Locknote: The Albatross Project - Mark Rendle - NDC Oslo 2024

Development trends and paradigms come and go rapidly, with companies often abandoning working solutions to chase the next “hot” technology

Management’s obsession with meetings (pre-meetings, post-meetings, meeting about meetings) creates unnecessary overhead and reduces actual productivity

Outsourcing often fails due to communication challenges and the expectation of perfectly detailed specifications that rarely match actual needs

Breaking applications into excessive microservices (hundreds of repos) doesn’t necessarily improve the system and can create more complexity

DevOps shouldn’t be a separate department - it should be integrated into development practices

Excel spreadsheets often become critical “temporary” solutions that end up running business operations for years

Over-planning and strict methodologies (like SSADM) often delay actual development and delivery

Chasing new technologies (Cloud, Kubernetes, Serverless, AI) without clear business justification leads to unnecessary complexity

Agile/Scrum can become bureaucratic when implemented with too many ceremonies and rigid processes

Large software projects tend to suffer from scope creep, constant rewrites, and missed deadlines when trying to incorporate every new technology trend