Matt Schouten

Thoughts on building people, software, and systems.

Category: Management

  • You Can’t Handle The Truth!

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    Feedback, in systems terms, is a loop that feeds outputs from a system or process back upstream as an input. As it’s more commonly used, “feedback” is information about behaviors, performance, or results1 (e.g., “don’t hit your brother”, “good hustle out there”, “our defense was almost always out of position and couldn’t get a stop”).…

  • Marketing Platform Engineering

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    The exceptional Aurooba Ahmed has written a series of articles on her Working Notes blog covering what she calls Marketing Platform Engineering: In this series, she digs into the particular craft “of building the systems and workflows that enable marketing teams to work at their best.” We worked together at WP Engine, doing exactly this…

  • Manager README: Matt Schouten

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    When I joined WP Engine in 2022, I was asked to write a Manager README. This is a lightly-edited version of that README.

  • How Do You Know?

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    I often ask a simple, unreasonably useful question: “how do you know?” I will ask that question of myself (“how do I know?”), a team (“how do we know?”), or another person (usually “how do we know?”, because “how do you know?” can sound aggressively challenging). Credit where credit is due: I learned the depth…

  • Why Deadlines? Why That Deadline?

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    It was about 10PM that Thursday night when I got back to my apartment. After a full day of work, I’d helped haul a bunch of sound equipment, set it up, run sound, hauled the equipment back, and spent some time unwinding with friends.1 I was tired. The light on my answering machine was blinking.2…

  • They Know More Than I Do! (Managing an Expert Team When You Can’t Do Their Jobs)

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    This post began as a WordCamp US talk proposal. The core ideas are worth sharing, so I adapted it from a talk to an article. Enjoy! Technical experts in a company know things, understand things thoroughly, in a way that someone, somewhere higher on the org chart, doesn’t. CEOs that have software engineering skills are…

  • It’s Fun To Learn (About Workflow) From the YMCA

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    The YMCA in Marion, Iowa knows more about getting work done than many professional managers. Recently, this sign went up near the weight machines.1 This sign was posted because, every so often, people will sit at the weight machines for several minutes, not working out. Sometimes they’re resting between sets. But every so often, what…

  • The Involvement x Affinity Matrix

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    This is the third and most useful article in the series about the Involvement x Affinity framework I developed for a coaching client. It might be useful to others beyond that one client. The first installment was about Involvement Levels, or OSCDaB.1 How much “skin in the game” each person has. The second installment was…

  • Project, Task, or Role Affinity

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    Last article, I started writing about a framework I’d created for a coaching client. The first part of the framework is Involvement Levels.1 Today, I’ll get into the next part of the framework: affinity for the task or project. This part of the framework is pretty simple. Unless you overthink it. (Don’t overthink it.) I’ll…

  • Involvement Levels

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    Sometimes, existing tools and frameworks won’t solve the problem that’s in front of you. A while back, I was working with a coaching client1 that needed to clarify involvement of various folks in their projects. The first tool most people reach for in that situation is RACI. If you’ve spent much time in projects in…