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...
Impact of AI on developers’ productivity and code quality
Many software development organizations introduced AI-powered tools like GitHub Copilot in 2023 to boost their delivery process. The aim was to deliver more and faster by speeding up the coding process.
Predictability vs Agility
In the dynamic realm of product development organizations, an ongoing debate between "predictable" and "agile" approaches unfolds, with perspectives often divided on the very definition of these terms.
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...
Inverse Conway Maneuver
How to use Conway's Law to your advantage.
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...