What I read this week...

7 links to help you grow, take inspiration for your own journey

“Responsibility cannot be assigned; it can only be accepted. If someone tries to give you responsibility, only you can decide if you are responsible or if you aren't.”
― Kent Beck, Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change

You’ll become successful through overcoming challenges and facing your obstacles.

… but that doesn’t mean it has to lack inspiration or fun.

Here’s a few links that you can skim in under 60 seconds.

I hope it will inspire you, and on occasion help you get unstuck.

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1. Increasing Team Velocity While Improving Quality: A Talk with Kent Beck. I didn’t find Extreme Programming, XP found me. This is how I generally feel about agility without any ritualistic frameworks. Great insights from Kent regarding XP in 2024.

2. Software Archeology. How to explore and work in legacy systems? I wasn’t aware this had a wiki page, or that anyone outside of Adam Tornhill was resarching it.

3. Avoid the test-automation Death March. Adam Tornhill’s seminal work, republish as 2nd edition in 2024 with new case studies and examples. Well-recommend to anyone who takes data-driven legacy codebase due diligence and team dynamics seriously.

4. Mastering Tech Leadership in 50 Minutes • Tim Berglund • GOTO 2023. A great inspiration for my talk on Extreme Programming, Tim gave a few down-to-earth examples on Psychological safety and team dynamics. Product leadership comes to mind, but his talk is widely applicable in any field.

5. How I plan my week as a Senior Engineer in Big Tech.

   Jordan Cutler
   shares his playbook on how to get shit done throughout a week. As a dad of twins my calendar looks about the same as his promotion chart. Sometimes it’s difficult to zoom out and pick only the high-priority stuff that you can guarantee.

6. Split Product and Engineering Roadmaps, an anti-pattern. This and clearing leaders’ schedules from clutter are the two things I end up solving the most with coaching clients. I don’t think the problem will go away per se, but it’s always nice to gear up with more perspectives.

7. When should you establish a Developer Productivity team? Software Engineering Intelligence tools are all the rage this year, but they mean very little of you don’t have incentives and continuous learning initiatives in place to foster them.

   Abi Noda
   shares his insights when such teams should be formed.