stdlib

Find resources to solve your technical leadership challenges

Article

6 Principles for Building a World Class TPM Team

A TPM team thrives when it follows six clear principles: strong charter, data-driven metrics, defined career ladders, cross-functional partnership, intentional hiring, and a culture of psychological safety.

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
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
Blog Post

Presentation Zen: Living large: "Takahashi Method" uses king-sized text as a visual

Master the Takahashi Method: using massive text as visuals to create memorable, high-impact presentations without complex graphics

presentationzen.blogs.com
CommunicationMeeting effectiveness
Guide

A Five Minutes Guide to Better Typography

Transform your presentations and documents with 5 simple typography rules that take minutes to learn but make a professional difference

pierrickcalvez.com
CommunicationKnowledge sharing
Article

10 Tips For Using OKRs Effectively

Avoid common OKR pitfalls with 10 battle-tested tips from companies that have successfully scaled with objectives and key results

rushabhdoshi.com
Decision-makingScalingCross-functional alignment
Article

Objectives and Key Results

GitLab's open handbook on OKRs showing how a fully remote company implements and scales objectives and key results transparently

about.gitlab.com
ScalingRemote workCross-functional alignment
Blog Post

Manager OKRs, Maker OKRs: How Early Stage Startups Should Think About Goal-Setting

Startups should use lightweight OKRs that split manager-level objectives from maker-level execution, keeping focus and avoiding heavyweight bureaucracy.

hunterwalk.medium.com
Decision-makingScalingProcess inefficienciesTeam performance
Article

OKR Examples (And Tips for Creating Your Own)

50+ real OKR examples across engineering, product, sales, and HR with practical tips for crafting effective objectives and key results

okrexamples.co
Team performanceCross-functional alignment
Article

OKR: The Ultimate Objectives and Key Results Resource

The definitive OKR resource hub with guides, templates, case studies, and tools for successful implementation at any scale

weekdone.com
Team performanceCross-functional alignment
Guide

A Modern Guide to Lean OKRs

Strip away OKR complexity with a lean approach focusing on what truly matters: outcomes over outputs and continuous learning

worldpositive.com
Process inefficienciesTeam performance
Article

How to Make OKRs Actually Work at Your Startup

Angus Davis's strategies from Swipely for implementing OKRs effectively at startups through collaboration, transparency, and separation from performance reviews

firstround.com
Team performanceCommunicationProcess inefficiencies
Blog Post

How to Use OKRs for Quarterly and Annual Planning

Practical guide to implementing OKRs with templates, examples, and a proven framework for quarterly and annual planning cycles

wrike.com
Decision-makingProcess inefficienciesScaling
Article

With Goals, FAST Beats SMART

Replace SMART goals with FAST goals: frequently discussed, ambitious, specific, and transparent for better organizational performance

sloanreview.mit.edu
Team performanceCommunication
Article

Stop inventing product problems; start solving customer problems

Pavel Samsono's insights on why low-performing teams choose problems based on what they'd like to solve rather than what customers actually need

uxdesign.cc
Decision-makingTeam performance
Article

How-to Evaluate a Product Roadmap, for Engineers

Stephen Meszaros's framework for engineers to evaluate product roadmaps through strategic alignment, customer focus, and achievability assessment

stephen.fm
Cross-functional alignmentDecision-making
Article

How to plan?

Kellan Elliott-McCrea's planning principles for engineering leaders, emphasizing fewer things, avoiding pure bottom-up planning, and framework-driven decision making

kellanem.com
Process inefficienciesDecision-makingCross-functional alignment
Article

Leading and Lagging Indicators: How to measure Product OKRs

Prioritize leading indicators in OKRs to get fast feedback and avoid decisions based only on lagging metrics like revenue or churn.

herbig.co
Decision-makingProcess inefficiencies
Article

Measure what matters. Even if you don’t fully control it

Product teams should be measured against full business outcomes, even when control is partial, rather than narrow, esoteric metrics like isolated A/B test results.

madsjohnsen.com
Decision-makingCross-functional alignment
Article

Key Performance Indicators Infographic

Visual guide to understanding and implementing Key Performance Indicators with best practices for data visualization and reporting

news.kpiinstitute.org
Team performanceDecision-making
Showing 769-816 of 1215 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.