stdlib

Find resources to solve your technical leadership challenges

Guide

A guide to distributed teams

Increment's comprehensive framework for building successful distributed teams through intentional communication, coordination, and culture

increment.com
Remote workCommunicationMeeting effectiveness
Article

How to Work Faster in a Remote Team

Zapier's strategies for maximizing remote team productivity through streamlined communication, flexible schedules, and intentional tool usage

zapier.com
Remote workCommunicationTeam performance
Article

The Tick-Tock of Apple

Apple's alternating strategy of revolutionary redesigns followed by incremental refinements in product development cycles

512pixels.net
InnovationBurnout & morale
Article

Time for a Code-Yellow?: A Blunt Instrument That Works

Google's crisis management approach where teams drop everything to intensely focus on solving existential problems through parallel solutions

nilam.ca
Decision-makingTeam performance
Article

The code quality pyramid

Fabian Zeindl's hierarchical framework prioritizing build performance and testability as foundations for sustainable feature development

fabianzeindl.com
Process inefficienciesTechnical debtTeam performance
Article

SomeEstimates

Shai Yallin's balanced perspective arguing that while estimates have limited value, some estimation practices can improve team collaboration

shaiyallin.com
CommunicationProcess inefficienciesDecision-making
Article

Ask HN: How do you deal with managers/customers questioning your estimates?

Hacker News community wisdom on defending estimates, managing pushback, and communicating technical complexity to non-technical stakeholders

news.ycombinator.com
CommunicationDecision-making
Article

Hacks for engineering estimates

Shubhro Saha's practical techniques for extracting more accurate estimates through informal questioning and confidence tracking

shubhro.com
CommunicationProject delays
Blog Post

Cut Out Time Estimates on Roadmaps: Get Into a Product Delivery Rhythm

Honeycomb's approach to replacing unreliable time estimates with flexible delivery rhythms and graduated planning cycles

honeycomb.io
Project delaysProcess inefficienciesBurnout & morale
Blog Post

Yes, You Should Estimate Software Projects

Gergely Orosz's pragmatic case for estimation as a tool for focus, stakeholder trust, and continuous improvement despite inherent challenges

blog.pragmaticengineer.com
Decision-makingTeam performanceProject delays
Article

How I've run major projects | benkuhn.net

Ben Kuhn's battle-tested approach: focus intensely (6+ hours daily), maintain detailed victory plans, run fast OODA loops, and overcommunicate

benkuhn.net
Project delaysCommunicationProcess inefficiencies
Article

Rescuing a project in progress

Jason Fried's guide to rescuing failing projects: reduce scope, clarify ownership, communicate honestly, and focus on shipping something valuable

world.hey.com
Process inefficienciesDecision-makingCommunication
Article

Project Management for Software Engineers

Kevin Sookocheff's guide bridging the gap between engineering and project management with practical frameworks and techniques

sookocheff.com
Project delaysMeeting effectivenessCommunication
Article

How finishing what you start makes teams more productive and predictable

Lucas F. Costa uses Little's Law to prove limiting work-in-progress dramatically improves cycle times and team predictability

lucasfcosta.com
Team performanceProcess inefficiencies
Article

How Big Tech Runs Tech Projects and the Curious Absence of Scrum

Gergely Orosz reveals Big Tech secret: engineers lead projects with high autonomy, no Scrum - 'competent people need less structure'

newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com
Process inefficienciesInnovation
Article

Driving engineers to an arbitrary date is a value destroying mistake

Arbitrary deadlines force engineers to deliver 'Something™ by the Date™' creating chaos and features nobody wants - try parallel experiments instead

iism.org
Process inefficienciesInnovation
Article

6 Principles for Building a World Class TPM Team

DoorDash's Sophia Vicent shares 6 principles for world-class TPM teams: centralized structure, high leverage, fierce prioritization, technical clarity, blameless culture, and organizational recognition

doordash.engineering
Decision-makingCross-functional alignmentScaling
Article

Great engineering teams focus on milestones instead of projects

Shift from monolithic projects to 1-3 week milestones that deliver value incrementally and create constant achievement streams

rubick.com
Process inefficienciesTeam performance
Article

Software Estimation Is Hard. Do It Anyway

Jacob Kaplan-Moss: estimation is notoriously hard but critical for career advancement - treat it as a learnable skill through practice and reflection

jacobian.org
Project delaysCareer development
Article

Directly Responsible Individuals

GitLab's DRI model assigns single-person accountability for every decision and project, eliminating confusion about ownership

about.gitlab.com
Decision-makingProcess inefficienciesScaling
Blog Post

How to Lead a Project - as a Software Engineer

Gergely Orosz's comprehensive guide for engineers stepping into project leadership: from kickoffs to retrospectives with practical steps

blog.pragmaticengineer.com
CommunicationMeeting effectivenessProject delays
Blog Post

Efficient Software Project Management at its Roots

Gergely Orosz's four pillars of efficient project management: clarity from start, directional milestones, ongoing transparency, and proactive dependency management

blog.pragmaticengineer.com
Process inefficienciesProject delaysCommunication
Article

WaterfallProcess

Martin Fowler explains why Waterfall persists despite fundamental flaws: it seems logical but assumes stable requirements that rarely exist

martinfowler.com
Process inefficienciesProject delays
Article

Who are you trying to impress with your deadlines?

