SWLW #611: How to Build a Strategy, Cleanathon, and more.

Like always, sharing my best findings for the week. 

 

This Week's Favorite

How to Build a Strategy
26 minutes read.

A comprehensive look into setting a company's strategy: "Your goal is to morph the entire organisation towards a new vision and goals. Everything below the vision will change, twist, modify and move to support the strategy. People should know how to question day-to-day work in light of the strategy. Use visuals - a picture tells a thousand words. Remember that everyone is different so ensuring you cater to those differences in the way you communicate is essential. Try using different mediums and different ways of communicating. Learn what work and what does not. And keep going. Tie all work to the strategy and make it clear how everyone is contributing to something bigger than themselves. Bigger than you as a leader or manager."

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Culture

When Engineering First Learns About the Deadline at the All Hands
1 minute read.

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

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Reevaluating Team Topologies: A Critical Perspective on Organizational Strategies
8 minutes read.

Organizational Design is one of the most complex challenges to iterate on and improve. Humans are far more complex and unexpected, with far more nuances than the software we create and operate. The structure will never fit a perfect model, and people will hate it, feeling that the "right" model will appear if we try just a bit more. Determine what you're trying to optimize for, make it explicit and transparent, and find a good enough structure to take the organization forward.

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"We Need Consistent Sprint Lengths Across the Company. And a Consistent Definition of a Point and an Epic!"
3 minutes read.

What a wonderful (and painful) reminder when we try to leverage process to gain confidence and clarity: "Standards when used effectively create beneficial consistency. If teams are just working around this to humor you, does that have the desired effect? If someone was asking you to jump through a hoop that didn't really reflect reality 'just because', how would you feel?"

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How We Deleted 4195 Code Files in 9 Hours. Like a Hackathon, but With a Twist. Template Included!
4 minutes read.

Cleanathon (and Refactathon!) is a great concept for having fun, leaving the system in better shape, and learning a lot. Anton Zaides covers a format and a template you can use to try it out in your company.

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Peopleware

What Are 1-2 Time Management Techniques You've Implemented That Genuinely Help You Get More/Better Work Done Day-to-Day? (Thread)
3 minutes read.

It's always fun to pick up new small hacks to improve productivity. For example, this works extremely well for me when pairing with calendar block time (maker/manager schedule): "Align your energy with the type of task you have to do. Ex: If I need high energy for a specific task—and my energy is highest in the morning—that is where it gets scheduled, etc."

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Advice to the Young
4 minutes read.

"Producing something small each week is key to keep your muscles from atrophy. Think of it as investing in your skills piggy bank every week. This way you also accumulate work that you can later draw on to compose something bigger." -- Building a muscle takes repetition. Looking at yourself as a maker, even if your job is a manager, depends on small projects you can deliver. This takeaway captures it well: "The stories we tell ourselves (knowingly or unknowingly) are very important, because they determine how we manage our emotions, which in turn determine our success. You should cherish your small successes to build motivation. You might get demoralized from failures, but you can reframe them to learn from them, and use them as leverage to drive to your next small success. You can even change the narrative on failures as a setback in your hero's journey."

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Administrivia: Reconsidering the Engineering and Management Tracks
5 minutes read.

Writing an explicit agreement on where management should focus and where technical leadership should focus is one of the highest-leverage activities you can do. Administration work is often ignored until it must happen. Colin Breck provides a good framework for where each position should focus and how to outsource some of the administrative work so that it won't create an additional burden for the team.

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@thejustinwelsh: Working hard is important. But without direction, it loses most of its value.

@jjen_abel: early-stage startups: invalidation is more (learning) progress than validation



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.