Knowledge shared by our community

How to Prevent Burnout by Delegating Tasks

In order to manage time more effectively, a working parent found ways to keep their teams productive while also managing their own time. This included delegating tasks to senior engineers and allowing them to lead and facilitate meetings, as well as asking someone who is driving the engineering for the project to do the preparation for coordination meetings. This allowed the working parent to focus on collaborating more deeply to solve targeted problems.

Transitioning an IC to Manager

This article discusses the transition of individual contributors to engineering managers. The author suggests giving the IC more responsibility around project and program management before managing people, and splitting people management roles and ownership of engineering work streams between the manager and the author. The author also suggests that managers should focus on enabling engineers to be productive and grow, such as planning a roadmap and engaging engineers on longer-term architectural initiatives. Lastly, the author suggests that the transition from IC to manager should be seen as an inverse hierarchy, in which the manager is there to support everyone from below.

Packaging Information to Effectively Manage Up

In order to effectively manage upwards, it is important to prepare for meetings as if they are deadlines, talk to multiple people to form an opinion, package information in an easy-to-consume format, and distill the most important parts. By doing this, it allows for a deeper level of interaction with leaders and makes the most of the limited conversation time.

Managing growing pains of a scaling product team

When transitioning from one person managing a product team to managing a team of product managers, engineers, and designers, it is important to set up a structure for the team. This includes delegating tasks, providing training, and implementing feedback and goal setting. Training can include bringing in a company to lead product management curriculum, using online PM course resources, or hiring an employee who has been through a more formal product management program. Additionally, implementing 360 reviews and one on ones can help ensure feedback and goal setting is successful.

Managing a Remote Report Who is Resistant to Feedback

This article discusses how to manage a report who is not junior but wants the respect of a non-junior person. The author suggests setting up a coffee chat type of one-on-one, giving intense in-person coaching, and having a serious in-person conversation with the report. The author also shares lessons learned, such as having a 15-20 minute coffee call check-in, pairing the report with a mentor, and understanding the value of the manager's skill set.

Measuring the Success of a Software Engineering Team

Software developers often don't like being asked questions around metrics and measurements, as it doesn't tell the complete story. To monitor productivity, Scrum burndown and burnup charts can be used to measure velocity and progress. Additionally, tools such as Git and Jira can be used to measure check-ins and code rework. Lastly, teams should be encouraged to come up with their own metrics, such as performance characteristics and bug leakage issues.

Getting Team Alignment on Goals and Operating Principles

A scaling team needs to have a shared mental model of the team's goals and operating principles. To achieve this, the team leader should facilitate successful team development by having a conversation on the operating principles and goals of the team, distilling the mission into two or three sentences, and testing team members' understanding. The team should be empowered to make decisions within the guard rails set by the leader. Ultimately, the leader's job is to set the team up for success so that they can eventually manage themselves.

Hiring an Engineering Manager

When hiring an engineering manager, it is important to define the role and consider the traits and questions to ask in the interview process. Three facets of the job to consider are personnel management, execution leadership, and technical leadership. Traits to look for include a willingness to admit failure and questions should include performance management issues, employee unhappiness, and a project from inception to delivery. Technical leadership can be assessed by asking the candidate to explain a system their team worked on and how they helped arrive at technical decisions.

The State of Women in Tech

This article discusses the lack of women in the tech industry and the barriers that keep them out. It suggests that companies need to create more female-friendly environments, provide improved working incentives, and encourage young girls to pursue computer science. Additionally, it highlights the fact that women-led tech startups receive 16 times less funding than those led by men. The article concludes by emphasizing the need to break down the institutional barriers that keep women out of the tech industry.

Relying on Conversations, Not Assumptions

This article discusses the importance of having conversations and clearing up assumptions when it comes to relationships with people. It is important to call the person or set up a meeting to discuss any assumptions that have been made, and to ask questions in order to gain a clear understanding. It is also important to remember that if you don't have the energy to spend time in clearing up assumptions, it is best not to make them in the first place.

Thoughts and Learnt Lessons from the Pareto Principle (aka the 80/20 Rule)

Mr. Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist and sociologist, created the Pareto Principle, also known as the "80/20" rule. This rule states that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Through his observations, Pareto noticed that this held true for peapods in his garden and land in Italy. Shrivastav, an MBA, PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM, and CSP, has learned lessons from the Pareto Principle, such as avoiding the perfection trap and striving for 80/20, listening to client feedback, and using the 80/20 rule to manage time.

Providing Your Customers a Seamless Digital Experience

Customer retention is essential for businesses to remain competitive and profitable. To ensure customers have a positive experience, businesses should ask themselves questions about how easy it is for customers to purchase products/services, find the business, and complete documents. Businesses should also seek feedback from their most valuable customers and strive to constantly improve the customer experience.

Online Representation of You and Your Brand

Having an online presence is just as important as meeting someone face to face. This article provides tips for setting up a website and a LinkedIn account in order to make a good first impression. It suggests having a professional website, an easy call to action, and regularly updating content. For LinkedIn, it suggests having a professional headshot, making it easy to find you, and regularly sharing content. All it takes is dedicating a small amount of time to work on your online presence.

The Power of Personal and Team Retrospectives

Retrospectives are an important ritual in Agile project management, allowing individuals and teams to reflect on their work and processes and identify areas for improvement. Bobbie Shrivastav suggests having weekly retrospectives, with a time-box of 30 minutes, to brainstorm what went well, what went bad, and one-time occurrences. From this, goals are set to start, stop, and continue certain activities, and action steps are taken to make the most impact in the upcoming week. Regular retrospectives are an important way to inspect and adapt to achieve greater outcomes.

Lessons Learned from a Broken Relationship with a Manager

After a disagreement with his manager over the hiring process, the narrator's relationship with his manager deteriorated and eventually ended when his manager left the company. Through this experience, the narrator learned the importance of assuming good intentions, aligning values and strengths with the company culture, and having a structured outlook when interviewing or deciding to work with a team or organization. He also realized that staying in a position at a company because of a good manager is just as important as leaving a manager, not a company.

Investigating a Variety of Career Paths

This article is about the journey of an engineer who had an undergraduate degree in biology and a Master's in computer science. He began an internship in software testing and eventually became a project manager. He then realized he wanted something more technical and decided to look into product management. He had informational meetings with different product managers to gain insight into the role and eventually left the company he was working for because he wasn't able to get the career growth he was seeking. He then received a cold call about a test manager job which led him to his current role as an engineering manager. He learned that being patient isn't necessarily the correct way to solve things, to ask for what you want, and that you may have to move to a different team or company to get the career growth you want.

