Tech — Work — Ramblings

by Mike Kalvas

I see you're not using JavaScript (which is awesome!) on one of my pages that uses it to provide a better experience. If you see something not working right, please let me know. My site should work exactly the same without it apart from any exceptions noted here.

I use prism.min.js to do syntax highlighting. It clocks in at 23kb total in size. Since the majority of the writing I do involves coding, I personally find this to be a worthwhile trade off. If you choose to keep this disabled, rest assured, the code examples are still there, they just may have some extra whitespace and obviously no syntax highlighting.

I do no tracking at all and am a zealot about keeping my pages as small as possible. If you're reading a page of mine that transfers more than about 250kb over the wire (including my most gratuitous indulgence — fonts) I've messed up.

So, if you'd like to have a slightly richer experience, consider enabling javascript for my site and I promise your trust won't be misplaced.

202203241159 The four states of a team

It’s hard and slow work, but stay the path to the end. Prioritize one team at a time.¹

Falling Behind

Description — Every week the backlog gets longer, the team is working super hard and not making progress, morale is low, and there’s vocal dissatisfaction from users.
Fixing and Supporting — Hire net new people. Support by setting expectations with users and stakeholders. Find easy wins to inject optimism.

Treading Water

Description — Can get critical work done but can’t pay down debt or start new major projects. Morale is a bit better but users know help won’t come when needed.
Fixing and Supporting — Consolidate effort to finish more things and reduce WIP until the team can start repaying debt. Transfer people from personal view of productivity to team view.

Repaying Debt

Description — Beginning to snowball when debt is payed down enabling more debt to be payed down.
Fixing and Supporting — Add time. Your team is working. Find space for them to allow it to continue to work. Try to find overlap with user needs. Prevent backsliding.

Innovating

Description — Debt is sustainably low, morale is high, and the majority of work is satisfying user needs.
Fixing and Supporting — Need to maintain. Find slack to build quality into work and avoid backsliding. Make sure the work is being valued and not perceived as unnecessary.

Larson, W. & Stripe Press. (2019). An elegant puzzle: Systems of engineering management. Stripe Press. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45303387-an-elegant-puzzle ↩