Does the “point velocity” of a scrum team matter?

I find myself subtly drawn to binary questions, though I wish I weren’t.

Binary questions have yes/no answers.

They ask people to line up on one side or another. They polarize, draw lines, and…

Dynamic Reteaming with Heidi Helfand

Programming Leadership

Episode 18

The only constant is change. Heidi Helfand knows a thing or two about changes in organizations. From re-teaming to re-organizations to just shuffling a member or…

The Importance of Proper Feedback

Programming Leadership

Episode 16

Do people really crave feedback? That’s the assumption a lot of managers make, so in this episode we’ll talk about what feedback really means and how you can give it in a…

The surprising effect of traffic and bathrooms

“Sorry I’m late, traffic was nuts,” Sean said as he ducked into your team meeting. Irritated, you look up and nod, continuing with the department update. “Sheesh, he so unmotivated, he doesn’t even care.” you think. Finishing the meeting, you stop…

”What is everyone working on?”

When you’ve got a team of smart people, it’s easy for everyone to go in different directions. That’s the power of brilliant engineers, but it’s also a challenge for tech leaders.

Systems always seek their real goal

The system will seek its goal above all else, even if it’s not actually what you want.

Even if it’s not what anyone wants.

If you want to improve education, and set a goal of 20% more dollars spent per student, then…

Stepping in without Stepping in it

When things go wrong, you might have to step in.

I did this most often when failure was going to be a BigProblem.

And things often improved. The project got back on track, the client didn’t fire us, or we hit the big…

My mistaken motivation mindset

The people on your team are motivated.

But they are not motivated by the same thing.

One programmer might be motivated by “cutting-edge technology.”

Putting the Emotion Into EQ with Etienne de Bruin

Programming Leadership

Episode 17

Emotional intelligence is essential to good leadership, but many CTO’s stress the importance of IQ instead. To move from contributor to manager…