🏂 CTO KPIs, Command & Control, Tech & Management Debt, Influence, Retro Games: TMW #314 by CTO Craft

Hello! Welcome to the week - it's a chilly one here 🥶

Some of you may remember a survey we ran in collaboration with Code Climate last year, focused on how technology leaders have adapted to the disruptions we've all faced over the last few years. The results of this have now all been digested and collated, and you can read the outcome here:

Tech Leadership in Disrupted Times: Our Strategies for Success in 2023 | CTO Craft

We surveyed leaders in relation to tech leadership in disrupted times, but how did leaders view 2022, and what do they predict for 2023?

CTO CraftAndy Skipper

We'd like to hear from you if you have ideas for surveys and reports that CTO Craft could be putting together - what would you like to know about the role, the ecosystem, the challenges technology leaders face, or anything else?

On with the show. Until next week - stay warm!

Andy @ CTO Craft

Reads of the Week

KPIs for Early Stage CTOs

Metrics that you ought to be interested in as an early stage technology leader, for teams, individuals, and the organization as a whole.

The Next LevelBritton Broderick

Big Ideas in Tech for 2023: An a16z Omnibus | Andreessen Horowitz

From entertainment franchise games to the precision delivery of medicines, the a16z team highlights over 40 builder-worthy pursuits for the coming year.

Andreessen Horowitza16z

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Culture & People

“Beyond Command and Control” (Book Review)

“It is the system that governs the behaviour” John Seddon et al, “Beyond Command and Control” “Beyond Command and Control” starts off with clarifying the two mai…

As I learn ...Name (required)

Management Debt

Teams naturally start to incur management debt as they grow and become more complex, just as codebases incur tech debt. The combined weight of past decisions creates a web of precedents and exceptions that can cause problems of varying size over time. Here are a few of the main types of management d…

Stay SaaSy

How to Address Tech Debt vs. Product Debt vs. Business Debt

Once upon a time, in a cave filled with software engineers, a voice complaining in unison shouts, “Product Managers do not care about tech…

Big O(n) DevelopmentJulius Uy

Managers, you can support your high performers by asking this question twice

A practical guide to making sure those who may not ask for your time and attention are getting the clarity and encouragement they need.

Fast Company Middle East | The future of tech, business and innovation.More

Technical debt: Can investing in it unlock 2x team impact?

When technology leaders should advocate for or against investing in technology initiatives

The Technology Leader's ToolkitFergus Doyle

Leadership & Self Management

Don’t Underestimate Your Influence at Work

The tendency towards underconfidence can also lead us to needlessly (and endlessly) search for ways to gain influence when what we really need is to get better at recognizing the influence we already have — but may not be wielding effectively. In this piece, the author offers three suggestions, not…

Harvard Business ReviewVanessa Bohns

Goodhart’s Law Isn’t as Useful as You Might Think

Goodhart’s Law is useless. It tells you about a phenomenon, but it doesn’t tell you how to solve it. We look at how organisations actually prevent Goodhart’s Law, and illustrate this with Amazon’s Weekly Business Review as an example.

CommoncogCedric Chin

Debugging Architects

Whether architects must code or not has been much debated. Why not try debugging?

The Architect ElevatorGregor Hohpe

Leading at Roblox with Claus Moberg - Roblox Blog

Leading at Roblox is a new series that explores the career journeys of Roblox’s leaders and discusses their roles, philosophies, and management styles. In our first profile, we get to know Claus Moberg, VP of Engineering, who heads up our User Group.

Roblox Blog

Get better at guiding people by cultivating these 5 behaviors

Facilitators are present in many industries and professions, from business leaders to yoga instructors. While leading a group of executives…

MediumJackie Colburn

Agile & Engineering

Velocity defeats itself. Get acceleration instead

what a spherical cow can teach us about task prioritization in software teams

Jessitron

Feature Factories vs. Value Generators - Itamar Gilad

The feature factory model rests on sound historical foundations, but it is causing massive waste and cost when applied to software.

Itamar GiladItamar Gilad

13 Sprint Retrospective Games for Remote Teams | Parabol

Spice up your retrospective meeting with games designed to help you overcome blockers, learn about working preferences and make continuous improvement.

ParabolGareth

Enabling better quality - Agile Testing with Lisa Crispin

Enabling better quality with quality practices assessment

Agile Testing with Lisa CrispinLisa Crispin

My preferred approaches to estimation on Agile projects

Initial assessment: Blink Estimation

MediumJason Yip

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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https://techmanagerweekly.com

Have an amazing week!

Andy