I am an telecommunications engineer who has been developing electronic products, both hardware and software, since 2006. I have professional experience in sectors like defence, automotive, railway, renewable energies, power electronics and semiconductors, from small, medium and large multinational companies.
But much more important than what I made, where or when, is how I made it. During most of these years, I barely managed to survive. Yes, 'survive'. Because I failed to follow a sustainable, iterative, almost defect-free (both in behavior and in structure) development process in every project I was involved. And I was not alone. Every team member had a shared belief: embedded was 'that' hard.
By accident, guided by the pain of being unable to satisfy my customers, in 2016 I found out about the existence of Test-Driven Development (TDD), which pointed me out to Extreme Programming (XP), Agile and Craftmanship. It was a revealing moment, a whole game changer in my professional career. I felt like I had been living inside Plato's cave. Like a prisoner suffering Stockholm syndrome with his beloved hardware, being devoid of the proper principles, knowledge and tools to consider himself a true professional.
Nowadays, I help teams and organizations to improve their development processes as a part of my long road to software craftsmanship, offering both technical coaching and training.