World Congress 2026 Europe • Jul 9, 2026 • Session details

Software Engineering for Muggles

Translating technical jargon into vivid metaphors like the chaotic Weasley house bridges the communication gap. Discover how to finally win business support for crucial infrastructure maintenance.

Pause

Mute

Enter Fullscreen

#1 about 3 min

The challenge of explaining technical concepts to stakeholders

Engineers often struggle to explain the necessity of technical maintenance to business stakeholders.

#2 about 2 min

Modeling software architecture evolution with the Weasley house

The ever-expanding magical house serves as a metaphor for software that must continuously adapt to new requirements.

#3 about 3 min

Explaining the cascading complexity of software security upgrades

Upgrading a house door illustrates how updating one software component often requires extensive changes to related dependencies.

#4 about 1 min

Illustrating test environments and canary releases using metaphors

Visualizing duplicated houses and partial rollouts helps non-technical audiences understand testing strategies and deployment types.

#5 about 2 min

Improving business collaboration and prioritization through shared understanding

Breaking the technical bubble enables decision-makers to prioritize necessary engineering work and set realistic deadlines.

#6 about 2 min

Practical strategies for verifying audience comprehension in meetings

Actively checking if stakeholders understand technical discussions prevents miscommunication and encourages radical simplification.

Matching moments

3:31 min

Translating internal software complexity to external perspectives

Hendrik Lösch

Hendrik Lösch · World Congress 2025

2:25 min

Building engineering cultures that support long-term software architecture

Oskar Kruschitz

Oskar Kruschitz · Europe 2026 Virtual

2:30 min

Overcoming the human challenges of software maintenance

Robby Russell · Coffee With Developers

3:56 min

Acknowledging the inevitability of software evolution and technology migrations

Luisa Rink

Luisa Rink +1 · World Congress 2026 Europe

2:12 min

Escaping the smart person trap in technical communication

Anastasiia Shabalina

Anastasiia Shabalina · Europe 2026 Virtual

1:43 min

Summarizing the organizational benefits of platform engineering

Christian Strack · LIVE

More from World Congress 2026 Europe

Building the Nervous System of AI - Michael Kagan (NVIDIA) thumbnail

Building the Nervous System of AI - Michael Kagan (NVIDIA)

Michael Kagan, Sead Ahmetović

Five Things in Tech that Matter Now - WeAreDevelopers World Congress 2026 Closing Keynote thumbnail

Five Things in Tech that Matter Now - WeAreDevelopers World Congress 2026 Closing Keynote

Christian Heilmann

The Sound of Your Secrets: Teaching Your Model to Spy, So You Can Learn to Defend thumbnail

The Sound of Your Secrets: Teaching Your Model to Spy, So You Can Learn to Defend

David vonThenen

Super scaling for the Super Bowl: How to survive 30 million users hitting your backend in 30 minutes thumbnail

Super scaling for the Super Bowl: How to survive 30 million users hitting your backend in 30 minutes

Irina Branovic

Running Secure Life Science Research at Scale using Hybrid GPU HPC and Kubernetes 🧬 thumbnail

Running Secure Life Science Research at Scale using Hybrid GPU HPC and Kubernetes 🧬

Jeremy Murray

Angstfreude - AI and Corporate Culture - The Thrill and the Threat thumbnail

Angstfreude - AI and Corporate Culture - The Thrill and the Threat

Axel Ebert, Karin Krobath

Upcoming sessions on this topic

World Congress 2026 North America

September 24, 2026 · 16:50–17:20

Stage 1

When Humans Stop Writing Code: Rethinking Languages, Compilers, and Responsibility

