An Evolutionary Approach To Staffing Software Product Teams
- Patrick Roos tl;dr: “A common pitfall that many companies face is the temptation to staff a product team quickly and from scratch with a large number of mostly external developers.” Phase (1): Lay the Foundations with a minimal team i.e. 1-3 entrepreneurial engineers and domain expert (2) Expand with precision: 1-2 engineers who match the culture and work ethic. (3) Scale through specialized feature teams.featured in #500
featured in #499
featured in #499
Leadership Requires Taking Some Risk
- Will Larson tl;dr: Will discusses the scenarios when taking risks make the most sense as a leader. “Taking direct, personal risk is a prerequisite to taking ownership of interesting problems that matter to your company. A risk-free existence isn’t a leadership role, regardless of whatever your title might be. Indeed, an uncomfortable belief of mine is that leadership is predicated on risk. The upside is that almost all meaningful personal and career growth is hidden behind the risk-taking door. There’s a lot of interesting lessons to learn out there, and while you can learn a lot from others, some of them you have to learn yourself.”featured in #498
Patterns Of Legacy Displacement
- Ian Cartwright Rob Horn James Lewis tl;dr: “We have spent most of the last couple of decades helping large organizations overhaul their legacy systems. In doing this we've learned a great deal about what works and seen many paths that lead to failure. We've decided to set aside some time to writing down what we've learned in the form of various patterns that we've seen used.” The authors believe the following four activities should be done in sequence: (1) Understand the outcomes you want to achieve. (2) Decide how to break the problem up into smaller parts. (3) Successfully deliver the parts. (4) Change the organization to allow this to happen on an ongoing basis.featured in #498
Estimating Software Projects: Breaking Down Tasks
- Jacob Kaplan-Moss tl;dr: Jacob describes his process: (1) Begin with a list of tasks or sketch. (2) Think through the steps you need to take to accomplish that task and write them down. Don’t worry about completeness. Each pass just needs to expand on the previous one. (3) For each item, ask the following: Do I understand what change is desired? Do I understand what “done” looks like? Can I define all the steps I would take to get to “done”? Do I have all the information I need? If the answer is “no”, take that task and break it down further using this algorithm again. (4) Repeat until all tasks are sufficiently broken down.featured in #497
How To Give Actionable Feedback On Work Output
- Wes Kao tl;dr: “Super Specific Feedback is extremely concrete feedback primarily on work output. The goal is to strengthen the work product to get it closer to ship ready, and to help the feedback recipient improve their craft and judgment over time.” Wes provides 16 ways to give actionable feedback, starting with: (1) Get “permission” and sell why getting lots of feedback benefits them. (2) Explain the “why.” (3) Avoid the shit sandwich i.e. be intellectually honest and direct, and support it with evidence. (4) Share positive feedback so they know what to continue doing. (5) Aim to be tactical, actionable, concrete, and specific.featured in #496
An Engineering Leader’s Job Search Algorithm
- Kevin Conroy tl;dr: Word document written by Kevin, an Engineering Manager at Meta. “This outlines the algorithm I’ve used for my job searches. It’s not perfect. There’s no one right way to do this, and your mileage will vary. However, I’ve tried to capture the common elements and rules of thumb I’ve picked up over the years in the hopes that it will help someone else through what is all too often a very stressful process. I hope you, too, can overcome the imposter syndrome and anxiety you might have to get a job that you love and pays you what you are worth (or more)!”featured in #496
How Capable Leaders Navigate Uncertainty And Ambiguity
- John Cutler Tom Kerwin tl;dr: “What do leaders who are skilled at navigating complexity know how to do? What do they do differently? What would you observe if a leader had these skills?” The authors asked these questions, and answered them using general behaviors they’ve observed first. These include: (1) Accepting they are part of the problem and have contributed to the current situation. (2) Encourage new interaction patterns and not simply remove individuals. (3) Patient divergence by resisting the urge to converge on a path forward prematurely.featured in #495
An Engineering Leader’s Job Search Algorithm
- Kevin Conroy tl;dr: Word document written by Kevin, an Engineering Manager at Meta. “This outlines the algorithm I’ve used for my job searches. It’s not perfect. There’s no one right way to do this, and your mileage will vary. However, I’ve tried to capture the common elements and rules of thumb I’ve picked up over the years in the hopes that it will help someone else through what is all too often a very stressful process. I hope you, too, can overcome the imposter syndrome and anxiety you might have to get a job that you love and pays you what you are worth (or more)!”featured in #495