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You're reading Leading Software People, a curated newsletter for people who are managing software teams, brought to you by the people who built Status Hero.
Team Communication
Use Mood Tracking to Increase Team Empathy
When you’re on a software team, you're keeping tabs on a lot of things: project scopes, timelines, progress, blockers, etc… But how much is your team tracking (or even consciously thinking about) each other’s moods? Probably not much, but team members' moods can be the missing piece that you need to increase team empathy and understanding.
That’s why we’re excited to announce that Status Hero now has mood tracking. Team members pick from a set of emoji to represent their different moods. Simple and easy. Check out the blog for full details and to learn how to enable it for your team!
The Silent Meeting Manifesto v1: Making meeting suck a little less
Meetings suck. David Gaska of Twitter agrees and argues the standard meeting format is to blame. So what's the alternative? “Silent Meetings” - where most of the time is spent thinking and discussing the topics at hand. Check out the article to learn how (and when) to use silent meetings at your company.
Leadership & Management
Should You Become a Manager?
Debating on whether or not to go the management route? Cap Watkins breaks it down for you. The pros, the cons, and everything else you should consider. But remember, "sometimes you just have to try if you want to know whether something’s right."
What does your team learn from success?
It's a well known best practice to analyze failures for their root causes. But how often do you analyze your team's successes to understand their root causes? If you're like most managers, it's not much. Marcus Blankenship explains how important it is to understand the factors that made success possible if you want to maximize your team's chance of achieving more of it in the future.
Coding as an Engineering Manager
Depending on the type of engineering management at your company, you might be able to work on code once in a while. Gergely Nemeth of Uber outlines some tips and best practices that he has learned over his career that allow him to roll up his sleeves and write code without creating situations that block his team.
How to Deliver Constructive Feedback in Difficult Situations
Giving feedback is hard. In this article, Dave Bailey explains how to make it easier by using "Nonviolent Communication" - a useful framework for expressing your feelings without criticizing, insulting, or putting people down. Check out the article to understand the importance of observations vs. evaluations, emotions vs. thoughts, universal needs vs. strategies, and requests vs. demands. If you manage people, you're definitely going to want to read this.
Productivity & Estimation
Snooze your way to success: how sleep affects your productivity
Sleep deprivation has become an epidemic, and it's not just affecting our moods, it's impacting our productivity. Aytekin Tank of JotForm, an admitted insomniac, reviews the science of how sleep deprivation affects our brains and ability to perform as well as the techniques that he's using to get more sleep.
Why your huge tech team isn’t delivering
Roger Nesbitt breaks down the five main reasons that explain why teams slow down as they increase in size, including the growing size and complexity of the app and misaligned backlogs. Check out the article to learn the other three and, most importantly, how you can overcome them.
People & Culture
The Essential Questions That Have Powered This Top Silicon Valley Manager’s Career
Julie Zhuo first started working at Facebook as an intern and went on to risen through the ranks to become VP of Product Design. In this article from First Round Review, Julie explains how she learned to use probing questions with her team and herself in order to really understand what was going on. Learn the questions new managers need to ask to build trust, have stellar 1:1s, and give feedback that lands.
Only Slightly Off-Topic
The Attention Economy Is Eating Our Brains
Dorian Peters takes a different and very interesting approach to combating the "attention economy" driven by companies that make money by having us pay attention to them, like YouTube and Facebook. Her concern is that "as companies get better at making us pay more attention to their products, we have less time to pay attention to things that matter, that actually make the world a better place. Things like parenting, friendship, self-development, and contributing to society."
But, what if we taxed it?
Kodak Got the Digital Picture Too Little, Too Late
In this fascinating article, Tracy Moran looks at how, despite inventing the first digital camera, Kodak's decisions allowed it to be overtaken by the competition:
“The hard part is transitioning. There were people inside Kodak that argued for years — actually decades — that the transition to digital, while bad for the current business model, was necessary because it was inevitable. All businesses, even those as big as Kodak once was, must strive to think big and outside the box. By not considering new strategies and business models, you have no chance of winning.”
Have you tried Status Hero yet?
Status Hero is a lightweight tool for tracking daily goals, activity, and status updates from your team. It works with your existing tools, like email, Jira, GitHub, Trello, and Slack. Skip costly meetings, map goals to accomplishments, and unearth blocking issues quickly. Status Hero helps you and your team get more done with fast access to the big picture. Give it a shot with a free trial.