What's the Point?

Why certain best practices in software engineers are best practices.

The software engineering industry is full of many "practices". These practices range from testing, source control management, and even workflow methodology.

But how are you supposed to know

  • What value that practice brings to software engineering?
  • Will adopting this practice in our team actually help our team?

These articles are meant to help answer both of those questions.

I want to help show how different best practices in the software engineering space can help your team become even better. Some pratices will help you team improve quality while others will improve time-to-market or how you team operates. This page will walk you through such pratices and help you know how to incorporate them into your team.

Let's dive in!

Improve Your Writing with Three Simple Words

June 17, 2025 | minutes reading time
team-driven developmenttechnical writingwhat's the point
When writing technical documents, having specific words to indicate requirements is just as important as the requirements themselves. Enter RFC 2119

What's the Point to Feature Flags?

February 16, 2025 | minutes reading time
what's the pointteam-driven developmentsoftware engineering
Why feature flags can help improve your velocity, reduce your risk, and help you build better software

What's the Point of SLOs?

December 02, 2023 | minutes reading time
what's the pointobservability
Measuring software quality is complex. SLOs are here to help.

What's the Point of Blameless Postmortems?

May 08, 2023 | minutes reading time
leadershipteam-driven developmentwhat's the point
The way we respond to incidents says a lot about our culture. Are are we learning from our mistakes and accidents or creating a culture of fear?

What's the Point to Retrospectives Anyway?

March 14, 2023 | minutes reading time
what's the pointsoftware engineeringiterative development
Teams need to set aside time to reflect and recalibrate where they are headed. They need to consider how to continually improve their code, process, and tools. Retrospectices are the meeting to do just that.

What's the Point to Observability Anyway

October 17, 2022 | minutes reading time
what's the pointsoftware engineeringteam-driven developmentobservability
Observability is more than metrics and cool dashboards. It is a fundamental shift in how you write software.

What's the Point of Containers Anyway?

November 07, 2021 | minutes reading time
software engineeringdevopswhat's the point
Containers are becoming more and more popular. Here is my take on why and if your team should to jump on the bandwagon.

What's the Point of the Software Development Lifecycle Anyway?

October 12, 2021 | minutes reading time
software development lifecyclesoftware engineeringwhat's the point
The importance of a guide for how you build software.

What's the Point of Pull Requests Anyway?

August 28, 2020 | minutes reading time
software engineeringteam-driven developmentcode reviewswhat's the point
Why pull requests are one of the best tools in modern software.

What's the Point of CI Anyway?

May 05, 2020 | minutes reading time
software engineeringcontinuous integrationwhat's the point
Continuous integration (CI) is a powerful and neccesary tool to maximize your team's effort. This article explains what CI is and how to start leveraging it to it's full potential.