Adrien Joly - Pro

[IMPORTANT] I left SHODO in September 2023. I am not taking consulting gigs anymore. Please send consulting requests over to contact@shodo.io.

My name is Adrien Joly (he/him), based in Paris, France (CET).

I help development teams produce software that is both durable and useful, by bringing a continuous improvement mindset on technical and collaboration practices, including Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD), also on legacy code.

My approach consists of making myself dispensable and making teams autonomous as soon as possible. I continuously transfer my know-how, lead by example and make sure that teams integrate the right habits, so they can apply them autonomously, for the long run.

On this page, I share the types of services I can provide to your business, my background, values and availability.

Services

I provide the following services:

• Renovation and maintenance of legacy software: I help teams (re)gain confidence and efficiency on the maintenance and development of their production software (incl. web applications and data pipelines), by reducing technical debt and accidental complexity that builds up over time.
• Technical coaching: I support the planning and animation of the cultural transformation of software teams. I coordinate technical projects in which all developers contribute to improve the codebase, in a way to grow mastery and autonomy. Pair/mob programming on katas and/or on production code.
• Teaching/training/workshops on software craft practices (TDD/DDD/BDD, clean code, clean architecture, automated testing, continuous integration, continuous delivery, DevOps), pair/mob programming and problem solving techniques.
• Strategic software consulting: I can act as an on-demand CTO or VP Engineering, to audit your technical assets and provide recommendations on how to bootstrap or grow your business efficiently, according to DORA capabilities.

Experience

Always fascinated by computers, I wrote my first scripts and programs at the age of 6. During my career, I carried several roles in various environments:

• Research engineer and researcher, respectively at Gemalto and Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs;
• Technical leader in several startup companies, including Whyd and Algolia;
• Teacher in several schools, including EEMI, ESGI and Web School Factory; (in Paris)
• and I have developed and maintained many products as a contractor and entrepreneur – mostly open-source.

In terms of technical stack and skills:

• I’ve been developing software with Node.js (mostly) since 2012, but I’m used to learn new technologies and to adapt to different environments and constraints.
• I know how to setup, develop and maintain a software application across the stack: web and data pipeline development, automated testing, debugging, continuous integration, deployment, monitoring and other operations in production.
• I’ve trained and improve my pedagogical skills by teaching hundreds of students in various computer science schools, for five years. And by speaking in international conferences.

Values

All my career, I’ve strived to grow as an efficient and accountable professional. As a person, I’m honest, open-minded and seek harmony – rather than competition – with my peers. I value people who share my thirst for life-long learning and sharing of knowledge.

I’m driven by:

• Relevance: Writing software that is useful, by taking the time to listen and understand the vision and goal of its owners and end-users;
• Pragmatism: Writing software efficiently, by discussing what’s the most impactful and lean next step we can implement towards reaching that goal;
• Rigor: Writing software that works as expected, by clarifying iteratively the underlying expectations and implementing them as automated tests and/or documentation;
• Durability: Writing software that is sustainable to maintain, by helping the team commit to shared programming and communication guidelines, and by promoting practices like TDD and pair/mob programming.

My objective is to help your software team (re)gain confidence, autonomy and serenity while creating (or sustaining) value for your business.

Note: I particularly enjoy contributing to open source projects.

Testimonial

Thibaut Gensollen
CTO, Choose

« Adrien helped Choose grow the skills of the development team, notably on best practices (software craft), setup a roadmap to refactor a monolith (4-year-old codebase) without CI/CD nor automated tests, and crippled by performance and maintenance issues. »

« His ability to understand business, technical et human needs enabled Choose to reach a clean, stable et well-performing codebase, on which it’s easy to onboard new developers. Also, our developers are now at ease with software craft practices, including TDD and DDD. »

« We now feel confident everytime we deploy a new version. I recommend Adrien to lead this kind of improvements. »

Availability

In March, 2020, I joined the consulting agency SHODO to grow with a community of like-minded professionals and practice my skills as a Software Crafter.

As a contractor (through SHODO), I’ll be available from the end of July 2023, 4 days per week. (last update: 2023-10-11)

I am accustomed to work remotely, from Montreuil ~ Paris, France – in the CET timezone.

Any question? Contact me

References

• Professional experience: resume · teaching · LinkedIn · GitHub
• Examples of production code I’ve been refactoring: Signaux Faibles · Openwhyd
• Talks and publications: talks · posts · research publications
• Side projects, ideas and hobbies: side projects · list of business/software ideas · musical projects · album shelf · musical discoveries · VR experiences
• Learn about Software Crafts(wo)manship: Thinking in tests, by James Shore” (31m) · L’Artisanat Logiciel, par Yannick Grenzinger” (1h)