I spent part of my last week and a half researching a legacy internal system we use as part of our company's phones offering. I wrote up an in-depth analysis on our internal company wiki, detailing the context within which this system operates, how our customer-facing products consume it, the technology and the inner workings of the code.

Today I gave a presentation on this content to the internal team responsible for maintaining it (and other interested internal software engineers), to help them develop their own mental model of this system. As a team, they will be able to use the knowledge conveyed both in the documentation and the recording to guide their decision making as they look to improve its maintainability, stability, and security - some of the important architectural qualities needed in long-lived software.

After the presentation, I facilitated a discussion where each attendee shared their thoughts on how to improve the system along these "-ilities". Sessions like these help the team members understand how each other thinks, gives them a chance to learn from each others' ideas, and surfaces the best ideas. This collaboration leads to the team feeling more ownership over the outcome of their work, which improves engagement and overall work happiness. It also gives team members a chance to step up and demonstrate leadership skills and knowledge, opening them up to new opportunities within the team.