Here’s why the QCD triangle might be a little misguided.
As with a lot of managers, I’ve lived my career by the QCD triangle — that is, quality, cost, and, delivery. If the term is not familiar, perhaps the old adage is — “ build it right, fast, or cheap: pick two. “ And I definitely still believe in this idea. There’s no better way to illustrate how certain expectations from management can be, well, downright impossible.
However, conversations I’ve had recently with people has led me to believe that the QCD triangle, or at least some interpretations of it, might be a little misguided. …
In a remote setting, accountability is important. But equally important is safety.
Here’s another lesson from 2020 and this one comes in the light of working fully remote for almost a year now and reflecting on all the organizational complexities that come with it. What complexities, specifically? First off, the lack of visibility. Without a physical space to gather, we’ve lost all visual cues as to how people are actually doing (and, admittedly, what they’re actually doing). Secondly, when you can’t just pop your head up and ask a question, there’s an inevitable slowdown of information and obvious challenges in decision making that comes with that.
I’m lucky to have come out of it relatively better off, but I also wish I could have done more for others.
I find it funny when I look back at my 2019 retrospective, where I wrote that it was highly unlikely that I could beat that year in terms of being “transformational”. It turns out that was kind of true. But while I’ve personally decided to stay the course for this year, the entire world just happened to change super drastically. A little bit forward to early this year (still pre-COVID) and I wrote this update on where I was at at the time, and even that seems ages away now. …
A few things I wish for you and for all of us after such a challenging year.
Hey there! I know you’ve probably been having a rough year. I assume we all have, in varying degrees and each our own unique circumstances. My problems may not be the same as yours, but I believe regardless of what you and I have been through this year, we all deserve a break these next few days to enjoy time with the people we love or simply time with ourselves. And, yes, we deserve to have a better year ahead.
So here are a few things I wish for you (and all of us) this Christmas:
- I wish for some sense of normalcy next year — if not what we’ve always known as “normal”, at least some new normal we can all adapt to. …
We want to solve problems but we also have to admit that we can’t solve all of them.
In my last article on silent culture killers, I talked about failing to address rumors as one of the things that seem harmless on the surface but can do quite a lot of damage if left unfixed. I felt that point alone merited an article of its own. Consider this my 2020 reflection (or at least the first of several).
Here are four silent culture killers you need to watch out for, and some tips on how you can avoid them in your organization.
Company culture — a holy grail that most companies hold in very high regard and rightfully so. Yet, despite all the motivational speeches and slogans plastered throughout our office walls, we often find ourselves in holes that are a bit difficult to climb out of and cycles that seem… counterproductive, to say the least.
There are, of course, the obvious red flags you need to watch out for — power struggles and in-fighting, incompetent or absentee leadership, expectations of overtime as a norm… the list goes on. …
Emphasizing teamwork can occasionally send the wrong message.
Let me share something I’ve recently learned the hard way. Back story — one of the engineers on my team has decided to pursue another opportunity and leave our company, which caught me and most the rest of our team a bit off-guard. There were no warning signs and no discussion around the possibility as far as I’m aware. But it happened.
After a deep reflection, I realized and learned something that might have led to this unpleasant surprise. I now understand that emphasizing teamwork can occasionally send the wrong message. As a company, we highly value teamwork, and we’re proud to have software engineers who buy into that. We all believe that we are only as effective as the team is effective, and that the sum of individual results is never as valuable as the entire team’s result. …
While the golden rule is definitely powerful advise, this is about that “platinum rule”.
While it seems pedantic to even be discussing it, there is definitely a lot to talk about when it comes to the two variations of the golden rule. To those unfamiliar, the two variations are the Christian variation, which is phrased as:
Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.
… and the Confucian one which is phrased as:
Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you.
True enough, the negation in the Confucian version seems like a minor detail but it does make a world of a difference. …
Simply put — give as much thought to the process as you give to the outcome.
I’m currently in a business analytics class in my MBA program, which is all about using quantitative methods for coming up with the best business decisions. There was one particular quote mentioned in the intro session that really got me thinking.
A good decision is different from a good outcome.
This really spoke to me. Despite sounding counterintuitive, it makes a whole lot of sense. …
It makes assumptions about decisions that haven’t been made yet and circumstances that haven’t happened yet.
It’s no question that estimates still play a big role in modern-day planning. It’s easy to see why. Estimations give us a mental model of what’s possible in a given timeframe. Having an estimate gives us a sense of security that we know what’s coming and based on which we might drive the rest of our plans. There’s one big problem with it though — it’s often a false sense of security.
The time it takes for us to deliver expected results is a direct product of hundreds or thousands of decisions we make as we execute the work. In the software business, these decisions range from what kind of usability and function we want to deliver, how we design the software, where we add (or remove) code, who writes the code, who reviews it — an endless list, honestly. Adding to that, external factors and circumstances that we have little control over can easily throw off any picture you might have had about the future. …
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