We’ve all been there: an experienced team staffed with brilliant engineers starting a new product strong and constantly shipping. The product launches successfully— the customers love it! Everything is great! Features fly out the door! Many sprints later, the team’s velocity dramatically slowed, and you’re dealing with exciting new problems! …

This guide is a bit “make the bread, buy the butter.” Your team has a need, and now you’re considering buying a product to fill that need. You can articulate the pain and the business case. You saw a cool system at a show that could bring value, but you’re…

When discussing team organization, I am often asked: “Why don’t you have the tech lead manage the team?” My response is to hiss like a vampire exposed to holy water. When the follow-up question is: “Given you want managers on your teams, can the manager still perform code reviews?” I…

The most important skill a leader must learn is how to scale themselves. In a growing company, a team always starts at a reasonable size. We can assume the team performs well and ships impactful work in a necessary part of the company! But as I always say, “the reward…

I figured I would open with a topic I know and understand well: technical Leadership, building a healthy engineering culture, and the arrows of trust. Everything is a system. Teams are as much a system as any intricate algorithm or distributed deployment. …