🍳 Lessons from Cycling, Systems Leadership, Stakeholders, Performance Reviews, Measuring Stability, Peter Principle: TMW #353

Hi there, welcome to the week!

A massive thank you to everyone involved in the Campus launch last week; we couldn't be happier with how it's gone. Lots of new content coming this week, so keep your eyes peeled for announcements!

As you'll see below, we've started planning Mixer events in cities around Europe, where CTO Craft community members (and non-members!) can get together for an informal chat, beverages and whatever else they fancy. We're planning to launch many more of these in cities everywhere in the world, so if you're interested in helping launch one wherever you're based, drop us a line!

CTO Craft Con: Culture and the CTO is getting very close to selling out - if you're planning to come along, don't leave it too late to pick up your ticket. We'd love to see you there. Don't forget to use the access code "Community-Nov-23" to enable your exclusive discount!

That's it, on with the links! See you next week

Andy @ CTO Craft

Campus by CTO Craft: The Go-to Resource for Senior Technology Leaders

Created for CTOs, by CTOs: A transformative learning community for senior technology leaders in startups and scale-ups

CTO Craft Campus

CTO Craft Events

CTO Craft Con: Culture and the CTO | London 7-8 November

CTO Craft Con will bring together over 250 Chief Technology Officers and other senior technology leaders from the most exciting start-ups, scale-ups, unicorns, and big tech companies to elevate their engineering culture in London, 7-8 November 2023.

CTO Craft Con November 2023

CTO Craft Bytes: Sorry - Sales is part of the CTO role

In this Bytes session, we will discuss strategies and best practices to understand your sales role as a CTO or technical leader.

Eventbrite

CTO Craft: Berlin Mixer

Our first CTO Craft Bytes in Berlin, Germany! Join our community of CTO and senior tech leaders for an informal meet-up

Eventbrite

CTO Craft: Dublin Mixer

Network and learn with fellow CTOs, CTO Craft community members and aspiring tech leaders in Dublin, Ireland

Eventbrite

CTO Craft: Manchester Mixer

Network and learn with fellow CTO Craft members at The Old Monkey pub in Manchester.

Eventbrite

Reads of the Week

Why We Don’t Ship Software as Fast as We Used To

Don’t blame it all on bloat—the reason is complicated

EveryThorsten Ball

Engineering Team Lessons from Cycling - Benji’s Blog

Cycling provides interesting example for software development. Like software development it’s possible to race individually or in teams. A group that’s an effective team will outperform the same group acting as individuals every time.

Benji's Blog

From our Sponsors

[From 101 Ways] Is it Time to Retire Digital Transformation?

Names do matter and ‘digital transformation’ is one that shows little sign of going away. This can pose challenges for tech teams, as it creates certain expectations among senior management and encourages outdated approaches. We believe it's time to retire digital transformation. What are your thoughts?

Join our webinar on October 19th at 1pm where we’ll outline a 5-step plan on how your organisation can embrace this new mindset. You’ll also hear from our expert panellists including Michael Seipp (Chief Service Delivery Officer, 101 Ways), Norma Dove-Edwin (Fractional CIDO, NED & Advisor, Thames Water), Nic Granger (Director and CFO, North Sea Transition Authority) and Luca Grulla (CTO Mentor & Technology Advisor, Techstars) who will offer their own insights and debate the issues.

Register for the Webinar

Thanks as always to all the amazing sponsors helping CTO Craft bring you resources like this newsletter, our events, community and more:

AWS, Albany Partners, Code Climate, Cohaesus, Google Cloud, Vention, Jellyfish, LinearB, 101 Ways, O’Reilly, Pentalog, Skiller Whale, Swarmia, Uplevel, YLD

Leadership, Strategy & Business

The 9 Characteristics of Effective Systems Leaders – Equal Measure

For the next few months, we’ll be sharing short, bite-size, and easily digestible elements of these lessons learned through an ongoing series we’re calling Tools & Frameworks.

Equal MeasureEqual Measure

On Stakeholders, And How To Discover Them

Why Agile teams can’t exist without stakeholders, and 10 powerful questions to find them.

The LiberatorsChristiaan Verwijs

OKRs don’t solve dependencies, they reveal them

OKRs can work like an organisational flashlight, shedding light on the dependencies that keep teams from delivering autonomously

Jeff GothelfJeff Gothelf

Manage Your Capacity, Not Your Time - The Engineering Manager

We obsess over managing our time. However, we should focus on managing our capacity instead: it’s our ability to do our best work.

The Engineering ManagerJames Stanier

Culture, People & Teams

Hired Releases 2023 State of Tech Salaries; Tech Hiring Tightrope

Hired’s annual data report covers proprietary hiring marketplace behavioral interactions and talent surveys to guide employers & jobseekers

Company NewsHired

Whoopee! Performance reviews that work?

In 2020, I wrote a piece titled “Interim thoughts on “managing” performance”:

Org HackingItamar Goldminz

How DoorDash Defines Great Engineering Management - DoorDash Engineering Blog

What great engineering management looks like at DoorDash.

DoorDash Engineering BlogLandis Coutzoukis

Software Development Engagement Models - DZone

Explore the top six engagement models for software development, their pros, cons, and best use cases.

DZoneAlex Vakulov

Technology, Operations & Delivery

Engineer Time Saved

How measuring the cost of operations unlocked a quantification of efficiences and speed of engineering delivery driven by a platform team.

MediumAidan Donnelly

Diving into Engineering Metrics

A deep dive into Engineering Metrics, their history, and how to use them.

The Hybrid HackerNicola Ballotta

TBM 248: Project-ish

Imagine a spectrum. On one side, you have a team basking in the warm glow of a sunny afternoon, free from constraints, shipping high-quality products at will, with instant access to customers and the best tools, and not a care in the world. On the other side, you have a team thrown into a Sisyphean…

The Beautiful MessJohn Cutler

How Agile Teams Can Improve Predictability by Measuring Stability

In this article, we will present our approach for analysing agile systems as networks of queues and how we have used it to analyse 926 projects in the Public Jira Dataset. We explain how you can measure the Stability Metric (SM) for your queues. Finally, we will present our planned next phase of res…

InfoQRob Healy

Stress, Wellbeing & Growth

Leading Through Pain

Highlighting the profound impact of simple gestures during horrific times and ways to take care of others AND yourself

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The 8 Drivers For Employee Wellbeing

You are not measuring the most important well-being drivers. It’s time to start doing so.

The Manager's GuideCsaba Okrona

Impostor Syndrome or Peter Principle…

… Learn how you can tell the difference and what to do about it.

Management MattersRay Carnes

Wellbeing Champions: An essential tool in mental health and wellbeing strategy

Today, as we constantly juggle the demands of our professional and personal lives, we encounter a multitude of new challenges and pressures. With the potential for life to become overwhelming, the importance of prioritizing employee wellbeing has never been more critical. Here’s how having Wellbeing…

ThoughtworksGill Fordham

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:

https://techmanagerweekly.com

Have an amazing week!

Andy