QFM031: Engineering Leadership Reading List August 2024
Everything that I found interesting last month about engineering leadership
In August’s Engineering Leadership Reading List, we start off with an exploration of entrepreneurship and business strategy. In Loving My New Porsche? A Provocative Review of Year Three on My $300k Rollercoaster Business, Marian Kamenistak shares his journey of building a profitable business, highlighting the importance of KPIs, financial data, and community growth. The theme of strategic decision-making continues with The Flywheel Effect, which explains how sustained focus in a single direction can generate momentum, contrasting with companies that fail due to constant changes in strategy.
Leadership and team dynamics are also central in this month’s reading. Is Your Leadership Style Hurting Your Team? by Diana Stepner discusses how different leadership styles impact team morale and performance, emphasising the importance of empathy and adaptability. Similarly, Should the Daily Stand-Up Die? questions the relevance of traditional daily stand-up meetings, suggesting that their effectiveness may depend on team maturity and communication practices.
The list also includes several pieces on software development and architecture. Architectural Retrospectives: The Key to Getting Better at Architecting focuses on improving team decision-making processes through regular retrospectives, while The Case for Custom Software argues for the benefits of custom software solutions over SaaS, particularly as AI makes personalised solutions more accessible. In a similar vein, this Xitter thread roll-up Predictions for the Future of Software Engineering anticipates how advancements in AI will reshape the field, making software more accessible and reducing development time and costs.
For those involved in startups Startup Success — Analysis of Unicorn Startup Founders provides a data-driven look at the factors contributing to unicorn startup success, including founder traits and team structure. Awesome CEO: The Ultimate Guide for Startup Founders is a comprehensive resource for startup leaders, covering everything from fundraising to product development. Meanwhile, The Hard Thing About Small Things contrasts the challenges of managing large corporations with the unique demands of running a startup, stressing the importance of attention to detail.
On the product management front, Focusing on Time to Value Over Time to Market by Sebastian Straube emphasises the benefits of prioritising the speed at which a product delivers value to users. This approach can lead to sustainable growth and customer satisfaction. Also, Introduction to Product Discovery offers a fantastic beginner-friendly guide to improving product leadership skills, with a focus on community engagement and skill-building.
Finally, this month includes insights into learning and tool usage. Learn How To Learn provides strategies for improving learning skills, promoting a positive feedback loop that enhances overall effectiveness. Additionally, GitHub Navigation and Features offers a detailed overview of GitHub’s tools and services, useful for both beginners and experienced users alike.
As always, the Quantum Fax Machine Propellor Hat Key will guide your browsing. Enjoy!
Loving My New Porsche? A Provocative Review of Year Three on My $300k Rollercoaster Business.: Marian Kamenistak details his challenging yet rewarding journey in 2024. Despite a tough start, he managed to generate a gross profit of around $220k from his business ventures in mentoring, coaching, and fractional advisory services. The article also highlights KPIs, financial data, community growth and predictions for 2025.
#BusinessReview #Entrepreneurship #FinancialGrowth #Leadership #TechCommunity
Architectural Retrospectives: the Key to Getting Better at Architecting: Architectural retrospectives focus on improving how a team creates architecture rather than the architecture itself. Unlike standard reviews, retrospectives aim to analyse decision-making processes and uncover biases that may affect these decisions. Conducting regular retrospectives after each iteration helps teams reflect on and improve their way of working, leading to better architectural outcomes. It’s crucial to keep retrospectives separate from reviews to maintain focus and encourage open, unbiased discussions.
#SoftwareArchitecture #Agile #Retrospectives #TechLeadership #ContinuousImprovement
Startup Success — Analysis of Unicorn Startup Founders: An insightful analysis of unicorn startup founders reveals key factors in their success. The study draws from multiple sources including Defiance Capital, Endeavor, and McKinsey. It highlights trends in age, background, team structure, and psychological traits of successful founders.
#Startup #TechTrends #Unicorn #Founders #Entrepreneurship
The Flywheel Effect: The article describes the “Flywheel Effect,” illustrating how consistent, cumulative efforts in a single direction can build momentum over time, leading to breakthrough success, contrasting this with companies that fail by constantly changing direction without sustained focus.
#Leadership #BusinessStrategy #Success #Momentum #Growth
Cyces Innovation Labs: Services and Hiring: Cyces Innovation Labs offers a range of services including product thinking, design, engineering, data engineering, and enterprise modernisation. Their guide on building user-centric products through design sprints provides practical insights and real-world examples. Additionally, they are looking to hire talent to join their team.
#TechInnovation #ProductDesign #Hiring #DesignSprint #CycesInnovations
Focusing on time to value over time to market: A strategy for developing successful products: In this article, Sebastian Straube explains how prioritising time to value over time to market can enhance customer satisfaction and drive business success. The piece discusses the key differences between the two concepts, illustrating how focusing on time to value, which emphasises the speed at which a product delivers value to users, can lead to sustainable growth and a competitive edge. Real-world examples and practical strategies for shortening time to value, such as customer interviews and rapid prototyping, are included to guide development teams.
#ProductManagement #CustomerSatisfaction #BusinessStrategy #ProductDevelopment #Innovation
Introduction to Product Discovery (incl. a simple process to get started): This YouTube video by Product Pathways offers an introduction to product discovery, detailing a straightforward process to get started. It’s ideal for those looking to improve their skills as product leaders and includes a call to join a community for coaching and further development.
