Decoding Leadership - where we break down the intersection of effective and humane leadership, especially in software product development (engineering, product,...
21. Jayanthan Bhattathiripad on introducing yourself, XP and Scrum, and waste
In this episode, we talk with Jayanthan Bhattatharapad. Jay has a very interesting way of introducing himself to his teams and organization, and I asked him to demo it to us. In doing so, he shares not only this interesting practice, but lots of tidbits about how he sees leadership. We had a fascinating discussion, can't wait to share it with you!* Jay's career journey from consulting at ThoughtWorks to Expedia, to his recent role at Cisco.* The importance of mental health and psychological safety in teams.* Why Extreme Programming is harder (and better) than Scrum. * The impact of lean principles on software development and tackling waste.* The influence of cultural differences on communication and leadership.
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41:21
20. Margaret Le on technical leadership and building strong engineering cultures
Join us as we welcome Margaret Le, VP of Engineering at Facet, to discuss her experience from software engineering leadership roles at New Relic, Heroku, Slack, and Facet. We dive deep into the engineering leader's role in technical direction, and building teams and culture. Margaret shares her insights on defining and executing technical vision. She also explains how to cultivate a thriving work environment by clearly defining core values. She talks about the value of psychological safety, transparency, and vulnerability.Â
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26:23
19. Jade Rubick: using task forces to solve complex leadership challenges
In this episode, we delve into the concept of task forces and their crucial role in addressing organizational challenges. Discover when and how to employ task forces effectively, and learn from real-life examples, including a case at New Relic to rapidly deliver a complex feature in six weeks, and another involving a complex merger that spanned every department. I share actionable tips on how to set up a successful task force, including the importance of a solid kickoff meeting, selecting the right team members, and how to leverage the power of other leaders.Â
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12:35
18. Brent Miller on team self-selection and project Upscale
Upscale was a large scale agile transformation at a 50 team software company. Brent and I were on the leadership team. The aim of Upscale was to address the gridlock problem with cross-team projects. Jade brought in James Shore, author of The Art of Agile Development, and he led us through a massive amount of change. Upscale was extremely successful, but there were missteps and challenges.
We retrospect on Upscale, and talk through cross-team dependencies, and especially into the massive self-selection event, where most of the people in engineering got to choose which team they wanted to be a part of. The episode covers a lot of topics in organizational design, team autonomy, and change management.
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1:07:32
17. Katie Wilde on the challenging step to director, and the perverse incentives of reliability
Katie Wilde is an accomplished leader from Snyk, Ambassador Labs, and Buffer. She shares how she learned to be an effective director (and how challenging the transition was), and shares tons of insights into why it's hard to build a culture of reliability in engineering organizations. And she shares a bunch of wonderful approaches to make reliability fun and desirable. This episode was a delight, and I learned a bunch from it.
Decoding Leadership - where we break down the intersection of effective and humane leadership, especially in software product development (engineering, product, and design).
South Africa