What are the ABCs of creating art, or shipping product? Is there such a thing? Should there be, and if not why not?
Perusing my bookshelf recently, I came to some conclusions: 1. I will almost surely not read every book I own, even if I exclude reference...
Sometimes being incorrect, or even wrong, can be useful. For example, I’m pretty sure I’m using the word “precis” incorrectly here. I lack a better word. Invoking the Humpty Dumpty principle, let’s proceed.
The Precís template
Definition of Precis...
The goal of the “Main Learning” book review is to provide a single, execution-ready concept which the reader of the review can put into action. Different readers will have different notions of what constitutes a main, actionable learning, and that...
From time to time I’m called on to provide a brief biographical paragraph for one reason or another. Perhaps a conference presentation, an article, or company website. These requests always seem to occur at inconvenient times, when I have other really...
Here’s a handy template for job descriptions.
Writing job descriptions can be easy or hard depending on a number of factors. The main difficulty is likely specifying what someone in the role is expected to achieve. In other words, describing how the...
The Situation, Complication, Question, Answer (SCQA) structure was introduced and explained on a couple of pages of Minto’s classic book on corporate communication The Pyramid Principle. Minto provides SCQA as a way to structure an introduction to...
A perennial activity in fast-growing companies is managing defects. Equivalently, fixing bugs. Bugs get reported, then routed, then triaged (or triaged, then routed), then scheduled, then at some point far in the future of the bug’s reported occurrence...
Writing is something I typically enjoy…provided I have time to write. In the past, “time to write” has usually meant some open-ended period of time when my plate was mostly clear of other obligations. More recently, time to write often means a 15...
Reflecting on the last year, and career experience, I’m going to be spending more time drawing in 2023.
In fact, that would be my single piece of advice to any engineer once the initial programming hurdle is cleared: learn to draw. More specifically...
A “Recent Win” is a very brief (2-5 sentences) story about a small increment of delivered business value:
Mary delivered a substantial improvement in lead conversion, from 4.5% to 6.3%, a 28% increase. The company had been losing Sales Qualified...
Refactoring can provide many benefits for an engineering team, including improved readability, maintainability, security, scalability, and performance. In short, refactor should improve the quality of the software.
Careless refactoring can introduce...