Software Lead Weekly Software Lead Weekly

The Most Precious Resource Is Agency
6 minutes read.

"Before you grasp, you have to reach. How did they (famous people) learn to reach? [...] Gaining agency is gaining the capacity to do something differently from, or in addition to, the events that simply happen to you. [...] The secret of the world is that it is a very malleable place, we must be sure that people learn this, and never forget the order: Learning is naturally the consequence of doing." -- Simon Sarris writes so beautifully. We all learn and do by inertia. We let the world happen. Agency is thinking of how to "Escape Velocity" of our personal growth by doing more than others have scripted for you.

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Well, It Passed the Test Suite, Good to Go!!!
1 minutes read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face, even in this difficult time.

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Finding Collective Ownership of the Codebase
3 minutes read.

Leverage Britton Broderick's insights when thinking of your team's principles (e.g. onboarding) and playbooks (e.g. planning, on-call, retrospectives): "Teams with shared understanding and patterns have the foundation for higher velocity. What norms has your team established around shipping? What’s the process for creating new norms and updating old ones? [...] Software engineering is a social activity, not an individual activity. Enabling that social element is key."

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In the Absence of an Accompanying Goal, a System Is Meaningless
3 minutes read.

While it may look intuitive or even obvious, we often focus more (or too much) on the system (process) than the desired outcome. Defining the expected result ("Definition of Done") clearly in a way that leaves very little room for mistakes or misunderstanding is often pushed to the end. We mix progress with tangible deliverables, and celebrate busyness as if it's useful to the business.

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Mandate Levels
7 minutes read.

John Cutler is one of my favorite product thinkers (and org thinkers). He takes deep concepts such as Agency and translates them into simpler terms we can observe and sometimes even measure (roughly).

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Will Worrying Make You Better?
4 minutes read.

How being worried or being stressed help you perform? Is it only bad? Can you optimize for when and how to use it? Dan Shipper asks some good questions. I highly recommend the book "The Upside of Stress," which covers these internal motivation areas by leveraging "fight or flight" in our brain. It helps to talk about it with others and see where you stand every few weeks. It helps to feel you're not alone in it, and can lean on others sometimes. So I'd change the question from "Am I worried?" to "Is it working for me?". Experiment and iterate. It's easier when you get someone who believes in you and can serve as a sounding board for your dilemmas and observations.

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How Friendships Change When You Become an Adult
3 minutes read.

Maybe it's my age (37) but these short snippets and thread around friendship made me think of the decisions I made. Some were made without much attention or thought. It just happened. What do I want to change? How my friendships should look like when I'm 47 or 57? What about yours? I like this one: "Friendship is a relationship with no string attached except for the ones you choose to tie, one that's about just being there, as best as you can."

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The 25 Micro-Habits of High-Impact Managers
13 minutes read.

I enjoyed skimming and jumping between the ideas presented in this post by various leaders. Many of those habits worth re-reading once a month, as it's so easy to get lost in our endless to-do list.

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@maggiecrowley: Quarterly reminder: it’s not possible to get prioritization "right" so clarify your decision making framework, explain to stakeholders why the bets you’re making make sense, build enough buy in, & then move on.

@shl: 80% of product is onboarding. 80% of managing is hiring. 80% of sales is marketing.