Hewing to the truth is a principle that applies to all facets of life, not just development or managing a development team. I’m focusing on the managing aspect because it has come front and center in this area for me in the last few months. As a manager of a development team, I have two [...]
I just recently closed out a round of hiring for my development team. My company’s hiring process is a standard one: initial phone screen, followed by code test and a short to medium length face to face interview with some technical staff, finally followed by a medium interview with management. If we really like you [...]
As a manager who came up through the ranks as a developer, I remember fondly the days where I had a full eight or more hours to immerse into a problem that I had been tasked to solve in code. Experiencing that mental shift where I could “see the code” was always enjoyable – it [...]
Mar 202011
This post isn’t about any kind of unit or integration testing on your code. Rather, it’s about the final measure of a developer’s contribution and worth to a team. This stems from the fact that one of the best developers on my team is leaving this coming Friday. As his manager, I’ve had to objectively [...]
In my position as a development manager, I am privileged to lead a small group of talented and bright people. Part of the fun of my position is the continual struggle to balance everyone’s strengths and weaknesses (including my own) against a workload that changes based on the needs of the business that we are [...]
I’m almost a third of the way through Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, so I figured this would be a good place to recap. First, law #7, the law of respect. 7. The Law of Respect The law of respect states that people naturally follow leaders stronger than themselves. The classic example here is [...]
I was looking for a good way to visualize some potential process improvement projects that my team may undertake, so I figured Visio would do me some good. Given that Microsoft Office 2010 Beta is available as a free download, as well as Microsoft Visio 2010 Beta and Microsoft Project 2010 Beta, I figured I’d [...]
Here I review laws 5 and 6 from Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, and describe how I plan to introduce them to my team of coders. 5. The Law of Addition The law of addition states that leaders add value by serving others. This is difficult to grasp as a coder, because every coder [...]
