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Week Four is the final week in the Warfighting Book Club, relating the Marine Corps doctrinal publication Warfighting to business agility. This is probably my favorite chapter in the book. Several of the sections (Philosophy of Command, Commander’s Intent, Surfaces and Gaps) would be worth an entire week’s discussion on their own. For facilitators, adding a week for an organization-specific wrap-up would be a great idea. In that week, focus on what was learned from the book and how it could be applied. Keep in mind that application could be short-term or long-term—and making time for both in a wrap-up… …read more…
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This is Week Three in the Warfighting Book Club, relating the Marine Corps doctrinal publication Warfighting to business agility. This section is not my favorite, but raises a lot of good questions to consider organizationally. Warfighting Week Three Leader’s Notes and Questions [Page numbers and quotes are taken from Warfighting, MCDP 1, 2019 Edition] …read more…
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This is Week Two in the Warfighting Book Club, relating the Marine Corps doctrinal publication Warfighting to business agility. This was a great, meaty section. I left a lot of possible topics and questions off the list because we only had so much time to discuss. Warfighting Week Two Leader’s Notes and Questions [Page numbers and quotes are taken from Warfighting, MCDP 1, 2019 Edition] …read more…
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One of the best books on agile development or business agility is Warfighting, Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication #1. It takes a little bit of work to translate from the military domain to the business domain, but it’s worth it, in much the same way that The Art of War is. I recently led a book club / discussion group on Warfighting for a group of leaders (including both managers and individual contributors) at WP Engine. I’m posting the leader’s notes and questions for anyone else that would like to lead their own discussion group. If you do, drop me a… …read more…
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My family has owned a Vizio TV (model V555-H11) for a while, keeping it disconnected from the internet and using as a dumb display for other devices. The picture has been fine. The audio has had some issues. We have experienced sound cutting out during quiet parts of movies, often accompanied by a quiet-but-perceptible-and-pretty-annoying-once-you-notice-it popping sound (probably an over-enthusiastic gate without the smarts to quietly clamp the audio, instead just cutting the sound wave abruptly). We are not the only ones, and it’s not just our model. I had tried different options in the menu to fix it, and not… …read more…
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Beginnings, like this one, are important. A good beginning draws you in, puts you in the right frame of mind to engage with upcoming ideas or events, and makes you want more. A good beginning might be funny, action-packed1, raise burning questions, make you feel a need, or enrage you. A bad beginning doesn’t do any of those things. A bad beginning is there because a thing has to start somewhere. If it didn’t start with Chapter 1, suddenly Chapter 2 would become Chapter 1. A bad beginning is not interesting, not useful, not repellent. It might be a bit… …read more…
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I’m married and have three kids in the elementary and middle school age ranges. They’re doing things that normal kids do: growing, learning, being active, participating in sports and other activities. My wife and I both work. Our baseline level of “busy” is relatively high, as it is for any family with three kids at home. Like most families, we experienced some changes starting around March 2020. Some of those changes reduced our level of “busy”—like activities and gatherings being canceled. But other changes increased our level of “busy”—like long quests to find rare and valuable items such as toilet… …read more…
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This started as a blog post for the HI Digital Solutions blog, and never got posted for some reason. I’m pretty sure it had to do with it being drafted in April 2020. I think some things may have been happening around then. Anyway, I’m (re?) posting it here (which works out fine, because the HIDS blog is no longer on the Internet). Enjoy! H.I. Digital Solutions (DS) has been working through improving our employee evaluation and growth processes. As part of exploring how we could improve, I scribbled a few questions on a sheet of paper. Then I started… …read more…
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My team uses Postman a lot. We store our collections in git. But we don’t want to store our secrets there. Postman is kind enough to allow users to create environments to hold those secrets. Even with environments, the need to keep secrets secret gives us a configuration problem. Setting up a new environment involves some clicking around into Azure keyvaults and making sure we’ve given the right secret the right name. It can be tedious. And that’s if we remembered to document where each key lives. If not, it can be downright frustrating! Not my favorite way to spend… …read more…
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In the spirit of surveys like the DORA survey or Stack Overflow’s Developer Survey, it’s time for the next round of the State of Work survey. A lot of things have changed since June: kids have gone back to school, sports leagues have gone back to doing sports, offices have re-opened, and people have adapted. But broad generalizations and observations about things that have happened don’t help much with understanding how people are truly doing. I want to hear about your experiences so I can get a better idea of how life really looks for everyone. I want to hear… …read more…