Tag: management

  • Inheriting a Struggling Team

    - You've taken on a team with low morale, deep technical debt and no clear direction. What to do first, and what takes longer than you'd like.

  • Giving Hard Feedback

    - How to raise a performance issue, an attitude problem or a skill gap in a way that's direct without being cruel, and that leads to change.

  • Running Effective 1:1s as a Tech Lead

    - As a tech lead, 1:1s are your most important meeting. Not status updates, not technical discussions. Real conversations about how people are doing and where they're going.

  • Four Questions I Answer Every Week

    - How I use weekly updates to provide visibility, track productivity, and build trust with my manager.

  • Estimation, Pragmatism, and the Real World

    - Why estimation isn't dead, and how to use it pragmatically to build trust and reduce surprise.

  • Cycle Time Isn't Your North Star

    - Many teams obsess over DORA metrics, but speed alone isn't a strategy. DORA is a speedometer, not a compass, and here's how to anchor measurement in real outcomes.

  • Engineering Toil - Seeing the Unseen Work

    - Toil is the work that keeps systems running and never shows up in a sprint goal. Ignore it long enough and it becomes the defining experience of the team.

  • Optimising teams through the Theory of Constraints

    - Using the Theory of Constraints to improve team delivery

  • 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

    - Working on software projects, I've started to spot what the successful ones have in common. It's almost always good communication between teams. The methodology used seems to have very little...