#10 | Sunday reads for EMs
My favourite reads of the week to make your Sunday a little more inspiring.
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Your Engineering Estimates Are Setting You Up To Fail
tl;dr: Stop treating estimation as a one-off task - most estimation effort is actually wasted. The key is to use three “Power Questions” to explore what could go wrong, what could go right, and why you’re estimating in the first place. Then, apply the PERT distribution to turn those answers into realistic timelines.
Match The Pipes
tl;dr: Executives have a unique superpower: seeing bottlenecks across the entire product delivery chain that individual teams can't spot. Pressuring teams to work 80-hour weeks is like expanding non-bottleneck pipes, it floods the system without increasing actual output.
The Reformist CTO’s Guide to Impact Intelligence
tl;dr: If you're getting badgered about developer productivity this gives you a framework to follow. Chasing output metrics, like story points or velocity, is a dead end unless they’re tied to business impact. Measurement debt is as real as technical debt, and you need to instrument applications to track business impact, not just delivery metrics.
So You're A Manager Now.
tl;dr: Advice for the transition from IC to manager. Your job is now building systems and coaching people. Worth bookmarking for the "painfully clear" communication advice alone, plus the take on how you'll mess up repeatedly and that's actually part of the job.
Team OKRs in Action
tl;dr: High-performing teams don't just execute OKRs, they define their own objectives within strategic context, creating real ownership instead of compliance. The framework here includes specific workshop formats (like the "Time Machine" activity) and the GRIP check-in structure for weekly progress reviews.
If you're remote, ramble
tl;dr: Simple but surprisingly effective tactic for remote teams of 2-10 people: create personal "ramblings" channels where each team member can post thoughts, ideas, and random updates without cluttering group channels. Obsidian has used this for two years as their equivalent of water cooler talks.
Most popular from last Sunday
What did you read recently that you would like to share?