Find resources to solve your technical leadership challenges
How to architect your organization to do architecture with or without architects.
A personal account of transitioning from a senior software engineer to an engineering manager, sharing lessons learned during the first year.
Principles, rules, and roles keep things from changing.
A Q&A discussion exploring how organizations can scale effectively when there is no shared alignment on values or culture.
Through my professional experience, while serving my customers, working with Scrum Teams and training people in Professional Scrum, I have observed that some Scrum Masters only work to serve the Development Team and the Product Owner.
The article explores why remote workers often feel isolated and offers practical strategies for leaders to create connection and reduce loneliness in distributed teams.
In the second half of 2019, my team and I invested over 250 hours running an in-depth study of 190 business leaders from around the world. We dug into the simple question of what's holding people back from being a more successful and effective leader.
An article exploring how the use of large language models requires a new approach to engineering context within complex systems.
An analysis of the buy vs build decision in software projects, emphasizing that changing context makes the "right" choice evolve over time.
This blog post explains why traditional fall business updates can be disengaging and offers practical, interactive alternatives to make them more effective for engineering and leadership teams.
The article explains how an overemphasis on job titles can limit personal and professional growth and offers strategies for focusing on impact, skill development, and value creation instead.
Psychological safety at work: Why is it important and what can you as a manager do to increase psychological safety in the workplace?
The article explores the two common anxieties engineers and managers face when moving between technical and leadership roles, and offers guidance on balancing the pendulum.
An article outlining nine common pitfalls to avoid when building internal products, offering practical advice from Skyscanner Engineering.
What is Feminine Leadership? Is it referring to Female Leaders, or is it leadership only directed towards women? This article dives into the 'Masculine' and 'Feminine' Sides of Leadership.
An article that outlines the key qualities and behaviours that make an effective technical leader.
An article exploring the emerging role of a Chief AI Officer, its strategic importance, responsibilities, and the impact on organizations as AI becomes a core business function.
We had interviewees use ChatGPT without their interviewer knowing. Here's what happened.
An interview spotlighting Mark Wood, CTO at Graze, discussing his career path, leadership insights, and personal background.
This post explains why delegation is an art, not a science, and provides a practical template to help managers prepare and support teammates effectively when delegating work.
John Cutler shares a four-quadrant matrix that helps technical leaders diagnose where their organization sits between guided autonomy and heavy process, and invites discussion about scaling challenges.
It's the B Players who really keep a team running, here's how to keep them performing.
A startup manager explores how moderate stress can motivate while unchecked stress stifles innovation, and offers practical strategies to balance stress and boost creativity within teams.
As a CTO, it's not just what you say that matters, it's how you say it. Whether you're shaping strategy, securing buy-in, or rallying a team, the ability to craft and share a compelling narrative is one of the most effective tools in your kit.
It is useful to build rapport with more than just your peers or immediate direct reports. Skip-level meetings will get you there.
The article explains how attaching core values to memorable stories helps leaders ensure their teams understand and embody those values, using the historic example of "A Message to Garcia".
De-risk your first 90 days in a new role by building reputational capital to invest in your long-term initiatives
List of activities that a Great, Amazing and an Exceptional Manager should do, as per Gallup, and other experts, including Google.
A LinkedIn post that uses cooking as a metaphor to illustrate how managers should focus on improving interactions rather than optimizing individual actions.
Calculating DORA change failure rate is simple once you get your data right. Learn what you should consider before you start measuring it.
This article discusses challenges when a Scrum team follows Scrum practices but their management does not understand or support it, offering insights for technical leaders.
Could fluid teams be the next popular iteration in Agile ways of working? Discover the pros and cons of experimenting with fluid teams!
We want to succeed but when managers communicate poorly high-aspiration people pull their hair out. Read 4 simple steps to help you find clarity.
Learn exactly what you need to do to become a more strategic leader, including practical steps to incorporating strategic work into your daily schedule.
An explanation of Deming's 95/5 rule, highlighting how the majority of quality issues stem from systemic factors rather than individual workers, and offering practical advice for technical leaders.
Read all about how CTOs around the world are solving problems across Culture, Technology, Operations, Product and Scalability, and hear interviews with CTOs who've been through the learning process and come out on top
The author experiments with GitHub Copilot, evaluating its AI code suggestions and impact on developer productivity.
Recover quickly when things go wrong.
Leadership and direction setting are essential components of any successful business strategy. This article explores the insights of Stephen Bungay, a renowned thought leader on business strategy, and how his ideas can help technical leaders set effective direction.
From throat to choke to empowered ownership
Key highlights from Michael's presentation during CTO Craft Con: Toronto, focusing on the importance and value of storytelling.
At Thoughtworks, we leverage a business security maturity model framework to equip business leaders with an actionable mental model for security.
The article explores how treating management as a craft bridges the gap between managing and leading, emphasizing the need for managers to lead and leaders to manage.
A reflective blog post about returning to first principles in leadership and engineering, offering insights for technical leaders.
The path to building a career framework for tech organization.
An article outlining how startups can transition from ad-hoc incident handling to formal, scalable incident response programs.
A concise guide that explains the responsibilities of a manager and offers practical advice for technical leaders to support their teams effectively.
Workers in Australia did not resign in large numbers after COVID, but many experienced burnout; a new survey identifies causes and suggests solutions for leaders.
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.