Five Questions a Manager Should Ask Themselves Every Week

As a manager, it can be difficult to stay on top of everything in a complex workplace. To help, five minutes of reflection at the end of each week can be beneficial. Ask yourself questions such as if workload needs to be rebalanced, if anyone is showing signs of burnout, if anyone needs more of a challenge, if there is anything to celebrate, and if there is anything to stop doing. Taking a few minutes each week to reflect on these questions can help get the week off to a running start.

Knowing When to Let Go

Isaac, an engineering leader who was recently promoted to a manager of managers, was struggling to keep up with his new role and had less visibility into what was happening. He was feeling anxious and was tempted to micromanage his teams. To avoid this, he was advised to focus on outputs and results, allow people to fail safely, choreograph communication, have regular skip level 1:1s, find an outlet for his need to get his hands dirty, and to remember to breathe. The underlying fear of micromanagement is loss of control, uncertainty, failure, and irrelevance. The alternative to micromanagement is not absenteeism, but rather knowing when to get involved and what questions to ask.

How to craft objectives that build alignment, accountability, and autonomy.

Writing a good objective is difficult and requires capturing a lot of knowledge and context into a short phrase. Poorly written objectives can lead to projects going off track, unnecessary work, and important things being dropped. Tips on writing objectives include: making sure the objective communicates what is being done and why, not how; right-sizing the objective; making sure the objective is objective and not subjective; and making sure the objective is appropriate for the situation. Tools like Range and coaching programs like Epic Teams can help with goal setting.

The Value of Code Reviews in an Engineering Team

Code reviews are an important part of engineering teams, as they help to ensure higher quality software, build a collaborative team, and reduce the bus factor. Different approaches to code reviews can be taken, such as pull requests, over the shoulder, and group/committee reviews. It is important to ensure that code reviews are not seen as a criticism, but rather as a way to optimise code and provide feedback. Code reviews should also be included in the Definition of Done and should be seen as a way to share knowledge and expertise.

How to Prevent Burnout by Delegating Tasks

In order to manage time more effectively, a working parent found ways to keep their teams productive while also managing their own time. This included delegating tasks to senior engineers and allowing them to lead and facilitate meetings, as well as asking someone who is driving the engineering for the project to do the preparation for coordination meetings. This allowed the working parent to focus on collaborating more deeply to solve targeted problems.

Transitioning an IC to Manager

This article discusses the transition of individual contributors to engineering managers. The author suggests giving the IC more responsibility around project and program management before managing people, and splitting people management roles and ownership of engineering work streams between the manager and the author. The author also suggests that managers should focus on enabling engineers to be productive and grow, such as planning a roadmap and engaging engineers on longer-term architectural initiatives. Lastly, the author suggests that the transition from IC to manager should be seen as an inverse hierarchy, in which the manager is there to support everyone from below.

Packaging Information to Effectively Manage Up

In order to effectively manage upwards, it is important to prepare for meetings as if they are deadlines, talk to multiple people to form an opinion, package information in an easy-to-consume format, and distill the most important parts. By doing this, it allows for a deeper level of interaction with leaders and makes the most of the limited conversation time.

Managing growing pains of a scaling product team

When transitioning from one person managing a product team to managing a team of product managers, engineers, and designers, it is important to set up a structure for the team. This includes delegating tasks, providing training, and implementing feedback and goal setting. Training can include bringing in a company to lead product management curriculum, using online PM course resources, or hiring an employee who has been through a more formal product management program. Additionally, implementing 360 reviews and one on ones can help ensure feedback and goal setting is successful.

Managing a Remote Report Who is Resistant to Feedback

This article discusses how to manage a report who is not junior but wants the respect of a non-junior person. The author suggests setting up a coffee chat type of one-on-one, giving intense in-person coaching, and having a serious in-person conversation with the report. The author also shares lessons learned, such as having a 15-20 minute coffee call check-in, pairing the report with a mentor, and understanding the value of the manager's skill set.

Measuring the Success of a Software Engineering Team

Software developers often don't like being asked questions around metrics and measurements, as it doesn't tell the complete story. To monitor productivity, Scrum burndown and burnup charts can be used to measure velocity and progress. Additionally, tools such as Git and Jira can be used to measure check-ins and code rework. Lastly, teams should be encouraged to come up with their own metrics, such as performance characteristics and bug leakage issues.

Getting Team Alignment on Goals and Operating Principles

A scaling team needs to have a shared mental model of the team's goals and operating principles. To achieve this, the team leader should facilitate successful team development by having a conversation on the operating principles and goals of the team, distilling the mission into two or three sentences, and testing team members' understanding. The team should be empowered to make decisions within the guard rails set by the leader. Ultimately, the leader's job is to set the team up for success so that they can eventually manage themselves.

Hiring an Engineering Manager

When hiring an engineering manager, it is important to define the role and consider the traits and questions to ask in the interview process. Three facets of the job to consider are personnel management, execution leadership, and technical leadership. Traits to look for include a willingness to admit failure and questions should include performance management issues, employee unhappiness, and a project from inception to delivery. Technical leadership can be assessed by asking the candidate to explain a system their team worked on and how they helped arrive at technical decisions.

The State of Women in Tech

This article discusses the lack of women in the tech industry and the barriers that keep them out. It suggests that companies need to create more female-friendly environments, provide improved working incentives, and encourage young girls to pursue computer science. Additionally, it highlights the fact that women-led tech startups receive 16 times less funding than those led by men. The article concludes by emphasizing the need to break down the institutional barriers that keep women out of the tech industry.

Relying on Conversations, Not Assumptions

This article discusses the importance of having conversations and clearing up assumptions when it comes to relationships with people. It is important to call the person or set up a meeting to discuss any assumptions that have been made, and to ask questions in order to gain a clear understanding. It is also important to remember that if you don't have the energy to spend time in clearing up assumptions, it is best not to make them in the first place.

Thoughts and Learnt Lessons from the Pareto Principle (aka the 80/20 Rule)

Mr. Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist and sociologist, created the Pareto Principle, also known as the "80/20" rule. This rule states that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Through his observations, Pareto noticed that this held true for peapods in his garden and land in Italy. Shrivastav, an MBA, PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM, and CSP, has learned lessons from the Pareto Principle, such as avoiding the perfection trap and striving for 80/20, listening to client feedback, and using the 80/20 rule to manage time.

