Communication Just how much Project Management do you need? A software engineering project for a consulting company vs a product company can be very different animals. Timelines can be longer in product companies. Less urgency. Less accountability. And probably less chance that
Empathy The Engineering Director Paradox I love to code. Like all passionate engineers; if left alone, I can think of nothing better than to build new things. To create wonderful, elegant, simple solutions. I spent many man-years on
Empathy Should happiness be a goal at work? Your job is what you make it. Go into it with a bad attitude, and that will be reflected back to you. Be positive, help others and solve problems together and you'll be
Culture The Golden Rule of "Managing up" I admit to saying "I can easily fix problems below me, but the hardest problems are above me". I still believe this, but I think many people misinterpret the statement. If you're thinking
Culture Should you really encourage playing games at work? Think back to the companies that you've worked for; that you loved. Those that made you happy. Those jobs that you couldn't wait to get to after waking up. If that's your current
Project Management Project Management: How to screw up your software projects You know the saying "Opinions are like assholes - everyone has one"? Well, project management processes and tools are similar - everyone has their own special setup. So this article isn't intended to
Project Management How Many Bugs is Too Many? In some companies an Engineering Director may also be responsible for related technical departments - so let's talk a little about Support. Just as with the inherent (and necessary) conflict between product owners
Team Where/When should you make your team work? In the software industry it seems very common nowadays to assume you'll allow your team to work flexible hours and perhaps work-from-home. Or is that a myth? On the other side of the
Team Taking notes in your one-on-ones - it's tricky You should always take notes in your one-on-ones with the team, but how you do that is a tricky question to answer. Do your brain a favor Just the act of taking notes
About Which kind of Engineering Director are you? And why you need help. Many titles are given to our role. I've been called Engineering Manager, Director of Engineering, Senior Director of Engineering and Vice President of Engineering - and when I interviewed at Amazon, they called
Culture Programming interview questions - it's not about the answers As Director of Engineering you'll be interviewing a lot of Engineers - my average is more than 2 interviews per week for the last few years. Filter candidates early The interview process changes
Team Why it's critical you take new hires to lunch - a checklist Do you remember your first day at your company? Even the most confident of us were wondering what to do and who to meet. Hopefully there is a wonderful onboarding process to walk
Team It's ok to admit you're wrong As I was writing Programmers really need open floor plans [https://www.tellthemeverything.com/programmers-really-need-open-floor-plans/] I found myself thinking about a story that I had been confidently telling for years as an example
Process Workflows and Todo lists Common day-to-day tasks like managing workflows and todo lists don't fit perfectly inside the domain of the normal development suites from Microsoft, Atlassian, etc., or even Project Management tools like Asana. You can
Environment Programmers really need open floor plans As soon as Joel Spolsky talked at GeekWire Summit [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1V8OUOb-Hw] recently, Twitter lit up with articles like Programmers really hate open floor plans [http://qz.com/806583/
Communication Helping Departments work together As well as Helping Engineering teams work together [https://www.tellthemeverything.com/helping-teams-work-together/] you'll also review the way departments interact at a higher level. Soon after meeting your team [https://www.tellthemeverything.com/
Communication Helping Engineering teams work together Although the Engineering department is our domain, we do not sit in isolation. We simply can't do our job without many interactions with other teams or departments. Encourage communication I've said it before
Culture Publish an Engineering weekly newsletter As soon as you can, start sending a weekly newsletter to the Engineering team. And by 'as soon as you can', I mean start this week. > The aim is to share what you
Team Identifying personalities on your Engineering team One of the first tasks for you to do as Director of Engineering is to quickly identify the personality types of your team members. One-on-ones [https://www.tellthemeverything.com/one-on-ones/] is a perfect
Culture Team too big for one-on-ones? I received some great feedback about One-on-Ones with your team [https://www.tellthemeverything.com/one-on-ones/] today. In that article I said that: > At some number of people - probably between 20 and 30
Culture One-on-Ones with your team After your team introduction, one-on-one's are the next item on your agenda. They are the most important part of your job. Through one-on-ones you will find the true story behind the scenes of
About The 30 day plan You are a Director of Engineering, walking into a new company - where do you start? Here's a 30 day plan that will cover all the tasks that you should consider. Some won't
About What is "Tell Them Everything"? I'm James Shaw [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesshaw], and I have led software teams since my first company back in the UK in 1990 - leading teams of up to 45 technical
