evaluating value

I find many senior software and IT folks don’t know how to talk about the value of tools. I frequently get asked by peers, inside my company and outside it, why I can successfully get tool expenses approved when theirs get rejected. Here’s my simple framework.

mister secretary

A brief recounting of the power of the written word across my life and career. Leadership isn’t in a title, it’s in your words, and you should beware anyone suggesting you outsource them in the name of efficiency.

strategic capacity

In a small & fast engineering team, it’s challenging to quantify work being done. There’s so much to do, and it’s difficult to categorize. How can you determine your capacity for addressing your strategic roadmap when stakeholders ask about it?

community signal

Patrick O’Keefe of the long-running show Community Signal asked me to join him in a discussion that ranged from private equity buying community software, community data ownership, and the stakeholder challenges of community software roadmaps.

weighted web

Building on the Web these days often feels like a game where you see how much weight you can put in a boat before it sinks, but you get $1 for every pound you add instead of how many days it stays afloat.

victory laps

Moments worthy of victory laps come from stories which have a beginning, middle, and end. If you’re not actively communicating these stories to a team, eventually startup-era victory laps fade into memory.

deferred conflict

I’m the kind of person that waits to see what the third person decides before I open up on the first attacker. I’m being physically assaulted and I still try to deflect or defer, to see where things go, before I hit the gas.

startup power

If you don’t invest in engineering leadership early you’re burning your salary budget. Once it’s time for process, you need someone who empowers your engineers and helps them operate safely rather than imposing rules that grind your releases to a halt.

two leaders

How do I say this politely? If you’re the kind of leader who “puts the group before the individual” that usually just means you’re a bad leader and everyone knows it.

graphing teams

I’ve studied many performance rubrics, skill trees, and advancement systems for engineering departments. Boiling them down to core principles can bring clarity when you’re up to your eyeballs in criteria, factors, and value statements.

feature shortcuts

When you’re building a software product, time always feels like your enemy. Co-opting an existing feature for a new use can feel extremely clever, like you’ve sidestepped a ton of work. But it doesn’t scale, it adds friction, and it adds danger.

power structures

As a white dude who can smoothly “pass” as straight and grew up with strong, educated parents in a very stable environment with a strong safety net, I had the privilege of approaching social power structures however I liked. And I chose deeply irreverent.