6 min read

🍩 Onboarding, Back-to-back Zooms, Communities of Practice, Self-management, Retros, Kanban: TMW #216 by CTO Craft

Hello again! 😀

One of last week's Mentoring Circles conversations focused on the perception of the engineering function within the organisation, building trust and transparency, and the pattern many of us have experienced of engineering being seen to exist in a separate culture from the rest of the organisation. We discussed ways of avoiding the appearance of opacity, storytelling, aligning on business and technology values and missions, and showing vulnerability.

Given that it looks like we'll all be working at least partly remotely for some time yet, getting all of this right without sharing physical space with non-engineering teams makes it all the harder,

If you've experience any of these symptoms, drop us a line, we'd love to hear from you - how did you remove some of the layers between tech and non-tech, and how did you build trust with non-engineers?

There are still spaces in the next Canada / US Mentoring Circle, which will start in June - drop us a reply if you'd like to chat about it!

This week's CTO Craft Bytes will be a fireside with the amazing Vicky Wills, CTO at Zego, an insure-tech startup in the UK which is currently scaling very rapidly. Vicky will be discussing how to onboard new hires effectively, so if you have any questions or experiences to share, drop in! The link is below

Until next time

Andy @ CTO Craft

CTO Craft Bytes

📆 This is What Successful Onboarding Looks Like: Fri 28 May 2021 at 12:30pm BST

📆 This is What Successful Onboarding Looks Like: Fri 28 May 2021 at 12:30pm BST

Vicky Wills, CTO of insure-tech startup Zego, shares her own experience and discusses common challenges, including avoiding overwhelm, managing team dynamics and handling role expectations in a fast-moving environment.

Reads of the Week

The Great Talent Reshuffling of 2021 Has Begun

The Great Talent Reshuffling of 2021 Has Begun

Why the next 6–12 months will be the best time in a decade for startups to hire. Whether it’s moving to a new geography for a fresh start (for some, maybe just an Adventure Year) or leaving a safe but stagnant career, the “I’m starting a new company/open to a new gig” inbounds are up since Jan 1...

Brain Research Confirms Stupidity Of Back-to-Back Meetings

Brain Research Confirms Stupidity Of Back-to-Back Meetings

Most people have way too many meetings at work. This sucks. And it's frustrating. Brain research now confirms what we have all experienced: back-to-back meetings are stupid. Back when everyone worked in offices, we knew meetings sucked.

About our Partners

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Culture & People

Starting Communities of Practice in Your Organization

Starting Communities of Practice in Your Organization

Everything you need to know about the concept of Community of Practices and how to engage collaborations in multiple Agile teams across the organization.

Amplify Learning In Your Team With More Double-Loop Learning

Amplify Learning In Your Team With More Double-Loop Learning

In one of my first roles as a Scrum Master, I worked at a web agency whose clients wanted us to build complex web applications. We used a classic project management approach. Acquisition of new clients was the primary responsibility of the sales department.

Some Can Handle Self-Management. Some Can't. Here's Why.

Some Can Handle Self-Management. Some Can't. Here's Why.

I earlier described how MMLOs can now scale themselves to massive size using IT tools that allow for hyperconnectivity, and by institutionalizing relational models based on the principles of communal sharing, market pricing or equality matching.

Things your manager might not know

When people talk about “managing up”, sometimes it’s framed as a bad thing – massaging the ego of people in charge so that they treat you well. In my experience, managing up is usually a lot more practical.

Leadership & Self-management

7 Universal Principles that Explain the Persistent Problems of Leadership

7 Universal Principles that Explain the Persistent Problems of Leadership

#1. If you’re persistently exhausted, you’re doing too many things. Reflections for exhausted leaders: What needs to be true for you to rest? What time will you stop working today? What frivolous activities distract you from meaningful work? Who might help?

Hiring vs nurturing managers

Hiring vs nurturing managers

Over the last few years, companies put a lot of effort and money into developing their engineering management teams: one-on-ones, yearly goal setting, feedback, coaching, and whatnot.

It’s Time to Free the Middle Manager

It’s Time to Free the Middle Manager

The shift to remote work has taken its toll on us all, but middle managers have faced particular challenges over the last year.

An Adaptive Approach to the Strategic Planning Process

An Adaptive Approach to the Strategic Planning Process

There are many adjectives we could use to describe the business landscape of the last decade, some heavily overused—but one word we’d never use is “certain".

Maker to Manager — How We Support New Leaders

Maker to Manager — How We Support New Leaders

At Skyscanner, we take the career aspirations of our teams seriously, which is why we have spent a ton of time building our two distinct engineering paths; individual contributor (IC) or manager.

Agile, Engineering & Product

Report: How the world’s top organizations test

Report: How the world’s top organizations test

The challenge of software testing is immensely underestimated and invariably unappreciated. Even with seemingly basic applications—like a common mobile app—there’s a staggering amount of testing approaches you could take, paths and conditions you could exercise, device configurations you could test against, and so on.

State of Kanban Report

State of Kanban Report

This week we have big news: the first-ever annual State of Kanban report is finally here, and it’s available below! We are very excited to announce that in collaboration with Kanban University and Digite, we have compiled the first State of Kanban survey results.

Software Estimation Is Hard. Do It Anyway.

Software Estimation Is Hard. Do It Anyway.

It’s well-established that estimating software projects is hard. One study by HBR found that one in six IT projects had cost overruns of over 200% and were late by almost 70%. Another study by McKinsey found that IT projects are on average 45% over budget and 7% over schedule.

Running Great Retros

Running Great Retros

Over the course of nearly ten years working in technology, mostly as a coach or product person, I’ve run hundreds of retros and through trial & error, I’ve landed on a simple 4 part formula that I share with you today.

Advantages of Trunk-only Development

Advantages of Trunk-only Development

What’s the alternative to complex branching and pull requests? Trunk-only development drives practices such as testing, incremental development, and branching by abstraction. It also improves communication within the team.

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.com/community

Please do remember to share this link if you know of anyone who’d like to receive TMW:

http://www.techmanagerweekly.com

Have an amazing week!

Andy