Born or Made?
In the 1840s Thomas Carlyle gave a series of lectures that were later published as a book. His premise was that leaders are born with innate and unteachable traits. Leadership is the purview of a few very special people. Carlyle’s 19th century theory lives on, in...
4 Steps to Better Communication
Solving Communication Problems During my first visit with a new client, Doug, the VP of Engineering said, “Don, if we don’t get a handle on quality, it’s going to kill us. For every story we released into production, there was a new defect logged.” I often find that...
Don’t Let These 5 Assumptions About Leadership Hold You Back
Most of us have been taught—implicitly and explicitly a handful of definitions of leadership. We’ve heard over and over that leadership is: Positional authority. This happens in every formal hierarchy. A job has a set of delegated responsibilities. Because of the job...
5 Questions to Frame the Problem Space
Jerry Weinberg defined a problem as "a difference between what I have and what I want." When solving our own problems, this can be difficult enough. When we solve problems for other people, which is most of what software development is about, the difficulty increases...
Don’t Just Do Something …
The First Rule of Problem SolvingOdd as it seems, not all problems have to be solved. Action may actually create a problem that didn't exist in the first place. The problem-solving starting point should be "Don't just do something, stand there!" This non-action can...
Training or Learning?
Many training classes are designed to reduce variation—to ensure that people approach a task the same way. These classes reduce variety another way. They’re designed for people in a particular functional role or specialty. Think programming language classes,...
Mess or Problem?
Most of us in the software field are problem solvers. When we face a problem, we try to solve it. But some problems are vexatious—they don't stay fixed. In that case you may be facing many problems that are all tangled together—a mess. The Zeroth Rule of Problem...
Solving Other People’s Problems
I love to solve problems. Most people I've met in software development love to solve problems too. When you develop skill at problem solving, you get bigger, more complicated problems. These problems are given to you by someone such as the product owner, your boss and...
What Is Congruence?
At its very simplest, you might think that congruence means “say what you mean and mean what you say.” However, that definition has real limitations. Consider a conference session I attended. Brad, a consultant, stood at the front of a packed room, and shared stories...