InfoQ Homepage Leadership Content on InfoQ
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Managing High-Performing Software Teams
High-performing teams expect their leader to enable them to make things better, Gillard-Moss said at QCon London. Independence in software teams can enable decision-making for faster delivery. Teams need empathy, understanding, and guidance from their managers.
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How to Improve Software Team Performance with Experimentation
According to Terhi Aho, experimentation is a way of thinking that guides action. By experimenting we can develop ways of working without a major change process. It can help software teams to solve problems in small steps, relieve their workload, and foster self-management.
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Fostering High-performing Work Environments for Software Development
According to Eb Ikonne, leaders should provide a motivating challenge or mission so that the software engineering team understands what success looks like. They can provide an enabling structure for effective teamwork, address things that negatively impact team success, and reduce or remove friction. Coaching can help people discover how to work effectively together.
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Transitioning from a Software Engineering Role into a Management Role
Software engineers who want to become good at leading engineers can use everyday opportunities to practice management. Peter Gillard-Moss gave a talk at QCon London where he shared his experience with becoming a manager, and provided tips and ideas for engineers aiming to become a manager.
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Catalyzing Change in Software Organizations: Find Allies, Invite People, and Sustain Engagement
Much of the change we experience in software organizations is coercive. Software engineers, architects, and people in software engineering management roles feel they cannot spark change without formal authority, Eb Ikonne mentioned at QCon London 2024. To catalyze change, he suggested identifying allies, inviting people to participate in the change, and sustaining engagement through storytelling.
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How Technology Can Drive Culture Change in Software Organisations
Technological improvements like containers, VMs, infrastructure-as-code, software-defined-networking, collaborative version control, and CI/CD can make it possible to fix cultural issues around organisational dynamics and bad product delivery. According to Nigel Kersten, software leaders should leverage tech to create positive changes in organisational dynamics and relationships between teams.
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How to Prevent and Repay Technical Debt: What Teams, Tech Leads and Managers Can Do
Tech leads, project managers, and managers can prevent technical debt by giving software developers more time; in addition, they can plan for spare time and refactoring sprints to allow teams to improve code. To prioritise technical debt, development teams can show how much time we can save if we invest, and how complicated the software will become in the future if we don’t repay technical debt.
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Skills and Insights for First-Time Managers
The skills and capabilities required to be an effective first-time engineering manager are often orthogonal to those of an IC. These range from people management through to delivery of projects. We report on recent podcasts featuring Ben Greenberg, Matt Stratton and Shopify's James Stanier as they share practical management patterns for prospective, new and seasoned engineering managers.
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How to Develop a Culture of Quality in Software Organizations
According to Erika Chestnut, software organizations can develop a culture of quality with a clear commitment from leadership, not only to endorse quality efforts in software teams, but also to actively champion them. This commitment and advocacy should manifest in data-driven decision-making that strikes a balance between innovation and quality, ensuring that we maintain the highest quality.
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Why Stable Software Teams Aren't Always Best: Self-Selection Reteaming at Redgate
There are advantages to having the same group of people stay together, especially in achieving a time-bound software development project. However, in a world where we increasingly see product or stream-aligned teams who own long-living software from creation through to delivery, operation, and ongoing improvements, then optimising for very stable teams is not the best idea, Chris Smith argues.
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Why Leading without Blame Matters to Leaders and Teams
According to Diana Larsen, a culture of blame is a waste of human potential. People cannot achieve their best and most creative work when their energy goes into avoiding shame and blame. To lead without blame requires a shift toward learning and curiosity, she argues. It begins by building or restoring a relationship of trust and trustworthiness with the people.
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How Growing Tech Engineers Enables Growing Yourself as a Leader
It’s challenging to grow into a new role when you are still holding on to what you have been good at and really love, and what you’ve been doing in your previous role. By attaching to everything you used to do, you are also depriving the people around you of an opportunity to grow and learn to master those skills and take on those responsibilities too.
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How Big Tech Lost its Way - Accountability and Leadership
Accountability in big tech companies seems to be lacking; it’s rare for people in senior positions to be held accountable. Engineers should be conscious of the culture they want to work in and watch out for their well-being, whereas companies should invest in their leaders to support people’s best work. Andy Walker gave a talk about how big tech lost its way at QCon London 2023.
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Building a Lifelong Technical Career in Software Development
Technical experience matters because it adds to the value chain. In engineering companies, the technical knowledge accumulated by people over many years can provide the basis for the next generation of products and projects. Sven Reimers spoke about building a lifelong technical career in software development at QCon London 2023.
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Challenges and Skills for Staff+ Engineering, Learnings from QCon New York
The QCon New York 2023 track Staff+ Engineering: New Skills, New Challenges comprised four talks that went into decisions with buy-in, growing people, the art of staff+, and deciding between individual contributions and leading people.