safety

Communication, Teams

Please, break the build!

The feeling when you hit the button and push the code to server. You’re done! You’ve implemented a new feature that’s going to be ready for the end-user. Soon. You see that the code has reached the build machine, and a new build gets scheduled. You get up to take a quick break and end up chatting with a few colleagues on the way. When you get back you see there are 10 messages in your inbox and the same number of notifications on your team chat.

Looking around, you see that the scheduled build has failed. And now there are 5 other schedules builds that ended up failing. It looks like you’ve just broken the build. The rest of the team of 20 developers are now blocked from committing in their code.

You sit down feeling… Continue Reading

Developer growth, Practice Empathy

Leading teams with Empathy -Providing Psychological Safety

As a technical team lead, you are in a unique position to facilitate the growth of your team or watch it spin out of control. You can run it with an iron fist or meekly get overrun by strong forces. You can encourage psychological safety or allow watch things fall apart in a toxic environment.

What makes or breaks a team? How can you bring out the best in the people around you? What can you do as a technical team lead to ensure the success of your team, and as an extension your product? Continue Reading