A Field Guide To Team Dynamics And Conflict
- Andy Cleff tl;dr: “The guide provides a spectrum of common team patterns, starting with healthy ones, things you’ll likely observe with high-performing teams, and then progresses through muddy “not clear” territory, to various levels of not-so-good, and all the way to fully toxic.”featured in #584
How Do Interruptions Impact Different Software Engineering Activities?
- Lizzie Matusov tl;dr: Key findings include: (1) Performance and productivity are impacted by interruptions, in nuanced ways. (2) The type of task, and type of interruption, changes the stress associated with an interruption. (3) Perception and physiological data don’t always align. Lizzie elaborates on each.featured in #583
Bridging Theory And Practice In Engineering Strategy
- Will Larson tl;dr: Will covers: (1) Why strategy documents need to be clear and definitive, especially when strategy development has been messy How to iterate on strategy when there are demands for unrealistic timelines. (2) Using strategy as non-executives, where others might override your strategy. (3) Handling dynamic, quickly changing environments where diagnosis can change frequently. (4) Working with indecisive stakeholders who don’t provide clarity on approach. (5) Surviving other people’s bad strategy work.featured in #583
How I Give High-Quality Feedback Quickly
- Wes Kao tl;dr: (1) Give feedback on one thing that will make the biggest difference. (2) Don’t jump straight into line edits. (3) You don’t need to write out all your feedback. (4) Balance what’s easy for you (feedback giver) and easy for them (feedback receiver).featured in #582
A Reading List For Leaders In A Crisis
- Ed Batista tl;dr: Broken down into the following different categories: (1) Responding to the crisis. (2) Supporting others. (3) Managing yourself (4) On coping. (5) Learning from a crisis. (6) Other resources that Ed recommends.featured in #582
30 Lessons From 30 Top Product Leaders
- Peter Yang tl;dr: (1) So you must hold steadfast to "it's not good enough yet. (2) Great products are built through continuous tinkering and adjustments. (3) Don’t confuse the work behind the work with the actual work. (4) If you’re building 0-1, be ready for emotional whiplash. (5) The battle is won in the trenches of daily iterations.featured in #581
Product Integrations: Build Or Buy?
- Bri Cho tl;dr: Customers want to connect your product with their other key business tools. Building these integrations in-house can be painful and time consuming, while pre-built solutions are often limiting. Should you build integrations in-house, or turn to a third party solution? This build vs buy guide offers a handy framework to help you decide.featured in #581
“Looks Good To Me” Is A Lazy Default: Why Managers Should Give Feedback On Work Output
- Wes Kao tl;dr: Managers typically say “looks good” for one of two reasons: (1) You care about quality, but it’s faster to fix the work yourself. (2) You don’t prioritize quality, so you think the work is fine as is. This approach normalizes mediocrity in the name of efficiency. Wes prompts us to ask the following: Do I really think this looks good? What would make this excellent? What did they do well, and what could they improve? What’s one piece of feedback that will make the biggest impact in improving this? What’s something I’m noticing, that I can point out so my direct report learns to see what I’m seeing?featured in #580
How To Effectively Refine Engineering Strategy
- Will Larson tl;dr: Will covers: (1) An introduction to the practice of strategy refinement. (2) Why strategy refinement is the highest impact step of strategy creation. (3) How mixed incentives often cause refinement to be skipped, even thought skipping leads to worse organizational outcomes. (4) Building your personal toolkit for refining strategy by picking from various refinement techniques like strategy testing, systems modeling, and Wardley mapping. (5) Brief introductions to each of those refinement techniques to provide enough context to pick which ones might be useful for the strategy you’re working on. (6) Survey of anti-patterns that skip refinement or manufacture consent to create the illusion of refinement without providing the benefits.featured in #579
Hitting OKRs vs Doing Your Job
- Jessica Kerr tl;dr: When Engineering OKRs just mirror the product roadmap, they add no value. Instead, Engineering OKRs should focus on what's special that quarter - process changes, improvements, or critical launches that need extra attention. Regular work belongs in KPIs, not OKRs.featured in #579