Knowledge shared by our community

Achieving Closure on Projects and Avoiding the "bus factor" Effect

This article discusses the problem of small engineering teams having each engineer working in isolation, leading to a lack of capacity for new projects. The solution was to close projects with formal closure ceremonies, which enabled engineers to move on to new projects without being tied to the past. It also highlighted the importance of having a succession plan in place from the start.

Working yourself out of your role: the succession plan

In order to take on new opportunities and grow in their career, the author learned to create a succession plan to transition their current role to someone else. This enabled them to take on broader responsibilities and move on from their current role. The author recommends writing the succession plan as soon as possible, revisiting it regularly, and having a mutual understanding of each other's roles with their team of managers.

Empowering Employees by Promoting In-house

This article discusses the challenge of adding new roles in an organization. It outlines the steps taken by the author to understand the organization, identify potential internal candidates for the role, and gain executive buy-in. It emphasizes the importance of leveraging existing members, making sure roles are clear and well-understood, and providing ongoing support to ensure successful transition and growth.

The Value of Strategic Planning to Reach Product-Market Fit.

After joining an organization attempting to bring a product to market, the author noticed that the company lacked a realistic and cohesive product vision, roadmap, and plan to make it happen. To address this, the author held conversations with key people in the organization to surface concerns and form a plan forward. This included revising the product vision and MVP roadmap, finding partners to adopt the early phases of the product, and holding reviews with the engineering team to discuss the MVP roadmap. Through this process, the author was able to refine plans, secure additional funding, and adjust the team to be better equipped to execute against the problem. The lesson learned is that planning at every level is essential and flexibility to react to reality is critical.

Task Relevant Maturity - How to Best Enable Team Members to Become Highly Productive.

Managers should assess their team members on two dimensions (skill and will) and determine their level of task relevant maturity (low, medium, or high). Depending on the level, the manager should adjust the level of support and involvement required. This helps the team members progress to higher levels of maturity and enables the manager to allocate their time more effectively.

Dealing with a “Hero” Situation

The team was tasked to investigate and fix a performance issue on the website, but the Senior Engineer proposed a solution that was difficult to review. The manager stepped in and showed the engineer how to break up the code into smaller, more workable segments. The manager also discussed the importance of collaboration and included the matter in the engineer's quarterly review. The key lessons learned from this scenario are the importance of communication and collaboration, and the need for managers to understand what motivates a person or team in order to set them up for success.

Improving the Hiring Process by Engaging Your Team

This article outlines the steps taken to improve the hiring process by increasing the team's involvement. This included revisiting messaging to make it more personalized, creating more touchpoints and follow-ups, scaling up the process and getting more engineers involved in recruiting, and launching pair programming. The result was an improved candidate experience and higher success rate in hiring.

Solving Budget Problems by being Creative

When faced with budget constraints, such as hiring freezes or restrictions on buying or renting tools, creativity and a can-do attitude can help to find alternatives. Thinking outside the box and keeping the goal in mind can help to avoid being bogged down by budget constraints.

Helping your team members be more effective and relevant in their global scope by being more technical on subjects that can be out of their scope - even if it means breaking things.

As a manager, it is important to encourage team members to step out of their comfort zone and learn new skills. This can be done by providing opportunities for them to explore tasks outside of their job description and gain confidence in their abilities. An example of this is prompting QA testers to make production code changes instead of just testing and issuing recommendations. This way, they can learn from each other and share best practices.

Tackling Lack of Confidence for Newcomers

To help new hires and team members feel more comfortable and confident in the organization, a team lunch outside every Monday was implemented. This created an open and friendly atmosphere, and inspired the team to come up with other fun activities. The lesson learned is that social interaction is key to creating a successful and welcoming environment.

Minimizing the Risks from Notice Period during Hiring

Hiring from diverse cultures and backgrounds is now common, and hiring managers should be aware of transition requirements such as notice periods. To increase the chances of a hired candidate proceeding with their employment, an extended onboarding and buddy program should be implemented, as well as a buffer when making job offers. This will ensure a backup in case the chosen candidate decides not to join the company.

How to Achieve an Effective Online Meeting or Conference

This article discusses the challenges of conducting team meetings and one-on-ones online. The author suggests using video conferencing as a more effective way to maintain connection and attention with remote teams. This helps to ensure that everyone is engaged and understands the discussion.

Ensuring success for new hires

To avoid taking chances when hiring a new team member, it is recommended to hire them at one level lower of the desired position and promote them after a period of time. This gives the new hire time to learn the ropes and grow into the role, while also providing motivation and a positive vibe to the team. It also presents lower risk for the hiring manager and lower impact of potential failure for the team.

Ways to make your business start-up profitable

This mentee is looking for advice on how to grow their start-up and make it profitable. The mentor explains the five phases they went through with Plato, from confirming the problem to finding and hiring mentors, launching the beta-phase, and reaching the fifth phase with 20 mentors, 5 paying companies, and 50 users. The key lessons learned are that a strong start-up is based on a solid foundation and that it is important to maintain communication with customers to build trust and ensure long-term growth.

Design Sprint is an effective tool to build a Product

This article discusses the use of design sprints, a tool used to test out solutions and speed up the process. It is useful for discovering market fit, adapting the sprint scope, and adding product features or functionality. Design sprints are beneficial for getting stakeholders involved early in the process and achieving strong alignment. Ultimately, a successful design sprint leads to strong conviction on product solutions.

