Productivity on CTOMultiplier

Systems Thinking

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 18:11:56 +0000

Occasionally I work with clients who have a major problem in delivering on time and to the agreed quality. When I start to investigate the causes I find that when I talk to the product team they say the problem is that engineering is not fast enough and/or they produce too many defects, and when I talk to engineering they tell me that they get incomplete specifications from product, which means they have to spend more time developing, and sometimes they have to undo changes because they were not what the customer wanted. It is common for these organisations to see themselves as a set of silos, and to believe that the solution lies in “fixing” one of these silos (e.g. engineering). But this is a reductionist view of the problem, and rarely helps to solve it. To address the root of the problem, we need to rethink how we understand the organisation, and this is where systems thinking can help. As Einstein said: “We cannot solve problems by thinking in the same way as when we create them”.

The impact of culture on performance

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 17:44:00 +0000

This week I want to talk about a podcast from techlead journal (link at the end), in which they interview the author of the book Wrong fit, right fit. In the podcast, the author (André Martin) talks about company culture as a determining factor for the performance and happiness of an employee. Quote a Gallup report that says $8.8 trillion is lost due to employees’ lack of engagement with their companies. André will equate working in a company with which you don’t have a cultural fit to writing with your left hand (or right if you are left-handed). You can do it, and you will produce…but the quality will be much worse and you will feel unfulfilled.

How to conduct effective meetings

Thu, 26 Oct 2023 10:53:18 +0000

There is often talk about whether meetings are worthwhile, and whether they should be abolished altogether because they are a waste of time. Personally I find this view somewhat extreme, but I understand that it responds to the fact that in many cases the way we conduct meetings is effectively a waste of time and money, and a source of frustration and demotivation. Throughout my career I have worked with quite a few companies, and in all of them I have participated in unproductive meetings, and this seems to be a constant no matter who you talk to. It’s hard to find someone who, when you ask them about how they do meetings in their company, doesn’t complain.

Do you know what DPE is?

Wed, 27 Sep 2023 07:23:39 +0000

DPE stands for Developer Productivity Engineering and is the name of a new discipline that aims to improve developer productivity through automation, observability and tool enhancement.

The work of a developer when programming has three phases: code -> build -> test, the developer repeats this sequence tens or even hundreds of times a day. And in many cases the build and test phases can take in the order of minutes. For example: if the build of an application takes 5 minutes and the developer does 10 builds per day, that’s 50 minutes that the developer has to wait per day. Similarly, the testing phase can increase the developer’s waiting time. Multiply that by the number of developers in a company and the cost is significant.

Guide to do Code Reviews in your team

Tue, 25 Jul 2023 15:42:32 +0000

Code reviews are a practice that has become widespread in recent years, where one or more developers review the new code implemented by another colleague, with the aim of detecting code quality issues, bugs, vulnerabilities, bad practices, etc… . This allows feedback loops to be shortened, which we know is very beneficial because the later a problem is discovered, the higher the cost of fixing it and the greater the potential business impact.

Is your Scrum suffering from low productivity? Your problem could be WIP

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 09:18:13 +0000

It has been proven that the more work in progress a person or a team has, the more time it takes to close tasks. On the one hand, if we are doing several tasks at the same time and we deliver them at the same time, the delivery time will be the sum of the time of doing the two tasks. However, if we work on the tasks in sequential order, the first task will be delivered earlier, and the average delivery time will also be lower.

The cost of being reactive vs. being proactive

Sun, 04 Jun 2023 16:30:16 +0000

On countless occasions we hear that we need to be more proactive. In other words, taking the initiative and anticipating problems. But being proactive almost always comes at a cost, which is paid in advance, at best a little time investment, at worst a lot of time and money. We often look at the cost of being proactive, but overlook the cost of not being proactive. Especially when we see that the cost of being proactive is high, we often dismiss it outright, without seeing the other side of the coin.