MAINTAINING HEALTHY DISTANCE
If I’m being honest, I’ve never really understood the interview question “tell me about your leadership style”. I always thought to myself “my style is whatever is needed, situationally”, and I still believe that, to a certain degree. As I’ve grown as a leader, though, I’ve definitely identified a way of working that I believe to be effective for me, for my team’s delivery, and for their professional development. A way that I call “A Servant Leader, Maintaining Healthy Distance”....
Read moreWHO'S IT ALL FOR?
As a manager, I’m responsible for units of customer and business value. To make that happen, I’ve been entrusted with a team. As a people leader, I have the privilege of leading the people on that team. To ensure that they’re happy, productive, growing, and more… Among my personality traits is a great regard for belonging. I truly believe that if all of the contributors to an effort find common cause, common identity, the thing will be wildly successful....
Read moreDELIVERING AND TEAM COMMITMENTS
I was chatting with somebody today about what to do when the product of a user story does not match the original author’s intent. In these moments, it can be frustrating as a leader and the temptation can be to become more prescriptive. Likewise, the engineer can feel frustrated that they weren’t given enough information. But this doesn’t scale and isn’t especially desirable. A leader’s #1 job is to set up each team member for independence and success....
Read moreENGINEERING MANAGER COMPETENCY MAP
At my workplace, we have competency maps for IC engineers, but not for managers - how bananas is that!? So I decided to make one of my own, using the pattern of my work’s one. It’s only a first pass and I have yet to step away, think it through, and come back with fresh eyes, so it’s kind of rough and needs more editors, but I think it’s a pretty good start....
Read morePERSONAL DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK - AN OPINIONATED APPROACH
Up to this point, we’ve talked in generalities. Let’s talk about a specific application, how some tools can be applied, and how each of the three manager-curated meetings can work. Of course, your development doesn’t have to follow this pattern but it’s certainly one way to move forward! Define Your Destination This is typically the hardest step. Fortunately for us, if you’re an engineer, junior through lead, we have an incredible resource for you: the Engineering Competency Map....
Read morePERSONAL DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK
A career can be a tricky thing to navigate. Too often we find ourselves buffeted by the winds and waves unsure of where we’re going, let alone how to get there. Through the centuries, mariners have been obsessed with success, wealth, notoriety, self-actualization. The goal was to be the first of their culture to get to a place, to open a trade route, to set their name in the history books....
Read moreAPPLICATION HEALTH CHECKLIST
Reviewed quarterly by the component owner. Priorities Must be fixed immediately, have the on-call person do it Must be fixed the next sprint, create a story and put it at the top of the backlog Must be fixed this quarter, component owner accountable for making sure it gets done Nice to have, track non-compliance but don’t schedule the work Application Design Line Item Meets? Priority Notes Properly Focused Microservice [] API endpoints follow ESP patterns External dependencies minimized External dependencies have reasonable timeouts Uses event mesh to emit events Cloud located Uses DPE error code/message standard Instrumented to use feature flagging...
Read moreOPERATIONAL KEY RESULTS
Definition Objectives Subjective/aspirational goal for improving business or customer outcomes Key Results Measurable means of showing progress towards achieving the objective Key points Are aspirational Objectives aren’t ALWAYS in our control but Key Results should be Can’t have too many or teams cannot focus or feel misaligned to the objectives Effective OKRs Goals must be clear Clearly define key results and track them along the way Should serve to stretch the team but still be achievable - meaning the team has to understand what they’re doing and how they might achieve the thing OKRs must capture things you want to change, vs....
Read moreSECURITY CHAMPION BRAINSTORM
Problem Statement Among engineering teams, engagement with the Security and the security quality of our applications can stand to improve through: Passion for security Foundational knowledge of security principles Knowledge of cybersecurity tools & processes Secure by design principles and execution Development of DevSecOps mindsets Knowledge of tech-domain specific security concerns Knowledge of product-domain specific security concerns Strategy Inculcate security culture in Technology engineering through the creation of a self-supporting community of security-passionate engineers within the domain/product teams....
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