Intro As Interim CTO I deal with management topics. But I also deal a lot with IT architecture and high-performance systems. In one of my latest projects I had to deal with lots of IoT time-series data. Time series-data is a bit special because it has some distinct properties. Fi … | Continue reading
Intro Ever had the challenge of a CEO coming to one of you teams and requesting them to implement a super-urgent feature? I guess everyone leading tech teams or departments was already in that spot. But saying yes to every urgent request is simply not possible. It’s about priorit … | Continue reading
Musk and Twitter Musk is a salesman. Somewhere in 2022 he bought Twitter to make it his social network. I am not sure if this was his plan from day 1 - but the publicly bragged about buying twitter so much that he had to buy it. Otherwise that bragging would have put him into ser … | Continue reading
Intro Authentication and authorization is the bread and butter business of IT systems and web apps. Done right they allow you to write applications that integrate with any authentication systems seamlessly. From simple user/password to Google, LDAP and custom SAML systems. Good a … | Continue reading
Intro Somewhen in 2022 I decided to switch from normal hot showers to cold showers. I can’t really remember why I did this. We had an energy crisis in Germany and some politicians recommended to take cold showers. Sure - but I am not the person that starts taking cold showers jus … | Continue reading
Introduction GPT models are remarkable and can do a lot of things. From writing code to translating texts to generating new content. I personally use GPT models to generate texts from bullet points very very frequently. I no longer write emails myself, but collect the important p … | Continue reading
Introduction When working as Interim CTO the topic of SEO frequently comes up. SEO influences many management decisions and for an interim manager it is crucial to know the basics. Good SEO can make a great company, bad SEO can break. Let’s check out how I set up SEO for my own b … | Continue reading
Discover how GPT-4 can assist in writing tests for JavaScript code. In this blog post, we dive into a practical example of generating Jasmine tests for a given JavaScript function. Not only does the AI model understand the code's structure and logic, but it also creates detailed, … | Continue reading
TL;DR Consider using two basic metrics for your tech teams: “Cycle Time” and “Team Happiness”. It is crucial to ensure they are correctly defined and understood by all team members. Once these metrics are embedded, allow your teams the freedom to experiment with new ones as neede … | Continue reading
Establishing Leadership in Growing Organizations In mature tech organizations, each of your teams would have a team lead. The team lead takes care of various responsibilities such as conducting 1:1s, managing performance, handling PIPs, allocating budgets, and much more. These te … | Continue reading
A Recurring Theme Sometimes you read books that are so good that you re-read them multiple times. “Peopleware” by Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister is such a book. The theme of the book is that most problems are people problems - not tech problems. And this is true today - as it was tru … | Continue reading
When Software Slowly - then Suddenly - Gets Outdated In my time as consultant I’ve seen many companies and software systems. One recurring theme was outdated libraries in self-written software. And I can see where this comes from: Engineering departments are there to deliver grea … | Continue reading
Intro I just met a friend and we came to the topic of procastination. People that procastinate obviously can’t reach their full potential. Procastination is not cool. How can we then make sure to not do it? I am myself a master-procastinator - but I found some ways to hack myself … | Continue reading
Intro OKRs can be used to manage the team of a report jointly with the report, or manage one report (personal OKRs). Try out what fits best for you. I find it useful having OKRs to manage reports / teams of reports over quarters and years. I posted my OKR sheet as Google Spreadsh … | Continue reading
My One-on-One Template Over the years I’ve developed a pretty cool way to run one-on-ones. Well. At least this is what I think about it ;) I usually keep my own one-on-one notes and do not share these notes with my report directly. Many people do this differently and this is also … | Continue reading
Introduction Some engineering departments rock. Some suck. But how can you tell the difference? One option is to run an exhaustive due diligence. Examine all teams. Examine all processes. Examine technology. Examine management. That’s important. But it will take time and your can … | Continue reading
