Ask for the Unreasonable...and then Get Out of the Way • Andrew Harcourt • YOW! 2018

This presentation was recorded at YOW! 2018. #GOTOcon #YOW https://yowcon.com Andrew Harcourt - Principal Consultant at Thoughtworks @AndrewHarcourt RESOURCES https://x.com/uglybugger https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-harcourt https://github.com/uglybugger https://www.andrewharcourt.com ABSTRACT As a senior #TechnicalLeader, it’s often viewed as a temping trap to get down into nitty-gritty details of #SoftwareEngineering or product development. As a #CTO, Head of Engineering or equivalent, we’re supposed to play at the strategic level and leave the details to our engineering leads, aren’t we? Well… yes. And no. Sometimes, creating a strategy and leaving it for our teams to figure out ignores the fact that our organisation constrains our teams in ways that we don’t expect. Sometimes it’s actually necessary to venture down into the weeds and see what the teams are doing - and what we’re doing that actively harms their efforts despite our intentions to the contrary. In this talk we’ll look at some ways to map strategy to execution by setting “unreasonable” goals - and then working out how to get organisational constraints - and ourselves - out of the way. RECOMMENDED BOOKS Kevlin Henney • 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know • https://amzn.to/2Yahf9U Henney & Monson-Haefel • 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know • https://amzn.to/3pZuHsQ Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais • Team Topologies • http://amzn.to/3sVLyLQ Michael Jackson • Software Requirements and Specifications • https://amzn.to/3ql2T14 Geoffrey West • Scale • http://amzn.to/3eKMbpc Donald G. Reinertsen • The Principles of Product Development Flow • https://amzn.to/3hJ2Ye https://twitter.com/GOTOcon https://www.linkedin.com/company/goto- https://www.facebook.com/GOTOConferences #Leadership #Failure #Change #AndrewHarcourt #YOWcon Looking for a unique learning experience? Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket at https://gotopia.tech Sign up for updates and specials at https://gotopia.tech/newsletter SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL - new videos posted almost daily. https://www.youtube.com/user/GotoConferences/?sub_confirmation=1