Articles for category: Initiative

1 week ago

Greg Thomas

It Doesn’t Work the Way I Thought

Great, figure out another way to make it work. This has been the problem that programmers and developers have been faced with for years and years on end. API is more limited than they thought. Overuse and you get throttled. Data is hoarded instead of shared. Capabilities are limited without lots of workarounds. Great, it doesn’t work the way you thought; the absolutely amazing part of your journey starts to happen. Go make it work the way you thought.

We used to be Organized?

We used to be organized, now we hope pointing an AI agent at our work is going to resolve the issue. It won’t. That’s not how it works. You need some base level of organization and standards to make it work. Also, have you noticed how organized teams are able to adopt AI faster?

Who Attends the Meeting?

Who do you really, truly need at that next meeting? Who do you not need? I’m sure lots of people want to be at your meeting, but do they need to be there. If they don’t need to be there, don’t invite them. We’re past the era of “they might need to hear something”, there is a new era beginning and starts with need and value.

Onboarding Quickly is a Skill

On any project, there is a point where adding more people will slow down the project as you seek to onboard them to the work everyone else is doing. It takes time to bring a new person up to speed – sometimes estimated in months when it needs to be a few days or weeks. If you are someone who comes up with a toolbox, learns in advance where the project is at and where the team is having trouble, and knows the tech stack (or is early learning it), your onboarding can drop to those mythical days and low-cost

The Complaint Department

All complaints are in, and wow, there are a lot. The complaints are easy; anyone can write a complaint about anything. I don’t like the grip on my chainsaw (I know nothing about grips). I wish my car’s cupholders were 3 inches back and could hold 3 drinks instead of 2 (when ordering for the family). Many cool products and inventions come from complaints – watching what people are building with 3d printers to solve the above problems and many more is incredible to watch. You can keep chirping at the Complaint Department, or pick one up and make it