Articles for category: Initiative

April 17, 2023

Greg Thomas

The Heavy Lifting

No one wants to do the heavy lifting, especially if you’ve done it before, you know just how heavy it can really be and that what is being said at that next meeting or on paper is just a glimpse into what is required. But at the end of the day, it needs to get done and you can either ignore it or start lifting. What you might not realize is that if you’re seeing what needs to be lifted, others might not be and that puts you in a unique position to not only lift first but lead the

April 14, 2023

Greg Thomas

There is No Learn AI

Yes, AI will automate many things. But you will still have to learn how to do things and that will not get faster (depending on your speed of learning). What AI will never automate is our abilities to learn, process and decide. It can provide metrics, analysis, and dashboards, but that last piece will always rest with us and we will always have to take the time to learn new things to be able to do it.

April 6, 2023

Greg Thomas

Sprint Planning 101

Developers should be writing code in the current sprint. QA should be validating the code completed in the last sprint and/or bug fixes found in the current sprint. Product Management should be finalizing/confirming requirements for the upcoming sprint and answering questions for this sprint. Only take on what you can do “-1” – the “-1” being something is always going to go wrong, so cramming in your delivery to your topmost capacity is a surefire way to not hit your upcoming goals.  Give yourself time for customer tickets, unplanned meetings and the unknown. The goal of any sprint is to

April 5, 2023

Greg Thomas

What Matters Next?

This is another question that a Dev Manager should always be working on in the background in anything they are doing. What matters next? Talking to QA, PM, and other development teams – the goal is to get ahead of what needs are coming at the team next and ensure that it is prioritized and laid out for them in a way that matters and a way that they can be successful. It’s not the team’s job to know the answer to this question, it’s the Dev Manager’s to have it answered for the team to act on.

April 4, 2023

Greg Thomas

Free Time

Do you have any? Take it. Better yet if you don’t have it, schedule it into your life. We all need time to breathe, to the game, to read, to draw, to run, to workout, to do whatever it is that gives us a chance to catch our breath and feel better about ourselves and everything around us. The best thing about Free Time is that our minds wander and we take a second look at what we’re doing and what we should be working on more. All because we took a moment to think about it.

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