Recently I was talking to a manager friend about one-to-one meetings with team members. He noted that often some of his team talked about personal problems they are encountering (relationships, … Continue reading Helping team members with their personal problems
A couple of times before I’ve referenced Ian Leslie’s excellent book, “Conflicted”. It’s highly readable, built on the idea that we live in very polarised times, but we really need … Continue reading The conflict Tube map
Over on The Verge the other week was a frustrating story about a region-locked printer. It appears that an HP printer (or at least, this particular model) bought in one … Continue reading Customer focus and failure demand
Leaders and managers often have to introduce change—perhaps they see the need, or perhaps their team members come to them with a problem and solution. But it’s important to check … Continue reading Change for objective reasons
The other day I was talking to someone about release processes. Specifically, about convincing non-technical stakeholders that frequent releases are more desirable than less frequent ones. My friend said his … Continue reading Diagramming an argument about the release process
Last week I talked about clear and simple messaging for processes, to avoid confusion and waste. This is particularly important for parts of the process that are used rarely, and … Continue reading Making process reminders a habit
A while back I told a story in which a team questioned why I wanted them to show their current work on a whiteboard. They thought it was because I … Continue reading Questioning our own motivation
There are a couple of practices I value greatly, and which many engineers struggle with, usually for the same reason. One practice is planning for value in small increments, which … Continue reading There are many things to optimise for
I was speaking once to a user researcher about her work. One of the things she mentioned was the importance of asking unbiased questions. When she said this she was … Continue reading Unbiased questions for everyone
I love brown bag lunches, when someone talks about an interesting subject while (traditionally) everyone else eats their lunch around a table (or on the other side of their video … Continue reading Don’t just change what you know
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