Software Lead Weekly Software Lead Weekly

The Chokehold of Calendars
3 minutes read.

Really important post by Mike Monteiro, on how we're misusing our calendars - "In my experience, most people don't schedule their work. They schedule the interruptions that prevent their work from happening". His idea for goal-oriented calendar is brilliant, I wonder if someone would take up the gauntlet and build it. Tip: ask your teammates to set time in their calendar to avoid interruptions in hours they feel most productive. Highly recommended read!

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A Day in a Life of a Developer (gif)
1 minutes read.

If you've got 30 seconds and you want to see a short video about your life (probably), just watch it now. It made me laugh so hard at the office, people thought I had a seizure.

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The Management Framework That Propelled LinkedIn to a 20ドル Billion Company
15 minutes read.

"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" - Jeff Weiner (LinkedIn's CEO) is one of those giants who pushed LinkedIn to become one of the best companies in the world. If you run a company with over 50 people, I believe this post is simply a must read.

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To Do to Done: Jank ‘N’ Drank
4 minutes read.

A fantastic culture hack by the guys & gals working at Medium - scheduling time for working on non-urgent tasks. I am going to suggest applying this approach at my startup as I believe it can reduce Product (or Technical) Debt, increase creativity, all while we free up some time to work together, drink some beer and have fun.

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Efficiency Is Not Our Goal
4 minutes read.

I really enjoyed reading Kris Gale post and how he challenges the way we measure our organizational throughput. Every time we try to create an infrastructure to reduce future development cost, we should ask ourselves if you have enough information regarding the usefulness of that infrastructure in the long run. The price of coordinating such work, the meetings around it and getting everyone's approval can cost a lot of learning time. Share it with your Technical Leads and consider the right balance between autonomy, efficiency and throughput.

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The Silent Cockpit Theory of Time Management
5 minutes read.

Reading Aaron Lynn's post this week after reading "The Chokehold of Calendars", made me realize the importance of setting an output as a goal and block a few quiet hours in the calendar to focus on getting it done. I now try much harder to focus my time around output (for example, complete writing a post), and judge my results according to that. In order to create my quiet time, I use my early morning time to complete all of my writing on my iPad + Logitech keyboard. Checking emails, Twitter or Facebook is much harder to do this way, so I am able to concentrate and increase my efficiency during that time.

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How to Use Feedback
10 minutes read.

Scott Young is an amazingly driven individual. His MIT challenge is mind-blowing (search for his TED talk about it) and the way he decides to conquer his goals really inspire me. Based on his unique experience, Scott offers 4 ways you could apply to gather (or ignore) feedback. Personally, I loved his first method of listening to feedback based on what your audience do, rather than say.

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@henrikkniberg: Only Write It on a Todo-List or Backlog if 1) You're Likely to Forget It, and 2) That Would Hurt.

@aginnt: Drop the Need to Always Be Right.