October 22, 2021
Teams don’t just work and they don’t just magically come together. It takes work and time. As soon as I see an email that ends with “let’s do this as a team” – I know there is something wrong, that the bridge isn’t there and this is a half-hearted attempt to deal with the problem. Building bridges between teams is not easy but if you’re writing your team announcements or motivation quotes in an email. You’re not even close to starting to build that bridge.
October 20, 2021
I don’t worry about the falls. I don’t worry about the slipups. I don’t worry about things that are missed. Because we’ll figure it out, we’ll learn how to get better, we’ll figure out what we did wrong and fix the problem. The recovery is what I look for, if you can bounce back from defeat, from failure, from mistakes – that’s what will always matter. Will you blame your team? Will you beat yourself? Will you lash out at everyone else? Or will you lead the team out, accept the problem and move on?
October 19, 2021
That’s the question you need to be asking yourself as their Dev Manager all the time. What can they do? What can they do that they are not doing? What can they do if I let them have a run at it? What can they do if I took a step back? What can they do if I left the planning up to them? The goal isn’t to overload your team and gives them MORE work to do, the goal is to find out what they can do that they are being held back from doing.
October 17, 2021
The goal of every sprint should be pretty simple, irrespective of the release, and one that the team can easily get behind… “Did we do what we said we were going to do?” This is a statement that everyone can get behind – whether you’re pushing self-organization, leadership, accountability, responsibility – it’s clear what the beginning and end goal of the sprint is. But often we lose sight of the goal when it’s supposed to be a quick 100/200/400M in front of us (no one sprints an 800M or 1500M). If your team isn’t achieving that one goal, the question
October 15, 2021
Remember having day-long planning sessions where everyone got together to figure out a problem or map out your plans for the next quarter or year? If you haven’t had to do this yet (don’t worry it’s coming) but if you have one on the horizon and aren’t sure where to start, here are a few pointers. Pre-Preparation – yes pre-preparation, before the session begins, identify what you need people to do before they get there, what information do you need to have in hand so you can anticipate people’s questions and directions. Start with the people – only invite people
