agile management

Three things you need to stop doing when becoming an engineering manager

by Matthias Marschall on January 13, 2017 · 3 comments

You are a great software engineer with years of experience under your belt. You’ve seen too many technologies come and go to easily fall for the next hyped framework. You choose the tools which get the job done and have a good chance to keep working for the years to come.

Despite growing experience, your personal growth slowed to a crawl. You’re wondering what the next step should be as many of your peers have chosen to become an engineering manager.

Before you set off down this road, be aware of the implications of such a step: becoming an engineering manager is not a promotion, but a change of careers!

Why becoming an engineering manager is a change of careers

There are three things you have to completely change when switching from engineer to manager. You need to:

stop negativity
stop writing production code alone
stop saying “No” without providing options

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3 Reasons Why Your Team Needs Rituals

by Matthias Marschall on July 10, 2014 · 1 comment

Nathan Borror

It’s the same every morning: you get up and grab your morning coffee. No matter whether you brew it at home or fetch it on the road, your morning coffee is a ritual you never want to miss.

A ritual is a practice everyone knows how to do. It’s conducted regularly or on well defined occasions. Rituals help to create an identity for a group of people: nations, sports clubs or teams. How can rituals help form a high performing team?
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3 Reasons To Avoid Overloading Your Teams

by Matthias Marschall on April 16, 2013 · 0 comments

Burning Image

Monday morning on the highway. Your speed: 0 mph. You’re stuck in the usual rush hour traffic jam because the capacity of this road is exceeded. And it’s now obvious you’ll reach your destination much later than if the road were empty.

But what happens if you exceed the capacity of your development team? What happens when you cram in more features than the team can develop? Your features will get stuck in development. Let’s see how this can happen.
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Where Agile Starts

by Matthias Marschall on October 2, 2012 · 4 comments

atomicjeep

In most enterprises, employees are referred to as resources. Heck, it’s even worse. There’s a whole department dealing with human resources. This, my friend, is bad. It’s bad because it kills the most basic ingredient for agile success: Respect. Respect for your employees. Let’s have a look and see how respect builds the foundation for your success with agile.
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