Articles for category: Leadership

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

January 12, 2022

Greg Thomas

Software Leadership Series: One-On-Ones

I’m going to try something new and see where it goes, a series of what I think are important pillars (blocks, stones?) of leading software teams.  This is all geared towards the new Software Manager, Team Lead, or any other role that is undertaking leadership responsibilities in their day-to-day endeavours. One-On-Ones If you are not doing these with your team and they are not of the scheduled variety, go, send out the calendar invites now and then come back. When we do “ad-hoc” One-On-Ones or “slide” them into other meetings here is the message we are sending as a leader;

January 11, 2022

Greg Thomas

Show Up, Listen, Act and Learn

First, you show up – on time, with an open mind, ready to take everything in. Then you listen – patiently, attentively, without judgment or interruption. You act on what you have heard, putting it into practice, seeing what works and what doesn’t, iterating along the way. And when those three have been done, you will have learned something. Sometimes we forget what goes into the first three to get to learning, master one, forget the other two. Look back at what you have ever learned and you will realize, you always need the first three to be successul.

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