Simon Auer

Organizer of flutter vienna meetup and CEO of marqably

Simon Auer

World Congress 2026 North America

September 24, 2026 · 16:10–16:40

Stage 3

Sandboxing the Swarm: Building Secure, Serverless AI Agents with Wasm

Thorsten Hans

Sr. Developer Advocate @ Akamai Technologies

Thorsten Hans

World Congress 2026 North America

September 24, 2026 · 14:50–15:20

Stage 1

The Era of Machine-Driven Defense is Here: Headless Security

Loris Degioanni

Founder & CTO of Sysdig

Loris Degioanni

World Congress 2026 North America

September 24, 2026 · 12:15–12:45

Tech Leaders Stage

There’s No Such Thing as Vibe Strategy, Vibe Security, or Vibe Scale

Ussama Baggili, Matt Hobbs, Meghna Shah, Andrew Carlson

Ussama Baggili

Matt Hobbs

Meghna Shah

Andrew Carlson

World Congress 2026 North America

September 25, 2026 · 16:50–17:20

Stage 4

Engineering Moneyball: How We Benchmarked Google vs Meta

Jirka Bachel

Co-Founder & CEO

Jirka Bachel

World Congress 2026 North America

September 24, 2026 · 16:50–17:20

Stage 3

Merging at Scale: From Broken Builds to Green Mainline

Manjari Akella, Preetam Dwivedi

Manjari Akella

Preetam Dwivedi

Related videos

We (don't) need a software architect!?! thumbnail

World Congress 2023 • about 3 years ago

We (don't) need a software architect!?!

Hendrik Lösch

Why (most) software projects fail silently... thumbnail

World Congress 2025 • about 1 year ago

Why (most) software projects fail silently...

Hendrik Lösch

Communicate efficiently with Software Architecture Diagrams thumbnail

World Congress 2022 • over 4 years ago

Communicate efficiently with Software Architecture Diagrams

Simon Lasselsberger

Move fast with Software Architecture thumbnail

World Congress 2021 • about 5 years ago

Move fast with Software Architecture

Simon Lasselsberger

Solving Architectural Entropy With Runnable Diagrams thumbnail

World Congress 2026 Europe • 3 months ago

Solving Architectural Entropy With Runnable Diagrams

Mourjo Sen

Software Rollouts Are a People Problem: Meet the Nine Change Management Monsters thumbnail

Europe 2026 Virtual • 3 months ago

Software Rollouts Are a People Problem: Meet the Nine Change Management Monsters

Nina Malakhova

Related articles

DC

Daniel Cranney

How to Avoid Over-Engineering

In today’s software development world, the demand for designing applications that are both robust and easy to maintain is more pressing than ever. Many developers encounter the architectural chaos ...

over 1 year ago

A series of code blocks with 'X's on showing they are incorrect, with one CSS block shown as the correct answer.

AB

Andre Braun, GitLab

Now is the time for industrialized software development

Now is the time for industrialized software development Recently, I received a letter from my car’s manufacturer alerting me to a recall. They had discovered a defective part and wanted to replace ...

about 1 year ago

A person developint HTML on a laptop with the sun shining on it.

JC

Jordan Cutler

The Most Important Concept Every Developer Should Know

When you discuss your promotion with your manager, how do you bring it up? What about when you tell a story in an interview? Or give feedback to a coworker?In each of these situations, our intuitio...

almost 3 years ago

The Most Important Concept Every Developer Should Know

DC

Daniel Cranney

What is Software Engineering in the Age of AI?

Every few years, developers are told their jobs are about to become obsolete. Early programmers, often working in Assembly or machine code, were told that the rise of high-level languages like C wo...

11 months ago

An engineer with puppet strings attached

From learning to earning

Jobs that call for the skills explored in this talk.

about 2 months ago

Staff Software Engineer, Database Infrastructure

Experienced Remote Ruby MySQL Golang

Software Engineer III

New York, NY, United States

Experienced $285k Remote Ruby NoSQL Golang

Senior Software Engineer

Expert $124k–329k Remote Ruby Golang DevOps

Senior Software Engineer, Enterprise Products

Expert $124k–329k Remote Ruby Bicep Golang

25 days ago • Verified

Manager, Engineering, Secure Build and SCS Services

Expert Remote Team Leadership

about 1 month ago

Software Engineer I

Starter $182k Remote Ruby Golang Github