Articles for category: Initiative

June 29, 2022

Greg Thomas

Tackling Bad Code Performance

You can either tackle a code performance when it happens (i.e., fight the fires) or you can create a plan to tackle it. You will never get away from fighting the fire approach, a scenario, a use case, will always pop up and make you stop and think – “huh, I never thought about that”. But you can look to the other 90% of scenarios that you know of and work through the scenarios that could be better now so that hopefully when those performance fires flare up with a customer, they are not as bad as they could have

June 28, 2022

Greg Thomas

Inclement Weather Tendencies

You can go out and do things when the weather is bad. But you don’t want to do it all the time. Who wants to have a picnic day in and day out in the rain, each and every day. No one. Every now and again we’ll make an allowance for it so we can “brave the weather” and not “wimp out” – but doing this day in and day out is enough to have you wanting to stop doing the activity altogether. The same is true with our work, what activities are we doing that we can account for

June 24, 2022

Greg Thomas

Planning by Fires

“We’ve been delivering based on our fires over the past two months.” That’s what you hear when you are focused on customer issues, in triaging the immediate and getting the fixes out the door before asap, where the customers are beating down the door to get your code to work. And you’ve probably been successful at this, but you can only do it for so long, there are only so many times you can plan by the fire until they become little hacks, little pieces of debt that will turn into the next fire. This is why, after the fire,

June 20, 2022

Greg Thomas

When We Break The Rules

There are always exceptions to rules that should be broken when the time and place require it. But the majority of the time, the rules are there to guide us and ensure we are all operating within the same parameters that will help our team grow and develop. If one person is always breaking the rules they are sending the clearest of messages that the rules don’t apply to them. And if the rules don’t apply to them, the question your team will start asking is – why do they apply to us?

June 19, 2022

Greg Thomas

The Team Meeting

The team meeting is the most hallowed of all meetings. It is a gathering of the minds of your team and the greatest opportunity for you to lay out the plans for the week and hear from your team about what they are doing, where they are struggling, where help is required, and most importantly where you can reassure them. Don’t ever show up unprepared for a team meeting, it’s your single, greatest tool in your toolbox.

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