Having work agreements in the absence of signed documents as evidence

In this case, the mentee had a verbal agreement with the co-founder of their company for a co-founder role, but the agreement was not formalized. The mentee was facing difficulty in exercising authority and his visa was about to expire. The main advice given was to stay positive, use a softer approach and pursue his objective through honest communication with the co-founder. It was also suggested to use his technical capability as leverage and to have a one-on-one with the co-founder to discuss his vision for the company. The main lesson learned was that it is important to have formal agreements and documents in place, and to have honest communication to understand and level expectations.

Hiring Engineering Talent in a Highly Competitive Market

This article details the process of hiring for a new office location in San Francisco. Five methods were used to find the necessary talent, including leveraging social networks, using a hiring tool, attending boot camps and coding camps, scouting technology meet-ups, and street hops. It was also noted that when mass hiring is required, it is important to consider whether speed or accuracy is more important, and to be prepared to make adjustments and correct mistakes quickly. Lastly, it is important to acknowledge that new hires may have different backgrounds and cultures, and to give them time to assimilate into the new culture.

Establishing an Effective Communication and Process Routine

In order to keep teams aligned to a company's larger goal and to institute effective communication tools, a strategy workshop was conducted to develop and articulate the company's mission, a product roadmap was developed with the help of Trello, and regular check-ins were established to review progress and ensure tasks were on track. These activities helped ensure proper execution of the strategy and project roadmap.

Transitioning Someone to a New Role

When transitioning a technical lead to a people management role, it is important to empower them by delegating tasks and allowing them to take more responsibility for the team's performance. This will help them to take ownership of the team and make the right trade-offs to keep the team accountable for its commitments.

Encouraging A Team Member To Move Up The Career Ladder

An engineer asked his manager what it would take for him to move up to the next level, as he thought he needed to have managed other managers before. His manager helped him to realize he had the skills and potential to do well on the job, and encouraged him to prove he could lead by influencing others, rather than directing them. The manager also explained that building one's skills and experience involves a series of small leaps and this process usually takes time. The lesson learned is that an ambitious line manager can do lots of things to show their manager that they're ready for the next step, and should frame the challenge of new roles as a positive way to grow and learn.

Achieving Closure on Projects and Avoiding the "bus factor" Effect

This article discusses the problem of small engineering teams having each engineer working in isolation, leading to a lack of capacity for new projects. The solution was to close projects with formal closure ceremonies, which enabled engineers to move on to new projects without being tied to the past. It also highlighted the importance of having a succession plan in place from the start.

Working yourself out of your role: the succession plan

In order to take on new opportunities and grow in their career, the author learned to create a succession plan to transition their current role to someone else. This enabled them to take on broader responsibilities and move on from their current role. The author recommends writing the succession plan as soon as possible, revisiting it regularly, and having a mutual understanding of each other's roles with their team of managers.

Empowering Employees by Promoting In-house

This article discusses the challenge of adding new roles in an organization. It outlines the steps taken by the author to understand the organization, identify potential internal candidates for the role, and gain executive buy-in. It emphasizes the importance of leveraging existing members, making sure roles are clear and well-understood, and providing ongoing support to ensure successful transition and growth.

The Value of Strategic Planning to Reach Product-Market Fit.

After joining an organization attempting to bring a product to market, the author noticed that the company lacked a realistic and cohesive product vision, roadmap, and plan to make it happen. To address this, the author held conversations with key people in the organization to surface concerns and form a plan forward. This included revising the product vision and MVP roadmap, finding partners to adopt the early phases of the product, and holding reviews with the engineering team to discuss the MVP roadmap. Through this process, the author was able to refine plans, secure additional funding, and adjust the team to be better equipped to execute against the problem. The lesson learned is that planning at every level is essential and flexibility to react to reality is critical.

Task Relevant Maturity - How to Best Enable Team Members to Become Highly Productive.

Managers should assess their team members on two dimensions (skill and will) and determine their level of task relevant maturity (low, medium, or high). Depending on the level, the manager should adjust the level of support and involvement required. This helps the team members progress to higher levels of maturity and enables the manager to allocate their time more effectively.

Dealing with a “Hero” Situation

The team was tasked to investigate and fix a performance issue on the website, but the Senior Engineer proposed a solution that was difficult to review. The manager stepped in and showed the engineer how to break up the code into smaller, more workable segments. The manager also discussed the importance of collaboration and included the matter in the engineer's quarterly review. The key lessons learned from this scenario are the importance of communication and collaboration, and the need for managers to understand what motivates a person or team in order to set them up for success.

Improving the Hiring Process by Engaging Your Team

This article outlines the steps taken to improve the hiring process by increasing the team's involvement. This included revisiting messaging to make it more personalized, creating more touchpoints and follow-ups, scaling up the process and getting more engineers involved in recruiting, and launching pair programming. The result was an improved candidate experience and higher success rate in hiring.

Solving Budget Problems by being Creative

When faced with budget constraints, such as hiring freezes or restrictions on buying or renting tools, creativity and a can-do attitude can help to find alternatives. Thinking outside the box and keeping the goal in mind can help to avoid being bogged down by budget constraints.

Helping your team members be more effective and relevant in their global scope by being more technical on subjects that can be out of their scope - even if it means breaking things.

As a manager, it is important to encourage team members to step out of their comfort zone and learn new skills. This can be done by providing opportunities for them to explore tasks outside of their job description and gain confidence in their abilities. An example of this is prompting QA testers to make production code changes instead of just testing and issuing recommendations. This way, they can learn from each other and share best practices.

Tackling Lack of Confidence for Newcomers

To help new hires and team members feel more comfortable and confident in the organization, a team lunch outside every Monday was implemented. This created an open and friendly atmosphere, and inspired the team to come up with other fun activities. The lesson learned is that social interaction is key to creating a successful and welcoming environment.

