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 work in progress 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 ↩