I have had the fortune of learning a lot about development processes and how people approach work. It is always amazing to understand what excites people about work and how they see their role in creating our products. I find great pride in helping people evolve their practices to improve how products come together. Let's explore some observations I have made about what drive people to optimize, and some ideas on how to move to a different way of thinking. What drives optimization? I have noticed a typical driver in how many groups and companies define their development practices. These practices start by working to prevent pains the team has encountered in the past. We build our documentation, processes, and automation around avoiding things that have happened to us before.  “This happened once, three years ago, and in response, we implemented a rule to prevent it from happening again.”  I will share a scenario from my experience.  One of the teams I work closely w...

Just about every problem I work through in my role boils down to needing to communicate more and more often. Early on, as an engineering leader, I had to tackle a strange communication problem. I led a small team of 3-4 engineers who supported our production development teams. This team had fully embraced a Scrum mindset, and due to rapid prototyping requirements, the team worked in one-week sprints. This means we had planning, standups, retro, and demos every five days. Between standups and other ceremonies, they collaborated daily, looking for peer reviews and technical support. They were proud of their ability to be direct with each other, not needing to "sugarcoat" the message. Yet there was still a problem. The team was always working in drastically different directions and at various technical levels, constantly bickering about what needed to be done. One-on-ones with me were full of complaints about other team members and were always heated. How could there be such...