SWLW #421: Driving cultural change through software choices, The cost of a feature, and more.

I hope that you and your family are doing well, and you are able to find a new rhythm in this hard situation.

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

This Week's Favorite

​​Driving Cultural Change Through Software Choices
4 minutes read.

"All of this is to say that developers have more power than they imagine to change the engineering culture around them. As you build software that others will use or that your peers will work on, are you making it easy for them to do the right thing?" -- Camille Fournier with a powerful reminder when we build tools and products. Invest in the user experience and you can win a much bigger gain than what the tool or product comes to solve.

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

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Culture

This Is on My Partner’s Desk
1 minute read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face, even in this difficult time. I want something like that in my office, or on a t-shirt. Badge of honor.

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


Why “Standups” Are Useless and How to Run Great Product Team Meetings
10 minutes read.

Andy Johns will make you stop and ponder about how you leverage team meetings around progress. I'm not sure the format suggested by Andry is much better, but there are clear tradeoffs, and it's worth thinking about. Worth starting by sharing a google doc with the goals (status? context? solving problems?) of the meetings and come up with a few methods to achieve that. Try them out.

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


The Cost of a Feature
2 minutes read.

I'd print John Cutler's observations and put them on my wall at the office. Features are a liability. Be careful about what you say yes to, and double measure the value your customers find in it once you bulid it.

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


It's All About the Maintenance, Dummy
3 minutes read.

Shai Yallin wrote it so well: "The best reason for not developing YAGNI features is simply that you have no clue as to what you'll really need if and when the feature will actually be required."

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
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Peopleware

How to Find Focus
4 minutes read.

"All this has me convinced that focus isn’t just stubbornly saying “I’m going to say no to more things,” it’s studying all the options you have until you can say with conviction, “this is the right one for me.” Paradoxically, this means attaining focus requires us to become less focused for a little bit, exploring our options enough to develop some conviction around what’s important or what feels right." -- focus requires the comfort in knowing you are doing important work that you believe in.

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


3 Frameworks for Making Complex Decisions
12 minutes read.

I've added WRAP and MAP that Rushabh Doshi recommends using to my Anki Notes. It's helpful to have frameworks when you're brain sends signals of "warning! huge decision ahead, watch out from analysis-paralysis". The first thing I got comfortable doing when dealing with a dilemma is to ask "can we revert our decision?" as it takes a lot of the stress away.

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


The Bad Habit That Even Productive People Keep Falling Into
3 minutes read.

Hunter Walk with helpful 3 tips you should read in the morning (and again as the week begins) to help you prioritize your energy. The first two are extremely important as we already tend to let inertia (e.g. our inbox, incoming DMs) dictate our day to day.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@Kpaxs: Asking questions is one of the most effective ways of influencing people.

@justinkan: The point of having principles isn’t to make things easy for you. It’s to make it easy to decide to make things hard for you.



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Keep reading, keep learning.
-- Oren Ellenbogen.