It was a genuine surprise to see how much effort goes into even the simplest of articles. This, in turn, generated a significant inspirational backlog for potential content shortly. Looking back on those two years, I’m happy with the outcome, and I don’t feel much regret for not writing. As the internet doesn’t forget, this might serve mostly as a reminder to myself when I look back on this point a few years down the road. Just writing my own timeline took some time, as each week was packed with more work than I wanted it to be! Work-life balance?! ...

Building a Health-Data Platform I have had the opportunity to work on several complex and challenging projects. One such project was a health-data platform designed as a modular monolith with a plethora of complex requirements to fulfill. As a health-data platform, ensuring the security and compliance of our users’ sensitive information was paramount. To that end, we made it a priority to align with both HIPAA and SOC-2 standards. Compliance and Security Measures for a Health-Data Platform SOC-2 Compliance For SOC-2 compliance, we implemented various strict controls to guarantee the safety of our user’s data. This included implementing multi-factor authentication, such as FIDO tokens, for added security. We also conducted regular security assessments and backups to ensure that any data would be protected in the event of a security breach. Additionally, we employed SOC-2-compliant cloud providers to host and store sensitive data. A Governance, Risk management, and Compliance (GRC) program was established and reviewed regularly to maintain SOC-2 compliance. ...

The Challenge of Managing Complexity Software complexity grows faster than our ability to manage it. Businesses get more complex, so the software supporting them follows. Languages and tooling improve, but the underlying problem remains: every system eventually becomes harder to change than to replace. The Complexity Cycle Engineers try to manage complexity through diagrams, architecture documents, and visual representations. It helps for a while. Then the system outgrows the diagrams. A new team is brought in to redesign from scratch, and the cycle repeats. ...