Archive

Collection of weekly blog posts written between 2018 and 2020

Feedback Fallacy

Oct 7, 2019 · 2 min read
Blunt feedback is bad. It smothers learning. Plus, organizations are way too obsessed with this kind of unhealthy, unproductive feedback.
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Shipping Muscle

Oct 1, 2019 · 2 min read
We use a muscle when sharing our work with the world. This muscle is called the shipping muscle—and like any other muscle in our body we can train it to make it stronger.
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Stateful Designs

Sep 25, 2019 · 1 min read
Cheatsheet to help you add stateful thinking to your designs.
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The Drama Triangle

Sep 18, 2019 · 1 min read
Karpman drama triangle is a model of human interaction from the 1960s. It's based on two core assumptions: First, we have a tendency to choose certain recurrent roles in moments of conflict. Second, these roles are nonhelpful and often destructive.
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Don't Try to Create and Analyze at the Same Time

Sep 11, 2019 · 1 min read
Kent Beck has a metaphor of two hats: you should either add function or refactor.
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Fair Day's Work

Sep 4, 2019 · 1 min read
"Did I put in a fair day's work" might be the best question you can ask yourself today before leaving the office
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How Can We Do Better Next Time

Aug 28, 2019 · 1 min read
It doesn't take long for people to jump from "should we get better at X?" to "how can we get better at X?"
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Authority

Aug 21, 2019 · 1 min read
Yvette Pasqua, CTO of Meetup, is coming to your office to learn about leading engineering teams. Why?
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The Tortoise and the Hare

Aug 14, 2019 · 4 min read
Because hares deliver features faster than tortoises, they make better programmers. Or do they?
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Engineering as Marketing (or Free Tools as Marketing)

Aug 7, 2019 · 2 min read
Engineering as marketing, or free tools as marketing, is about utilizing your engineering resources to build free and useful stuff for your customers. It's really cool. But also kinda hard.
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We Scan, Word-spot and Sample Instead of Read

Jul 30, 2019 · 1 min read
Most of the time we read only the first sentence and word-spot through the rest of the text. Assume that you get five words to communicate your message.
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What I Gained From Writing Every Week for a Year

Jul 23, 2019 · 2 min read
Here are the three things I've gained from writing every week for a year. As a bonus, I've included a list of my most popular posts so far.
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You Keep Being over Budget Without Data

Jul 16, 2019 · 2 min read
On Monday, you started working on a feature that you thought was going to be out by the end of the day, and on Friday, you were barely able to submit your pull request before heading home for the weekend
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Patterns of Software Consulting

Jul 8, 2019 · 1 min read
These are the general patterns of great work I've picked up from my fellow software consultants
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No Silver Bullet

Jul 2, 2019 · 2 min read
No one will ever publish a book that provides a process or manual for managing software projects without quality problems and usability issues
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Reduce Expected Opportunity Loss with Build, Measure, and Learn

Jun 26, 2019 · 2 min read
Build-measure-learn feedback loop is rational economic behavior
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Paradox of the IT Cost-Benefit Analysis

Jun 19, 2019 · 2 min read
Probability of project cancellation and system utilization are the most important unknowns organizations should try to research—not development costs
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Getting to a No

Jun 12, 2019 · 1 min read
What will happen if you try to get a no out of people instead of a yes?
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