Delightful Progress: Kuali's Legacy of Community and Leadership

• 09/09/24

We've built software that supports universities and colleges doing things in the unique ways that they need to, safely so that they don't work themselves into a corner by over-customization.

It is important to us to offer software that allows colleges and universities to innovate safely.

So that's one way that we make our software ready for the future — to enable institutions to innovate without making it difficult for them to upgrade the software.

Another way that we try to be prepared for the future is to keep a very clean code base and avoid technology debt.

When your software has a lot of technology debt, it means that you've taken shortcuts in writing your code. It's a debt that you have to go back and pay later. If you don't pay that technology debt off, you're going to come across some performance problem, or some stability problem, or some security problem.

It's a serious debt because you're going to have to go back and fix it eventually. What we find is that the more technology debt that you have and the more bugs that you have in your code that you don't fix, the more it slows your developers down.

The more technology debt that you have and the more bugs that you have in your code that you don't fix, the more it slows your developers down.

So we focus on fixing bugs immediately and avoiding technology debt as much as possible.

Some people worry that addressing bugs in your software slows you down in the short term, but we feel that fixing bugs now can actually speed things up later. We're always keeping our code clean, keeping it safe, keeping it fresh, keeping it fast. So when we come up with new features, or a customer innovates, the developers are working in a code base that is clean.

We're always keeping our code clean, keeping it safe, keeping it fresh, keeping it fast. So when we come up with new features, or a customer innovates, the developers are working in a code base that is clean.

Grush: I'd like to ask one last question, relating to the community. I can remember attending the very early and very memorable Kuali Days… How are the Kuali Days of the past similar to or different from now?

Dehlin: We just recently had our first face-to-face Kuali Days since COVID. I think if you would have been there, you would have felt that same spirit of collaboration we have always seen with the Kuali community.

The energy was amazing. At Kuali Days it's not so much about code any more. It's more about how the software is being used than how the software is being developed, which I think is a fantastic evolution.

At Kuali Days it's not so much about code any more. It's more about how the software is being used than how the software is being developed, which I think is a fantastic evolution.

You can see the energy, and the appreciation that people in the Kuali community have for each other. On the homepage of our website there is a video clip of attendees who talk about their appreciation for being in this community with access to brilliant people from institutions they can identify with.

For those who were around for the early Kuali Days, I think they'd recognize it today, but they'd be intrigued by how much it's grown and how the focus has shifted from developers to end users. I know you'd recognize the spirit of the conference.

And it's a phenomenon that we're careful to nurture. Back when we started the company, I went to one of the Kuali meetings with a group of Kuali users from different institutions. And it became really clear to me that — even if we wanted to — we in fact couldn't disrupt that spirit of collaboration and joy.

Today, we've got forums that people can communicate and share in. We've got customer advisory boards that meet with customers to see and discuss the latest features.

We have a cadence of delivery with which we're delivering new features instead of every few years, sometimes every week, and sometimes every day, or at least a couple times a month. New capabilities are coming all the time and we're involving customers in that idea pipeline, just as we did in the past.

It's a wonderful community. They help validate our designs and they receive the benefits as those features come online.

And as much as we make progress as a company, we're bringing forward Kuali's legacy of community and leadership.

[Editor's note: Image by AI: Image Creator in Microsoft Designer]