Minimizing the Risks from Notice Period during Hiring

Hiring from diverse cultures and backgrounds is now common, and hiring managers should be aware of transition requirements such as notice periods. To increase the chances of a hired candidate proceeding with their employment, an extended onboarding and buddy program should be implemented, as well as a buffer when making job offers. This will ensure a backup in case the chosen candidate decides not to join the company.

How to Achieve an Effective Online Meeting or Conference

This article discusses the challenges of conducting team meetings and one-on-ones online. The author suggests using video conferencing as a more effective way to maintain connection and attention with remote teams. This helps to ensure that everyone is engaged and understands the discussion.

Ensuring success for new hires

To avoid taking chances when hiring a new team member, it is recommended to hire them at one level lower of the desired position and promote them after a period of time. This gives the new hire time to learn the ropes and grow into the role, while also providing motivation and a positive vibe to the team. It also presents lower risk for the hiring manager and lower impact of potential failure for the team.

Ways to make your business start-up profitable

This mentee is looking for advice on how to grow their start-up and make it profitable. The mentor explains the five phases they went through with Plato, from confirming the problem to finding and hiring mentors, launching the beta-phase, and reaching the fifth phase with 20 mentors, 5 paying companies, and 50 users. The key lessons learned are that a strong start-up is based on a solid foundation and that it is important to maintain communication with customers to build trust and ensure long-term growth.

Design Sprint is an effective tool to build a Product

This article discusses the use of design sprints, a tool used to test out solutions and speed up the process. It is useful for discovering market fit, adapting the sprint scope, and adding product features or functionality. Design sprints are beneficial for getting stakeholders involved early in the process and achieving strong alignment. Ultimately, a successful design sprint leads to strong conviction on product solutions.

Having work agreements in the absence of signed documents as evidence

In this case, the mentee had a verbal agreement with the co-founder of their company for a co-founder role, but the agreement was not formalized. The mentee was facing difficulty in exercising authority and his visa was about to expire. The main advice given was to stay positive, use a softer approach and pursue his objective through honest communication with the co-founder. It was also suggested to use his technical capability as leverage and to have a one-on-one with the co-founder to discuss his vision for the company. The main lesson learned was that it is important to have formal agreements and documents in place, and to have honest communication to understand and level expectations.

Hiring Engineering Talent in a Highly Competitive Market

This article details the process of hiring for a new office location in San Francisco. Five methods were used to find the necessary talent, including leveraging social networks, using a hiring tool, attending boot camps and coding camps, scouting technology meet-ups, and street hops. It was also noted that when mass hiring is required, it is important to consider whether speed or accuracy is more important, and to be prepared to make adjustments and correct mistakes quickly. Lastly, it is important to acknowledge that new hires may have different backgrounds and cultures, and to give them time to assimilate into the new culture.

Establishing an Effective Communication and Process Routine

In order to keep teams aligned to a company's larger goal and to institute effective communication tools, a strategy workshop was conducted to develop and articulate the company's mission, a product roadmap was developed with the help of Trello, and regular check-ins were established to review progress and ensure tasks were on track. These activities helped ensure proper execution of the strategy and project roadmap.

Transitioning Someone to a New Role

When transitioning a technical lead to a people management role, it is important to empower them by delegating tasks and allowing them to take more responsibility for the team's performance. This will help them to take ownership of the team and make the right trade-offs to keep the team accountable for its commitments.

Encouraging A Team Member To Move Up The Career Ladder

An engineer asked his manager what it would take for him to move up to the next level, as he thought he needed to have managed other managers before. His manager helped him to realize he had the skills and potential to do well on the job, and encouraged him to prove he could lead by influencing others, rather than directing them. The manager also explained that building one's skills and experience involves a series of small leaps and this process usually takes time. The lesson learned is that an ambitious line manager can do lots of things to show their manager that they're ready for the next step, and should frame the challenge of new roles as a positive way to grow and learn.

Achieving Closure on Projects and Avoiding the "bus factor" Effect

This article discusses the problem of small engineering teams having each engineer working in isolation, leading to a lack of capacity for new projects. The solution was to close projects with formal closure ceremonies, which enabled engineers to move on to new projects without being tied to the past. It also highlighted the importance of having a succession plan in place from the start.

Working yourself out of your role: the succession plan

In order to take on new opportunities and grow in their career, the author learned to create a succession plan to transition their current role to someone else. This enabled them to take on broader responsibilities and move on from their current role. The author recommends writing the succession plan as soon as possible, revisiting it regularly, and having a mutual understanding of each other's roles with their team of managers.

Empowering Employees by Promoting In-house

This article discusses the challenge of adding new roles in an organization. It outlines the steps taken by the author to understand the organization, identify potential internal candidates for the role, and gain executive buy-in. It emphasizes the importance of leveraging existing members, making sure roles are clear and well-understood, and providing ongoing support to ensure successful transition and growth.

The Value of Strategic Planning to Reach Product-Market Fit.

After joining an organization attempting to bring a product to market, the author noticed that the company lacked a realistic and cohesive product vision, roadmap, and plan to make it happen. To address this, the author held conversations with key people in the organization to surface concerns and form a plan forward. This included revising the product vision and MVP roadmap, finding partners to adopt the early phases of the product, and holding reviews with the engineering team to discuss the MVP roadmap. Through this process, the author was able to refine plans, secure additional funding, and adjust the team to be better equipped to execute against the problem. The lesson learned is that planning at every level is essential and flexibility to react to reality is critical.

Task Relevant Maturity - How to Best Enable Team Members to Become Highly Productive.

Managers should assess their team members on two dimensions (skill and will) and determine their level of task relevant maturity (low, medium, or high). Depending on the level, the manager should adjust the level of support and involvement required. This helps the team members progress to higher levels of maturity and enables the manager to allocate their time more effectively.

