03 Nov 2021
Often consultants bring a fantasy of co-located teams to their clients. This is a fantasy because companies have been using remote workforces for the entirety of my career, so thinking that will change is silly. In this particular article, I want to focus on one tiny aspect of a fairly standard setup—a single remote worker with a significant time difference.
01 Nov 2021
We’ve all been in meetings that wandered around topics without ever really landing on a defined point or decision. This leaves many people frustrated that there isn’t closure, and when the meeting is over, nobody is sure what they should take from that meeting. A straightforward technique to learn, though difficult to master, is ORID.
05 Oct 2021
At some point in one’s career in tech, you’ll wind up leading a meeting and need people to take part in some facilitation activity. That might be a retrospective or an activity where you hold a vote. If you’ve ever felt awkward introducing the activity, here’s a step-by-step way to do it next time.
21 Sep 2021
Team is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot and sadly often means individuals assigned to work in close proximity. Since I specialize in building teams, I have a very different definition.
15 Sep 2021
The first time I was on a team that abandoned pull-requests and code reviews was back in 2011. I would keep pushing the groups I was in to do the same because the results were much better than the branch-based code reviews.
14 Sep 2021
Tomorrow I’ll formally close on an experiment that I’m willing to call a failure a bit early. Why share all of this? Trying, looking at the results honestly, and moving on is a crucial aspect of building any product.
