Articles for category: Initiative

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.

April 3, 2023

Greg Thomas

The Plan to Grow

Do you have a Plan to Grow? To improve? To get better? To close the gaps that are keeping you up at night? If not, take 30 minutes, (yes that’s all it will take) and come up with one.  If you need to put your tomato timer on it to do it, then do it. And if you are still trying to find your 30 minutes because it’s “too much” – ask yourself that same question the next time you leave a 30-minute meeting where you said nothing.

April 2, 2023

Greg Thomas

Waiting for your Next Review

If you’re waiting to see how you are doing based on the results of your next review, you’ve already lost. You know how you are doing. You know what you need to work on. You know what your strengths are. Performance Reviews are a confirmation of what you should already know. So go fix what you know you need to work on.

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