Articles for category: Leadership

January 25, 2022

Greg Thomas

This Week’s IceBreakers

We are still remote. We are still leading our teams remotely. And as much as we would like to accept that this is how things are, we can keep doing the little things that made us better in the first place and got us over those earlier humps. We just need to work at it. Whether it’s a new team or an existing one, some good Icebreakers to get things started; What was your win last week? What did you get out of this weekend? What is your goal for this week? What can we help you with this week?

January 24, 2022

Greg Thomas

Software Leadership Series: Growth and Scale

I wrote two articles last year on Growing your Software Team, the first was the more obvious (add bodies), the second was not so clear (grow by skills, career, succession). Grow By Body Grow By Skill At some point, you need to do both. Growing by Body isn’t hard, you interview, you ask questions, you select a candidate, you make an offer and you hire. Growing by Skill requires mentorship, guidance, coaching, planning, training, One-On-Ones, discussions, feedback (not validation), and patience. We default to Growing by Body because it’s easier when we should be defaulting to Growing By Skill, not

January 19, 2022

Greg Thomas

Software Leadership Series: Your First Team Meeting

The most important meeting you will ever have with your team is your first one. And there are only a few rules; Introduce yourself  – but don’t showcase yourself (they have LinkedIn, they can read all about you). What are they working on – you don’t know, they do, ask them, if you are confused, write down the questions and discuss with them One-On-One, don’t derail the meeting on one person, you need to hear every person talk. Where do they need help – you don’t want to have 2 mins left to discuss, you want to have as much

January 16, 2022

Greg Thomas

The Plumbing is Everything

Plumbing connects destinations together in the most efficient manner possible. Roads are plumbing that connects cities. The wire is plumbing that connects the internet to our laptops. Wifi is the plumbing that connects routers to our phones. Want to make good software? Get the plumbing right, you never want your customers to be complaining about the plumbing, it should always “just work”.

January 13, 2022

Greg Thomas

Your Team’s Value

Software teams get called out for being costly more often than not. Salaries never seem to shrink. They need high-running machines to write code on. They need additional software and tools to show where they are, how they are progressing, and when they might be able to deliver code to end-users. They need build machines and extra devices to make things work. They have questions (oh the questions, how cruel to ask questions). And this is all if everything is running smoothly and there are no problems. If all you were looking at were those statements, your brain would immediately

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