You don’t have to read it, but you just might learn something.
Leading Thought
Prime
Engineering Leadership Tactics: Finding Focus
Last issue I had an article about reducing friction as the way to go faster in delivery. This is a good follow on to that, with some good strategies for increasing the focus of a team. While Scrum attempts to fill capacity for a set period and may have them, Kan-ban brings with it the idea of limits for work in progress (WIP).
How do WIP limits work? Suppose you have stages in development, maybe: analysis, engineering, code review, validation. Each of these is defined as a column where work (stories) are moved from one stage to the next; however, each column is constrained by a defined number of items that can be in it. If a column is full, no other work should be taken up from the previous stage until the limit is cleared. For example, you have a code review limit of two stories which is full; at least one of those code reviews must be completed before a story in engineering can be presented for code review. Naturally, this will cause the engineering column to back up in a chain reaction so that no new work should be started until things have become unjammed (this is a very simplistic, basic example). This forces the team to complete work rather than centering on a single individual.
If your team is struggling with knowledge silos, thrashing work, and rework, to name a few, this is absolutely worth a read. If you are already using WIP limits, there may be other ideas or reminders here that can help you become even more efficient as a team.
If I had one tip to give to managers, it would be to make it extremely clear to engineers that team efficiency is more important than individual efficiency. Every team member should understand that the primary metric is not how busy and productive they are individually but how fast the team can deliver features to customers together.
Why use a digital stadiometer?
This is a great post about the assumptions we all make when something seems to make no sense. In this case, the author uses a digital stadiometer (a piece of medical equipment used for measuring human height) in a doctors office as opposed to a presumably much cheaper analog version. This is then placed into the context of software development.
I fight this urge constantly, failing often, but getting better. You probably do, too, especially if you work in software. A good read as a reminder to always assume the best intent, with constraints you are unaware of.
I said a while back that it is a good idea to get in the habit of assuming that everything is more complex than you imagine. I think there is parallel advice here: assume that bad technical decisions are made rationally, for reasons that are not apparent.
10 Years of Making Car Videos | 20 Lessons
Not being a car fanatic, I had never heard of SavageGeese before, but when SwiftOnSecurity recommends something this strongly, I’ll give it a look. Turns out there is quite a bit here I agree with and can do better at as well.
Especially if you are newer to the workforce – whether public or private –this is worth a watch. Even if you are old like me, it never hurts to be reminded of some of these things and reset a bit.
If you want to succeed in a public role or in general: This is 26 minutes but it’s a direct 1:1 conversation that brings up tons of advice I would give. Hell, advice I wish I could follow better. However it also addresses larger teams and vendor relations.
A Path-breaking Innovation in Climate Journalism
French Public Television has made a change in how they report the weather – in addition to what you expect from a weather report, they are now including the reason for the weather, namely climate change. The French wine industry has been impacted tremendously in recent years, with 60 Minutes reporting that [in 2022] France recorded its smallest harvest since 1957 and lost more than $2 billion in sales. Given that kind of impact, it’s no wonder they are taking steps to not only help people understand the impact climate change is having, but are also putting their money where their mouth is by limiting air travel for news events happening within the borders of France with the exception of urgent breaking news.
Coming Soon
Juneteenth Conference
(June 15th and 16th | Chicago, IL and Virtual)
The conference to celebrate Black Excellence in technology, promote Black technology professionals, and to encourage future Black technologists to explore careers in the field is back! For $300 (in-person) or $100 (virtual), this is steal. Definitely give it a look.
Black Hat USA
(August 5-10, 2023 | Mandalay Bay / Las Vegas + Virtual)
Infosec your thing? Then check out this conference in Vegas. There are two day classes available, as well as briefings demos, and more.
Humble Bundles
Popular Programming Languages 2023 Book Bundle
New offering from Humble Bundle benefitting Code for America – and, if you don’t know it’s there, there is an Adjust Donation button that will let you give more of the take to charity! For a minimum donation of $25 you get 15 titles, including:
- Learning TypeScript
- Multithreaded Javascript
- Cloud Native Go
- Robust Python
- Programming C# 10
- And more!
Cybersecurity and Forensics Bundle
New offering from Humble Bundle benefitting Little Free Library – and, if you don’t know it’s there, there is an Adjust Donation button that will let you give more of the take to charity! For a minimum donation of $25 you get 19 items, including:
- Secrets of a Cyber Security Architect
- Cross-Site Scripting Attacks: Classification, Attack, and Countermeasures
- The Insider Threat: Assessment and Mitigation of Risks
- Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks: Classification, Attacks, Challenges and Countermeasures
- Behavioral Cybersecurity: Fundamental Principles and Applications of Personality Psychology
- And more!
The Complete Learn Coding MEGA Software Bundle
New offering from Humble Bundle benefitting Lotus Outreach International – and, if you don’t know it’s there, there is an Adjust Donation button that will let you give more of the take to charity! For a minimum donation of $20 you get 30 items, including:
- Responsive Web Design for Beginners
- JavaScript Programming for Beginners
- Intro to Java for Android Development
- iOS App Development for Beginners
- CSS Foundations
- HTML Foundations
- And more!
Architecture
How Khan Academy Rewrote their Backend
This is a good digest-version of the decisions and process Khan Academy (KA) used to rewrite their backend over 20 months, from a monolithic to service architecture. The article references a series of blog posts from KA that provide more detail that I want to go back and read to see what decisions they were facing and how they tackled them.
If you work in software or are interested in software architecture, this is a concise, digestible read that will likely have you wanting to dive into the reference links, including the design of Go and how KA handled a 2.5x increase in load during the rewrite due to the pandemic.
DE&I
One of the Earliest Memorial Day Ceremonies Was Held by Freed African Americans
This is a pretty interesting story that seems to have almost been lost to history. It seems that in May, 1865, a group of 10,000 people, mostly freed slaves, held a parade at a site where 260 Union soldiers had died from exposure and disease while held captive by the Confederate army. The site was a racetrack in South Carolina, where the Civil War had started, and so it’s no surprise that the event went unremembered – except for an old narrative found in a file at Harvard, and an article in the newspaper.
If you are a history buff, or just appreciate an amazing story, this is a pretty short read and worth a few minutes.
But it was clear from the newspaper reports that a Memorial Day observance was organized by freed slaves in Charleston at least a year before other U.S. cities and three years before the first national observance.
Engineering
Introducing Sep - Possibly the World’s Fastest .NET CSV Parser
Do you need a fast CSV parser? With a goal of use in machine learning, this may be the thing you need. While new, it’s worth taking a look at.