Articles for category: Leadership

October 5, 2020

Greg Thomas

Stop Pushing Things Out

When you had a problem in the office, you’d walk by that person’s desk, sit down, have a chat with them and get the problem resolved. If the issue was raised in the morning (i.e., a delayed project), you’d schedule something for early afternoon to sit down and figure things out. If you passed them in the hall you might stop, have a quick 5 min chat and get things resolved. All of these involved physical cues from working on-site with your team, side-by-side, elbow to elbow – crammed into cubicles that were too small (and we all complained about).

October 4, 2020

Greg Thomas

Priority and Severity

Ask any developer how you sort bugs and they might reply P1/S1 or S1/P1. Priority – the impact to the owner’s of the software Severity – the technical impact to the software Both are critical factors in identifying how bugs are logged. Lately, I’ve taken to updating these definitions to apply to other areas of a project that I might be working on. Priority – impact to the owner Severity – impact to the system that we are working on When we talk about the system it could be the process, the software, the team, whatever, but the question remains

October 2, 2020

Greg Thomas

All Video, All the Time?

I was having a call a few weeks ago where we were trying to figure out how make our meetings more productive. The immediate answer from someone on the call – “Everyone should have video on, we should turn it on by default, I want to see everyone’s faces”. I shut it down and here’s why… Just because I can see your face, it doesn’t mean you are engaged, it just means you are there. When someone has a poor connection, the video saps their audio, which collectively degrades the call. I want to hear what you are talking about,

October 1, 2020

Greg Thomas

Don’t Forget the Little Things

Was at a store the other night and saw a few of these drinks in the grocery area. For some reason, Grape Crush has been the treat over the last few years you didn’t know you would ever want. Goes great with pizza and shawarma. How many little things are you missing right now? What did you used to do with your team that you can’t do anymore? What do miss having? What is your team missing? We’re all missing little things, some things that won’t be back for a long, long time. After six months, I got lucky and

September 30, 2020

Greg Thomas

Optional Meeting Invites

I’ve never been a fan of optionally inviting people to meetings. It’s always screamed at me – “If you don’t want them there, don’t invite them”. But now having worked with people remotely for a longer period of time, I’m starting to see the value in can have in people’s minds. And I still think it’s wrong because we are associating optional meeting invites as a way to cure FOMO for the remote age (Fear of Missing Out). So we let everyone know when a meeting is happening, why it is happening and give the option to show up if

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