Dealing with a “Hero” Situation

The team was tasked to investigate and fix a performance issue on the website, but the Senior Engineer proposed a solution that was difficult to review. The manager stepped in and showed the engineer how to break up the code into smaller, more workable segments. The manager also discussed the importance of collaboration and included the matter in the engineer's quarterly review. The key lessons learned from this scenario are the importance of communication and collaboration, and the need for managers to understand what motivates a person or team in order to set them up for success.

Improving the Hiring Process by Engaging Your Team

This article outlines the steps taken to improve the hiring process by increasing the team's involvement. This included revisiting messaging to make it more personalized, creating more touchpoints and follow-ups, scaling up the process and getting more engineers involved in recruiting, and launching pair programming. The result was an improved candidate experience and higher success rate in hiring.

Solving Budget Problems by being Creative

When faced with budget constraints, such as hiring freezes or restrictions on buying or renting tools, creativity and a can-do attitude can help to find alternatives. Thinking outside the box and keeping the goal in mind can help to avoid being bogged down by budget constraints.

Helping your team members be more effective and relevant in their global scope by being more technical on subjects that can be out of their scope - even if it means breaking things.

As a manager, it is important to encourage team members to step out of their comfort zone and learn new skills. This can be done by providing opportunities for them to explore tasks outside of their job description and gain confidence in their abilities. An example of this is prompting QA testers to make production code changes instead of just testing and issuing recommendations. This way, they can learn from each other and share best practices.

Tackling Lack of Confidence for Newcomers

To help new hires and team members feel more comfortable and confident in the organization, a team lunch outside every Monday was implemented. This created an open and friendly atmosphere, and inspired the team to come up with other fun activities. The lesson learned is that social interaction is key to creating a successful and welcoming environment.

Minimizing the Risks from Notice Period during Hiring

Hiring from diverse cultures and backgrounds is now common, and hiring managers should be aware of transition requirements such as notice periods. To increase the chances of a hired candidate proceeding with their employment, an extended onboarding and buddy program should be implemented, as well as a buffer when making job offers. This will ensure a backup in case the chosen candidate decides not to join the company.

How to Achieve an Effective Online Meeting or Conference

This article discusses the challenges of conducting team meetings and one-on-ones online. The author suggests using video conferencing as a more effective way to maintain connection and attention with remote teams. This helps to ensure that everyone is engaged and understands the discussion.

Ensuring success for new hires

To avoid taking chances when hiring a new team member, it is recommended to hire them at one level lower of the desired position and promote them after a period of time. This gives the new hire time to learn the ropes and grow into the role, while also providing motivation and a positive vibe to the team. It also presents lower risk for the hiring manager and lower impact of potential failure for the team.

Ways to make your business start-up profitable

This mentee is looking for advice on how to grow their start-up and make it profitable. The mentor explains the five phases they went through with Plato, from confirming the problem to finding and hiring mentors, launching the beta-phase, and reaching the fifth phase with 20 mentors, 5 paying companies, and 50 users. The key lessons learned are that a strong start-up is based on a solid foundation and that it is important to maintain communication with customers to build trust and ensure long-term growth.

Design Sprint is an effective tool to build a Product

This article discusses the use of design sprints, a tool used to test out solutions and speed up the process. It is useful for discovering market fit, adapting the sprint scope, and adding product features or functionality. Design sprints are beneficial for getting stakeholders involved early in the process and achieving strong alignment. Ultimately, a successful design sprint leads to strong conviction on product solutions.

Having work agreements in the absence of signed documents as evidence

In this case, the mentee had a verbal agreement with the co-founder of their company for a co-founder role, but the agreement was not formalized. The mentee was facing difficulty in exercising authority and his visa was about to expire. The main advice given was to stay positive, use a softer approach and pursue his objective through honest communication with the co-founder. It was also suggested to use his technical capability as leverage and to have a one-on-one with the co-founder to discuss his vision for the company. The main lesson learned was that it is important to have formal agreements and documents in place, and to have honest communication to understand and level expectations.

Hiring Engineering Talent in a Highly Competitive Market

This article details the process of hiring for a new office location in San Francisco. Five methods were used to find the necessary talent, including leveraging social networks, using a hiring tool, attending boot camps and coding camps, scouting technology meet-ups, and street hops. It was also noted that when mass hiring is required, it is important to consider whether speed or accuracy is more important, and to be prepared to make adjustments and correct mistakes quickly. Lastly, it is important to acknowledge that new hires may have different backgrounds and cultures, and to give them time to assimilate into the new culture.

Establishing an Effective Communication and Process Routine

In order to keep teams aligned to a company's larger goal and to institute effective communication tools, a strategy workshop was conducted to develop and articulate the company's mission, a product roadmap was developed with the help of Trello, and regular check-ins were established to review progress and ensure tasks were on track. These activities helped ensure proper execution of the strategy and project roadmap.

Transitioning Someone to a New Role

When transitioning a technical lead to a people management role, it is important to empower them by delegating tasks and allowing them to take more responsibility for the team's performance. This will help them to take ownership of the team and make the right trade-offs to keep the team accountable for its commitments.

Encouraging A Team Member To Move Up The Career Ladder

An engineer asked his manager what it would take for him to move up to the next level, as he thought he needed to have managed other managers before. His manager helped him to realize he had the skills and potential to do well on the job, and encouraged him to prove he could lead by influencing others, rather than directing them. The manager also explained that building one's skills and experience involves a series of small leaps and this process usually takes time. The lesson learned is that an ambitious line manager can do lots of things to show their manager that they're ready for the next step, and should frame the challenge of new roles as a positive way to grow and learn.

