Leadership

Why sprints

For the past few months I've been introducing sprints into a chaotic startup that's been growing so fast everyone's got whiplash. Since August, 5 engineers turned into 12. I think it's starting to work.

Principles of high output engineering teams

A few engineering principles I aim to instill in every team I join. Lead or not.

Talk to more users sooner

Debate less, ship more.

What I learned from Inspired

Products not projects. Outcomes not features. Iterate.

Code yourself out of the job

Let go of your legos and let others do the work.

How *do* you break down a large project? INVEST

Going from Big Vision to Series of Executable Steps is a key skill for senior+ engineers. PMs can help but they don't know everything.

How do you prioritize?

How do you choose what to work on first? As an empowered engineer that's a key skill.

What I learned from Accelerate

Accelerate is the empirical research behind books such as The Phoenix/Unicorn Project and (parts of) Software Engineering at Google. I loved it.

Coaching AI to write your code

Working with AI is here and it's skill. Just like google-fu became important in the mid 2000's. A few things I've learned.

Why learning and teaching the good stuff is hard

You can't learn to ride a bike from reading a book.

The swarm doc

Here's a doc I like to use to structure the pre-work design chat that makes later code review a breeze.

"Yes caviar is great, here's a ham sandwich"

Why do some projects ship and others seem to drag on forever? You need 3 people to get this right.

Make mistakes easy to fix

You can't prevent bugs. You'll burn out. Instead focus on making them quick to fix.

How big up-front design fails

A long design phase without shipping kills many software projects. Here's a story from production I haven't shared before.

What helps you ship confidently?

Been thinking about what needs to be in place for engineers to ship with confidence

Let small fires burn

You can't fix everything. Focus on the next big thing and let the small fires burn.

How to use feature flags

All the hard lessons learned using feature flags in production. Skips the why and gets to the how.

Validate your assumptions early

here's war story from last summer. I've talked about it in workshops but haven't written it down before. It's for a book I'm working on.

A better roadmap solves many issues

Many engineering challenges start with your roadmap

Get us over the water, not build us a bridge

effective engineering teams should work *with* their product owner/manager, not *for* them

Coordinating at the end is too late

When working: sync first *then* async

Approve with comment

A shift in your code review process can boost your team's productivity. Empower authors to make the call.

Code yourself out of the job

Don't get stuck being a critical member of the team.

The quickest way to kill a team

The answer to 5 soloists in a trench coat

Team dysfunction where everyone's a soloist? Try this fix: Force the team to work on ONE story at a time.

5 soloists in a trench coat

Ever felt like your software team is just soloists in a trench coat? You may be right!

Why you need a regular retro

Agile is something you are, not something you do.

5 tips for effective standups

Talk about today, not yesterday

Onboarding to a new team

People are starting to cheat in interviews using ChatGPT. It's obvious, doesn't work, and wouldn't even be cheating if you did it right!

What being an expert looks like

The blue sweater scene in 'Devil Wears Prada' is a masterclass in expertise