Practice Timeboxing Welcome back to the start of the working calendar year š„³. Based on the many Out o
|
|
January 10 · Issue #74 · View online
Level Up delivers a curated newsletter for leaders in tech. A project by http://patkua.com. Ideal for busy people such as Tech Leads, Engineering Managers, VPs of Engineering, CTOs and more.
|
|
Practice Timeboxing Welcome back to the start of the working calendar year š„³. Based on the many Out of Office emails Iāve received, many of you will have started work this past week or will be starting this coming week. Firstly I wish you this year to be much less chaotic, more successful and full of good health! The rollover into a new year is interesting. A new year is an arbitrary new number, but many of us, like me, feel it is a great time to stop, reflect and plan for the upcoming year. In some way, we all need some way to mark the passage of time. This is why timeboxing is so helpful. Although Iām a big fan of flow-based methods like Kanban for teams, it doesnāt mean you need to completely give up other timeboxing approaches like weekly or fortnightly retrospectives, or quarterly goal/OKR setting. Note: In Kanban, you should still have these repeated timeboxes but not necessarily coupled to one other.
Timeboxing helps us because as I point out in my time management course, activities often expand to fill whatever time we have. We might have done enough (nothing is ever done!) and we can move on, but without an end date, we might continue iterating, refining with diminishing value. Ask yourself what time boxes you have in place for you and your team and if you might benefit from more frequent or smaller time boxes. If you find Level Up useful, please forward to someone you think would benefit. Stay safe and healthy š
|
|
Consider what time boxes you have in place
|
|
SeniorĀ Engineering ManagerĀ @Ā SignalĀ AI [London] SignalĀ AI is looking to expand its capabilities by adding a key engineering manager to focus on hiring, building and sustaining a high performing, high output, world-class team. Learn moreĀ here.
|
|
|
Nine Leadership Lessons 2020 Gave Us
Reading time: 8mins
Ally MacDonald (@allymacdonald) shares leadership lessons who contribute to the MIT Sloan Management Review. Many of these are great lessons for us to learn or to remind ourselves of.
|
Lessons from Managing for the Summer Part 2
|
Wellness: How to look after your mental health during lockdown
Reading time: 8mins Just like the satefy advice in airplanes, āPut your breathing mask on before helping others,ā leaders should take care of their own mental health before they can effectively help others. Given many countries are still in lockdown or going into lockdown, I found this evidence-based article very relevant for leaders. There are also great reminders about what to focus on to help the mental health of your team.
|
Being Chief Technology Officer: Lessons learned in my first year
Reading time: 22mins For those of you who wonder what a CTO does, Shekhar Gulati (@shekhargulati) shares 12 lessons learned from his first year as a CTO at a consulting company. Many of these are invaluable lessons for leaders at all levels though.
|
Dates for Q1/2021 for an online course now online (click the banner above)
|
|
Engineering Principles for Unruly Artists
Reading time: 7mins I encourage all technical leaders to identify and publish the engineering principles most relevant to their team. From experience, it will typically change based on the product/industry, the company culture and the companyās engineering approach. Josh Cole (@SaikoJosh) shares his current 6 engineering principles he chooses to focus on when leading technical teams.
|
An AI reporter's favorite books of 2020
Reading time: 25mins AI continues to grow and expand in its usage, so itās important as technical leaders we have a better understanding of not only how to build AI, but also its potential impact on customers and societies. I have definitely added a number of these books to my (ever-growing) book list. Thank you Khari Johnson (@kharijohnson) for the recommendations.
|
Consistent Core
|
|
ššš Reach thousands of engineering leaders around the world. Maybe you want to share a leadership role youāre looking to fill? Interested in becoming a sponsor? Get in touch for details. ššš
|
|
|
Make High Impact Decisions with Confidence using Alignment Records
Reading time: 6mins Director of Engineering and author of Dynamic Teaming, Heidi Helfand (@heidihelfand) and her colleague Vietor Davis share an important practice for making good technical decisions with high involvement from people. Iāll definitely be adding this to my set of bookmarks! Iām also a big fan of the books recommended at the end š
|
Principles for Managing a Remote Team
Reading time: 12mins Remote working is not going away, but I also think post-COVID it wonāt be the only working style. Great leaders are adaptable and Jay Signorello (@jaysignorello) offers 11 principles to focus on when leading remote teams. These are also great principles to follow even if youāre leading an in-person team too š„³
|
Revisiting How People Prioritise Software Architecture Work
Reading time: 3mins I took part in a survey run by book author and CTO of Endava, Eoin Woods (@eoinwoodz) for research in how organisations prioritise software architecture. Eoin provides an update to their model about what to focus on when testing the effectiveness of any architecture activity š
|
How tech acquisitions work
Reading time: 12mins Companies at any stage can be acquired and since itās not an everyday event, many employees are surprised. Benjamin Yolken (@bhyolken) outlines some great notes from his experience about why they occur, the types of acquisitions, the process and impact on employees.
|
|
A fun twitter š§µ that looks back at Flash, one of the greatest examples of an anti-web concept. Flash was popular, but Iām also glad 2020 saw it end. Click the tweet below to expand the thread.
|
|
Today is the Adobe Flash end of life date.
I come to bury Flash, not to praise it.
As an animation platform, Flash launched the web into new directions. But once it became a UX platform, without the structure of web or OS apps, it left millions behind. (thread)
|
|
|
Complexity has certainly increased! š
|
|
10 years ago, we had an unmanageable monolith with a database and a server-side rendered web frontend.
Now, we have an unmanageable system of NoSQL databases, complex JS frontends, and a death star of micro services.
|
|
|
|
If you enjoyed this newsletter, please send me feedback and share with others!
|
Did you enjoy this issue?
|
|
|
|
If you don't want these updates anymore, please unsubscribe here.
If you were forwarded this newsletter and you like it, you can subscribe here.
|
|
Patrick Kua, Postfach 58 04 40, 10314, Berlin, Germany
|