About Thomas Owens
writing about software engineering
By education, I'm a software engineer. I focus on agile and lean software development, software process improvement, and quality management. My goal is to enabling software engineers, teams, and organizations to be successful. I have experience with a wide variety of types of software systems, ranging from embedded systems to desktop applications to web applications.
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Posts
Managing multiple stakeholders with competing needs and interests. Forecasting the capacity of a team for planning an iteration. Integrating threat modeling into the design and risk assessment processes. Branch name conventions and Conventional Branch. Technical debt isn't just mess. Logging and managing technical debt. AI-generated source code and the GPL's "preferred form of the work". Choosing ...
August 2026
Sep 01, 2026
64 views
Security governance at scale. Presenting technical risks to non-technical stakeholders. AI tools' impact on a team's cadence and speed. Tracking and visualizing work that spans multiple "tickets" in a work tracking system. Work estimation - avoid it when you can, but there are good practices when you can't. Poorly run daily standups can impede a team's morale - short, focused standups can be extre...
July 2026
Aug 01, 2026
99 views
Managers, leaders, and "unofficial" organizational structures. UX as a shared service. Managing engagement and organizing events with large teams. Splitting large features into Sprint-sized Product Backlog Items. Flow metrics and approximating value delivery. Addressing testing when work is delivered late in an iteration. Ensuring regression test cases stay fresh and up to date.
June 2026
Jul 01, 2026
148 views