I talk a lot about having to put thought into things. I even have a term for it: “Stare at the wall mode”. (You’ve probably heard me use this term before on this blog.) This is when you are wrestling with something in your mind and are working on trying to solve a problem or […]
Formal Agile and Scrum training uses things like Story Points or T-Shirt Sizes for user story estimation. Although I have done lots of reading and training, I still have a hard time understanding how this would work in real life, given that it is very intentionally stated in the formal academic training that the Points […]
So I like to work out (sort of). I mean, I don’t always enjoy the act of working out but I enjoy the satisfaction of doing it. But I’m not very good at it. I can’t run a marathon, bench 250, do more than three pullups, and I’m one of the last to finish a […]
Have you ever heard of the Bystander Effect? (I think of it as the Bystander’s Dilemma). According to britannica.com, its “the inhibiting influence of the presence of others on a person’s willingness to help someone in need” (https://www.britannica.com/topic/bystander-effect). I’ve seen this play out many times in a work meeting. Have you ever been in a […]
Last week I talked about the importance of domain knowledge. I asserted that if you are building, supporting, or selling something, that it was important to understand the domain that you were working in. Otherwise, you would face challenges. But that’s the ideal use case. What about the pragmatic reality of the situation, where this […]
I was doing a question-and-answer one time at a university’s ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) club. This was a bunch of 18-22-year-old computer science majors. There were a couple of interesting technical questions but the overriding theme was about employment and careers. The main question was basically, “How do I get a job?” My answer […]
For quite a while, I was excited about the new videogame Cyberpunk 2077 being released. It looked to be quite an amazing game. When it was released, although it had many great aspects the game also had a lot of bugs and defects. One bug, in particular, made the rounds on social media, as video capture. It […]
Here’s an interesting leadership thought exercise. Let’s say your team is walking along lengthy paths, and there are a bunch of boulders in the way along the path. Which of these is your initial reaction? a) Run ahead on the paths and remove all the boulders or b) Make sure each team member has a […]
Happy Father’s Day! To the fathers who might be reading this, I encourage and hope that you are able to take this day to enjoy some time with your children, and also rest and recover. I know from firsthand experience that it can be hard to stay focused on growing and fostering your career while […]
After posting last week’s blog post, I realized I have more I want to say about effort versus results. Or more accurately, about process versus results. I heard a saying one time, it went along the lines of: “A sub-par team will produce sub-par results no matter what process is used. Conversely, a good team […]
