Teams grow based on numbers, skills, and deliverables. They don’t grow overnight. It doesn’t happen over an interview. The first time you meet, you are not a team, you are a group project, thrown together to see what you do. It’s your first deliverable that makes you a team and starts your path to growth – what next, what else can we accomplish, who else do we need, what do we do next – these…
Your field is your job, your role, your team, what you do, what you deliver, what you bring to the table each and every day. You are the expert of your own field. You are the one best positioned to answer questions and figure out where to go next. You. No one else. You are the Expert of One, and that’s where it starts, believing that and knowing that.
Not when the plan will change, but know that the plan WILL change. It will change, and you will have to adjust and roll with it. Give yourself slush time, space, confidence, etc in all your estimates. And work from there. But go in, knowing this will change and you will have to adapt – that is the first step to not being controlled and beholden to the plan.
Not your sprint backlog. Not your work backlog. Your personal backlog, that big list of things rolling around in your head. Don’t let it grow uncontrolled. Don’t let it sit there collecting moss. Don’t let it take up rent in your mind. Clean it but, schedule the time, to think, ponder, and prune. And then move forward.
Problem-solving is a tough skill to learn. We think it’s easy because we were taught “Solve for X” but it’s not that easy (even if we do show our work). The best problem solvers, keep it the focus on the issue, the core and work on that and only that. They push out all the symptoms and noise so they can focus on the core. It’s not that the symptoms don’t matter, it’s that they…