Providing Your Customers a Seamless Digital Experience

Customer retention is essential for businesses to remain competitive and profitable. To ensure customers have a positive experience, businesses should ask themselves questions about how easy it is for customers to purchase products/services, find the business, and complete documents. Businesses should also seek feedback from their most valuable customers and strive to constantly improve the customer experience.

Online Representation of You and Your Brand

Having an online presence is just as important as meeting someone face to face. This article provides tips for setting up a website and a LinkedIn account in order to make a good first impression. It suggests having a professional website, an easy call to action, and regularly updating content. For LinkedIn, it suggests having a professional headshot, making it easy to find you, and regularly sharing content. All it takes is dedicating a small amount of time to work on your online presence.

The Power of Personal and Team Retrospectives

Retrospectives are an important ritual in Agile project management, allowing individuals and teams to reflect on their work and processes and identify areas for improvement. Bobbie Shrivastav suggests having weekly retrospectives, with a time-box of 30 minutes, to brainstorm what went well, what went bad, and one-time occurrences. From this, goals are set to start, stop, and continue certain activities, and action steps are taken to make the most impact in the upcoming week. Regular retrospectives are an important way to inspect and adapt to achieve greater outcomes.

Lessons Learned from a Broken Relationship with a Manager

After a disagreement with his manager over the hiring process, the narrator's relationship with his manager deteriorated and eventually ended when his manager left the company. Through this experience, the narrator learned the importance of assuming good intentions, aligning values and strengths with the company culture, and having a structured outlook when interviewing or deciding to work with a team or organization. He also realized that staying in a position at a company because of a good manager is just as important as leaving a manager, not a company.

Investigating a Variety of Career Paths

This article is about the journey of an engineer who had an undergraduate degree in biology and a Master's in computer science. He began an internship in software testing and eventually became a project manager. He then realized he wanted something more technical and decided to look into product management. He had informational meetings with different product managers to gain insight into the role and eventually left the company he was working for because he wasn't able to get the career growth he was seeking. He then received a cold call about a test manager job which led him to his current role as an engineering manager. He learned that being patient isn't necessarily the correct way to solve things, to ask for what you want, and that you may have to move to a different team or company to get the career growth you want.

Five Questions a Manager Should Ask Themselves Every Week

As a manager, it can be difficult to stay on top of everything in a complex workplace. To help, five minutes of reflection at the end of each week can be beneficial. Ask yourself questions such as if workload needs to be rebalanced, if anyone is showing signs of burnout, if anyone needs more of a challenge, if there is anything to celebrate, and if there is anything to stop doing. Taking a few minutes each week to reflect on these questions can help get the week off to a running start.

Knowing When to Let Go

Isaac, an engineering leader who was recently promoted to a manager of managers, was struggling to keep up with his new role and had less visibility into what was happening. He was feeling anxious and was tempted to micromanage his teams. To avoid this, he was advised to focus on outputs and results, allow people to fail safely, choreograph communication, have regular skip level 1:1s, find an outlet for his need to get his hands dirty, and to remember to breathe. The underlying fear of micromanagement is loss of control, uncertainty, failure, and irrelevance. The alternative to micromanagement is not absenteeism, but rather knowing when to get involved and what questions to ask.

How to craft objectives that build alignment, accountability, and autonomy.

Writing a good objective is difficult and requires capturing a lot of knowledge and context into a short phrase. Poorly written objectives can lead to projects going off track, unnecessary work, and important things being dropped. Tips on writing objectives include: making sure the objective communicates what is being done and why, not how; right-sizing the objective; making sure the objective is objective and not subjective; and making sure the objective is appropriate for the situation. Tools like Range and coaching programs like Epic Teams can help with goal setting.

The Value of Code Reviews in an Engineering Team

Code reviews are an important part of engineering teams, as they help to ensure higher quality software, build a collaborative team, and reduce the bus factor. Different approaches to code reviews can be taken, such as pull requests, over the shoulder, and group/committee reviews. It is important to ensure that code reviews are not seen as a criticism, but rather as a way to optimise code and provide feedback. Code reviews should also be included in the Definition of Done and should be seen as a way to share knowledge and expertise.

How to Prevent Burnout by Delegating Tasks

In order to manage time more effectively, a working parent found ways to keep their teams productive while also managing their own time. This included delegating tasks to senior engineers and allowing them to lead and facilitate meetings, as well as asking someone who is driving the engineering for the project to do the preparation for coordination meetings. This allowed the working parent to focus on collaborating more deeply to solve targeted problems.

Transitioning an IC to Manager

This article discusses the transition of individual contributors to engineering managers. The author suggests giving the IC more responsibility around project and program management before managing people, and splitting people management roles and ownership of engineering work streams between the manager and the author. The author also suggests that managers should focus on enabling engineers to be productive and grow, such as planning a roadmap and engaging engineers on longer-term architectural initiatives. Lastly, the author suggests that the transition from IC to manager should be seen as an inverse hierarchy, in which the manager is there to support everyone from below.

Packaging Information to Effectively Manage Up

In order to effectively manage upwards, it is important to prepare for meetings as if they are deadlines, talk to multiple people to form an opinion, package information in an easy-to-consume format, and distill the most important parts. By doing this, it allows for a deeper level of interaction with leaders and makes the most of the limited conversation time.

Managing growing pains of a scaling product team

When transitioning from one person managing a product team to managing a team of product managers, engineers, and designers, it is important to set up a structure for the team. This includes delegating tasks, providing training, and implementing feedback and goal setting. Training can include bringing in a company to lead product management curriculum, using online PM course resources, or hiring an employee who has been through a more formal product management program. Additionally, implementing 360 reviews and one on ones can help ensure feedback and goal setting is successful.

Managing a Remote Report Who is Resistant to Feedback

This article discusses how to manage a report who is not junior but wants the respect of a non-junior person. The author suggests setting up a coffee chat type of one-on-one, giving intense in-person coaching, and having a serious in-person conversation with the report. The author also shares lessons learned, such as having a 15-20 minute coffee call check-in, pairing the report with a mentor, and understanding the value of the manager's skill set.