Achieving Closure on Projects and Avoiding the "bus factor" Effect

This article discusses the problem of small engineering teams having each engineer working in isolation, leading to a lack of capacity for new projects. The solution was to close projects with formal closure ceremonies, which enabled engineers to move on to new projects without being tied to the past. It also highlighted the importance of having a succession plan in place from the start.

Working yourself out of your role: the succession plan

In order to take on new opportunities and grow in their career, the author learned to create a succession plan to transition their current role to someone else. This enabled them to take on broader responsibilities and move on from their current role. The author recommends writing the succession plan as soon as possible, revisiting it regularly, and having a mutual understanding of each other's roles with their team of managers.

Empowering Employees by Promoting In-house

This article discusses the challenge of adding new roles in an organization. It outlines the steps taken by the author to understand the organization, identify potential internal candidates for the role, and gain executive buy-in. It emphasizes the importance of leveraging existing members, making sure roles are clear and well-understood, and providing ongoing support to ensure successful transition and growth.

The Value of Strategic Planning to Reach Product-Market Fit.

After joining an organization attempting to bring a product to market, the author noticed that the company lacked a realistic and cohesive product vision, roadmap, and plan to make it happen. To address this, the author held conversations with key people in the organization to surface concerns and form a plan forward. This included revising the product vision and MVP roadmap, finding partners to adopt the early phases of the product, and holding reviews with the engineering team to discuss the MVP roadmap. Through this process, the author was able to refine plans, secure additional funding, and adjust the team to be better equipped to execute against the problem. The lesson learned is that planning at every level is essential and flexibility to react to reality is critical.

Task Relevant Maturity - How to Best Enable Team Members to Become Highly Productive.

Managers should assess their team members on two dimensions (skill and will) and determine their level of task relevant maturity (low, medium, or high). Depending on the level, the manager should adjust the level of support and involvement required. This helps the team members progress to higher levels of maturity and enables the manager to allocate their time more effectively.

Dealing with a “Hero” Situation

The team was tasked to investigate and fix a performance issue on the website, but the Senior Engineer proposed a solution that was difficult to review. The manager stepped in and showed the engineer how to break up the code into smaller, more workable segments. The manager also discussed the importance of collaboration and included the matter in the engineer's quarterly review. The key lessons learned from this scenario are the importance of communication and collaboration, and the need for managers to understand what motivates a person or team in order to set them up for success.

Improving the Hiring Process by Engaging Your Team

This article outlines the steps taken to improve the hiring process by increasing the team's involvement. This included revisiting messaging to make it more personalized, creating more touchpoints and follow-ups, scaling up the process and getting more engineers involved in recruiting, and launching pair programming. The result was an improved candidate experience and higher success rate in hiring.

Solving Budget Problems by being Creative

When faced with budget constraints, such as hiring freezes or restrictions on buying or renting tools, creativity and a can-do attitude can help to find alternatives. Thinking outside the box and keeping the goal in mind can help to avoid being bogged down by budget constraints.

Helping your team members be more effective and relevant in their global scope by being more technical on subjects that can be out of their scope - even if it means breaking things.

As a manager, it is important to encourage team members to step out of their comfort zone and learn new skills. This can be done by providing opportunities for them to explore tasks outside of their job description and gain confidence in their abilities. An example of this is prompting QA testers to make production code changes instead of just testing and issuing recommendations. This way, they can learn from each other and share best practices.

Tackling Lack of Confidence for Newcomers

To help new hires and team members feel more comfortable and confident in the organization, a team lunch outside every Monday was implemented. This created an open and friendly atmosphere, and inspired the team to come up with other fun activities. The lesson learned is that social interaction is key to creating a successful and welcoming environment.

Minimizing the Risks from Notice Period during Hiring

Hiring from diverse cultures and backgrounds is now common, and hiring managers should be aware of transition requirements such as notice periods. To increase the chances of a hired candidate proceeding with their employment, an extended onboarding and buddy program should be implemented, as well as a buffer when making job offers. This will ensure a backup in case the chosen candidate decides not to join the company.

How to Achieve an Effective Online Meeting or Conference

This article discusses the challenges of conducting team meetings and one-on-ones online. The author suggests using video conferencing as a more effective way to maintain connection and attention with remote teams. This helps to ensure that everyone is engaged and understands the discussion.

Ensuring success for new hires

To avoid taking chances when hiring a new team member, it is recommended to hire them at one level lower of the desired position and promote them after a period of time. This gives the new hire time to learn the ropes and grow into the role, while also providing motivation and a positive vibe to the team. It also presents lower risk for the hiring manager and lower impact of potential failure for the team.

Ways to make your business start-up profitable

This mentee is looking for advice on how to grow their start-up and make it profitable. The mentor explains the five phases they went through with Plato, from confirming the problem to finding and hiring mentors, launching the beta-phase, and reaching the fifth phase with 20 mentors, 5 paying companies, and 50 users. The key lessons learned are that a strong start-up is based on a solid foundation and that it is important to maintain communication with customers to build trust and ensure long-term growth.

Design Sprint is an effective tool to build a Product

This article discusses the use of design sprints, a tool used to test out solutions and speed up the process. It is useful for discovering market fit, adapting the sprint scope, and adding product features or functionality. Design sprints are beneficial for getting stakeholders involved early in the process and achieving strong alignment. Ultimately, a successful design sprint leads to strong conviction on product solutions.

