SWLW #585: Operational Health Maturity Model, Deciding whether an investment is worthwhile, and more.

Like always, sharing my best findings for the week.

 

This Week's Favorite

Deciding Whether an Investment Is Worthwhile
11 minutes read.

Your ability to argue and set a clear reasoning framework for decision-making before the dilemma happens (e.g., whether or not to make an investment) is crucial in taking out the emotional aspects. Another element to consider in these investments is understanding the value of the side products (revenues you can keep, credibility gained, learnings, and insights) if the primary goal fails.

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Culture

Designers Making Last Minute Changes in Figma Before Meeting a Client
1 minute read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face.

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Operational Health Maturity Model
5 minutes read.

Iccha Sethi shares a practical way to measure where your organization (team to company level) stands regarding Operational health. The 5 dimensions X 3 levels provide a useful way to track where you are and open up a discussion on where you want to invest (go level up) and why this dimension is critical for the business.

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“MY BOSS SAYS WE DON’T NEED ANY ENGINEERING MANAGERS. IS HE RIGHT?”
8 minutes read.

"I sometimes imagine managers as the nervous system of the company body, carrying around messages from one limb to another to coordinate actions. Centralizing many or most of these functions into one person lets you take advantage of specialization, as a manager builds relationships and context and improves at their role, and this massively reduces context switching for everyone else." -- Charity Majors provides a great answer to a questions we see every 10-15 years or so when companies contemplate if they need managers.

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The "Mom Test" in Software Development: Asking Good Questions When Everyone Is Lying to You
6 minutes read.

"The Mom Test" is an excellent book for people who want to build products (for paying customers or internal customers) and unsure how to measure others' response to the product. It's so easy to stop after a few negative signals or think you must go all-in after a few positive ones. It's great to read how Greg Foster, a software engineer and now a company co-founder, used this book to do product exploration and iterate on ideas. Maybe buy a few copies and give them to engineers on your team, both product teams and infrastructure (or platform) teams?

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Peopleware

How to Change Your Life in One Year. My Annual Planning Process (Video)
10 minutes read.

I've been following Sahil Bloom for the past year, learning so much from him about how to build great habits (he's a machine!), produce fantastic content (legendary Twitter threads), and build healthy relationships (family and business). In this video, he shares his approach to achieving the above, which I highly recommend listening to, taking bits into your life, and practicing.

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Strategic Planning for Resignations
6 minutes read.

"At least once a year, I recommend succession planning exercises where you try to identify another team member who could step in to replace another in the event of resignation or unexpected leave. This would cascade down the chain until you’ve tried your best to account for everyone having a replacement. While you could do this mentally, I strongly recommend writing it out — every year that I do this I usually uncover a gap I didn’t fully think out and it helps my preparedness greatly." -- Michael Lumpp provides excellent tips to map out knowledge and execution risks in your team and set a plan to address them effectively and proactively.

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On Being Lost: From a Confused CEO to Having a Vague Idea of What I Was Doing
23 minutes read.

Very few times, I start reading something long and find myself almost not blinking. Wonderful read for the weekend that I cannot recommend enough.

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@mmay3r: In the short run, success is a voting machine. In the long run it’s a weighing machine.

@maccaw: Agency is the most important thing to cultivate as the world changes, but also very difficult. Even people with high agency in some areas have low agency in other areas. For example, some successful entrepreneurs struggle with their personal fitness.



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.