If your roadmap is all reactive, you will always be putting out fires — In my experience (anecdotal evidence, for sure), engineering tends to neglect the need for an engineering roadmap. Consequently, engineering often shows unprepared for market and business challenges, often surprising business/product-side stakeholders with requests to delay the start of critical initiatives. What is an Engineering Roadmap?

Modern approaches meet classical definitions: Combine OKR, KPI, and GQ(i)M for a complete measurement strategy. — You have probably heard about OKR, KPI, and (hopefully) GQM/GQ(i)M. …

These techniques can be used to prioritize your Engineering Roadmap, support Product Owners/Managers, and even your own tasks. — A big part of managing our teams’ deliveries is tied to how our roadmaps are prioritized. Usually, a team has one product-driven roadmap and one engineering-driven roadmap to be combined in a delivery plan. …

Communicating information needs to your teams and receiving valuable reports. — In today’s world, information is vital. It drives decisions, informs goals, and assesses initiatives. In software development, information is abundant, many of which are readily available from the tools we use to manage our work. Sadly, it is one-sided and only tells part of the story. Strategic Software Management and Measurement

How to accurately define software measures (according to the ISO/IEC/IEEE 15939:2017) — OK, all. Prepare for a dense article because I’m about to summarize everything you should know about software measurement definitions. I’ll tell you that most of this content was taken from the ISO/IEC/IEEE 15939:2017 “Systems and software engineering — Measurement process”. But truth be told, most of this standard came…

And knowing this helps you avoid common pitfalls and hidden costs — I know what you are thinking! What does one thing have to do with the other? Well, it just so happens that teams don’t collaborate spontaneously. There’s “our team” and “the other teams.” We all play well with each other, but we only build things together when the requirements demand…

It’s important to find healthy ways to measure — In the book “Dynamics of Bureaucracy”, Peter Blau reports this case in a federal law enforcement agency that investigated business establishments where there was an imposition of a quota of eight cases per month for each investigator. Toward the end of the month, an investigator who found himself short of…

Development teams can have complete information without compromising security and compliance policies. — For contractual reasons, compliance with standards, or regulations/legislation, many organizations today struggle with the problem of development teams not having access to production data. The problem is notably worse when teams have to investigate issues reported by users in production. Is it possible to provide engineering teams with all the…

And that’s why your priorities are wrong — Are you prioritizing it all wrong? Probably. I believe that you, your team, your product owner, and their managers, are likely mistaking “business value” for “customer value.” Why do I think you are doing it? Because I see it all over, in other blogs, in different organizations, different teams. You should be prioritizing your work according to…