The other day I was at an Underground station where there were a number of charity collectors with buckets. I put a coin in a collector’s bucket and he gave … Continue reading Make good work visible

Some time ago I was working with a team that made a mistake in generating its release notes. I took on the task of improving the process to avoid us … Continue reading Achieving excellence is hard work

Organisational culture is seemingly nebulous, hard to pin down. But in fact it’s based on very concrete, tangible things. It follows that by changing those tangible things we can change … Continue reading Culture is based on tangible things

Having worked as both a team manager and a consultant, I find there is a common balancing act when introducing people to a new approach or idea, such as setting … Continue reading Balancing ownership and quality

In a discussion the other day about measuring the effectiveness of developers I looked for a document I’d written a while back for exactly that purpose. But when I opened … Continue reading Are we seeking to evaluate or improve?

I often hear about organisations that have tried to implement change and it’s not gone well. Sometimes those are organisations in which I’m working. Here, “not gone well” means the … Continue reading Be aware of the organisational brakes

Very technical roles require very technical skills. Information security experts, software developers, architects and others all need specialist skills as a baseline. But in general those people (like so many … Continue reading Good technical people need good non-technical skills