/Management

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

Tracking Engineering Time

- Jacob Kaplan-Moss tl;dr: How should a manager discover what their team is working on and figure out if time is being allocated correctly? Jacob shares his playbook: (1) Measure the time engineers are spending using story point, ticket counts. This doesn’t need to be super-precise. (2) Split that time into “buckets” that map activities that influence output. Jacob starts with 3 buckets: features i.e. time spent developing new things, debt and toil i.e. time spent on routine tasks. (3) Agree on the appropriate ratios for each bucket, and then adjust over time to influence the outputs you care about.

featured in #499

The Developer’s Guide to Directory Sync (SCIM)

tl;dr: SCIM is an open source protocol for implementing Directory Sync, which is crucial for user lifecycle management (user provisioning/deprovisioning). When selling to enterprises, this is a highly requested feature that can determine whether the deal goes through. However, when choosing to implement this yourself there are a number of pitfalls and implementation details to consider.

featured in #499

Friction Isn't Velocity

- Will Larson tl;dr: “It remains the most common category of reasoning error that I see stressed executives make. If you’re not sure how to make progress, then emotionally it feels a lot better to substitute motion for lack of progress, but in practice you’re worse off.” Will highlights this with examples. 

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

Are You Ready For PCI DSS 4.0?

- Robert Curlee tl;dr: If your organization handles or processes card payment data, an important milestone is upon you with the coming retirement of PCI DSS 3.2.1 and the following adoption of the new PCI DSS 4.0 standard. SonarQube can help you prepare for the new PCI DSS 4.0 requirements by identifying vulnerabilities, automating standards enforcement, conducting regular code reviews, and training developers on secure coding practices.

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

Modern Practices For Goal Setting In Software Engineering

tl;dr: How do the best software engineering orgs set and track goals? LinearB’s upcoming workshop: (1) Explores the data behind effective goal setting in software development. (2) Shares strategies elite engineering orgs use for setting OKRs and KPIs. (3) Explains how to use goals to drive predictable software delivery. (4) Includes a free how-to guide + reporting slide deck. 

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