Note: This was a series of talks I gave to leadership in my organization, so some of the comments here might not make sense in the context of a blog post.

Note: This was a series of talks I gave to leadership in my organization, so some of the comments here might not make sense in the context of a blog post.

Two of the more popular methods for setting goals are SMART and CLEAR:

In re-reading High Output Management recently, I was particularly interested in reading over Andy Grove’s schedule and seeing how he spent his time. I thought it might be interesting to post something similar to how I allocate my time throughout the year.

I was reviewing an old incident review doc where I wrote up some of the high level learnings from the incident. Thought it was worth sharing, with the details omitted to protect the innocent.

Some thoughts on how you could evaluate the state of the systems your team owns.

Velocity is a commonly used metric in development teams to measure how much work they can fit into a sprint. However, using velocity for any other purpose can be problematic as it might not reflect the real progress of the project and can be a flawed planning mechanism.

This is based off a talk I gave on improving communications.

Back when we were all the office together, it was pretty easy as a manager to get a feel for how the team was doing. Are folks getting along? Are folks stressed? Does everyone have the right balance of work? With folks all around you, it was pretty easy to drop in on a conversation, take someone to lunch, or grab a coffee and talk.

What is a project kick-off? A project kick-off meeting is the first meeting with the project team and the client of the project where applicable. This meeting is the time to establish common goals and the purpose of the project.