SWLW #454: Team meeting audit, Simple systems have less downtime, and more.

Heya,

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

This Week's Favorite

​​Team Meeting Audit: 3 Tests for an Effective Meeting OS
12 minutes read.

An incredible guide to review and improve your meetings. You'd need to sign up for Coda to read it (a bit annoying, I admit, but worth it and free!). This can be a great way for the team to meet and discuss it openly.

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

Product [sponsored]

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Culture

PM, Designer, APM, PM, UX Director, Eng Lead
1 minute read.

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

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


Simple Systems Have Less Downtime
4 minutes read.

Greg Kogan with a powerful reminder to look carefully into how much you add to the system's complexity. Systems tend to become more complex as you rarely rethink the architecture, data structures, and needs over time. It's a great practice to ask yourself "how would I rewrite the all thing?" and then go into "what is powerful in this new abstraction that we can evaluate given the current architecture?".

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


What Would You Ask in an Interview to See if a Company Is a High Drama Environment ? (Thread)
4 minutes read.

Pádraig O'Brien opens up an interesting discussion with great suggestions to ask on your next interview. I think that asking multiple people, "How do they handle conflict within teams?" is incredibly useful. I also liked Erin's suggestions: "What’s the average tenure? What’s the process to take product decisions? Can you give me an example of a recent disagreement and how it was solved? Is blunt feedback good?"

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


Discovery When Working Remotely
5 minutes read.

This post by Marty Cagan is more relevant than ever given the current situation where many teams work remotely, even if they used to work co-located before. The dynamics shift, and it happens quickly unless you pay attention and look for ways to compensate.

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

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Peopleware

6 Principles for Building a World Class TPM Team
11 minutes read.

Sophia Vicent shared observations from DoorDash's Technical Program Manager organization that I related to as we consider how to build ours. This one is critical: "The team should be incentivized to operate with openness and honesty and to create clarity. They need to work with engineering to set aggressive goals and milestones, without padding, and report accurately on where the program is against those goals, particularly if there are key work streams that are yellow or red against plans. [...] TPMs need to bridge these gaps between teams, and neutrality paves the path for that to happen in a blameless way."

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


How Do You Handle a Senior Employee That Is Underperforming and Not Meeting Expectations? (Thread)
4 minutes read.

Not so simple question to answer, right? Steve Schlafman started a discussion worth reading to get some ideas. Share it internally with people who might benefit from reading it if you know they face a similar situation.

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


Reading List by Blake Robbins
5 minutes read.

I found myself picking up a few posts from Blake and adding them to my Instapaper. He wrote valuable summaries of each one with great insights. Yes, I know that my job here is to recommend a few specific ones. Still, the quality is high, and you might find yourself browsing between a few of Blake's findings if you have some spare reading time.

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

And finally, inspiring tweets...

@ShaanVP: Success comes from daily impatience and decades of patience

@LearnStash: Don’t write to be read. Write to be understood. The difference maker is personal connection.



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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.