SWLW #543: Rescuing a project in progress, Progress is a lake not a line, and more.

Heya,

As always, below you can read my best findings for the week.
 

This Week's Favorite

​​Stay in the Game
6 minutes read.

This story really moved me. I have my fair share of people around me who dealt with anxiety and depression. It's not getting any better in today's ever-changing environment. Staying in the game is not trivial, but I'm sharing this story as it serves a good lesson: We cannot solve everything or even sometimes help the people we love most, yet we act like Kenny. As a parent of 3 young kids, it inspired me to think about how I can instill Kenny's heart and mindset in them.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.

Product [sponsored]

 Promote your product on SWLW and reach over 31,000 leaders 

Culture

A Beautiful Choreography
1 minute read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face. That is teamwork at its finest.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.


Progress Is a Lake, Not a Line
3 minutes read.

This is a great way to think of technological changes: "A better analogy for progress is a young lake, growing from the continual melting of a glacier. As water is added to the lake, progress happens along all edges of the lake, all at the same time, continuously, and gradually. With this viewpoint, new technology doesn’t develop linearly from the old, it grows outwards from the centre." -- Easily applicable to the current hype around Generative AI.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.


Excuse Me, Is There a Problem? Many Startups Fail Despite Identifying a Real Problem and Building a Product That Solves That Problem. This Explains Why, So You Can Avoid Their Fate.
24 minutes read.

One tip I give software engineers who want to increase their impact on the organization is to change their Information Diet by including materials around product and business (marketing and sales). This post by Jason Cohen is a masterpiece in understanding how to create long-lasting momentum in developing your product and making it into a sustainable business.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.


There Are No Shortcuts: Why Showing Up in Person Is Everything
6 minutes read.

"I know this sounds exaggerated but this is the life of an investor. Frankly, it’s the life of ANY executives with whom you want to sell product, do a business development deal with, execute M&A, a journalist you want to write about your company — anybody." -- This is an important post if you need to close a deal of significant value. Post-covid, these things are getting back to how they used to be. You cannot solve it all remotely.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.

Jobs [sponsored]

Engineering Leader (Platform) @ BioRender
We're hiring an Engineering Leader at BioRender to lead, develop, and grow our Platform team in our mission to accelerate the world's ability to communicate science.
 

 Looking to hire for your team? Promote your open positions on SWLW! 

Peopleware

What Complex Systems Can Teach Us About Building Software
11 minutes read.

Fascinating read on dealing with complexity in software (accept it to start with) with three interesting takeaways: (1) "Define a set of quality architecture principles that the organization believes in and that are systematically enforced" (2) "Develop quality information aggregation systems " and (3) "Experiment widely and encourage diversity in how we build teams and how we build software." -- The first two are worth a healthy discussion to better define and measure them as an engineering team.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.


What Idea Changed How You View the World? Here's Mine: High Agency. The 12 Best Examples (Thread)
4 minutes read.

Showing our teammates how to act with High Agency is one of the best things we can teach them when they start their careers.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.


Rescuing a Project in Progress
3 minutes read.

Simple but not easy: "The best process in this case is one that's easy to grasp and do: Stop, status, selection, focus, finish, next. This isn't about calling in reinforcements or adding more resources. This is about stopping, slowing down, eliminating the spread of attention, honing in, and driving to completion." -- This is why I think that Kanban methodology introduced a lot more value than Scrum did, yet got less attention and hype due to the ceremonies around it. Story Points and Velocity are terribly misleading and of lower value than measuring and limiting Work In Progress projects.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.

And finally, inspiring tweets...

@SahilBloom: I find mental “time travel” to be a very useful trick: Go back 10 years and realize how amazed your younger self would be at where you are today. Go forward 50 years and realize how much your older self will long for the challenges you’re currently facing. Works wonders.

@hdteevee: The world rewards the people who are the best at communicating ideas, not the people with the best ideas.



p.s. if you're interested in joining SWLW's Slack channel, simply reply to this email and let me know. If you're leading a team, consider writing your Manager README (it's free) or getting my e-book and interviews Leading Snowflakes: The New Engineering Manager's Handbook. You can also support me by becoming a SWLW Patron. Thank you ❤️




Keep reading, keep learning.
-- Oren Ellenbogen.