Having work agreements in the absence of signed documents as evidence

In this case, the mentee had a verbal agreement with the co-founder of their company for a co-founder role, but the agreement was not formalized. The mentee was facing difficulty in exercising authority and his visa was about to expire. The main advice given was to stay positive, use a softer approach and pursue his objective through honest communication with the co-founder. It was also suggested to use his technical capability as leverage and to have a one-on-one with the co-founder to discuss his vision for the company. The main lesson learned was that it is important to have formal agreements and documents in place, and to have honest communication to understand and level expectations.

Hiring Engineering Talent in a Highly Competitive Market

This article details the process of hiring for a new office location in San Francisco. Five methods were used to find the necessary talent, including leveraging social networks, using a hiring tool, attending boot camps and coding camps, scouting technology meet-ups, and street hops. It was also noted that when mass hiring is required, it is important to consider whether speed or accuracy is more important, and to be prepared to make adjustments and correct mistakes quickly. Lastly, it is important to acknowledge that new hires may have different backgrounds and cultures, and to give them time to assimilate into the new culture.

Establishing an Effective Communication and Process Routine

In order to keep teams aligned to a company's larger goal and to institute effective communication tools, a strategy workshop was conducted to develop and articulate the company's mission, a product roadmap was developed with the help of Trello, and regular check-ins were established to review progress and ensure tasks were on track. These activities helped ensure proper execution of the strategy and project roadmap.

Transitioning Someone to a New Role

When transitioning a technical lead to a people management role, it is important to empower them by delegating tasks and allowing them to take more responsibility for the team's performance. This will help them to take ownership of the team and make the right trade-offs to keep the team accountable for its commitments.

Encouraging A Team Member To Move Up The Career Ladder

An engineer asked his manager what it would take for him to move up to the next level, as he thought he needed to have managed other managers before. His manager helped him to realize he had the skills and potential to do well on the job, and encouraged him to prove he could lead by influencing others, rather than directing them. The manager also explained that building one's skills and experience involves a series of small leaps and this process usually takes time. The lesson learned is that an ambitious line manager can do lots of things to show their manager that they're ready for the next step, and should frame the challenge of new roles as a positive way to grow and learn.

Achieving Closure on Projects and Avoiding the "bus factor" Effect

This article discusses the problem of small engineering teams having each engineer working in isolation, leading to a lack of capacity for new projects. The solution was to close projects with formal closure ceremonies, which enabled engineers to move on to new projects without being tied to the past. It also highlighted the importance of having a succession plan in place from the start.

Working yourself out of your role: the succession plan

In order to take on new opportunities and grow in their career, the author learned to create a succession plan to transition their current role to someone else. This enabled them to take on broader responsibilities and move on from their current role. The author recommends writing the succession plan as soon as possible, revisiting it regularly, and having a mutual understanding of each other's roles with their team of managers.

Empowering Employees by Promoting In-house

This article discusses the challenge of adding new roles in an organization. It outlines the steps taken by the author to understand the organization, identify potential internal candidates for the role, and gain executive buy-in. It emphasizes the importance of leveraging existing members, making sure roles are clear and well-understood, and providing ongoing support to ensure successful transition and growth.

The Value of Strategic Planning to Reach Product-Market Fit.

After joining an organization attempting to bring a product to market, the author noticed that the company lacked a realistic and cohesive product vision, roadmap, and plan to make it happen. To address this, the author held conversations with key people in the organization to surface concerns and form a plan forward. This included revising the product vision and MVP roadmap, finding partners to adopt the early phases of the product, and holding reviews with the engineering team to discuss the MVP roadmap. Through this process, the author was able to refine plans, secure additional funding, and adjust the team to be better equipped to execute against the problem. The lesson learned is that planning at every level is essential and flexibility to react to reality is critical.

Task Relevant Maturity - How to Best Enable Team Members to Become Highly Productive.

Managers should assess their team members on two dimensions (skill and will) and determine their level of task relevant maturity (low, medium, or high). Depending on the level, the manager should adjust the level of support and involvement required. This helps the team members progress to higher levels of maturity and enables the manager to allocate their time more effectively.

Dealing with a “Hero” Situation

The team was tasked to investigate and fix a performance issue on the website, but the Senior Engineer proposed a solution that was difficult to review. The manager stepped in and showed the engineer how to break up the code into smaller, more workable segments. The manager also discussed the importance of collaboration and included the matter in the engineer's quarterly review. The key lessons learned from this scenario are the importance of communication and collaboration, and the need for managers to understand what motivates a person or team in order to set them up for success.

Improving the Hiring Process by Engaging Your Team

This article outlines the steps taken to improve the hiring process by increasing the team's involvement. This included revisiting messaging to make it more personalized, creating more touchpoints and follow-ups, scaling up the process and getting more engineers involved in recruiting, and launching pair programming. The result was an improved candidate experience and higher success rate in hiring.

Solving Budget Problems by being Creative

When faced with budget constraints, such as hiring freezes or restrictions on buying or renting tools, creativity and a can-do attitude can help to find alternatives. Thinking outside the box and keeping the goal in mind can help to avoid being bogged down by budget constraints.

Helping your team members be more effective and relevant in their global scope by being more technical on subjects that can be out of their scope - even if it means breaking things.

As a manager, it is important to encourage team members to step out of their comfort zone and learn new skills. This can be done by providing opportunities for them to explore tasks outside of their job description and gain confidence in their abilities. An example of this is prompting QA testers to make production code changes instead of just testing and issuing recommendations. This way, they can learn from each other and share best practices.

Tackling Lack of Confidence for Newcomers

To help new hires and team members feel more comfortable and confident in the organization, a team lunch outside every Monday was implemented. This created an open and friendly atmosphere, and inspired the team to come up with other fun activities. The lesson learned is that social interaction is key to creating a successful and welcoming environment.

