May 4, 2020

Tech Manager Weekly by CTO Craft - Issue #161

By Andy @ CTO Craft • Issue #161 • View online

Welcome to the week!

We’re keeping the momentum with online panel and speaker events this week, with a session on Org Structures and Process Bottlenecks with Anthony Dang of Radley Yeldar on Thursday, as well as some follow-up group discussions from last week’s session on Job Hunting, for leaders experienced with early-stage, one-tier and multi-tier teams, and a separate session on Being More Agile.

You can see all the details on the CTO Craft Eventbrite page

The CTO Craft Slack Community is exploding - we’ve just hit 1100 members, and it continues to grow week by week. If you’d like to be part of a free, safe space to talk about leadership, growth, challenges, as well as technology, get in touch: https://ctocraft.com/community/

Have fun and stay safe!

Andy @ CTO Craft

CTO Craft Bytes - Organisational Structures and Process Bottlenecks - Thu 7 May 2020 at 12:30

This free online session brought to you by CTO Craft will look at production team structures, inter & intra team efficiency, workflows, and organisational constraints.

www.eventbrite.co.uk • Share

Listen of the Week

ENGINEERING PRODUCTIVITY: HOW TWO SIGMA KEEPS DEVELOPERS ENGAGED

Engineering productivity is key to building good software. It comes down to the manager to make sure the developer team is performing as expected.

According to the State of Software Development 2019 report, capacity is the single biggest challenge for software teams.

codingsans.com • Share

Culture & People

Build a Team that Ships

I started my first company 15 years go, and I still can’t manage. I suspect that very few people can. With AngelList, we want a team of self-managing people who ship code. If they can’t ship, release them. Our environment is wrong for them. They should go find someplace where they can thrive.

nav.al • Share

How to Work Remotely Like a Pro: Advice from a Veteran

Have you recently shifted to working remotely? Has it been a smooth process, or more of a bumpy ride? Getting into remote work is tricky. Making the switch from a regular co-located team to a fully remote team as many of us recently have had to do is particular difficult.

getlighthouse.com • Share

The science of why remote meetings don't feel the same

As COVID-19 has pushed more teams to work remotely, many of us are turning to video calls. And if you’ve ever been on a video call and wondered why it doesn’t feel quite the same as an in-person conversation, we have something in common.

blog.google • Share

Does Your Team Have Psychological Safety?

Does your team have psychological safety? This may be a much more important question than you think. It may seem unintuitive but safety is a critical ingredient to unlocking your team’s potential. Google certainly believes so, and Amy Edmondson at Harvard Business School agrees.

managingdev.com • Share

Leadership & Self-management

A chief technology officer in a time of COVID-19: Keep calm and make the most of the whole business suddenly realising how important IT is

The suddenness and scale of the COVID-19 pandemic took many CTOs and CIOs by surprise as worries over the impact on a supply chain in China flipped, seemingly overnight, into a fight for corporate survival. Right now, I’m following the advice to stay home.

www.theregister.co.uk • Share

Conversations, Conflict and Leadership

Throughout their careers, whatever question either Lily or Randy has had, Roman Pichler’s probably had some great advice on the topic! A longtime consultant, author and teacher, we grabbed him for a chat focusing on some of the lessons contained in his fourth book, How to Lead in Product Managemen

www.mindtheproduct.com • Share

Tools for Systems Thinkers: The 6 Fundamental Concepts of Systems Thinking

In this series on systems thinking, I share the key insights and tools needed to develop and advance a systems mindset for dealing with complex problem solving and transitioning to the Circular Economy.

medium.com • Share

Leadership-Standup Questions

As more leaders and people in management organize themselves into teams working at coordination and strategy “flight” levels, they — like the operational teams they support — use daily standup/flow-planning meetings.

mattphilip.wordpress.com • Share

12 Principles of Leadership

On any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win.

medium.com • Share

A Micro-Manager’s Guide to Chilling Out

Jessica Powell, the former Google vice president who wrote The Big Disruption and told you how to quit your job, is here to answer your common but tricky work questions.

forge.medium.com • Share

Agile, Engineering & Product

How We Hire Great Agile Coaches

We have been asking this question a lot lately. What makes an Agile Coach successful? Hiring is notoriously difficult in general, and we are in need of hiring top tier Agile Consultants and Coaches.

medium.com • Share

If Estimates Were Accurate, We’d Call Them Actuals

Almost everyone agreed that we need to get better at estimation. I heard this recently from a team. It’s not the first time, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Teams struggle with estimates; others needlessly obsess over it. And while I agree with the sentiment, it’s true but useless.

www.spikesandstories.com • Share

Failed #SquadGoals

You might have discovered the Spotify model because you were trying to figure out how to structure your teams. Don’t stop here. Keep researching. Leaders of companies that have withstood longer tests of time have written far more than Spotify blogged.

www.jeremiahlee.com • Share

Examples Of Real Sprint Goals

Although most people see the value of Sprint Goals, how to create them is a huge source of confusion and frustration.

medium.com • Share

What Else?

Advice to Product Owners from a Developer

The testers begin to ask what kind of regression this will take, when the product owner interrupts. We’ll call her Katy. “Wait,” Katy says. “We can’t refactor that. I’ve looked at it; that seems fine.

medium.com • Share

That’s it!

If you’d like to be considered for the free CTO Craft Community, fill in your details here, and we’ll be in touch!

https://ctocraft.typeform.com/to/XXRNqV

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Have an amazing week!

Andy