When NOT releasing is the right thing to do.
Tom’s team is preparing a highly anticipated release, but QA hasn’t gone well. More bugs were found than were anticipated. Too many fixes have been of the hack-n-slash variety, meaning there could be lingering problems after the deploy. There’s also a concern that tech debt is being accrued which will have to be paid later […]
Would you trust earwax flavored jelly beans?
My kids loved two things when they were twelve: Harry Potter and Jelly Bellys. So when Jelly Belly released the Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans box, we had to try them! I mean, how awesome would Harry Potter Jelly Beans be!!! (Turns out, less awesome than you think…) Driving home from the store, a chubby […]
Its all engineering, but not all of engineering
Today in the Tech Lead Mentoring group, Sarah* mentioned that next Tuesday her team was having a “no code day.” Suddenly it got quiet, as everyone stopped to listen. I asked, “Oooh… what’s that Sarah?” Sarah explained that a “no code day” was a day set aside to work on non-coding engineering activities. Some folks […]
The brilliance of
Guillermo wrote me back yesterday to let me know how he solved the “demotivated, disconnected programmer” problem. I’ll let him tell you… I started seeing this behavior in my developers, so what I did was to introduce a “Customer Support value hour.” Programmers have to sit with the CS people for an hour and see […]
[Video] Q&A: I am an un-happy developer. What do I do?
"They just want to be left alone and code."
“Jamie just wants to be left and code.” Does this sound familiar? If so, maybe you have a developer who: 1. Doesn’t openly participate in retrospectives or team meetings 2. Complains meetings are a waste of time because they reduce engineering time 3. Doesn’t offer features suggestions or ideas to the group 4. Hates dealing with […]