/Leadership

Why You Should “Design It Twice"?

- Eliran Turgeman tl;dr: “The core message is that you shouldn’t just go with the first design that comes to mind. Instead, come up with at least two different designs even if you have to force yourself. No matter how confident you are, you’ll make better decisions when you compare options side by side.”

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Be Plainspoken

- Andrew Bosworth tl;dr: Andrew discusses the superpower of being plainspoken. “Our desire to maintain harmony can cause us to be indirect about uncomfortable truths. Our desire to influence can cause us to pre-emptively address every arcane objection. Our desire to impress can cause us to use more language than necessary. And the expectations we have internalized about corporate communication often cause us to write in a way we never would to our friends.”

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Scope Management 101

- Kent Beck tl;dr: (1) Plan incrementally. The team, every week, must be prepared to decide what to do that week. Some planning processes are so painful, or require the sign-off of such overworked people, that contemplating planning weekly causes sweat to bead on foreheads. Learn how to plan lightly as to tactics & resolutely as to goals. (2) Deliver incrementally. The team must be prepared to support production while developing. This in turn requires rock solid reliable tidying & prioritizing the fixing & preventing of defects.

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The Impossibility Of Making An Elite Engineer

- Kent Beck tl;dr: “While all elite engineers face these contradictions, there are as many paths through them as there are engineers.” Kent discusses the pattern he’s seen elite engineers take on with the following: (1) Longevity and diversity of projects. (2) Success and failure. (3) Mentored and self-directed. (4) Urgency and slack. 

featured in #549

The Impossibility Of Making An Elite Engineer

- Kent Beck tl;dr: “While all elite engineers face these contradictions, there are as many paths through them as there are engineers.” Kent discusses the pattern he’s seen elite engineers take on with the following: (1) Longevity and diversity of projects. (2) Success and failure. (3) Mentored and self-directed. (4) Urgency and slack. 

featured in #548

Your Company Needs Junior Devs

- Doug Turnbull tl;dr: “Coaching junior employees becomes its own force multiplier for innovating at scale. It’s not about the added labor, it’s about a psychologically safe culture that values teaching and learning, and the innovation that this unlocks.”

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Founders Create Managers

- Camille Fournier tl;dr: “The only solution to this is to think early and often about the systems of accountability you have to set up. This is much, much harder than micromanaging details, because every system of accountability you set up will eventually be gamed. So in addition to accountability, you need to foster a strong, ethical company culture that encourages transparency while allowing for some mistakes.”

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Tone And Words: Use Accurate Language

- Wes Kao tl;dr: “You make decisions, allocate resources, and make plans — all based on words. This is why it’s important that your language accurately reflects a few things: intent, meaning, severity, level of certainty, stakes and power dynamics.” Wes describes how to use words that accurately reflect what you mean.

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Finding The Goldilocks Zone: Just The Right Amount Of Process

- AbdulFattah Popoola tl;dr: “All the struggling organizations I have worked in shared one common characteristic. They had process deficiencies: some did too little, while some did too much. The best-performing orgs? They did just right. This post offers suggestions and tips for leaders seeking to introduce change.”

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Technical Coherence

- Jack Danger tl;dr: “Software development slows down over time. I wrote a whole book to help leaders reverse this slowdown and the central point of the book is a process any engineering leader can apply. I call this process Technical Coherence and you can mostly achieve it in a single meeting with your leaders. You can implement it in your org gradually or all at once.”

featured in #547