reshape

One of the talks I saw at MeasureUP was called "Reshaping the Company" and it was put on by a Mr. Gabriel N. Schenker. It was about making your company better and less sick. He suggested that a team is like a chain in that it is only as strong as its weakest link (weakest employee) and that for continuous deployment everyone has to be an engineer. Most companies are in firefight mode and firefighting is a grave evil for a company as there are no budget or resources planned for it. At Microsoft they stopped all development to create Service Pack 2 for Windows XP in the name of stabilizing it. This took a problem out of firefight mode and into formal plans. Heroes also do a lot of unplanned work. If someone is producing more than may be consumed downstream, send them home early to spend time with their family. What if your hero was hit by a bus? IT needs to be involved in strategic decisions and not just treated as a cost center. Many places give names to their servers and give them special treatments like pets. "I have this server, Billy, and I give it special treatment, and I have a patch installed on it..." etc. When Billy dies one day it is sad just like when your dog dies. You need to get out of thinking that your servers are special and need to be loved. In lieu of having pets, have a herd of cattle. They should really all be largely the same, and if one of them dies one day it should just be a cost, not a devastatingly sad gut punch to cry about. If you are building features which are not being put into production you are building waste.