Articles for category: Growth

September 18, 2019

Greg Thomas

Finished

I finished a big project I’ve been working on for a few years. Yup it took that long, between multiple starts and stops, being worried about how it’d turn out and not sure if it’d ever get done, I finished. Here’s how I did; I let the voice in my head that kept saying it was garbage to keep talking and sat down at the keyboard and pounded out intervals and intervals of work. I broke the day into intervals, what was finished was finished, what wasn’t would move onto the next interval. I got help from people that knew

September 13, 2019

Greg Thomas

Meetings Can Go Late

If you are getting immeasurable value out of them. If no one is dropping out on their phones. If people are looking more towards the front than at their laptops. If everyone is engaged. If the conversation is exciting, discourse is happening and everyone is respectful of each other’s ideas. If forward momentum is happening. If it’s worth it. We are focusing too much on timeboxing simply for the sake of timeboxing when in effect we should be focused on the value and not how long it took. Don’t kill the momentum because Outlook pops up and says so.

September 12, 2019

Greg Thomas

Go Last

The person who goes last is responsible for summing everything up. Everything that came before them is at their fingertips. They get to have the last word. Their words are the last ones that everyone will think of and linger with as they walk out of the room or the conference hall. They have a choice in how they respond, in what they do. Whenever I have gone last, what I was going to say has always changed because it has to, it can’t, it can’t stay the same with everything I just would have heard, it has to change,

September 9, 2019

Greg Thomas

Delete One Thing

Our tendency is to “Scorch Earth” when something isn’t going right instead of to tweak it. On your phone too much? Toss it out. The Project not going well? Start over from scratch. Platform keeping you down? Go find a new one. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Instead of tossing your phone, delete the offending app(s) and see what changes. Instead of starting over on your project, focus on an area of improvement to be better for the next meeting. Instead of starting from scratch, pick the feature that you are missing and see what you can

August 28, 2019

Greg Thomas

The Successful Software Manager

When I first became a Software Manager, I was pretty lost, not sure what to do or where to start. I was pretty lucky in that I had a strong supporting environment and picked things up over time. Recently I was reading the book – “The Successful Software Manager” by Herman Fung and this brought me back to that first day to when I wasn’t sure where to start, what to work on, where I should be focusing my time and what I should be looking to do next week, month, year, etc with the team. Over the years, I’ve

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