Kyle Rowland’s Post

"Leadership Secret: The Ultimate Proxy Toward Engineering Health is...TBD!" ...Join us for our latest podcast episode!! There aren't a lot of metrics out there that actually work. At least toward building up a great software engineering practice. There is one that does carry a bit of signal with regard to health, and that's TBD. Your maturity with TBD implies maturity with a number of the core practices involved in building software well. Further, it implies that you are actually pretty good at those things (as a team). As long as you avoid the pitfall of "cowboy coding" - there aren't a lot of dangers in measuring and even holding yourself accountable to your TBD maturity. Even if it turns out that your maturity is low - probing even a little at that will yield massive concrete, actionable improvement opportunities. So join us this month as we dive into this unique and powerful idea. https://lnkd.in/gBxyzb7Z

Is your org structure and processes delivering the value you want? If so, awesome. If not, what changes might move you closer to that goal? It's common that certain practices, while good for many, may not be good for all, yet go unquestioned. Take a second look! Here is a different take on team setup. Maybe it would work for you.

Org design and how designers fit within cross functional teams has been at the top of my mind recently. Peter Merholz and John Cutler have an idea that in the future empowered design and engineering leads take on the majority of produce responsibilities. PMs focus on product strategy and in lieu of running daily rituals for 2 pizza sized squads. I’ve actually lived a version of this reality and can say it’s possible — with caveats. 1. The product-thinking mindset and skill set is needed for design and engineering leads. 2. A mature design practice with solid design ops is must. 3. Clear alignment and connection with business stakeholders. 4. An empowered insights practice based on UX research, driven by evidence, generates novel growth opportunities while enhancing current user journeys and experiences. 5. Great relationships across product, design, engineering, business. The truth is skill sets and preferences vary so widely that this model simply can’t work for every company or even every team. A full stack PM/UXDev sounds great on paper but rarely plays out well in reality. However, well supported leads could totally pull it off if well supported by practice area ops squads and empowered PMs.

Hey there org design nerds! Spurred by my podcast conversation with John Cutler, and his proposal of moving away from 6-8-person 'squads' and toward 30-50 person 'pods,' I wanted to share some thinking I've done, drawing on a model first shared in "Org Design for Design Orgs." This video is 8 minutes long (I would have made it shorter, but I didn't have the time), and I hope is useful for those looking for new, and maybe better, ways to work. (EDIT: Find the podcast here: https://lnkd.in/gFi4VEyS)

Great insights on effective product org incorporating prodops and insights.

The "learn to code or not" debate is a hot one! It was refreshing to hear Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, advise an 18-year-old to learn coding on the Steven Bartlett's Diary of a CEO podcast. This resonated deeply. I started coding early, and it fundamentally shaped my approach to problem-solving. The critical thinking and logical reasoning I developed have been invaluable throughout my career, well beyond just tech. Check out the podcast – link in the comment section.

NEW EPISODE! With more and more calls for #systems capabilities and systems transformation in education, do we really understand what these terms mean and how we might 'teach' and learn them?! Professor Ray Ison and his colleagues at The Open University have accumulated more than half a century's worth of collective #wisdom on this topic, which Ray generously shares with Tim Logan on this week's podcast. It's a cracker!! 🤯 🌟 🌍 What is the difference between systematic and systemic approaches? 👁️ Why the historical battle to 'bring the observer back in' (Margaret Mead). 🤹 Why is the metaphor of the juggler is useful to think about the work of systems thinking in practice? (or, in fact, is it an 'isophor'?) 🎾 What balls are we juggling? Being, Engaging, Contextualising, Managing 🖼 Why does how we frame 'situations' matter? 🎧 Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/euTkdhXy

What is it about podcasts that help us learn? It's the power of story and our innate human capacity for narrative understanding. Now, we can transform any content into stories. In this YouTube experiment, I generate an eight-minute podcast using Google's NotebookLM using content I've gathered to study Jensen Huang. Story is the ultimate learning tool. Link in the comments.

NotebookLM is awesome. I agree that an audio Q&A format is perfect for conveying ideas naturally in a way that PowerPoints and reports cannot do. Since NotebookLM is limited to 2 voices and offers no way to edit the script, I wrote my own podcast generator using #OpenAI and #ElevenLabs that can have more than 2 participants, you can choose the voices (including cloned voices), and edit the script before clicking "generate podcast" (which takes about 30 seconds). It's not as subtle with the speaker interaction but for business purposes, it is very effective in getting the message across.

Our greatest challenge is "how we begin to flip our world into a trajectory of living with both the systemic and, in special cases, the systematic." (Ray Ison) This is not about choosing the most well-branded ‘systems thinking’ framework at random to start teaching our students! Rather we should take a moment to learn from those who have been at this for a long time (through the ebbs and flows of previous #systems fads)! I believe that this is not the latest vogue for 'systems thinking' in #education, but that we are now being asked some critical questions about complex ecological situations and how we respond in our fullest #human-ness! These WILL be a vital and revitalising set of a capabilities that our young people need.