SWLW #444: Why your huge tech team isn’t delivering, Barrels & Ammunition and more.

Heya,

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

​​Focus on Your First 10 Systems, Not Just Your First 10 Hires
17 minutes read.

Kevin Fishner shares how he looks at HashiCorp's organization as a system. His observations are wonderful, and there are many practices (and templates!) you can take and experiment with: "As the chief of staff, you could be responsible for proposing the solution — in our case, writing an RFC and building the source of truth — but you will never be responsible for the ritual. And the ritual is where change happens."

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

Product [sponsored]

Guide to Effective Feature Management [O'Reilly]
Testing in production sounds scary, right? What if you could safely ship features faster? Adopt feature management practices to accelerate release cycles and deploy every 6 hours, instead of every 6 weeks. Check out the new book from O'Reilly and LaunchDarkly CTO & Cofounder John Kodumal.

 Promote your product on SWLW and reach over 27,450 leaders 

Culture

Development, Staging and Production
1 minute read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face, even in this difficult time. You think you're ready...

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


Barrels and Ammunition
5 minutes read.

Conor Dewey uses the "Barrels and Ammunition" concept to frame the type of impact and value you can bring to your team. Is that something you can relate to? Every team needs both, so it's mostly a question of preferences and passion. Share it with your teammates and discuss those preferences and how you want to make progress.

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


Why Your Huge Tech Team Isn’t Delivering
9 minutes read.

I'd use Roger Nesbitt's insights to do a premortem for what might hold us back as we grow the organization. Keep your focus on whether or not people have the right context, agency, and incentive to deliver. You can achieve that with numerous org structures. Don't let the recent org-structure hype (e.g. squads) dictate your decisions.

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


Reducing Product Risk and Removing the MVP Mindset
8 minutes read.

Casey Winters's post should be a recommended read both for product managers and engineers involved in delivering value to customers. It helps you understand when to use each tool and why it makes sense: "We create frameworks not so that we can shut our brains off and follow an exact guide to building our product, but so that we can focus our brain power on the thousands of other very confusing and ambiguous questions we will undoubtedly face in trying to build this product over time."

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

Jobs [sponsored]

Tech Lead Developer - Full Stack (m/f/x) @ Ecosia  (Berlin)
Ecosia - the search engine that plants trees, is one of the world's largest social business. You will influence the technical direction of your team in close collaboration with the product manager and you will be contributing code as well.

Engineering Manager (f/m/x) @ Ecosia (Berlin)
You help grow the engineering organisation as a hiring manager and by strengthening our collaborative and inclusive culture. This is your opportunity to become part of a supportive, cross-functional team and shape a product used by millions of users!
 

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

Peopleware

I Want to Hire Someone My Team Said No to on the Debrief
5 minutes read.

Gergely Orosz provides helpful advice on a difficult situation. I will add that you can take the different concerns and address it in the onboarding plan (probably needs to be more tailored), who will assist with it, and how to measure their success after 30 days, 90 days, and 180 days. Remind the team that you'll own the decision for better or worse, and need their support and trust if we want to give it a real chance.

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


What’s the Best Thing a Manager Has Ever Done for You? (Thread)
4 minutes read.

Julie Zhuo asked one short question and opened a discussion with so many wonderful responses. This is how leadership should look like.

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


How to Commit to the Right Opportunities
3 minutes read.

Linus's advice can help you make decisions when you want to explore personal hyper-growth in your career. This is helpful to look at if you consider multiple dimensions: personal health, family experience, career growth, etc.

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

And finally, inspiring tweets...

@anafabrega11: Obsession often beats talent I saw this over and over again in my class Kids pushing boundaries, challenging themselves, and going the extra mile in order to fulfill their obsessions Their mindset and drive is extreme compared to others who merely enjoy the same activities

@brandonthezhang: The average person has about ~60,000 thoughts per day. Of those thoughts, 80% are negative, and 95% are the same thoughts as the day before. Aim to break out this loop. Everyday reflect on something you want to do differently, experiment, measure, reflect.



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 and my work by becoming a SWLW Patron. Thank you ❤️




Keep reading, keep learning.
-- Oren Ellenbogen.