Agile
The Agile C-Suite (via Harvard Business Review)
Interesting piece about how a company used Agile principles all the way to the top. It’s about striking a balance between standardizing operations and pursuing innovations. The CEO, CFO, CHRO, CIO, COO, and CMO all play roles as well. Leadership is driven by fast feedback, a shift from commanding to coaching, and using meetings as work sessions.
The Work-centric Standup (via Software Lead Weekly)
Most Agile standups go from person to person asking them the standard three questions. This post mirrors what Dominica DeGrandis said in Making Work Visible. Talk about the work, not the people. An interesting takeaway from this post was to work backward: talk about what got done, what’s about to deploy, what’s active, and what hasn’t started.
Business
If You Feel Like You’re Regressing, You’re Not Alone (via Harvard Business Review)
“This shift, from the emergency phase of a crisis to a regression phase, is uncomfortable but necessary. To equip your team to move from emergency to regression to recovery, focus on three steps: Disrupt your team to create a new “day one”; learn how to calibrate your team’s emotions; and aim beyond business as usual to find a new way your business can contribute to society and find meaning.”
How to Monitor Your Employees — While Respecting Their Privacy (via Harvard Business Review)
- Choose your metrics carefully by involving all relevant stakeholders
- Be transparent with your employees about what you’re monitoring and why
- Offer carrots as well as sticks
- Accept that very good workers will not always be able to do very good work all the time — especially under present circumstances
- Monitor your own systems to ensure that people of color and other vulnerable groups are not disproportionately affected
- Decrease monitoring when and where you can
10 tips for growing a globally distributed engineering team (via Software Lead Weekly)
- Have business hours overlap
- If you can’t hire the leader, don’t do it
- Make “Head of Engineering” also “Head of Office”
- Align, at least every 3 months
- Total product ownership
- Commit to faster iteration cycles
- Build a bridge for acquisitions
- Everyone needs a friend
- Avoid juniors reporting across an ocean
- Standardize and write everything down
- Be global by default when communicating
Career
Time Machines & Leadership: 10 things I wish I knew at the start (via Software Lead Weekly)
This is a fantastic set of principles (and each one has multiple actionable tips) for a career in engineering management.
- You need to start with yourself
- Plan ahead
- Learn how to hold effective meetings
- Communicate effectively
- Make time to learn
- Keep your hands dirty
- Learn to let go
- We can always be better
- Empower and trust the team
- Connecting worlds
Communication
How to Host a Virtual Networking Event (via Harvard Business Review)
- Invite the right number of people (8 including yourself).
- Make logistics as easy as possible for your attendees.
- A few days before your call, send out an email introducing your guests to each other.
- Make people feel comfortable.
- After initial introductions, ask each participant to answer a specific question.
Different Types of 1:1 Conversations Visualized (via Software Lead Weekly)
- Ping pong
- Interview
- Flow
- Imbalance
- No flow
Leadership
How to Prepare Your Virtual Teams for the Long Haul (via Harvard Business Review)
Things that will erode a team are unclear missions, inconsistent social norms, low common identity, unclear roles, and unstable membership. Triage, stabilize, and plan for long-term care of your teams.
Our book club discussed career growth and interviewing.
Laughter Will Keep Your Team Connected — Even While You’re Apart (via Harvard Business Review)
“Laughter is known to be physically and mentally good for you. But it is primarily a social activity, and in a pandemic-gripped world working from home, where social contact with colleagues takes place virtually through video conferences, it will not occur spontaneously. It is is up to leaders, therefore, to make laughter happen, and this article describes five key steps anyone leading virtual teams can take.”
Managers, Adjust Your Expectations (Without Lowering the Bar) (via Harvard Business Review)
- Many are getting less done while also feeling emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted
- This background stress causes emotional and cognitive fatigue
- Compassion fatigue is caused when we drain our own resources to help others
- Our emotional state impacts our physical wellbeing