There are a lot of challenges in the way QA and engineering work together. Many eng leaders think you shouldn

Understand the tradeoffs of team size and span of control for managers

An executive advisor can help you grow faster and navigate unfamiliar terrain. This post summarizes how to evaluate advisors and what rates to pay for their services

Jade shares an experience report on the use of a Product Council to solve executive alignment on product direction, and cross-team execution challenges.

The simple loop executives use

I talk about the concept of reflecting power, which is leveraging other people

I sit down with Beth Long to discuss her extensive experience with reliability engineering from working at companies like New Relic, Jeli, Gruntwork, and Adaptive Capacity Labs. Beth shares her insights on the role of executives in incident management, the balance between product development and reliability, and how different organizations approach incident coordination. We also explore reliability as a product and the importance of organizational culture in effective incident response. I learned a great deal, and thought about some aspects of reliability in completely new ways. I hope you do too!

Describes complete staff work, a management technique that improves local autonomy, prevents going back and forth, and carves out greater responsibilities for yourself.

Understanding how companies go about figuring out compensation. And an exercise to do for your team.

Jade Rubick shares his advice for new directors. All the surprises you may encounter, and tips for navigating the new skills of managing managers.

For managers, viewing your role as a shit shield is one of the most common early mistakes. Learn the dangers of being a shit shield, and what to do instead.

This is a list of patterns you can apply to coordinate the work of teams. The patterns are divided into centralized, role-based, and team coordination models.

Leadership is a race between complexity and leadership. Describes the principles behind creating humane, effective organizations in growing software startups.

OpenAI denies lawyers discouraged disclosing a scheming swarm on a German language wiki.

Notes from my Thoughtworks colleagues on AI-assisted software delivery

How managers can make changes that people will embrace.

Programs are more complicated than projects which are more complicated than milestones. Instead of projects, focus on milestonesMost engineering organizations focus on delivering projects. You can get better results by focusing on milestones instead.

I share a complete guide to how to hire engineering managers, including a sample interview plan

Understand the tradeoffs of team size and span of control for managers

Engineering handbooks can be done in an open-source manner, which allows process to adapt quickly to the needs of an organization.

There are a lot of challenges in the way QA and engineering work together. Many eng leaders think you shouldn

Communication is analogous to sharing state in computer systems. Describes how the same principles apply between both.

Software's hidden cost is learning its grammar. AI lets a founder speak English & use CAD to make a dress once previously unmanufacturable.

Feel like your team is the bottleneck? Learn how to address the challenges of managing a bottleneck team.

An introduction to FaST, describing how it works and what the tradeoffs of adopting it are

Some of the best engineers I know have not touched a coding agent.

Describes a technique you can use to improve information flow with the people around you.

We'll always have Spirit in the data center of our hearts.

Learn the nuts and bolts of project management for software projects, with the things you should do every week: update your project plan, review your risk registry, and send a project update

Commitments trade slower velocity for higher predictability. Is that what you really want?