Measuring the Success of a Software Engineering Team

Software developers often don't like being asked questions around metrics and measurements, as it doesn't tell the complete story. To monitor productivity, Scrum burndown and burnup charts can be used to measure velocity and progress. Additionally, tools such as Git and Jira can be used to measure check-ins and code rework. Lastly, teams should be encouraged to come up with their own metrics, such as performance characteristics and bug leakage issues.

Getting Team Alignment on Goals and Operating Principles

A scaling team needs to have a shared mental model of the team's goals and operating principles. To achieve this, the team leader should facilitate successful team development by having a conversation on the operating principles and goals of the team, distilling the mission into two or three sentences, and testing team members' understanding. The team should be empowered to make decisions within the guard rails set by the leader. Ultimately, the leader's job is to set the team up for success so that they can eventually manage themselves.

Hiring an Engineering Manager

When hiring an engineering manager, it is important to define the role and consider the traits and questions to ask in the interview process. Three facets of the job to consider are personnel management, execution leadership, and technical leadership. Traits to look for include a willingness to admit failure and questions should include performance management issues, employee unhappiness, and a project from inception to delivery. Technical leadership can be assessed by asking the candidate to explain a system their team worked on and how they helped arrive at technical decisions.

The State of Women in Tech

This article discusses the lack of women in the tech industry and the barriers that keep them out. It suggests that companies need to create more female-friendly environments, provide improved working incentives, and encourage young girls to pursue computer science. Additionally, it highlights the fact that women-led tech startups receive 16 times less funding than those led by men. The article concludes by emphasizing the need to break down the institutional barriers that keep women out of the tech industry.

Relying on Conversations, Not Assumptions

This article discusses the importance of having conversations and clearing up assumptions when it comes to relationships with people. It is important to call the person or set up a meeting to discuss any assumptions that have been made, and to ask questions in order to gain a clear understanding. It is also important to remember that if you don't have the energy to spend time in clearing up assumptions, it is best not to make them in the first place.

Thoughts and Learnt Lessons from the Pareto Principle (aka the 80/20 Rule)

Mr. Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist and sociologist, created the Pareto Principle, also known as the "80/20" rule. This rule states that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Through his observations, Pareto noticed that this held true for peapods in his garden and land in Italy. Shrivastav, an MBA, PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM, and CSP, has learned lessons from the Pareto Principle, such as avoiding the perfection trap and striving for 80/20, listening to client feedback, and using the 80/20 rule to manage time.

Providing Your Customers a Seamless Digital Experience

Customer retention is essential for businesses to remain competitive and profitable. To ensure customers have a positive experience, businesses should ask themselves questions about how easy it is for customers to purchase products/services, find the business, and complete documents. Businesses should also seek feedback from their most valuable customers and strive to constantly improve the customer experience.

Online Representation of You and Your Brand

Having an online presence is just as important as meeting someone face to face. This article provides tips for setting up a website and a LinkedIn account in order to make a good first impression. It suggests having a professional website, an easy call to action, and regularly updating content. For LinkedIn, it suggests having a professional headshot, making it easy to find you, and regularly sharing content. All it takes is dedicating a small amount of time to work on your online presence.

The Power of Personal and Team Retrospectives

Retrospectives are an important ritual in Agile project management, allowing individuals and teams to reflect on their work and processes and identify areas for improvement. Bobbie Shrivastav suggests having weekly retrospectives, with a time-box of 30 minutes, to brainstorm what went well, what went bad, and one-time occurrences. From this, goals are set to start, stop, and continue certain activities, and action steps are taken to make the most impact in the upcoming week. Regular retrospectives are an important way to inspect and adapt to achieve greater outcomes.

Lessons Learned from a Broken Relationship with a Manager

After a disagreement with his manager over the hiring process, the narrator's relationship with his manager deteriorated and eventually ended when his manager left the company. Through this experience, the narrator learned the importance of assuming good intentions, aligning values and strengths with the company culture, and having a structured outlook when interviewing or deciding to work with a team or organization. He also realized that staying in a position at a company because of a good manager is just as important as leaving a manager, not a company.

Investigating a Variety of Career Paths

This article is about the journey of an engineer who had an undergraduate degree in biology and a Master's in computer science. He began an internship in software testing and eventually became a project manager. He then realized he wanted something more technical and decided to look into product management. He had informational meetings with different product managers to gain insight into the role and eventually left the company he was working for because he wasn't able to get the career growth he was seeking. He then received a cold call about a test manager job which led him to his current role as an engineering manager. He learned that being patient isn't necessarily the correct way to solve things, to ask for what you want, and that you may have to move to a different team or company to get the career growth you want.

Five Questions a Manager Should Ask Themselves Every Week

As a manager, it can be difficult to stay on top of everything in a complex workplace. To help, five minutes of reflection at the end of each week can be beneficial. Ask yourself questions such as if workload needs to be rebalanced, if anyone is showing signs of burnout, if anyone needs more of a challenge, if there is anything to celebrate, and if there is anything to stop doing. Taking a few minutes each week to reflect on these questions can help get the week off to a running start.

Knowing When to Let Go

Isaac, an engineering leader who was recently promoted to a manager of managers, was struggling to keep up with his new role and had less visibility into what was happening. He was feeling anxious and was tempted to micromanage his teams. To avoid this, he was advised to focus on outputs and results, allow people to fail safely, choreograph communication, have regular skip level 1:1s, find an outlet for his need to get his hands dirty, and to remember to breathe. The underlying fear of micromanagement is loss of control, uncertainty, failure, and irrelevance. The alternative to micromanagement is not absenteeism, but rather knowing when to get involved and what questions to ask.

How to craft objectives that build alignment, accountability, and autonomy.

Writing a good objective is difficult and requires capturing a lot of knowledge and context into a short phrase. Poorly written objectives can lead to projects going off track, unnecessary work, and important things being dropped. Tips on writing objectives include: making sure the objective communicates what is being done and why, not how; right-sizing the objective; making sure the objective is objective and not subjective; and making sure the objective is appropriate for the situation. Tools like Range and coaching programs like Epic Teams can help with goal setting.

The Value of Code Reviews in an Engineering Team

Code reviews are an important part of engineering teams, as they help to ensure higher quality software, build a collaborative team, and reduce the bus factor. Different approaches to code reviews can be taken, such as pull requests, over the shoulder, and group/committee reviews. It is important to ensure that code reviews are not seen as a criticism, but rather as a way to optimise code and provide feedback. Code reviews should also be included in the Definition of Done and should be seen as a way to share knowledge and expertise.

