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Why 5 Whys isn’t enough
29 Dec 2024
5 Whys is a prevalent engineering process in modern tech companies. When your company has operational incidents (and even the…
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Convincing or Instructing
26 Dec 2024
To convince someone, tell them why, then how, then what, in that order. To give an instruction, tell someone what,…
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Managing Expectations
14 Dec 2024
“This team isn’t delivering enough.” You’ve had a fully funded team of engineers working on a product for years. It…
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Stop saying Tech Debt
23 Jul 2023
If you gave two options to someone who cared about business outcomes, about what they could have, which do you…
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What are your engineering culture values?
20 Nov 2022
Perform an activity frequently enough, and you will start to see patterns. After being involved in the process of creating…
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Manager README 2021
20 Jul 2021
It has been a while since I wrote my first manager README. The idea is simple: help people who are…
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Manager README
29 Oct 2018
The concept of a manager README doc, as an introduction of what to expect from a new manager, has become…
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Are you joining a good engineering team?
23 Jul 2017
You’re unlikely to read a job spec these days that doesn’t contain the word, Agile (capitalised, of course), scrum, kanban,…
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How much coding should a manager do?
2 Jul 2017
In my day job we use Slack as a key communication tool – for those who haven’t used it, it’s…