Clarion Coughlan, Jayne Paterson O’Connell, Justin Blass, Kelsey White & Simon Watson
We'd love to introduce Kelsey White, who has joined THEIA on a trial. Kelsey is part of our Xero alumni and is a fellow product and leadership aficionado based in Denver. Kelsey has been spending much of the last two weeks researching and brainstorming Site Reliability operational excellence measures. From a product thinking point of view, this means thinking through what the customer experience is like if Site Reliability is absolutely excellent. GitLab and Google have provided inspiration. Kelsey is also reading Death by Meeting with peers and has slightly restructured her team's weekly tactical meeting as a result.
Justin has been chipping away at rolling out team health checks, improving our leadership team meetings, and supporting improvements to our release process. As the work builds up, he's reflecting on the importance of timeboxing his day and focusing on doing the next thing, not drowning in tasks. Here is the most thought-provoking blog he read last week from Farnham Street, Iatrogenics: Why Intervention Often Leads to Worse Outcomes.
Lately, Simon can be found down a manual testing rabbit hole. He is pondering how to do a sensible amount of testing to build enough confidence to release new functionality where the permutations of devices x operating systems x browsers x network conditions x user behaviours are seemingly endless and the ability to automate is very limited. This is involving lots of deep thought about users, negotiating trade offs, and identifying assumptions. In his downtime Simon has been enjoying videos of famous drummers playing along to songs they've never heard before, like this: Megadeth Drummer Hears "Mr. Brightside" For The First Time.
Throughout the last couple of weeks, Clarion has immersed herself in the world of forecasting. She's been absorbing articles and engaging in discussions with colleagues to explore the intricacies of forecasting – both its benefits and limitations. With a clear stance in favor of forecasting, Clarion advocates for its utility, underpinned by its capacity to balance delivery costs with expected outcomes and provide stakeholders the means to align their plans with potential release timelines. Clarion enjoyed an article on the subject by Adrian Fittolani, Agile Project Forecasting – The Monte Carlo Method.
Finally, Jayne is on holiday in Portugal, melting in the heat. 🫠