---
title: "How To Direct a Software Team When You Have No Idea What They're Talking About at Minnebar (2025)"
source: "/speaks/how-to-direct-a-software-minnebar-may-2025/"
---

Speech

# How To Direct a Software Team When You Have No Idea What They're Talking About

Collin Flynn

May 3, 2025

## About the talk

It's not easy committing your resources to a software project without having some technical background. What if you have no technical background at all?
This session is full of actionable steps _anyone_ can take to greatly increase your confidence with a technical partner, including:

-   What expectations you should communicate up-front?
    -   Specific examples of tight-loop feedback you should ask for, that any competent team can provide
    -   How to make regular measurements part of the delivery cycle
    -   What you should measure!
-   How do you evaluate a technical proposal?
    -   Concrete advice on how to understand a technical plan, before you spend the resources on it.
    -   How to ask great questions that will force technical teams to validate their assumptions
-   What do you do when technical difficulties arise?
    -   How to categorize issues: was this a talent/experience issue? Was it purely exogenous?

## Presented by

Collin Flynn

Principal Software Engineer

Collin Flynn

## About Livefront

Livefront builds intelligent products, platforms, and agents for the world's most admired companies. Partner with us to move faster, think bigger, and drive material business outcomes with AI.

### Tags

[Digital Engineering](/insights/all/?topic=digital-engineering) [Strategy & Product](/insights/all/?topic=strategy-product)

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