Effective delegation is a core management skill that every leader should master. In essence, delegation is an act of transferring responsibility for specific tasks to others (teams or individuals). Delegation should result in freeing the manager up for more strategic work, but it goes beyond just getting stuff off the manager's plate. Delegating empowers the teams, builds trust, encourages...
Measuring developers’ productivity has been an important topic for decades but it became even more critical when optimizing teams’ efficiency became the main focus of 2023. Why it’s important… Measuring productivity is essential for organizations as it provides valuable insights into resource allocation, project timelines, and team dynamics. It also plays an important role...
How to use Conway's Law to your advantage.
In the 1990s British anthropologist Robin Dunbar performed an interesting research and suggested that humans can comfortably maintain about 150 contacts. It’s now best known as the Dunbar’s Number and it’s a measurement of the “cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships”. Stable relationships mean that you know...
I am often asked about books I recommend that aspiring leaders should read. Appearances to the contrary, it is not an easy question to answer. I went through what I recall I have read and came up with the following, very narrowed-down list of books I think are mandatory for every software engineering manager.
One of the software engineering manager’s responsibilities is to understand the team’s dynamics and to know if your direct reports are happy in their jobs. While it sounds easy getting full insights from 1:1s, team meetings, or from your direct collaboration with the team is not always that straightforward. It may happen that your team members wait with raising their concerns or...
Early this year Harvard Business Review published an interesting article about innovative organizations by Gary P. Pisano. Most organizations perceive innovative culture as a key to their future competitive advantage and therefore something leaders want to establish and invest in. Also, employees value innovative organizations and consider them as a great place to work for. Moreover, it seems...
Transparency is a key value in Agile organisations. It improves employees' motivation and make the teams perform better. At the same time, transparency is difficult to achieve, because it usually requires serious changes to company's culture and mindset. You can't do it overnight, but fortunately, each and every step towards this goal counts.
Empowering people and teams is critical for organisations to gain competitive advantage and succeed. Smart delegating of responsibilities results in more engaged employees, better culture and improved overall productivity of a company. Knowledge and experience are shared among a larger group of employees which in turn increases organisation's flexibility and agility. However, it's easier said...
An effective reward system can motivate employees and increase their work performance. It can have a very powerful influence on people's behaviour and, therefore, many organisations implement it as an integral component of their compensation strategy. However, not all reward programmes are beneficial. Moreover, inefficient systems are counterproductive, destroy creativity, hurt morale and disrupt...