Hiccupps

Last night I was at the Cambridge Tester meetup for a workshop on leadership. It was a two-parter with Drew Pontikis facilitating conversation about workplace scenarios followed by an AMA with a group of experienced managers. I can't come to work this week, my cat died. Drew opened by asking us what our first thoughts would be as managers on seeing that sentence. Naturally, sadness and sympathy,  followed by a week ? for a cat ? and I only got a day for my gran! Then practicalities such as maybe there's company policy that covers that , and then the acknowledgement that it's contextual: perhaps this was a long-time emotional support animal . Having established that management decisions are a mixture of emotion, logic, and contingency Drew noted that most of us don't get training in management or leadership then split us into small groups and confronted us with three situations to talk through: Setting personal development goals for others. Dropping a clange...

I bought a belt recently. Unexpectedly, it came with a tool for making holes and the notice above. My initial reaction was to chuckle and think "yeah, we could probably all learn something from that." But, honestly, that's just lazy. That's the cheap laugh. That's this misguided thinking:  DO NOT OPEN THE EDITOR BEFORE YOU FINALISE THE REQUIREMENT And I am so over that.  When asked what advice I would give to the early-career me I've often answered: get comfortable with uncertainty.  In the spirit of today's post, I might rephrase that as DO NOT HALT THE WORK BEFORE YOU ENCOUNTER THE BLOCKAGE Of course, this is what iterative development is predicated on. By the time we've coded what we can, and shown it to our customers for feedback, we might find that we understand the problem space well enough to not need answers, or that we were asking the wrong questions. What I like these days is to understand t...

  It's all relative. There's enough wrong in the world that having an imperfect job in tough economic times is still a privilege that many would cherish.  And yet, in its own isolated context, the daily grind can genuinely feel like being physically ground down, minced, fragmented.  Which is why it's important to find a glimmer of joy where you can. And I found one this week, in the accidental coining of the word cliction, a portmanteau of click and friction,  while exploring the user experience of a new front end. It doesn't solve any global, or even local, problems, but it raised a few smiles and lifted a few eyebrows, and improved my mood. I hope sharing it can do the same for you. Image: Gemini , " A close-up view of a human finger (drawn simply) gently touching or hovering over a single, large computer mouse button"