leadership Asking For and Receiving Feedback as a Leader Requesting and receiving feedback is crucial for an IT leader. It is too easy to think we are doing an excellent/terrible job when the truth is quite different.
management Using the GROW Model for One on One Meetings As a leader, you need to help the individuals in your team develop. The GROW model offers a structured way to help team members to set and achieve goals that benefit them and the company.
teambuilding Perfect Team Size for Successful Agile Software Development Having worked in tiny, small, medium, large and extra-large teams, I was reflecting on what size works best. What I realised is that there isn't a magic number and it depends on several factors.
incident-management Lowering the Cost of Failure in IT The technology landscape changes continuously, and often the only way to know what is going to work is to try it. Lowering the cost of failure enables companies to experiment and learn about their customers.
management Balancing the Business as Usual (BAU) and Project Work of a Development Team Development teams can get bogged down doing too much BAU work or get lost by focusing heavily on project work. Finding the balance is important but tricky.
leadership One-way and Two-way Door Decisions Decisions are something that we have to do many times a day and having a heuristic for decision making can make us much more efficient and effective.
product-development 7 Digital Product Development Tactics Digital products are different from physical products. We expect frequent updates, feature releases and a higher level of engagement from those building/supporting the digital product. So let's explore some useful tactics for digital product development.
mission-and-vision 8 Benefits of Great Vision and Mission Statements It takes a lot of effort to create, communicate and integrate Vision and Mission statements into an organisation, but when done right, there are subtle and powerful benefits.
OKRs How to Measure OKRs If we set arbitrary OKRs with vague Objectives and Key Results, we could end up with a set of Key Results that can't be completed and Objectives that have an unknown impact on the business. Let's explore how to measure, score, grade and review OKRs.
integration IT Integration with the Business in Mind When engineers talk about horizontal and vertical integration, they are talking about implementation design choices, but there is value at looking at the problem of integration through the business lens.
management People are not lazy A friend once said to me "People are not lazy; they are just unmotivated." I find this statement helpful because it shifts one from a blaming attitude "You can't get good help these days!" to a more proactive attitude "What can I do to help X be more engaged/motivated?".
management Australia's Got (IT) Talent Large companies in Australia are going overseas to find skilled IT talent because they say there isn't enough here. It takes skill to find, acquire and manage talent.
communication Conversing with Humans When you are talking to someone, it is important to remember there is a gap between what they are thinking, what they are saying, what they mean, what you hear and what you understand.
management "Don't come to me with problems" I once approached a manager to discuss an issue that was weighing heavily on my mind and was told: "Don't come to me with problems, come to me with solutions!". The meeting quickly