Jatin questions the obsession with arbitrary deadlines and asks who we're really trying to impress with unrealistic timelines

jatins.gitlab.io
Project delaysBurnout & moraleTechnical debt
Community

Agile Lite: Agile without all the burnout

Dave B's burnout-preventing methodology: 3 weeks on, 1 week off, no death marches, minimal meetings, and developers actually rest

github.com
Burnout & moraleMeeting effectiveness
Article

JIRA is an antipattern

Jon Evans argues JIRA fragments project vision, turning developers into ticket-completing machines who lose sight of the bigger picture

techcrunch.com
Process inefficienciesKnowledge sharingCommunication
Article

My 20-Year Experience of Software Development Methodologies

20-year journey through software methodologies reveals they're 'collective fictions' - useful for collaboration but not sacred texts

zwischenzugs.wordpress.com
Process inefficienciesCommunication
Blog Post

How should deadlines be used in software engineering?

Thoughtful analysis of deadline effectiveness, distinguishing between helpful constraints and harmful pressure in software development

blog.keen.io
Project delaysBurnout & moraleDecision-making
Article

Will your project be a success? Find out in five minutes.

Quick diagnostic tool to assess project health through critical success factors and early warning indicators

projectsmart.co.uk
Project delaysDecision-making
Article

How we structure our work and teams at Basecamp

Basecamp's project-centric approach to team organization emphasizing transparency, centralized communication, and flexible team management

basecamp.com
CommunicationProcess inefficienciesScaling
Article

15 Fundamental Laws of Software Development

Essential principles from Occam's Razor to Hofstadter's Law that reveal software development's human and organizational challenges

exceptionnotfound.net
Project delaysDecision-makingMeeting effectiveness
Framework

The LinkedIn DPH Framework

LinkedIn's Developer Productivity and Happiness framework for measuring and improving engineering team effectiveness

linkedin.github.io
Team performanceBurnout & moraleDecision-making
Article

The Toyota Way

Toyota's management principles of continuous improvement and respect for people that revolutionized manufacturing and software development

en.wikipedia.org
Process inefficienciesTeam performanceDecision-making
Article

Bottleneck #03: Product v Engineering

Martin Fowler's analysis of how functional silos create destructive product vs engineering conflicts in scaling companies

martinfowler.com
CommunicationConflict resolutionCross-functional alignment
Book

How Amazon Web Services (AWS) Achieved an \$11.5B Run Rate by Working Backwards

How Amazon's 'Working Backwards' process of writing press releases before building products helped AWS reach $11.5B revenue

hitenism.com
Decision-makingProcess inefficienciesInnovation
Blog Post

The most important thing Dropbox did to scale Product Management

Inside look at Dropbox's product management scaling strategies and organizational structure evolution

medium.com
ScalingDecision-making
Blog Post

Bureaucrat mode

Andrew Chen's analysis of how well-intentioned values like collaboration create self-replicating bureaucracies that kill innovation

andrewchen.substack.com
Process inefficienciesDecision-makingInnovation
Article

Constructive Chaos vs. Clusterf***s

Bob Sutton explores how intention and structured boundaries distinguish productive organizational chaos from destructive dysfunction

art19.com
InnovationConflict resolution
Article

Simple Rules Set You Free

Bob Sutton and Kathleen Eisenhardt discuss how clear, customized simple rules create liberation not constraint in complex organizations

art19.com
Process inefficienciesTeam performance
Article

The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code

Joel Spolsky's quick 12-question test for evaluating software team quality and development discipline

joelonsoftware.com
Team performanceProcess inefficienciesTechnical debt
Blog Post

TBM 245: The Magic Prioritization Trick

John Cutler's three-step framework for decoupling urgency from value to make more objective prioritization decisions

cutlefish.substack.com
Decision-making
Article

Prioritization is a Political Problem as Much as an Analytical Problem

Rich Mironov's analysis of how organizational politics and conflicting stakeholder demands make prioritization more than just spreadsheets

mironov.com
Decision-makingCross-functional alignment
Article

How To Do Less

Alex Turek's framework for achieving more by ruthlessly focusing on one priority at a time and saying no to everything else

alexturek.com
Decision-makingBurnout & morale
Article

How to Create, Structure, Design, Prepare and Hold a Great Presentation

Information Architects' guide to applying the Five Canons of Rhetoric for powerful presentation design and delivery

ia.net
CommunicationMeeting effectivenessKnowledge sharing
Article

1 Trick to Finish Your Next Talk in Style

Master the art of memorable presentation endings with a simple technique that leaves audiences inspired rather than relieved

davidnihill.com
CommunicationMeeting effectiveness
Article

How to present to executives

Navigate executive presentations successfully with Will Larson's strategies for handling interruptions, staying strategic, and getting decisions

lethain.com
CommunicationDecision-makingMeeting effectiveness
Blog Post

Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people

The Columbia disaster case study: how a single cluttered PowerPoint slide contributed to a fatal decision that cost seven lives

mcdreeamiemusings.com
CommunicationDecision-makingMeeting effectiveness
Blog Post

How to tell great spoken stories

Learn the neuroscience and techniques behind compelling storytelling that makes your presentations memorable and persuasive

julian.com
CommunicationMeeting effectiveness
Showing 625-672 of 1110 resources

Aboutstdlib

The stdlib collection is a community-curated library of practical, immediately useful, battle-tested resources for technical leadership. Each resource is designed to be immediately applicable to your role. New resources are added based on community feedback and emerging best practices.