The morning air was still crisp. Not a soul in sight as I walked past the small waterfall. After crossing the road, I moved at a steady pace, passing the last houses, heading upward. With every increase in altitude, the noise from the valley below grew steadily fainter, until eventually I heard nothing at all from the world I had left behind.

My gaze wandered to the far side of the valley. The snow there had retreated, and at the bottom, green was already the dominant color. I could just barely make out the path on the opposite side, winding through a pass and over the ridge. Strange, I thought; in winter, when everything is white, I never have to search for that path so long.

On my way to the summit, I passed several fields that had already woken from winter’s sleep. The final stretch of the climb took me along a trail where I finally met the first hikers coming the other way. When I reached the top, I stopped by “my secret spot,” offering the best view of the whole area. Sitting there, with my feet dangling into the air, the sense of calm and relaxation was simply wonderful.

But on my way back down into the valley, that peacefulness was quickly swallowed up by the increasing noise of civilization. By the time I reached the bottom, the magic was gone.

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This walk made me think about how some developers repeatedly fear rolling out new software into production on Friday afternoons. While development may proceed relatively calmly, like my climb to the summit, things can change in seconds during deployment if something goes wrong. Then the noise of civilization really crashes in. Stress surges, and your mind snaps into crisis mode as you scramble to find and fix the issue.

Do we really need to fear deploying to production on Friday afternoon? In reality, it can all be much more relaxed — if teams make the time to build quality in from the start, and test software continuously and automatically. That means using unit tests, integration tests, regression tests, and more. It means running both static and dynamic code analyses as an integral part of your CI/CD pipeline. It means living a culture of quality, writing clear, maintainable code, taking code reviews seriously, generating reproducible builds — the list is long.

Just as important is the culture inside development teams. It’s better to move in smaller, thoughtful steps and keep quality top-of-mind, so that later, surprises are avoided and everyone has confidence that the product will work reliably in production.

Beyond the technical aspects, there are also human factors. How are teams formed and bonded? How do you ensure developers work well together and strive to grow as a unit? How are teams shaped and supported? How is trust built on both sides, and conflicts resolved? What’s the communication style? And just as important — though often overlooked — how is psychological safety actively promoted? What steps are taken to ensure it?

These are many questions about building engineering teams, what qualities a leader should have, how to show respect for your people, what culture to nurture, and how to create transparency and foster trust. All this, besides technical excellence, will actively contribute to delivering better software. So you can go into the weekend without fear, relaxed, and meet satisfied customers on Monday.