When I started in technology, there was a typical quote, ‘no one gets fired for hiring IBM’, to point out that adopting the standard industry approach without thinking could lead to bad results. However, it would still be accepted as a good decision. We are now in the ‘nobody gets…

A framework for Engineering Management — In a recent post, I talked about the idea of how Engineering Managers (EMs) should act as leaders in their teams. They should intentionally work on the systems (or processes) that affect their teams to achieve better results for the team and their members. Software engineering is a complex discipline…

Being passive is not the goal. We were recently discussing this article in a tech group I’m part of. For those who haven’t read it, the blog post describes a manager’s weekly schedule and demonstrates how hard it is to do anything proactive, given you are always in meetings. The…

This post is part of a series on Creating Effective Teams. One of the current philosophical discussions in software engineering is the challenge of balancing individual and team needs. Companies want highly productive teams but understand that software is a creative process that requires some personal inspiration. …

This post is part of a series on Creating Effective Teams. Our industry has shifted from a process-driven focus, with Waterfall and then Agile methodologies, to a people one, where we have been focusing on engineers driving the output of teams independently. …

How the software industry is leaving essential knowledge behind — This post is part of a series on Creating Effective Teams. I believe we have made delivering software more complicated than it should be. What used to be a process-driven industry has recently moved to a people-focused one. …

How can I make my team(s) more productive? That’s the constant question that engineering managers ask themselves. Managing a group of people working in a complex environment feels more like an art than a science. How much work can we do? What staffing decisions should I be making? …

A few tips on getting big results with small engineering teams — Technology is a fast-paced field, especially in early-stage companies where every hour and day count. The runway decreases, while the expectation to deliver results increases. The typical scenario looks like this: a small team trying to deliver multiple features just in time to hit a launch date for customers. A…

Views on a role that is more art than science — The Spotify model has been a de facto standard of organizational structure in the technology industry for the best part of the last decade. And recently an article outlining its failures has got a lot of attention. It shines some light in a model that nobody understood, but everybody tried…