On Prioritization: Your Team Structure Articulates Your Goals

Of the three legged stool that defines the controllable outputs of development of a software system

• Features
• Performance
• Stability

it's self evident that everything comes at a cost; you have to employ prioritization to determine what gets the most focus.

More time spent on features equals less time spent on performance and stability, and vice-versa.

Imagine having a development team that has 1,000 hours of capacity. How do you split the time? 333 1/3 hours per output? Are you feature driven: 600 hours spent on features, 350 on performance and 50 on stability?

Everything is a choice.

Note, I'm specifically avoiding what might be called Engineering as a controlled output. Mostly, customers don't directly notice Engineering - they can't tell if my interfaces are clean, if I'm employing a single responsibility principle, or my code is a spaghetti mess of variables named x1, x2, x3, ... x999 looking like it was produced by a poorly written minifier.

Certainly Engineering is indirectly noticed, as poorly Engineered software requires more resources to add Features, is less likely to be Stable, etc. That frequently manifests over the software system's lifetime.

So, we have our software system, and we've made our choices about who is working on what, and for how much time.

Easy peasy, right?

Maybe. Maybe not. There are other inputs to this problem. 

Regardless of the time allocation, how have you segmented your development teams? 

If your teams are aligned around a Feature, they're going to have a Feature mindset. They will communicate with other teammates about Feature implmentation. Regardless of direction around resource allocation, Features will be artifically weighted.

I'm being delibarately provocotive here. Many of us, myself included, are used to teams with Feature segmentation. For developing a software system of any complexity, it just makes sense - separate into feature based bounded contexts, and throw a team on each context.

I challenge myself to not default to that muscle memory way of team creation, and to be considerate to organizational structure when laying out goals. 

Pasta de Olio and Mushrooms

crazy easy

1. make pasta
2. olive oil glug
3. garlic, pepper, italian spices (bonus points for fresh basil)
4. cook a bit
5. chopped mushrooms, big dollop of butter
6. cook a bit more, throw on some salt
7. small dollop of pesto
8. cook a bit more
9. stir in cooked pasta to lap up all the good bits

Effective Online Meetings

As more employers are contemplating work from home due to concerns around spreading coronovirus, I want to share some of my random throughts around how to have an effective online meeting, regardless of underlying technology (Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, Zoom, etc.)

I've been primarily working from home for the past 13 years, so I've gotten a lot of practical experience.

1. Use your camera (assuming bandwidth supports it). It's better to see faces and pick up on the nonverbal cues that we use for communication.
2. Mute and unmute quickly. This will limit background noise and allow the speaker to be more focused. My tech (Microsoft Teams) has a software mute button, but I prefer the hardware mute button on my headset, because I can quickly press it, share my thoughts, and then mute myself without much effort of reaching for the mouse. 
3. Keep it light. Meetings are less effective when people go in scared to contribute. I like to start things off light (a couple of bad dad jokes maybe), introductions to participants that I don't know or don't know each other, and then try to get into a groove of productivity.
4. Give time back. If you've accomplished what you need to accomplish, no need to stay on for the entirety of the scheduled time. People are busy. Give them time back to do their things.
5. Consider recording. Generally, recording is cheap / free. If anything about the meeting feels relevant to others, start off by recording (I like to announce the date & subject at the beginning). This can be a tough one, as recording can make some less likely to contribute. Also, recording should not take the place of good note taking with action items. I'd rather browse a well written set of notes than sit through a 30m recording to discover outcomes.
6. Play. The underyling tech is your tool. Learn how to use your tool. Learn how to screen share, learn how to record, etc. I will sometimes grab coworkers that are friends and (if they are not busy) have them join an impromptu meeting where we play with features of the meeting tech. Play yeilds familiarity, where you can use these tools effectively and be a tech leader in your organization.
7. Phrase questions in the negative. When I assume that everybody understands what I've been talking about, I will say "shout if you don't understand", and then give a healthy pause. I don't get visual cues about understanding like I do with a real life conversation, and having everybody vocally assert the positive ("yes, I get it") gives a lot of unnecessary cross talk.
8. Pause. There is a sub 100 millisecond delay that we have online that we don't get in real life. Account for that by communicating an idea, and, especially if it's controversial or tough, give a healthy pause for others to participate.
9. Enable participation. If there is cross talk with different people trying to talk at the same time, the meeting organizer should be the "switchboard operator" and let each of them go in turn. If you have cross talk with somebody else, do the polite thing, and let them go first. For some of my regularly scheduled meetings, I also like to force participation: everybody talks (gives a status). 
10. Focus. I have 4 monitors in front of me. They can be very distracting, and meetings are not the place to multi-task. I like to minimize all other windows, have one monitor dedicated to whatever is screen shared, and one monitor dedicated to the participants view. The more focused, the faster we can accomplish what we need, and the faster we can get out.