How to Prevent Burnout by Delegating Tasks

In order to manage time more effectively, a working parent found ways to keep their teams productive while also managing their own time. This included delegating tasks to senior engineers and allowing them to lead and facilitate meetings, as well as asking someone who is driving the engineering for the project to do the preparation for coordination meetings. This allowed the working parent to focus on collaborating more deeply to solve targeted problems.

Transitioning an IC to Manager

This article discusses the transition of individual contributors to engineering managers. The author suggests giving the IC more responsibility around project and program management before managing people, and splitting people management roles and ownership of engineering work streams between the manager and the author. The author also suggests that managers should focus on enabling engineers to be productive and grow, such as planning a roadmap and engaging engineers on longer-term architectural initiatives. Lastly, the author suggests that the transition from IC to manager should be seen as an inverse hierarchy, in which the manager is there to support everyone from below.

Packaging Information to Effectively Manage Up

In order to effectively manage upwards, it is important to prepare for meetings as if they are deadlines, talk to multiple people to form an opinion, package information in an easy-to-consume format, and distill the most important parts. By doing this, it allows for a deeper level of interaction with leaders and makes the most of the limited conversation time.

Managing growing pains of a scaling product team

When transitioning from one person managing a product team to managing a team of product managers, engineers, and designers, it is important to set up a structure for the team. This includes delegating tasks, providing training, and implementing feedback and goal setting. Training can include bringing in a company to lead product management curriculum, using online PM course resources, or hiring an employee who has been through a more formal product management program. Additionally, implementing 360 reviews and one on ones can help ensure feedback and goal setting is successful.

Managing a Remote Report Who is Resistant to Feedback

This article discusses how to manage a report who is not junior but wants the respect of a non-junior person. The author suggests setting up a coffee chat type of one-on-one, giving intense in-person coaching, and having a serious in-person conversation with the report. The author also shares lessons learned, such as having a 15-20 minute coffee call check-in, pairing the report with a mentor, and understanding the value of the manager's skill set.

Measuring the Success of a Software Engineering Team

Software developers often don't like being asked questions around metrics and measurements, as it doesn't tell the complete story. To monitor productivity, Scrum burndown and burnup charts can be used to measure velocity and progress. Additionally, tools such as Git and Jira can be used to measure check-ins and code rework. Lastly, teams should be encouraged to come up with their own metrics, such as performance characteristics and bug leakage issues.

Getting Team Alignment on Goals and Operating Principles

A scaling team needs to have a shared mental model of the team's goals and operating principles. To achieve this, the team leader should facilitate successful team development by having a conversation on the operating principles and goals of the team, distilling the mission into two or three sentences, and testing team members' understanding. The team should be empowered to make decisions within the guard rails set by the leader. Ultimately, the leader's job is to set the team up for success so that they can eventually manage themselves.

Hiring an Engineering Manager

When hiring an engineering manager, it is important to define the role and consider the traits and questions to ask in the interview process. Three facets of the job to consider are personnel management, execution leadership, and technical leadership. Traits to look for include a willingness to admit failure and questions should include performance management issues, employee unhappiness, and a project from inception to delivery. Technical leadership can be assessed by asking the candidate to explain a system their team worked on and how they helped arrive at technical decisions.

The State of Women in Tech

This article discusses the lack of women in the tech industry and the barriers that keep them out. It suggests that companies need to create more female-friendly environments, provide improved working incentives, and encourage young girls to pursue computer science. Additionally, it highlights the fact that women-led tech startups receive 16 times less funding than those led by men. The article concludes by emphasizing the need to break down the institutional barriers that keep women out of the tech industry.

Relying on Conversations, Not Assumptions

This article discusses the importance of having conversations and clearing up assumptions when it comes to relationships with people. It is important to call the person or set up a meeting to discuss any assumptions that have been made, and to ask questions in order to gain a clear understanding. It is also important to remember that if you don't have the energy to spend time in clearing up assumptions, it is best not to make them in the first place.

Thoughts and Learnt Lessons from the Pareto Principle (aka the 80/20 Rule)

Mr. Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist and sociologist, created the Pareto Principle, also known as the "80/20" rule. This rule states that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Through his observations, Pareto noticed that this held true for peapods in his garden and land in Italy. Shrivastav, an MBA, PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM, and CSP, has learned lessons from the Pareto Principle, such as avoiding the perfection trap and striving for 80/20, listening to client feedback, and using the 80/20 rule to manage time.

Providing Your Customers a Seamless Digital Experience

Customer retention is essential for businesses to remain competitive and profitable. To ensure customers have a positive experience, businesses should ask themselves questions about how easy it is for customers to purchase products/services, find the business, and complete documents. Businesses should also seek feedback from their most valuable customers and strive to constantly improve the customer experience.

Online Representation of You and Your Brand

Having an online presence is just as important as meeting someone face to face. This article provides tips for setting up a website and a LinkedIn account in order to make a good first impression. It suggests having a professional website, an easy call to action, and regularly updating content. For LinkedIn, it suggests having a professional headshot, making it easy to find you, and regularly sharing content. All it takes is dedicating a small amount of time to work on your online presence.

The Power of Personal and Team Retrospectives

Retrospectives are an important ritual in Agile project management, allowing individuals and teams to reflect on their work and processes and identify areas for improvement. Bobbie Shrivastav suggests having weekly retrospectives, with a time-box of 30 minutes, to brainstorm what went well, what went bad, and one-time occurrences. From this, goals are set to start, stop, and continue certain activities, and action steps are taken to make the most impact in the upcoming week. Regular retrospectives are an important way to inspect and adapt to achieve greater outcomes.

Lessons Learned from a Broken Relationship with a Manager

After a disagreement with his manager over the hiring process, the narrator's relationship with his manager deteriorated and eventually ended when his manager left the company. Through this experience, the narrator learned the importance of assuming good intentions, aligning values and strengths with the company culture, and having a structured outlook when interviewing or deciding to work with a team or organization. He also realized that staying in a position at a company because of a good manager is just as important as leaving a manager, not a company.

Investigating a Variety of Career Paths

This article is about the journey of an engineer who had an undergraduate degree in biology and a Master's in computer science. He began an internship in software testing and eventually became a project manager. He then realized he wanted something more technical and decided to look into product management. He had informational meetings with different product managers to gain insight into the role and eventually left the company he was working for because he wasn't able to get the career growth he was seeking. He then received a cold call about a test manager job which led him to his current role as an engineering manager. He learned that being patient isn't necessarily the correct way to solve things, to ask for what you want, and that you may have to move to a different team or company to get the career growth you want.

