The Beautiful Mess

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TBM 243: Capital Inefficiency
In this post, we will explore capital (in)efficiency and why the current preoccupation with developer productivity (and efficiency overall) is a symptom…
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John Cutler
5
TBM 242: The Simplicity Fetish
...and why it is so draining and burnout-inducing
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John Cutler
8
TBM 241: Convictions (Loosely Held)
You work as a product manager at an e-commerce company. Your team prioritizes a performance tweak you hope will improve page load time. You release an…
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John Cutler
2
TBM 240: The Ultimate Guide to Developer Counter-Productivity
Developer productivity is so August 2023. Enter Developer Counter-Productivity. Productive developers spend more of their time and energy on…
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John Cutler
11
August 2023
TBM 239: "Get Creative"
Quick tip. When you tell a team to "get creative," let me translate what your team hears: You aren't being creative We're not giving you additional help…
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John Cutler
4
TBM 238: Spinning Plates
...and enabling constraints
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John Cutler
4
TBM 237: Incompetence!
I was reflecting on this research I did earlier in my career. As an experiment, two teams tracked where their time went for two weeks. If you've ever…
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John Cutler
6
TBM 236: The Paper-Cut Tax
Imagine eighty construction workers on a job site. Every couple of weeks, there is a safety issue on the site, and work stops until the issue is…
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John Cutler
2
TBM 235: Forms & Shadows
Prepare for some post-break philosophizing… Consider twelve related frames we might use to think about a team or company: Work People Organizational…
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John Cutler
3
TBM 234: Maintenance, KTLO, and BAU
I've always been bothered by how teams use words and phrases like maintenance, keeping the lights on (KTLO), and business as usual. I get what they…
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John Cutler
8
July 2023
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