Maintainable · 2026-05-05 · 56 min
Sally Lait joins Robby Russell on Maintainable to explore software maintainability through a different lens… not just code quality, but how teams work together over time. Sally is a fractional technology leader and advisor with more than two decades in the industry. You can follow her on LinkedIn or Mastodon . They start with a familiar question: what makes software well maintained? Structure and standards matter, but Sally shifts the focus to signals around the edges… documentation, onboarding speed, knowledge sharing, and especially how confident people feel making changes. That confidence becomes the thread throughout the conversation. Teams with high confidence move faster and adapt more easily. Teams with low confidence hesitate, avoid parts of the system, and struggle to make progress… regardless of what the code looks like. Robby and Sally also dig into why maintenance work often struggles to get traction. It rarely speaks for itself. Leaders need to connect it to outcomes the business already cares about… risk, hiring, delivery speed, and long-term sustainability.
Chris Coyier: The Long Game of Maintaining CodePen75 / 100
Rein Henrichs: The Real Work of Maintenance Happens Before You Touch the Code
Russ Olsen: The Hidden Cost of Forgetting Why the Code Looks Like That
Joel Oliveira: Predictability Is a Maintainability Feature
Lucas Roesler: The Fast Feedback Loop Advantage