Most candidate debrief meetings are super-boring. Everyone just reads the feedback they already put into the application tracking system. A couple of years ago I was introduced to a much better approach, and I’d like to share that today. A better format for candidate review meetings Instead of a meeting where people summarize their feedback, you as…

Steel Threads are a powerful but obscure software design approach. Learning about Steel Threads will make you a better engineer. You can use them to avoid common problems like integration pain. And you can use them to cut through the complexity of system design. So obscure it was deleted on Wikipedia in 2013 How unknown are Steel Threads? The…

I’m often asked about my advice for new directors. Here I lay out the ten things I wish I had known when I started as a manager of managers. Being a director is a very different job First of all, the move to being a director was a bigger change for me than I expected. I thought managing…

Use an engineering handbook, open it to all, and see your process flourish — “Process: a series of actions or events performed to make something or achieve a particular result.”— Cambridge English Dictionary Today, we delve into the great debate about Process. Is Process the solution to the chaos in organizations? …

Today, I would like to share a management practice we developed at New Relic. It was one of the best things we did as an engineering organization. The practice is called “Mini-Ms”. I believe it’s as important a practice for managers as code reviews are for engineers. This post is…

At some point, you begin to lead. This is very different than managing. The difference can be summed up with the phrase, “leaders make their own problems”. I’ll explain that in a bit, but first, let me tell you a story. When I first realized I was missing something When I first became a director, I had a…

Today, I’ll share a few thoughts on what makes a good project plan. And I’ll provide a sample project plan. Why have project plans Many agile teams focus on sprints or chunks of work. But they don’t really plan — instead they do what they can each sprint, plot out their velocity, and determine…

As a consultant, I have a view across many companies. So I’ve seen a lot of product strategies. Most have been problematic. Occasionally, I see an example of a product strategy that stands out. Today, I review common problems with product strategies. …

Process gates are a common management trap you may not even realize you’re making. Let’s see if you can spot the pattern: Engineering is shipping too many bugs, so you bring in a QA team that reviews everything before it goes out to production. There has been a history of…