My thoughts and notes on the preface and first chapter of book The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks.

Feb 13, 2024

My personal thoughts and notes on a blog post Charity Majors wrote in response to a question about measuring engineering productivity. Here is a link to the blog post: https://charity.wtf/2020/07/07/questionable-advice-can-engineering-productivity-be-measured/.

Feb 13, 2024

My notes and thoughts on a blog post by Charity Majors about how Friday deploy freezes are actually a sign of an unhealthy culture. The original post is at https://charity.wtf/2019/05/01/friday-deploy-freezes-are-exactly-like-murdering-puppies/.

Feb 13, 2024

My thoughts and notes on a blog post by Charity Majors on how teams should build/cultivate their culture. Her post is at https://charity.wtf/2023/05/01/choose-boring-technology-culture/.

Feb 13, 2024

This post is about a model for organizing the work of a software development team in Jira and for articulating why we work on the tasks that we work on. At the moment, I think splitting work into things that meet one of our agreed-upon commitments and things that don't have to do with meeting one of our commitments is a helpful model for categorizing work.

Mar 16, 2023

From time to time I have encountered a tension between what is considered important work. In my experience, work tied to a formal project or to business goals is often deemed important work, and other vital work is de-emphasized. We still need to honor and respect the vital day-to-day work teams do to keep the lights on.

Mar 08, 2023

As I read more about OKRs, I have started to wonder how so many companies that saw great success from adopting OKRs later suffered serious failures or structural issues. This post is thoughts and musings about this problem.

Feb 26, 2023

My notes and outlines on training I plan to deliver at work to my team mates. The goal is to help a team new to OKRs understand how the framework works, know why OKRs is valuable, and start writing their own OKR sets.

Feb 23, 2023

The OKRs framework is a trendy, desirable tool for increasing productivity. However, it seems OKRs is really only for teams that already have established psychological safety, a sense of empowerment, and are capable of delivering results on their own. OKRs, then, is not a solution to productivity problems, rather it is an accelerator.

Feb 21, 2023

Empowerment is the foundation of successful, high-performing teams. Empowered team members successfully solve problems independently and with intiative. Build your team's empowerment through building confidence, providing guidelines, and making your team feel trusted.

Nov 14, 2021

Managing remote teams is challenging! However, having regular one-on-ones and building empowerment are two of the best ways to help you and your remote team succeed.

Nov 14, 2021

Leadership starts with you. Being a good leader for others is difficult if you are a not a good leader for yourself.

Nov 02, 2021

While there may be people who are naturally good at interviewing, conducting successful, meaningful interviews is a skill you can work on like any other skill. Anyone can become a better interviewer and have more informative, more enjoyable interviews through thoughtful planning and consideration. Some keys to becoming a better interviewer are understanding what your strengths as an interviewer are, identifying areas in which you need to improve, and developing a plan to improve your interviewing in a measurable way.

Oct 29, 2021

Are too many candidates answering your questions with just a yes, a no, or some other unhelpful response? A one word response can be extremely frustrating for interviewers trying to establish the credibility or skills of candidates. However, the problem may not be the candidates but the questions interviewers are asking. Asking-open ended questions, recording the performance of your questions, and writing your questions down beforehand will help you get better results from your interviews.

Oct 29, 2021