Five Questions a Manager Should Ask Themselves Every Week

As a manager, it can be difficult to stay on top of everything in a complex workplace. To help, five minutes of reflection at the end of each week can be beneficial. Ask yourself questions such as if workload needs to be rebalanced, if anyone is showing signs of burnout, if anyone needs more of a challenge, if there is anything to celebrate, and if there is anything to stop doing. Taking a few minutes each week to reflect on these questions can help get the week off to a running start.

Knowing When to Let Go

Isaac, an engineering leader who was recently promoted to a manager of managers, was struggling to keep up with his new role and had less visibility into what was happening. He was feeling anxious and was tempted to micromanage his teams. To avoid this, he was advised to focus on outputs and results, allow people to fail safely, choreograph communication, have regular skip level 1:1s, find an outlet for his need to get his hands dirty, and to remember to breathe. The underlying fear of micromanagement is loss of control, uncertainty, failure, and irrelevance. The alternative to micromanagement is not absenteeism, but rather knowing when to get involved and what questions to ask.

How to craft objectives that build alignment, accountability, and autonomy.

Writing a good objective is difficult and requires capturing a lot of knowledge and context into a short phrase. Poorly written objectives can lead to projects going off track, unnecessary work, and important things being dropped. Tips on writing objectives include: making sure the objective communicates what is being done and why, not how; right-sizing the objective; making sure the objective is objective and not subjective; and making sure the objective is appropriate for the situation. Tools like Range and coaching programs like Epic Teams can help with goal setting.

The Value of Code Reviews in an Engineering Team

Code reviews are an important part of engineering teams, as they help to ensure higher quality software, build a collaborative team, and reduce the bus factor. Different approaches to code reviews can be taken, such as pull requests, over the shoulder, and group/committee reviews. It is important to ensure that code reviews are not seen as a criticism, but rather as a way to optimise code and provide feedback. Code reviews should also be included in the Definition of Done and should be seen as a way to share knowledge and expertise.

How to Prevent Burnout by Delegating Tasks

In order to manage time more effectively, a working parent found ways to keep their teams productive while also managing their own time. This included delegating tasks to senior engineers and allowing them to lead and facilitate meetings, as well as asking someone who is driving the engineering for the project to do the preparation for coordination meetings. This allowed the working parent to focus on collaborating more deeply to solve targeted problems.

Transitioning an IC to Manager

This article discusses the transition of individual contributors to engineering managers. The author suggests giving the IC more responsibility around project and program management before managing people, and splitting people management roles and ownership of engineering work streams between the manager and the author. The author also suggests that managers should focus on enabling engineers to be productive and grow, such as planning a roadmap and engaging engineers on longer-term architectural initiatives. Lastly, the author suggests that the transition from IC to manager should be seen as an inverse hierarchy, in which the manager is there to support everyone from below.

Packaging Information to Effectively Manage Up

In order to effectively manage upwards, it is important to prepare for meetings as if they are deadlines, talk to multiple people to form an opinion, package information in an easy-to-consume format, and distill the most important parts. By doing this, it allows for a deeper level of interaction with leaders and makes the most of the limited conversation time.

Managing growing pains of a scaling product team

When transitioning from one person managing a product team to managing a team of product managers, engineers, and designers, it is important to set up a structure for the team. This includes delegating tasks, providing training, and implementing feedback and goal setting. Training can include bringing in a company to lead product management curriculum, using online PM course resources, or hiring an employee who has been through a more formal product management program. Additionally, implementing 360 reviews and one on ones can help ensure feedback and goal setting is successful.

Managing a Remote Report Who is Resistant to Feedback

This article discusses how to manage a report who is not junior but wants the respect of a non-junior person. The author suggests setting up a coffee chat type of one-on-one, giving intense in-person coaching, and having a serious in-person conversation with the report. The author also shares lessons learned, such as having a 15-20 minute coffee call check-in, pairing the report with a mentor, and understanding the value of the manager's skill set.

Measuring the Success of a Software Engineering Team

Software developers often don't like being asked questions around metrics and measurements, as it doesn't tell the complete story. To monitor productivity, Scrum burndown and burnup charts can be used to measure velocity and progress. Additionally, tools such as Git and Jira can be used to measure check-ins and code rework. Lastly, teams should be encouraged to come up with their own metrics, such as performance characteristics and bug leakage issues.

Getting Team Alignment on Goals and Operating Principles

A scaling team needs to have a shared mental model of the team's goals and operating principles. To achieve this, the team leader should facilitate successful team development by having a conversation on the operating principles and goals of the team, distilling the mission into two or three sentences, and testing team members' understanding. The team should be empowered to make decisions within the guard rails set by the leader. Ultimately, the leader's job is to set the team up for success so that they can eventually manage themselves.

Hiring an Engineering Manager

When hiring an engineering manager, it is important to define the role and consider the traits and questions to ask in the interview process. Three facets of the job to consider are personnel management, execution leadership, and technical leadership. Traits to look for include a willingness to admit failure and questions should include performance management issues, employee unhappiness, and a project from inception to delivery. Technical leadership can be assessed by asking the candidate to explain a system their team worked on and how they helped arrive at technical decisions.

The State of Women in Tech

This article discusses the lack of women in the tech industry and the barriers that keep them out. It suggests that companies need to create more female-friendly environments, provide improved working incentives, and encourage young girls to pursue computer science. Additionally, it highlights the fact that women-led tech startups receive 16 times less funding than those led by men. The article concludes by emphasizing the need to break down the institutional barriers that keep women out of the tech industry.

Relying on Conversations, Not Assumptions

This article discusses the importance of having conversations and clearing up assumptions when it comes to relationships with people. It is important to call the person or set up a meeting to discuss any assumptions that have been made, and to ask questions in order to gain a clear understanding. It is also important to remember that if you don't have the energy to spend time in clearing up assumptions, it is best not to make them in the first place.

Thoughts and Learnt Lessons from the Pareto Principle (aka the 80/20 Rule)

Mr. Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist and sociologist, created the Pareto Principle, also known as the "80/20" rule. This rule states that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Through his observations, Pareto noticed that this held true for peapods in his garden and land in Italy. Shrivastav, an MBA, PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM, and CSP, has learned lessons from the Pareto Principle, such as avoiding the perfection trap and striving for 80/20, listening to client feedback, and using the 80/20 rule to manage time.

