Articles for category: Delivery

December 3, 2024

Greg Thomas

Being the Alternate

You might not be the star. You might not be the top player. You might be the third person on the call-in rotation. You might get the emails but you don’t have to respond to them. That’s what you’re asked to do as the Alternate. Here’s what they don’t always tell you that you can do; Show up for everything. Bring the best attitude. Jump in and offer to do extra. Ask questions. Volunteer for the grunt work. Push yourself on your own time to learn and get better. Support. That’s what the best alternates do.

November 26, 2024

Greg Thomas

Now I know why I don’t do Front-End

I’ve always been a back-end, middle-ware coder. Service gets data – awesome – success – looks great. I’ve done front-end worked, but I have never truly enjoyed it. I will buy a template before doing my own work. Lately, I’ve had to force myself to do Front-End work. It has been painful. And the only thing I can say is that I have a huge appreciation for front-end developers and what they do. Hats off to you!

November 19, 2024

Greg Thomas

The First Step in Any Problem

The first step in any problem is identifying where you are. What is wrong? What do you have? What is broken? What happened? Why are we here? All these questions (and more) are not about solving the problem, not about figuring it out, not about brainstorming, not about fixing it. The first step in solving any problem is making sure you understand the problem.

November 8, 2024

Greg Thomas

Dear FirstName

Another in my favourite emails that I receive… Dear FirstName, Wouldn’t that be horrible, but for real, there is a person writing this email… Then why not use my name?  If I went up to some random stranger and said – “What’s up FirstName?” – what do you think they would say? What do you think the response would be? Even if I was joking (and let’s be honest, “hey buddy”, sounds infinitely better). The problem with all these mails that I’ve referenced over the past few days is they are so lazy, it’s sad and depressing – just a

November 6, 2024

Greg Thomas

Unsolicited Seminars

I get emails from seminars I need to be attending. I’m not sure what drives this need. Many times I feel like responding, but then I worry that it’s going to trigger an upgrade in the mailing lists from “maybe a SPAM” to “attached to a human” and then I’m going to get flooded with even more solicitations for seminars I don’t want to attend. Hello, You have the wrong person, I’m doing great, and things are going well, apart from this random email that came out of the blue thinking I needed help. I’m good, you’re good, let’s call