Tag: management

  • Cycle Time Isn't Your North Star

    - Many teams obsess over DORA metrics, but speed alone isn't a strategy. This post explores why these metrics are useful signals, not your true north and how to anchor measurement...

  • Culture Follows Incentives

    - If you want to influence how people act at work, don't spend time on motivational Slack posts or new processes. The real lever is incentives. Most of us like to...

  • Reconsidering Tech Debt

    - There's a phrase I've grown wary of over the years: tech debt. It shows up in all kinds of conversations, often spoken as a half-apology, half-warning. The metaphor is sticky,...

  • Engineering Toil - Seeing the Unseen Work

    - It's easy to admire the peak moments in engineering: shipping features, the incident recovery, the burst of innovation after months of foundational work. But beneath the visible achievements sits something...

  • Don't Improve Coordination, Eliminate It

    - If you want to know how healthy your engineering org is, count the meetings on your calendar. Or better yet, count the ones labelled 'cross-team sync'. As dependencies grow, so...

  • Optimising teams through the Theory of Constraints

    - Using the Theory of Constraints to improve team delivery

  • Finding Your Place: Pioneers, Settlers, and Town Planners

    - Why engineering teams need different archetypes at different phases, and how mismatches quietly slow things down.

  • Stuff I learned at cinch

    - Today’s my last day at cinch, where I was a Tech Lead across multiple teams for the past two and a half years. I’ve learned so much working there, and...

  • Notes on An Elegant Puzzle

    - Will Larson's excellent "An Elegant Puzzle" deep dives into every aspect of being a tech leader at modern software companies

  • Notes on A Manager's Path

    - Camille Fournier's "A Manager's Path" is a guide for navigating the technical career ladder

  • Managing Software Projects

    - During my time working on software projects, I've began to spot trends in what makes a successful project. The most common trait I've observed in successful projects is great communication...