Providing Your Customers a Seamless Digital Experience

Customer retention is essential for businesses to remain competitive and profitable. To ensure customers have a positive experience, businesses should ask themselves questions about how easy it is for customers to purchase products/services, find the business, and complete documents. Businesses should also seek feedback from their most valuable customers and strive to constantly improve the customer experience.

Online Representation of You and Your Brand

Having an online presence is just as important as meeting someone face to face. This article provides tips for setting up a website and a LinkedIn account in order to make a good first impression. It suggests having a professional website, an easy call to action, and regularly updating content. For LinkedIn, it suggests having a professional headshot, making it easy to find you, and regularly sharing content. All it takes is dedicating a small amount of time to work on your online presence.

The Power of Personal and Team Retrospectives

Retrospectives are an important ritual in Agile project management, allowing individuals and teams to reflect on their work and processes and identify areas for improvement. Bobbie Shrivastav suggests having weekly retrospectives, with a time-box of 30 minutes, to brainstorm what went well, what went bad, and one-time occurrences. From this, goals are set to start, stop, and continue certain activities, and action steps are taken to make the most impact in the upcoming week. Regular retrospectives are an important way to inspect and adapt to achieve greater outcomes.

Lessons Learned from a Broken Relationship with a Manager

After a disagreement with his manager over the hiring process, the narrator's relationship with his manager deteriorated and eventually ended when his manager left the company. Through this experience, the narrator learned the importance of assuming good intentions, aligning values and strengths with the company culture, and having a structured outlook when interviewing or deciding to work with a team or organization. He also realized that staying in a position at a company because of a good manager is just as important as leaving a manager, not a company.

Investigating a Variety of Career Paths

This article is about the journey of an engineer who had an undergraduate degree in biology and a Master's in computer science. He began an internship in software testing and eventually became a project manager. He then realized he wanted something more technical and decided to look into product management. He had informational meetings with different product managers to gain insight into the role and eventually left the company he was working for because he wasn't able to get the career growth he was seeking. He then received a cold call about a test manager job which led him to his current role as an engineering manager. He learned that being patient isn't necessarily the correct way to solve things, to ask for what you want, and that you may have to move to a different team or company to get the career growth you want.

Five Questions a Manager Should Ask Themselves Every Week

As a manager, it can be difficult to stay on top of everything in a complex workplace. To help, five minutes of reflection at the end of each week can be beneficial. Ask yourself questions such as if workload needs to be rebalanced, if anyone is showing signs of burnout, if anyone needs more of a challenge, if there is anything to celebrate, and if there is anything to stop doing. Taking a few minutes each week to reflect on these questions can help get the week off to a running start.

Knowing When to Let Go

Isaac, an engineering leader who was recently promoted to a manager of managers, was struggling to keep up with his new role and had less visibility into what was happening. He was feeling anxious and was tempted to micromanage his teams. To avoid this, he was advised to focus on outputs and results, allow people to fail safely, choreograph communication, have regular skip level 1:1s, find an outlet for his need to get his hands dirty, and to remember to breathe. The underlying fear of micromanagement is loss of control, uncertainty, failure, and irrelevance. The alternative to micromanagement is not absenteeism, but rather knowing when to get involved and what questions to ask.

How to craft objectives that build alignment, accountability, and autonomy.

Writing a good objective is difficult and requires capturing a lot of knowledge and context into a short phrase. Poorly written objectives can lead to projects going off track, unnecessary work, and important things being dropped. Tips on writing objectives include: making sure the objective communicates what is being done and why, not how; right-sizing the objective; making sure the objective is objective and not subjective; and making sure the objective is appropriate for the situation. Tools like Range and coaching programs like Epic Teams can help with goal setting.

The Value of Code Reviews in an Engineering Team

Code reviews are an important part of engineering teams, as they help to ensure higher quality software, build a collaborative team, and reduce the bus factor. Different approaches to code reviews can be taken, such as pull requests, over the shoulder, and group/committee reviews. It is important to ensure that code reviews are not seen as a criticism, but rather as a way to optimise code and provide feedback. Code reviews should also be included in the Definition of Done and should be seen as a way to share knowledge and expertise.

How to Prevent Burnout by Delegating Tasks

In order to manage time more effectively, a working parent found ways to keep their teams productive while also managing their own time. This included delegating tasks to senior engineers and allowing them to lead and facilitate meetings, as well as asking someone who is driving the engineering for the project to do the preparation for coordination meetings. This allowed the working parent to focus on collaborating more deeply to solve targeted problems.

Transitioning an IC to Manager

This article discusses the transition of individual contributors to engineering managers. The author suggests giving the IC more responsibility around project and program management before managing people, and splitting people management roles and ownership of engineering work streams between the manager and the author. The author also suggests that managers should focus on enabling engineers to be productive and grow, such as planning a roadmap and engaging engineers on longer-term architectural initiatives. Lastly, the author suggests that the transition from IC to manager should be seen as an inverse hierarchy, in which the manager is there to support everyone from below.

Packaging Information to Effectively Manage Up

In order to effectively manage upwards, it is important to prepare for meetings as if they are deadlines, talk to multiple people to form an opinion, package information in an easy-to-consume format, and distill the most important parts. By doing this, it allows for a deeper level of interaction with leaders and makes the most of the limited conversation time.

Managing growing pains of a scaling product team

When transitioning from one person managing a product team to managing a team of product managers, engineers, and designers, it is important to set up a structure for the team. This includes delegating tasks, providing training, and implementing feedback and goal setting. Training can include bringing in a company to lead product management curriculum, using online PM course resources, or hiring an employee who has been through a more formal product management program. Additionally, implementing 360 reviews and one on ones can help ensure feedback and goal setting is successful.

Managing a Remote Report Who is Resistant to Feedback

This article discusses how to manage a report who is not junior but wants the respect of a non-junior person. The author suggests setting up a coffee chat type of one-on-one, giving intense in-person coaching, and having a serious in-person conversation with the report. The author also shares lessons learned, such as having a 15-20 minute coffee call check-in, pairing the report with a mentor, and understanding the value of the manager's skill set.

