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Improving the world with software

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Essays on software development, teams and the craft of building things that last.

Essays from December 2024

3 essays from December 2024

  1. The Leadership Mistake That’s Killing Your Team’s Focus (And How to Stop It)

    Have you ever been in a meeting where leadership shares their latest great idea, and you can feel the anxiety spreading across the team? I have. The developers exchange knowing looks – they’re already struggling with an overloaded sprint, the backlog is growing, and now here comes another “high priority” initiative. You can almost hear …

    5 min read

  2. We Need Alternatives To Project Management: Here’s an Agile Alternative

    Project management, as we know it, is a recent invention. Though some argue it’s ancient, it’s really only become mainstream in the 20th century—not unlike computing. Project management requires a rigid set of beliefs: the ability to plan ahead, follow a fixed schedule, and predict how what we do affects our goals before we even …

    4 min read

  3. The key to successful engineering teams: The OTOG Principle

    Have you ever wondered why some software teams seem to be in constant conflict between product ambitions and technical realities, while others achieve the impossible together?Here’s what I’ve learned about great teams, and great organizations from my experience as a developer, project manager, product manager, director of product, and running my own company as well …

    5 min readteams

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What if better planning started with a different question?

The first chapter of #NoEstimates argues that the “deliver on time” challenge is answered by a different question. Read it, and see whether it changes how you plan the next piece of work.

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