SWLW #487: Refactor → Organisation, Managing Developer Experience off the happy path, and more!

Heya,

My heart is with everyone in a difficult situation these days. I pray we will have better days coming.

As always, below you can read my best findings for the week. If you want to support my work or join SWLW community in Slack - scroll down to the bottom of the email to see how.
 

This Week's Favorite

​​Refactor → Organisation
8 minutes read.

"Autonomy is not a silver bullet — without alignment between teams, autonomy can breed inefficiency and low-value variation. Alignment can be created by organising humans and teams with a clear purpose. It can also be created with an opinionated platform — one which makes it easier to do the right thing, and harder to do the wrong thing. Within these constraints, there is plenty of scope of high team autonomy." -- Graeme Lindsay wrote a great post with many insights into their experience with team structures to optimize for different goals.

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Culture

ML vs. Bunny
1 minute read.

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

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Developer Exception Engineering: Managing Developer Experience Off the Happy Path
5 minutes read.

"[M]y intuition is that in order to design exceptional developer experiences, we should pay more attention to developer exceptions. As DX people, we’ve focused a lot on "try", perhaps we should take a good look at "catch". The first thing to fix is organizational incentives. DX work must not just feel welcome, it must be demanded and good results rewarded." -- This is a mindset worth considering for all teams producing internal products.

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The Principles and Habits of Healthy Software
9 minutes read.

Share Nahuel Garbezza's post with your technical leaders. They should own pieces such as "Simplicity" and "Sustainability," considering how to measure it and create visibility (metrics, roadmap, accomplishments, etc.) around it.

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The Data-Informed Product Cycle
6 minutes read.

John Cutler made me think about the way I participate in product building (or doing it myself with side-projects): "Many organizations suffer from a "messy middle" problem. They go from insanely high-level business goals and metrics (yay exec dashboards!), straight to features on a roadmap. Models help us fill that gap."

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Peopleware

What You Give Up When Moving Into Engineering Management
7 minutes read.

Karl Hughes covers the tradeoffs you make when picking the management route. We should encourage more people to look at these two tracks, of Individual Contributors and Managers, to try them out and feel okay with moving between the tracks if they wish to. It shouldn't be perceived as a "demotion" when a manager goes back to IC. I see us moving in that direction, which is wonderful as more people will explore the management track to see if it fits their skills and desired growth areas.

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Here’s How to Give the Right Amount of Context to “Manage Up” (Thread)
3 minutes read.

Wes Kao shares powerful tips worth adopting when “managing up.” Worth reading the thread and internal threads she shares. A few favorites were “Mention your criteria and assumptions” and the follow-up on “Put the recommendation at the top, then context below.”

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10 Step Guide to Clearer Thinking Through Essay Writing
24 minutes read.

Writing is still an undervalued skill in our profession as software builders. Grab a coffee or tea (or anything else that sets the mood) and read it. Take notes. Where do you want to focus on in the next few weeks to improve your writing?

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@avlok: Hire and retain people who increase momentum. Shed the rest.

@aymanalabdul: One thing remains constant: create leverage through your work



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.