Measuring the Success of a Software Engineering Team

Software developers often don't like being asked questions around metrics and measurements, as it doesn't tell the complete story. To monitor productivity, Scrum burndown and burnup charts can be used to measure velocity and progress. Additionally, tools such as Git and Jira can be used to measure check-ins and code rework. Lastly, teams should be encouraged to come up with their own metrics, such as performance characteristics and bug leakage issues.

Getting Team Alignment on Goals and Operating Principles

A scaling team needs to have a shared mental model of the team's goals and operating principles. To achieve this, the team leader should facilitate successful team development by having a conversation on the operating principles and goals of the team, distilling the mission into two or three sentences, and testing team members' understanding. The team should be empowered to make decisions within the guard rails set by the leader. Ultimately, the leader's job is to set the team up for success so that they can eventually manage themselves.

Hiring an Engineering Manager

When hiring an engineering manager, it is important to define the role and consider the traits and questions to ask in the interview process. Three facets of the job to consider are personnel management, execution leadership, and technical leadership. Traits to look for include a willingness to admit failure and questions should include performance management issues, employee unhappiness, and a project from inception to delivery. Technical leadership can be assessed by asking the candidate to explain a system their team worked on and how they helped arrive at technical decisions.

The State of Women in Tech

This article discusses the lack of women in the tech industry and the barriers that keep them out. It suggests that companies need to create more female-friendly environments, provide improved working incentives, and encourage young girls to pursue computer science. Additionally, it highlights the fact that women-led tech startups receive 16 times less funding than those led by men. The article concludes by emphasizing the need to break down the institutional barriers that keep women out of the tech industry.

Relying on Conversations, Not Assumptions

This article discusses the importance of having conversations and clearing up assumptions when it comes to relationships with people. It is important to call the person or set up a meeting to discuss any assumptions that have been made, and to ask questions in order to gain a clear understanding. It is also important to remember that if you don't have the energy to spend time in clearing up assumptions, it is best not to make them in the first place.

Thoughts and Learnt Lessons from the Pareto Principle (aka the 80/20 Rule)

Mr. Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist and sociologist, created the Pareto Principle, also known as the "80/20" rule. This rule states that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Through his observations, Pareto noticed that this held true for peapods in his garden and land in Italy. Shrivastav, an MBA, PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM, and CSP, has learned lessons from the Pareto Principle, such as avoiding the perfection trap and striving for 80/20, listening to client feedback, and using the 80/20 rule to manage time.

Providing Your Customers a Seamless Digital Experience

Customer retention is essential for businesses to remain competitive and profitable. To ensure customers have a positive experience, businesses should ask themselves questions about how easy it is for customers to purchase products/services, find the business, and complete documents. Businesses should also seek feedback from their most valuable customers and strive to constantly improve the customer experience.

Online Representation of You and Your Brand

Having an online presence is just as important as meeting someone face to face. This article provides tips for setting up a website and a LinkedIn account in order to make a good first impression. It suggests having a professional website, an easy call to action, and regularly updating content. For LinkedIn, it suggests having a professional headshot, making it easy to find you, and regularly sharing content. All it takes is dedicating a small amount of time to work on your online presence.

The Power of Personal and Team Retrospectives

Retrospectives are an important ritual in Agile project management, allowing individuals and teams to reflect on their work and processes and identify areas for improvement. Bobbie Shrivastav suggests having weekly retrospectives, with a time-box of 30 minutes, to brainstorm what went well, what went bad, and one-time occurrences. From this, goals are set to start, stop, and continue certain activities, and action steps are taken to make the most impact in the upcoming week. Regular retrospectives are an important way to inspect and adapt to achieve greater outcomes.

Lessons Learned from a Broken Relationship with a Manager

After a disagreement with his manager over the hiring process, the narrator's relationship with his manager deteriorated and eventually ended when his manager left the company. Through this experience, the narrator learned the importance of assuming good intentions, aligning values and strengths with the company culture, and having a structured outlook when interviewing or deciding to work with a team or organization. He also realized that staying in a position at a company because of a good manager is just as important as leaving a manager, not a company.

Investigating a Variety of Career Paths

This article is about the journey of an engineer who had an undergraduate degree in biology and a Master's in computer science. He began an internship in software testing and eventually became a project manager. He then realized he wanted something more technical and decided to look into product management. He had informational meetings with different product managers to gain insight into the role and eventually left the company he was working for because he wasn't able to get the career growth he was seeking. He then received a cold call about a test manager job which led him to his current role as an engineering manager. He learned that being patient isn't necessarily the correct way to solve things, to ask for what you want, and that you may have to move to a different team or company to get the career growth you want.

Five Questions a Manager Should Ask Themselves Every Week

As a manager, it can be difficult to stay on top of everything in a complex workplace. To help, five minutes of reflection at the end of each week can be beneficial. Ask yourself questions such as if workload needs to be rebalanced, if anyone is showing signs of burnout, if anyone needs more of a challenge, if there is anything to celebrate, and if there is anything to stop doing. Taking a few minutes each week to reflect on these questions can help get the week off to a running start.

Knowing When to Let Go

Isaac, an engineering leader who was recently promoted to a manager of managers, was struggling to keep up with his new role and had less visibility into what was happening. He was feeling anxious and was tempted to micromanage his teams. To avoid this, he was advised to focus on outputs and results, allow people to fail safely, choreograph communication, have regular skip level 1:1s, find an outlet for his need to get his hands dirty, and to remember to breathe. The underlying fear of micromanagement is loss of control, uncertainty, failure, and irrelevance. The alternative to micromanagement is not absenteeism, but rather knowing when to get involved and what questions to ask.

How to craft objectives that build alignment, accountability, and autonomy.

Writing a good objective is difficult and requires capturing a lot of knowledge and context into a short phrase. Poorly written objectives can lead to projects going off track, unnecessary work, and important things being dropped. Tips on writing objectives include: making sure the objective communicates what is being done and why, not how; right-sizing the objective; making sure the objective is objective and not subjective; and making sure the objective is appropriate for the situation. Tools like Range and coaching programs like Epic Teams can help with goal setting.

The Value of Code Reviews in an Engineering Team

Code reviews are an important part of engineering teams, as they help to ensure higher quality software, build a collaborative team, and reduce the bus factor. Different approaches to code reviews can be taken, such as pull requests, over the shoulder, and group/committee reviews. It is important to ensure that code reviews are not seen as a criticism, but rather as a way to optimise code and provide feedback. Code reviews should also be included in the Definition of Done and should be seen as a way to share knowledge and expertise.