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The Circles of Growth: Capacity, Capability and Potential
A framework for professional (and personal) growth
This is a guest post from my friend Arnav Gupta, you might know him as @championswimmer from Twitter or from his hugely popular Scaler Pod. He's not just a hardcore nerd but also a seasoned manager and keeps dropping gems on
The Shape of Work
In my last episode, I wrote about the Office and how the shape of our built environment affects our work. But we are not mere material, friend. We’re energetic as well. And intellectual. And the shape of the energetic and intellectual environment also affects how we work.
The underlying
The Office
'Management is not work'
In which I explain that management is, indeed, work. But it doesn't look like work because it deals in different material than thermodynamics or information.
Admiration - the secret sauce of culture
Just saw this tweet by Jason Fried and got inspired to write about admiration, the often overlooked attribute of great teams.
Jason is an astute org observer and he has hit the nail on the head. There is a huge difference between teams in which the members are playing zero
One Simple Trick for Better Planning
99% of orgs don't do this.
In a previous post, I started talking about Nailing the Quarterly Plan. The thing about planning is that it only makes up half the game. A fact that often goes unnoticed is that planning, in and of itself, is a necessary but
Nailing the Quarterly Plan
Gantt masti time.
Bhel-puri code
From the dawn of the age of computing, humans have been telling computers to do things. That has never been the problem. A stack of punch cards can instruct a computer just fine.
The problem is, and always has been the human comprehension of these programs. Because until recently all
The Dashboard Nerd Guide
Dashboards are like teeth. Strong, white teeth indicate overall health and viability of an animal. And beautiful, useful dashboards indicate the health and viability of an organisation's information systems, which these days is the health of the whole org.
Herding Cats
One of the defining characteristics of a well functioning product org is discipline. And discipline necessarily entails getting people to do things one way and not another, which as we all know, can be famously difficult when dealing with programmers.
Some have likened the organisation of the efforts of programmers
The Annual / Quarterly Plan
Months of hard work can save you days of planning.
Information Wants to be Free
There is something magical that happens when project management dashboards start to show the way to the goal. The teams become self-directing and in complex and chaotic situations, self directing teams are a super-power.
But you can't get there without a correct information architecture.
Architecting Beyond Code
It isn't just code that needs architecting. Every piece of text produced by your org executes on human wetware. It is code. And it needs to be treated like code.
Teams Without Managers
A team without managers sounds like a ridiculous idea, but it's actually worth trying out just to see how much of management is 'real' and how much is just fear of shadows.
In this post, Swanand Pagnis, CTO of co-learn, explores what it might take to get there.
Managing Without Managers
Anarchy - I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Hammer Time!
The Quality Muscle
Use it or lose it
Who is responsible for the quality of the output of your engineering org? If you answered "QA" then you're either a QA or you really need to read the rest of this article.
Quality, like reliability, is such a cross-cutting concern
Narratives - Part 1
Stories are extremely influential, they are innate to humans and humans derive their model of the world from stories. And this is true of orgs as well — your organisation is telling itself stories in order to make sense of itself.
The Power of Stories
The Ladder of Power
This is going to be a short post because the concept is quite simple, and yet quite powerful. When it comes to Politics, simple paying attention to the subtle forces that shape our world can be a game changer
If you haven’t already, please read my post on managing
Devs don't care about business!!
Talking to an entrepreneur friend of mine last night and he was complaining about the fact that given a choice, devs will choose to work on the more technically challenging thing than on the thing that makes the most business impact.
Here’s what I told him.
PMs are from Saturn, EMs are from Jupiter
the uncrossable chasms - Part 1
Agile for Real People
Why be Political?
Politics For Nerds - Episode 2
What is Politics?
Politics for Nerds - Episode 1
Politics for Nerds
Oh, you're not political are you?
Interesting Times
Welcome to the Global Financial System, young Paduan
The Clean Up Sprint
How to ship broken stuff with confidence
How to hire a kickass team
May the vibe be with you!
Everything I know about introducing TDD in an org
Hopefully you’ve read part one of this series where I talk about why one should do TDD. Teaching TDD is kind of out of scope here but at some point I will compile a list of the best resources on the web to come up the curve. The rest
Everything I know about TDD
Part 1
Be Careful Of Your Issue Tracker
It becomes your code.
Engineering Management Metrics
Everything that can be measured is not worth measuring.
Don't Get Eaten
Managing your career in software product development
Risk Management
All management is the management of risk
Outside-in Thinking
Or 'How to Actually Finish Projects'
How to Not Be A Micro-Manager - Part 2
Blast Radius FTW
How To Not Be A Micro Manager - Part 1
These 2 weird tricks will set you and your team free!
Building a Learning Organisation
Question from a Product Engineering leader at a fast growing start up
How do you provide learning and growth for engineers in the absence of a solid technical leader in the org?
First of all, congratulations on asking the question. This is a step many never take and the fact
The Engineering Organisation
Welcome to The Engineering Organisation by me, svs.
The whole concept of how engineering organisations work has been a fascinating revelation for me. The way information flows from being an idea in someone’s head to getting delivered to users in a real live product is as fascinating as it