Piotr Nowinski

Seasoned Software Engineering Leader, Head of Engineering, Transformation Leader

About

Hi, I’m Piotr and I’m a host of this independent blog where I share stuff that I deal with in my professional life. It’s mainly about software development management and team management, though it wanders into other areas at times.

I live in Gliwice, Poland with my wife and daughter. I am a seasoned technology leader with a particular interest in Agile and cultivating strong, efficient teams and organizations.

More about me

Latest stories

Becoming remote-first organization – Atlassian’s lessons learned

Atlassian has recently released a report available at  that details their experience with transitioning to a remote-first organization. The report offers valuable insights and is worth reading. What stands out for me is that Atlassian recognized that remote work is not just about hiring new talent or saving on office space. It requires a shift in how the entire organization functions. In my...

Effective delegation

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 the Unmeasurable: Unveiling the Challenges of Developer Productivity

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...

Decision-making velocity and drag

An insightful article about decision-making velocity and drag: . Many organizations concentrate on making their tooling and delivery processes more effective, yet they overlook or disregard the importance of verifying how they make decisions. Do your teams have the authority to make decisions on their own? Or do they have to involve managers in any issues or changes to a predetermined course of...

Evolution of engineering metrics

A good yet compact overview of the evolution of software engineering metrics and various attempts to measure the productivity of software development teams: . It’s nice to see how metrics moved away from being output-driven (lines of code or velocity) towards being more outcome-focused (DORA). Finally, it’s now widely acknowledged that the well-being and satisfaction of development...

Long-term planning vs backlog management

When we talk about longer-term planning in Agile world we usually focus on estimating (i.e. in Story Points), team’s velocity and a way of forecasting a timeframe by which a predefined set of backlog items can be delivered. While the above is absolutely valid and critical, we often forget that a success of a long-term delivery also depends on how a product backlog for the is prepared and...

Dunbar’s Number

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...