I know I always advocate for “velocity!” and “Speed of iteration beats quality of iteration” (John Boyd) and “Move fast and break things. If you’re not breaking things you’re not moving fast enough” (Mark Zuckerbeg). For a startup environment, where the goal is to get to minimum-viable-product (MVP) as quickly as possible, even with bugs […]
Typically I am very organized about my day-to-day work, and also my short-term (3 months or so) planning. I use Trello for the “month” timeframe, iCloud Reminders for the “week” timeframe, and a paper notepad and pencil for the “day” timeframe. Sometimes, when I’m being particularly unproductive, I’ll even go into my calendar, either iCloud […]
I’ve been reading a pretty good book lately, it’s the classic How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It’s a really good book, not dry or textbook-y at all. Mr. Carnegie keeps the reader engaged with lots of anecdotes and stories about real life people. I highly encourage this book for anyone, […]
I’ve been blogging for over a year now, but it’s only been about the last 3 months that I started being really intentional about writing 2 or 3 times a week. This last week, I only wrote once. At first I was disappointed in myself. I had set a goal of at least 2 articles […]
I bought my last new car about 3 years ago. At the time I spent a few moments wondering about what I wanted. And one thought was, I could get a hybrid, with the idea of saving money. So a used Toyota hybrid runs, let’s say $25,000. Let’s say it gets 50 miles to the […]
Something I occasionally get asked is, “How do I promote up? I want to be a technical leader or manager so what do I need to do to get there?” There are lots of things that spring immediately to mind: be a mentor, help others succeed, be a problem-solver instead of a complainer. I also […]
There’s two trains of thought in the business world: that the manager needs to be technical and understand what’s happening on the team, or that the manager doesn’t need to be technical and it’s really just about process and metrics and general management skills. I can see the validity to both sides, but I think […]
Who really likes meetings? I mean, I’m sure some people do, somewhere. But it seems like a lot of people don’t. So many don’t, in fact, that Scrum and Sprints are designed to minimize meetings. But let’s look at the Agile Manifesto. It says, “We favor…” Individuals and interactions Customer collaboration Responding to change In […]
You can have fixed time and variable scope, or variable time and fixed scope, but a product owner can’t pick both. Lately, I’ve heard this quote several times. At first, it makes sense. A product owner/stakeholder can either tell the team the requirements, and the team can then define the schedule. Or the product owner […]
When do you know its time to move on? There was a ten-year period in my career where I changed jobs 4 or 5 times. I started to notice a pattern: Year 1: Figure out what is actually going on in the company, and how to do your job Year 2: Try to institute a […]
Knuggets of Knowledge 