Honeycomb has doubled in size since I joined less than 2 years ago. More people means we can do more things at the same time. Both “more people” and “more things at the same time” lead to increased overhead. There’s coordination overhead to get timings right on work that’s independent. Like, to release a feature …
A viable system continues to function in a changing environment. We want our companies—and some teams—to be sustainable this way. How does your team contribute? Does your team have all the components of a viable system… and should it? Stafford Beer (1926-2002) coined the Viable Systems Model to describe what it takes. A Viable System …
At my first real job, around the turn of the millenium, software engineers were graded on a bell curve. On a scale of 1 to 5, most people should get 3s, with a lower number of 4s and 2s and a much lower number of 1s and 5s. The bell curve, also called the normal …
As a software engineer, what is your job? and what is your value? On many teams, the work is “add features to this codebase.” We congratulate teams for moving JIRA tickets from “defined” to “delivered.” Meanwhile, the value to the business depends on value to the customers, or to people or software who in turn …
We talk about “software products” and “product teams.” What does this even mean, “product?” It is not the definition I learned in school. Economics 101: the output of the economy is “goods and services.” Goods, also called “products,” are physical items that you can buy, take home, and have. Like, if you buy a rug, …
TL;DR: When different parts of an organization need to coordinate, it seems like a good idea to help them coordinate smoothly and frequently. Don’t. Help them coordinate less — more explicitly, less often. Software systems get big, and they have lots of parts, and those parts need to talk to each other. Maybe we’re building …
TL;DR: Projects ask teams do what is asked of them; Products ask teams to invent their work. This requires a different way of seeing the world, and not everyone can do it yet. Software is not an up-front investment that pays off over its use. Software is an ongoing concern, an intricate piece of a …
Read moreProject to Product asks more of our software, and more of us
Just now, Avdi had a miserable experience buying curtains. He went to pick up an order that he placed last night, but Lowe’s didn’t have it. The order was sent to the wrong store and it was a huge pain to figure out. Software is hard to get right. And every time we don’t, customers …
If ya know how to do it, stick with the bureaucracy. If you’re building software, it’s always new — you need a generative org with a resilient structure.
No one wants to review pull requests. This is a sign of a deeper problem than “people aren’t following the process”