Minimizing the Risks from Notice Period during Hiring

Hiring from diverse cultures and backgrounds is now common, and hiring managers should be aware of transition requirements such as notice periods. To increase the chances of a hired candidate proceeding with their employment, an extended onboarding and buddy program should be implemented, as well as a buffer when making job offers. This will ensure a backup in case the chosen candidate decides not to join the company.

How to Achieve an Effective Online Meeting or Conference

This article discusses the challenges of conducting team meetings and one-on-ones online. The author suggests using video conferencing as a more effective way to maintain connection and attention with remote teams. This helps to ensure that everyone is engaged and understands the discussion.

Ensuring success for new hires

To avoid taking chances when hiring a new team member, it is recommended to hire them at one level lower of the desired position and promote them after a period of time. This gives the new hire time to learn the ropes and grow into the role, while also providing motivation and a positive vibe to the team. It also presents lower risk for the hiring manager and lower impact of potential failure for the team.

Ways to make your business start-up profitable

This mentee is looking for advice on how to grow their start-up and make it profitable. The mentor explains the five phases they went through with Plato, from confirming the problem to finding and hiring mentors, launching the beta-phase, and reaching the fifth phase with 20 mentors, 5 paying companies, and 50 users. The key lessons learned are that a strong start-up is based on a solid foundation and that it is important to maintain communication with customers to build trust and ensure long-term growth.

Design Sprint is an effective tool to build a Product

This article discusses the use of design sprints, a tool used to test out solutions and speed up the process. It is useful for discovering market fit, adapting the sprint scope, and adding product features or functionality. Design sprints are beneficial for getting stakeholders involved early in the process and achieving strong alignment. Ultimately, a successful design sprint leads to strong conviction on product solutions.

Having work agreements in the absence of signed documents as evidence

In this case, the mentee had a verbal agreement with the co-founder of their company for a co-founder role, but the agreement was not formalized. The mentee was facing difficulty in exercising authority and his visa was about to expire. The main advice given was to stay positive, use a softer approach and pursue his objective through honest communication with the co-founder. It was also suggested to use his technical capability as leverage and to have a one-on-one with the co-founder to discuss his vision for the company. The main lesson learned was that it is important to have formal agreements and documents in place, and to have honest communication to understand and level expectations.

Hiring Engineering Talent in a Highly Competitive Market

This article details the process of hiring for a new office location in San Francisco. Five methods were used to find the necessary talent, including leveraging social networks, using a hiring tool, attending boot camps and coding camps, scouting technology meet-ups, and street hops. It was also noted that when mass hiring is required, it is important to consider whether speed or accuracy is more important, and to be prepared to make adjustments and correct mistakes quickly. Lastly, it is important to acknowledge that new hires may have different backgrounds and cultures, and to give them time to assimilate into the new culture.

Establishing an Effective Communication and Process Routine

In order to keep teams aligned to a company's larger goal and to institute effective communication tools, a strategy workshop was conducted to develop and articulate the company's mission, a product roadmap was developed with the help of Trello, and regular check-ins were established to review progress and ensure tasks were on track. These activities helped ensure proper execution of the strategy and project roadmap.

Transitioning Someone to a New Role

When transitioning a technical lead to a people management role, it is important to empower them by delegating tasks and allowing them to take more responsibility for the team's performance. This will help them to take ownership of the team and make the right trade-offs to keep the team accountable for its commitments.

Encouraging A Team Member To Move Up The Career Ladder

An engineer asked his manager what it would take for him to move up to the next level, as he thought he needed to have managed other managers before. His manager helped him to realize he had the skills and potential to do well on the job, and encouraged him to prove he could lead by influencing others, rather than directing them. The manager also explained that building one's skills and experience involves a series of small leaps and this process usually takes time. The lesson learned is that an ambitious line manager can do lots of things to show their manager that they're ready for the next step, and should frame the challenge of new roles as a positive way to grow and learn.

Achieving Closure on Projects and Avoiding the "bus factor" Effect

This article discusses the problem of small engineering teams having each engineer working in isolation, leading to a lack of capacity for new projects. The solution was to close projects with formal closure ceremonies, which enabled engineers to move on to new projects without being tied to the past. It also highlighted the importance of having a succession plan in place from the start.

Working yourself out of your role: the succession plan

In order to take on new opportunities and grow in their career, the author learned to create a succession plan to transition their current role to someone else. This enabled them to take on broader responsibilities and move on from their current role. The author recommends writing the succession plan as soon as possible, revisiting it regularly, and having a mutual understanding of each other's roles with their team of managers.

Empowering Employees by Promoting In-house

This article discusses the challenge of adding new roles in an organization. It outlines the steps taken by the author to understand the organization, identify potential internal candidates for the role, and gain executive buy-in. It emphasizes the importance of leveraging existing members, making sure roles are clear and well-understood, and providing ongoing support to ensure successful transition and growth.

The Value of Strategic Planning to Reach Product-Market Fit.

After joining an organization attempting to bring a product to market, the author noticed that the company lacked a realistic and cohesive product vision, roadmap, and plan to make it happen. To address this, the author held conversations with key people in the organization to surface concerns and form a plan forward. This included revising the product vision and MVP roadmap, finding partners to adopt the early phases of the product, and holding reviews with the engineering team to discuss the MVP roadmap. Through this process, the author was able to refine plans, secure additional funding, and adjust the team to be better equipped to execute against the problem. The lesson learned is that planning at every level is essential and flexibility to react to reality is critical.

Task Relevant Maturity - How to Best Enable Team Members to Become Highly Productive.

Managers should assess their team members on two dimensions (skill and will) and determine their level of task relevant maturity (low, medium, or high). Depending on the level, the manager should adjust the level of support and involvement required. This helps the team members progress to higher levels of maturity and enables the manager to allocate their time more effectively.

