🧲 Beyond DORA, Executive Presence, Group Decisions, Turn up the Fun!, Calendar Reviews, Handovers, CUPID : TMW #253 by CTO Craft
Hello there!
This week's CTO Craft Bytes session will look at how to ensure your engineering org actually benefits from having implemented the DORA metrics described in the seminal Accelerate book. If you've just put these in place, you'll want to dial in to make sure the effort is rewarded.
We've got a strong focus on executive presence and communicating outside engineering this week - I've always considered a key part of the a CTO's responsibilities to be translating engineering related topics to the rest of the leadership team, and to others in the organisation. Read on for some good approaches to acting as tech's translator.
Until next time!
Andy @ CTO Craft
CTO Craft Bytes
CTO Craft Bytes - So You’re Measuring Dora Metrics. What Now? Fri 18 Feb 2022 at 12:30 GMT
Keeping track of DORA metrics (deployment frequency, change lead time, change failure rate, and mean time to recover) is one thing. But if you really want to turn the data into insights and the insights into action, you'll also need buy-in from the engineering organization, tangible goals, and a culture that encourages continuous development.
Reads of the Week
Talking Like a Suit - Communicating the Importance of Engineering Work in Business Terms
Engineering-driven work (such as tech debt, addressing technical risks, or enhancing the system to open up new opportunities) often gets deprioritized because leadership and product management don't see the value in this work.
We sound like idiots when we talk about technical debt
Does this Sound Familiar? Techie: We are drowning in technical debt! Business person: Oh really! What is it costing us? Techie: Oh, it’s not that. What I’m saying is the code doesn’t use best practices, there are alot of things hard coded and lots of spaghetti code.
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Culture & People
Coaching teams that do not want to be coached
The differences between these situations are significant. Yet it is difficult for many coaches to understand what situation they are in. One reason for that is the similarities in how these situations display themselves:
How to Steer Clear of Group Decision-Making Churn
We’ve all been there: An important decision needs to be made. It’s got high stakes for multiple parties, each with different perspectives and goals. And…things start to go off the rails almost immediately.
Time to dial up the fun?
With an undue focus on work and productivity over the last couple of years I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this article by Elle Hunt in The Guardian. It explores the philosophy expounded in The Power of Fun, the new book by Catherine Price, author of How to Break Up With Your Phone.
The 5 Handover Secrets Every Manager Should Know
What should you do before your colleague leaves the company? What should you do before anyone leaves for the holiday?
How To Reach A 100% Offer Acceptance Rate (According To An Expert)
The UK is currently going through an unprecedented boost in the number of job vacancies, so how do you win over candidates when talent has never been more in demand?
Leadership & Self-management
Calendar Reviews
For me, this is similar to the core product prioritization problem: an infinite set of demands that each individual requestor considers to be extremely important/urgent. But for calendars, the scarce resource is time rather than development capacity. Just as we’ll never (ever!) get to the end of the backlog, we’ll never be able to accept all incoming invitations. It’s easy to feel guilty and overwhelmed.
Executive presence coaching - use these tips to become a better leader
Some people naturally shine in meetings. Others have to work at it. I count myself in the latter category. I’d like to share some tips that have helped me to improve my executive presence.
How to Avoid the 4 Temptations of Being a Nice Leader
Being known as a nice person has been considered by some to be detrimental to effective leadership. But the evidence would indicate that just the opposite is true.
Being Excluded From Meetings At Work? Here's How to Proceed
Although work and life are largely separate things, they can both lead to similar feelings. That’s especially true if you’re being excluded from meetings at work.
When to delegate, when to say no
A common theme that’s come up in recent coaching calls is a feeling of being overwhelmed with the volume of work.
Agile, Engineering & Product
CUPID—for joyful coding
What started as lighthearted iconoclasm, poking at the bear of SOLID, has developed into something more concrete and tangible.
30, 60, 90 Day Plan For New Security Leaders
A simple outline of tasks and goals a new security leader will need to tackle in their first 90 days.
An Engineering Team Journey from Component Tracks to Outcome Squads
For any team - How the overall work is distributed into smaller tasks & how the team is constructed to tackle these tasks play an important role in determining the output, outcome & efficiency of the unit, which in turn impacts the organizational goals & visions directly.
Systems Thinking tools & techniques
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the Systems Thinking discipline. My main learning point about Systems Thinking was the interconnectedness of the parts that make up a system.
That’s it!
If you’d like to be considered for the free CTO Craft Community, fill in your details here, and we’ll be in touch!
https://ctocraft.com/community
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Have an amazing week!
Andy