Recent Posts
Building Teams: Birthdays and Lunches
We provide recommendations on two powerful yet easy to implement approaches to maintain the human connections and the spirit of camaraderie in a team, celebrating birthdays and going to lunches. This is the first episode in the series dedicated to the most important activity any engineering manager is responsible for, building and maintaining effective teams.
Effective One-on-Ones: Don’t Skip Your 1:1s
The more 1:1s you miss, the longer will be your next one. One-on-ones are the most effective people management tool. When it's used right, it's allows engineering managers building lasting relationships with their direct reports that pay in great performance. When done wrong, 1:1s can become ineffective or even harmful. The first episode in the series The Laws of One-On-Ones we talk about the impact of skipped 1:1s and practical techniques to avoid missing 1:1s, for managers and their direct reports.
Effective Agile: Remote Teams
We provide guidance on how to effectively manage remote teams in an Agile environment. In the end we share a checklist that engineering managers can use to self-check that they are managing their remote teams effectively.
Engineering Process: Gap Analysis
Gap Analysis is an effective approach to identifying challenges in the areas of engineering processes, people and tools. Gap Analysis allows engineering managers to address challenges that prevent the team from delivering high quality software on time. In this podcast we provide a step-by-step guidance for conducting Gap Analysis and resolving the identified gaps.
Effective Agile: Standups
Daily standups are one of the most important practices in Agile. We share our recommendations and experiences towards running effective Agile standups. The most important Agile event, standups provide a means to build a culture of consistency and focus on making progress on the team’s priorities for that sprint. In the end we share a succinct checklist that engineering managers can use to self-check that they are running effective standups.
Engineering Process: Think-Plan-Execute
Think-Plan-Execute is an effective technique for getting things done. In this podcast we discuss how it helps engineering managers and software engineers to deliver working software on time, with quality, and provide practical examples of how to implement Think-Plan-Execute.
Effective Agile: Estimation
In this podcast we continue in our podcast series on Effective Agile and discuss the importance of estimation and how it is a fundamental building block for effective teams. We share tips and techniques to help teams become better at estimating and also share practical experiences with estimation. In the end, we provide a concise checklist that engineering managers can use to self-check that they are applying the best techniques for estimation.
Developing Skills: Guided Self-Study
In this podcast we share the practice of guided self-study, discuss how it helps busy managers to elevate team’s skills, and provide practical recommendations on how to run the guided self-study practice. In the end, we share an approach to install the guided self study at your team and provide a checklist that engineering managers can use to self-check that they are executing guided self-study effectively.
Effective Agile: Best Practices
In this podcast, we start a four-part discussion on Agile teams. We share key best practices for effectively building and managing Agile teams, discuss why these practices are important, and provide tools to implement them easily. In the end, we share a succinct checklist that engineering managers can use to self-check that they are building and managing Agile teams effectively.
Engineering Process: Effective Design Reviews
In this podcast we share the practice of effective software design reviews, discuss why they are important and provide practical recommendations to engineering managers on how to run design review meetings that deliver high quality software architectures. We provide guidance for executing one-on-one reviews, accommodating input, running team reviews and public reviews, and sharing the final designs. In the end, we share an approach to install the effective design reviews and a checklist that engineering managers can use to self-check that they are running their design reviews effectively.