What do you do if there's stuff you don't know? Can you ask questions? What questions should you ask? How should you ask those questions? In an earlier post, I addressed the fear of having colleagues with better technical skills than you. I suggested, "Spend time pairing with [those who know more than you]." And I added, "Handled without apology, this exercise will deepen your team members’ respect for you, rather than the other way around." I promised to explain what I meant in another post....
24 days ago • 3 min read
Oh no! You’ve been given a new team to lead, and they’re working on this horrible legacy code base that everyone hates! I can't make sense of this code... Nobody enjoys working on this code. Team members are going through the motions with no interest in what they do, repeating the same terrible patterns and either counting the days to retirement or actively looking for more exciting work elsewhere. Here are three things you can do to make things better, for yourself and for your team: 1....
3 months ago • 1 min read
How will you fit through those holes? "I'm worried my current position only works at my current company. I moved up fast because soft skills come naturally for me. I prevent any office politics from affecting my devs, and they have the freedom of implementation at an execution level. But ask me to implement code for multi-threading? I am starting from 0." You are not alone When I'm running workshops with technical leadership, I see concerns like these raised repeatedly. People who started out...
3 months ago • 2 min read
I've been freelance for three years now, and I admit it: I haven't had a very cohesive plan. I've been reactive, saing Yes to all the things and going where the wind blows me.Well, last year I decided enough was enough. I started saying No instead of Yes. I even bought myself some hologrammatic gold stickers and made myself a little chart: Every time I said No, I got a gold star. Just say NO Since then, I've been doing a whole series of exercises designed to help me decide what I should be...
3 months ago • 1 min read
All humans have problems from time to time One of the hardest parts about a leadership role is the fact your team are PEOPLE with PROBLEMS and that’s hard to ignore. You might be aware that one of your team members is privately suffering. You might hope you can just ignore it. Or maybe you desperately want to help, or feel like you should help, but either way you don’t know how. First things first: You’re (probably) not a therapist. It’s absolutely not your job to fix people’s personal...
4 months ago • 2 min read
"I'm nowhere near as good technically as the senior devs in my team." I hear this repeatedly from many of the technical leaders I work with. But let's dig in a little... "Our team performs well because I lean on my senior devs for execution, and they lean on me to make sure they get whatever they need." OK, so you're definitely performing a useful purpose? "I understand the business logic, dependencies of upcoming projects, can do T Shirt sizing alone and I run technical analysis meetings...
5 months ago • 2 min read
Workshops for technical leaders, in London and Cornwall How technical do technical leaders have to be? Are you worried that you’re too hands-on, or not hands-on enough? Are you exhausting yourself trying to keep up with every technical detail in your domain? Sometimes individual contributors are promoted to leadership positions and worry that they won’t be as hands-on as they used to be. Sometimes they worry that they no longer have time to stay up to date with modern technology and / or the...
5 months ago • 1 min read