leadership
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🚧 Gatekeepers are ineffective
In the context of complex systems, gatekeepers are ineffective. In product development, a gatekeeper is often a middle manager who relays information from one person to another. As an example, we have been struggling for the past year to ge…
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🏞️ Communicating Status Without Demanding Attention
One precept of “managing up” is that over-communicating tends to work better than under-communicating. This is where releasing “often” comes in. Releases offer a natural way to communicate status because they don’t feel like something requi…
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🤝 How to manage up
The concept of “managing up” can be a valuable practice for developers and middle managers. It seems counter-intuitive that we need to manage the people over us. But, simply put, managing up is intentionally improving the relationship with …
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⚡ The essence of shipping faster
In recent conversations about why development schedules slip and what to do about it, several themes continue to come up: Openness - This is key to surfacing issues early. Safety - People must feel safe being transparent and speaking up. C…
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🤔 Two types of unknowns
There are two types of unknowns: Things we don’t know. Things we think are true, but are not. 1 Both can inflict havoc on our plans, but the second is the most damaging. Why? The first is more associated with doing nothing. Bugs not known…
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🍄 Mushroom Management
I recall a quote from the book The Soul of a New Machine that describes “Mushroom Management” and goes something like this: “Keep them in the dark, feed them sh**, and watch them grow.” (This book chronicles the experiences of a computer …