TL;DR Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) are a lightweight tool to document your decisions. They were invented by Michael Nygard in 2011. ADRs help you, your team and a potential successor to understand why something has been built in a certain way. ADRs are a great tool to thi … | Continue reading
Two Characteristics of Great Managers Many companies have large matrices to grade managers based on an extensive set of criteria. In my opinion there are exactly two things successful managers do: The manager goes the extra mile and does exceptional things frequently The teams of … | Continue reading
Two Ways to Praise Praise is important. If someone did something good we should mention that! But there are two ways you can do that Option one is to say “You did this very well!”. Option two is to say “Thank you for supporting us”. The Superior Way to Praise The first version is … | Continue reading
Background Our challenge was to insert data into a sqlite database as quickly as possible. You can find a lot of information on insert performance on the internet. Most information is already a couple of years old. Sqlite has improved. The drivers have improved. Java has improved … | Continue reading
Intro Being an exceptional leader takes behaviors that everyone can observe. But there are also smaller, subtle things that the best leaders do. One of these small, subtle things is to praise and say thanks! Praise Among Employees - An Example One of our teams is currently creati … | Continue reading
Jefferson What? I recently learned about the Jefferson dinner. How does it look like? 8-15 people with diverse opinions. All at one table. With food. And one big topic. Caveat: Only one person talks at a time. At the end everyone gives a short summary what they’ve learned. Conclu … | Continue reading
TL;DR The product manager has to work on two areas: Discovery and delivery. Most of the time is spent on discovery. Engineers will handle most delivery tasks. Product managers that spend too much time on delivery will fail in both areas. Note: I am using “product manager” and “pr … | Continue reading
TL;DR Meetings without clear structure and action items are a waste of time Use a checklist to remind everyone to do effective meetings Intro You likely all know this kind of meetings. Someone invites a group to discuss an important topic. The meeting starts. A lively discussion … | Continue reading
TL;DR Go without a separate QA team by default Hire engineers that write tests on the proper level and own the quality aspect QA sometimes make sense when applied carefully as detailed below Intro I just read a very nice post by Regina Gerbeaux and Case Sandberg about “Setting up … | Continue reading
Peter Drucker and one question Peter Drucker is likely the founder of the science of management and leadership. His research centered around one question: “What makes leaders effective?”. That question sounds simple, but leaders come in all shapes, sizes and with many many differ … | Continue reading
A reorganization that went well I recently completed a reorg of an IT department for a client. This reorg went surprisingly well. Let’s checkout some potential reasons for that. The status quo The client was in growth mode. The whole department was still thinking of itself as one … | Continue reading
Agile makes the organization slower. Wat? Klaus Leopold is an experienced agile consultant. He made the observation that changing your teams towards an agile methodology like SCRUM won’t make your organization faster. In many cases your organization and delivery gets even slower … | Continue reading
Intro Go and Rust are some relatively new languages not that widely used languages that compile down to native code for a platform. That’s a difference to languages like Java / Kotlin that run on a JVM and use a middle layer called bytecode that then gets executed on the host pla … | Continue reading
Caveat: By “leader” I equally mean leadership on CTO level, but also experienced engineers on an individual contributor level. And make no mistake - I am an engineer by heart and made many mistakes along the way. This article is just a way for me to learn from my mistakes. Your t … | Continue reading
Intro Accelerate became a classic book describing what makes a high performing IT department. Most IT books talk about successful concepts, but not many of them have science to back their claims up. Accelerate is different in that regard - it has a more solid scientific grounding … | Continue reading
Intro As part of my management assignments I am often tasked with strategy-related topics. Hamilton Helmer’s book “7 Powers” is a great way to think about business strategy. Especially for startups this is an excellent framework. Earning money and product-market-fit is important … | Continue reading
Intro Recently I had a very interesting discussion with a colleague about why to test software at all. Doesn’t it make us slower? Isn’t it more important to get feedback from users quickly by drafting the software and then adding tests subsequently? At first I was: What the hell? … | Continue reading