The role of humanity and empathy in digital development
12 | 2023 Sanna Valkeejärvi & Mikael Kulma, Senior Tech Lead
Mikael Kulma's superpowers are related to team play, organisational performance, teams and coaching. Mikael advocates for right-sized teams and open discussion.
"I have always been a firm believer in teamwork. In my opinion, a team should consist of four to eight people to avoid being vulnerable and to function as a genuine team. If there are fewer people, it is administratively comparable to an individual. When a team has four or more members, the departure of one person doesn’t significantly change the way the team operates. And by keeping the upper limit at eight, the work is done together, and the number of potential communication paths doesn’t become a burden."
Mikael has a strong track record in explaining the value the customer gets from the team and how it affects the business.
"If I clearly see things that are crying out for someone to invest time in and think about how to advance the organization and digital development, I take action. Changes need to be discussed openly and courageously, beyond just the team level. Instead of narrowly resourced project teams, I would tightly integrate software development with different areas of the business. This way, teams can be more long-lasting, and development can be seen as an investment rather than a cost."
"Being able to quantify the value each customer gets from a well-functioning team and how it affects the business is my superpower. Small changes in the work environment are easily measured under the bottom line."
Getting rid of unnecessary fuss and irrelevancies
According to Mikael, in many companies in this industry, there is little awareness of how much time is spent on unnecessary fuss and how much of it is irrelevant.
"I believe that if the employees of a company had more visibility into the good and interesting things being done, the focus would follow. Changes in the work environment are easily measurable in monetary terms: when people are happier, they are more efficient. Motivation and feeling valued greatly enhance job satisfaction."
Mikael would like to bring coaching to all customer operations: "Coaching is a kind of superpower for me. I also get a lot out of it myself. Through discussions, we help people in the organization find the right solutions and the things that matter. They can be as small as anything, but their significance can still be enormous."
Personally, I talk about technical agile coaching, or senior tech leadership, which is about making sure teams work and making practical improvements to the way teams work, and technical improvements and ensuring quality through testing. "There is a lot of this kind of expertise at Kipinä, expertise that holds great potential for many customers."
Teams, coaching, and testing in development are important to Mikael. "Test-driven development reveals gaps in your knowledge. It's a path toward continuous improvement and streamlining team operations. Testing forces you to think about what you're doing before you do it, and you quickly realize that you can't know everything alone—everyone needs a team around them."
In Mikael's view, the human side and empathy will become more important in the consulting business in the future.
Looking to the future
The importance of teams and testing will certainly not diminish in the future, they are fundamental, according to Mikael.
"In the longer term, it's really hard to say where the whole industry is going, because AI is going to change everything so much. In the short term, the skill and ability to orchestrate AI will be relevant and play a big role."
"The role of developers will definitely change. We will be working at a higher level of abstraction than now, especially by leveraging AI. At the same time, the role of domain understanding—grasping the business—will continue to grow. However, certain types of technical expertise will decrease or evolve due to AI. Deep expertise and human facilitation of AI will be needed for a long time."
"It's absolutely amazing to be part of seeing all this new development and to work in an environment where AI is strongly present. It's rare to be involved in such a monumental shift. But, of course, AI doesn’t do anything by itself for now. We humans have to tell it what to do. You can't just coexist with AI; you have to guide it yourself."
In Mikael's view, the human side and empathy will become more important in the future.
"The work will definitely change a lot in the consultancy business. And in this respect, humanity is a hard currency."
Mikael's background
Mikael is a seasoned professional with extensive experience. He has experience from both sides of the table.
"Before joining Kipinä, I worked not only in the development team but also as a product owner. The product owner role helped me understand the business in a different way. At the same time, I saw how the work of my teams impacted the entire organization and gained more visibility into the future. This inspires me even more to coach teams in all of my projects toward better and more efficient work."
Thoughts of Kipinä
Mikael started at Kipinä a couple of years ago. Back then he was the eighth Kipinä employee.
"Now it's so much cooler, with a significantly larger team. Kipinä's approach is a revolutionary way to build a consulting firm. It feels like I’m part of a hypothesis that’s being proven right in real-time. I'm really impressed by how incredibly skilled the people at Kipinä are."