Never Stop Iterating

Show Notes

Guest: Joeleen Kennedy, Senior Web Engineer, Human Made

Recorded at: WordCamp 2025

In this episode, meet Joeleen Kennedy, Senior Web Engineer at Human Made, an enterprise WordPress agency. In conversation with Pantheon’s Steve Persch, Joeleen challenges a fundamental assumption about web projects: launch day isn't the finish line – it's the starting point. Through agile-but-flexible sprint planning and ongoing client partnerships, Human Made ensures phase 2 actually happens instead of becoming the myth it is at so many agencies.

Key insights:

• Engineering seniority isn't knowing everything—it's knowing how to find solutions, ask the right questions, and recognize when you're stuck (15-minute rule: if you're spinning your wheels, ask for help).
• Human-centered AI adoption at Human Made focuses on features that genuinely help users, such as automated tagging, excerpt creation, and natural language search.
• Hybrid approach to Gutenberg and full-site editing for Wikimedia's UX refresh when 100% FSE isn't feasible. Listen to Joeleen’s full talk at WordCamp.