Articles for category: Delivery

November 15, 2017

Greg Thomas

The Angry Helper

The Angry Helper is the person who begrudgingly agrees to help you. They bemoan the process the whole time, bitter in the fact that they have to take time out of their day to help you figure out this “simple” problem that only they can understand. What you say and do is never enough to help, it was done wrong the first time and it will be done wrong the second and third and fourth time. And then they leave, sure whatever it was might now work, but you can see the wake behind them as they walk away, onto

November 10, 2017

Greg Thomas

Trusting Code More than People

Do you trust the code or your people? When you trust the code you hope it doesn’t break when you ship. you know when it breaks, the customer logs a support case and you ask for logs. it ships when someone pushes it out the door. When you trust the people you know if it does break, your team will be there to fix it. when the customer has an issue, the team will ask how they are using it and what the customer is trying to do before looking at the code the team ships the product when it’s

November 8, 2017

Greg Thomas

The Final Hack

If you were to measure the amount of hacks shipping in the latest release of your product by the date they were created. You would probably see a hockey-stick style graph. Up until that moment, you’ve done everything right, laid the foundation, put in the effort, plowed through your grunt work – making gains all day every day. But now the end is in sight and everyone is getting excited or worried about what is going to happen next. Excited because they are finally going to be done. Worried because will it work and will customers like it. It’s the

November 1, 2017

Greg Thomas

End with with a Period.

Not an exclamation point, not a question mark, not an ellipsis… a simple period. We’ve exchanged ideas and statements for impact when they used to be about everything before the punctuation. Want to impress your Team Lead with how to fix that Nuclear customer’s problem? Send your answer and end it with a period. When you end it with a period, it’s a signal that it will be resolved, it will be fixed, you will get it done and the customer will be happy. It’s not a hopeful question mark or an exasperated exclamation – it’s what you said it

October 31, 2017

Greg Thomas

Going into a Cave

How many times have you heard a developer say this? This problem is really complex, I’m going into a cave for the next few days to work on it. So they go away for a few days and when they come out – BOOM – problem solved, new features built, product ideas are pouring out the ceiling. Two days in a Cave – no distractions, minimal interruptions, no communications – yielded – progress, delivery, initiative. We can’t always work out of our cave (wherever that is) but it’s refreshing to know that we all have that place where we yield

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