Dealing with a “Hero” Situation

The team was tasked to investigate and fix a performance issue on the website, but the Senior Engineer proposed a solution that was difficult to review. The manager stepped in and showed the engineer how to break up the code into smaller, more workable segments. The manager also discussed the importance of collaboration and included the matter in the engineer's quarterly review. The key lessons learned from this scenario are the importance of communication and collaboration, and the need for managers to understand what motivates a person or team in order to set them up for success.

Improving the Hiring Process by Engaging Your Team

This article outlines the steps taken to improve the hiring process by increasing the team's involvement. This included revisiting messaging to make it more personalized, creating more touchpoints and follow-ups, scaling up the process and getting more engineers involved in recruiting, and launching pair programming. The result was an improved candidate experience and higher success rate in hiring.

Solving Budget Problems by being Creative

When faced with budget constraints, such as hiring freezes or restrictions on buying or renting tools, creativity and a can-do attitude can help to find alternatives. Thinking outside the box and keeping the goal in mind can help to avoid being bogged down by budget constraints.

Helping your team members be more effective and relevant in their global scope by being more technical on subjects that can be out of their scope - even if it means breaking things.

As a manager, it is important to encourage team members to step out of their comfort zone and learn new skills. This can be done by providing opportunities for them to explore tasks outside of their job description and gain confidence in their abilities. An example of this is prompting QA testers to make production code changes instead of just testing and issuing recommendations. This way, they can learn from each other and share best practices.

Tackling Lack of Confidence for Newcomers

To help new hires and team members feel more comfortable and confident in the organization, a team lunch outside every Monday was implemented. This created an open and friendly atmosphere, and inspired the team to come up with other fun activities. The lesson learned is that social interaction is key to creating a successful and welcoming environment.

Minimizing the Risks from Notice Period during Hiring

Hiring from diverse cultures and backgrounds is now common, and hiring managers should be aware of transition requirements such as notice periods. To increase the chances of a hired candidate proceeding with their employment, an extended onboarding and buddy program should be implemented, as well as a buffer when making job offers. This will ensure a backup in case the chosen candidate decides not to join the company.

How to Achieve an Effective Online Meeting or Conference

This article discusses the challenges of conducting team meetings and one-on-ones online. The author suggests using video conferencing as a more effective way to maintain connection and attention with remote teams. This helps to ensure that everyone is engaged and understands the discussion.

Ensuring success for new hires

To avoid taking chances when hiring a new team member, it is recommended to hire them at one level lower of the desired position and promote them after a period of time. This gives the new hire time to learn the ropes and grow into the role, while also providing motivation and a positive vibe to the team. It also presents lower risk for the hiring manager and lower impact of potential failure for the team.

Ways to make your business start-up profitable

This mentee is looking for advice on how to grow their start-up and make it profitable. The mentor explains the five phases they went through with Plato, from confirming the problem to finding and hiring mentors, launching the beta-phase, and reaching the fifth phase with 20 mentors, 5 paying companies, and 50 users. The key lessons learned are that a strong start-up is based on a solid foundation and that it is important to maintain communication with customers to build trust and ensure long-term growth.

Design Sprint is an effective tool to build a Product

This article discusses the use of design sprints, a tool used to test out solutions and speed up the process. It is useful for discovering market fit, adapting the sprint scope, and adding product features or functionality. Design sprints are beneficial for getting stakeholders involved early in the process and achieving strong alignment. Ultimately, a successful design sprint leads to strong conviction on product solutions.

Having work agreements in the absence of signed documents as evidence

In this case, the mentee had a verbal agreement with the co-founder of their company for a co-founder role, but the agreement was not formalized. The mentee was facing difficulty in exercising authority and his visa was about to expire. The main advice given was to stay positive, use a softer approach and pursue his objective through honest communication with the co-founder. It was also suggested to use his technical capability as leverage and to have a one-on-one with the co-founder to discuss his vision for the company. The main lesson learned was that it is important to have formal agreements and documents in place, and to have honest communication to understand and level expectations.

Hiring Engineering Talent in a Highly Competitive Market

This article details the process of hiring for a new office location in San Francisco. Five methods were used to find the necessary talent, including leveraging social networks, using a hiring tool, attending boot camps and coding camps, scouting technology meet-ups, and street hops. It was also noted that when mass hiring is required, it is important to consider whether speed or accuracy is more important, and to be prepared to make adjustments and correct mistakes quickly. Lastly, it is important to acknowledge that new hires may have different backgrounds and cultures, and to give them time to assimilate into the new culture.

Establishing an Effective Communication and Process Routine

In order to keep teams aligned to a company's larger goal and to institute effective communication tools, a strategy workshop was conducted to develop and articulate the company's mission, a product roadmap was developed with the help of Trello, and regular check-ins were established to review progress and ensure tasks were on track. These activities helped ensure proper execution of the strategy and project roadmap.

Transitioning Someone to a New Role

When transitioning a technical lead to a people management role, it is important to empower them by delegating tasks and allowing them to take more responsibility for the team's performance. This will help them to take ownership of the team and make the right trade-offs to keep the team accountable for its commitments.

Encouraging A Team Member To Move Up The Career Ladder

An engineer asked his manager what it would take for him to move up to the next level, as he thought he needed to have managed other managers before. His manager helped him to realize he had the skills and potential to do well on the job, and encouraged him to prove he could lead by influencing others, rather than directing them. The manager also explained that building one's skills and experience involves a series of small leaps and this process usually takes time. The lesson learned is that an ambitious line manager can do lots of things to show their manager that they're ready for the next step, and should frame the challenge of new roles as a positive way to grow and learn.