#ProductDiscovery #ProductManagement #Leadership #TechCommunity #SkillBuilding
Architecture decision record (ADR): The GitHub repository “Architecture Decision Record” provides templates and examples for documenting architecture decisions in software projects. It serves as a guide for IT leaders and teams to capture, organise, and communicate key design choices, ensuring consistent and informed decision-making throughout a project’s lifecycle.
#softwarearchitecture #ITleadership #documentation #decisionmaking #templates
Awesome CEO: The Ultimate Guide for Startup Founders: The GitHub repository “Awesome CEO” offers a curated collection of resources for startup founders and leaders of high-growth companies, covering key areas such as fundraising, entrepreneurship, product development, sales, marketing, management, hiring, and finance. It includes practical guides, tools, and recommended readings to help navigate the challenges of building and scaling a business.
#startups #entrepreneurs #fundraising #management #leadership
Awesome CTO: Repository ‘Awesome CTO’ is a curated and opinionated list of resources for Chief Technology Officers, with a focus on startups and hyper-growth companies. It includes articles and guides on various aspects such as people management, architecture, project management, and more to help CTOs navigate their roles effectively.
#CTO #Startups #TechLeadership #ProjectManagement #SoftwareEngineering
Learn How To Learn: The ‘Learn How To Learn’ website is a comprehensive resource dedicated to enhancing your learning skills. It focuses on the positive feedback loop where the more you learn how to learn, the better you become at it. The site includes articles, strategies, and upcoming community forums to help speed up this loop.
#LearnHowToLearn #Education #SelfImprovement #Learning #Growth
Meet my research team: Gemini, ChatGPT and Perplexity: Anita Brearton shares her experience using AI tools like Gemini, ChatGPT, and Perplexity for research tasks and product discovery. She emphasizes the benefits of utilizing multiple AI tools simultaneously to save time and improve results, and provides insights into how these tools can be effectively used for identifying product categories and evaluating vendors.
#AI #Research #ProductDiscovery #MarTech #ArtificialIntelligence
The Case for Custom Software: The article discusses the limitations of SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions in addressing unique business problems due to their rigidness and scalability issues. The author argues that custom software solutions are becoming more practical and accessible due to decreasing software development costs, enabling organisations to tailor systems to their specific needs and improve efficiency. With advancements in AI, the balance is shifting away from SaaS giants toward more personalised, custom solutions.
#CustomSoftware #SaaS #AI #BusinessAutomation #TechInnovation
Is Your Leadership Style Hurting Your Team?: In this article, Diana Stepner delves into the impact of leadership styles on team morale and performance. Highlighting Daniel Goleman’s six leadership styles, Diana explains which styles might be detrimental and offers advice on how leaders can adapt their approach. Empathetic leadership is underscored as essential for fostering an inclusive environment and avoiding crises.
#Leadership #TeamPerformance #Empathy #InclusiveWorkplace #Adaptability
Startup Playbook: Sam Altman’s ‘Startup Playbook’ provides essential advice for new startup founders. The book covers invaluable aspects from having a great idea to forming a stellar team, building an excellent product, and executing effectively. Developed to scale Y Combinator’s guidance, the playbook distils key lessons for anyone new to startups.
#Startup #Entrepreneurship #YC #Innovation #Tech
Should the daily stand-up die?: The article discusses the evolving role of daily stand-up meetings in agile teams, questioning their relevance as many have devolved into inefficient status updates rather than productive collaboration sessions. Experts suggest that the effectiveness of stand-ups depends on the team’s maturity, communication practices, and the specific needs of the project, advocating for flexible approaches, including asynchronous check-ins.
#Agile #Teamwork #StandUpMeetings #Productivity #RemoteWork
Predictions for the Future of Software Engineering: This article presents predictions on how software engineering will evolve in the near future. It highlights the advancements in AI modeling which will significantly improve coding capabilities. The emergence of coding agents will revolutionise the field, making software more accessible and reducing the time and cost associated with software development.
#AI #SoftwareEngineering #Coding #FutureTech #Automation
The Hard Thing About Small Things: In her article, Elizabeth Shassere shares the critical lessons she learned as a corporate executive and how they prepared her for her role as a startup CEO. She highlights 10 key lessons on the importance of not ignoring small issues, understanding the underlying causes of problems, and the value of teamwork in resolving issues to maintain productivity and effectiveness.
Shassere contrasts her experiences in managing a large corporate department with the unique challenges of running a small startup, emphasising the significance of attention to detail and the perils of assuming that smaller operations require less effort or oversight.
#Startups #Leadership #Management #Entrepreneurship #WomenInTech
80% of developers are unhappy. The problem is not AI, nor is coding: The latest Stack Overflow survey reveals a high level of dissatisfaction among developers, with 80% unhappy in their jobs. This discontent is not due to AI or coding itself but is linked to issues such as technical debt, pressure to meet unrealistic expectations, and a lack of understanding from management. Despite these challenges, most developers remain optimistic about the future of AI tools in improving productivity and job performance.
#developers #WorkplaceSatisfaction #AI #technews #coding
Regards,
M@
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Originally published on quantumfaxmachine.com and cross-posted on Medium.
