The existence of a "rock star" engineer is a strong indicator of organizational dysfunction.

Which tools a team chooses are useful only if they help the team work toward cooperation and collaboration. Focus on these and tools will fall into place.

Taylorism has gotten a lot of flack for being inhumane at worst, and ineffective at best. But DevOps is about applying Taylorism to computer systems.

I was making really great progress at instilling a culture of quality until the pressure above from to "hire more people!"

Why are new joiners often quick to offer unwanted advice on how to improve things? Many "newbies" can't distinguish between core skills and company-specific skills.

If a discussion becomes emotional, repetitive, or otherwise unproductive, it's time to pick up the phone.

The "Tech Lead" title is too often (ab)used as a way to "lord it over" people who are "less technically capable".

I read most of "Team Topologies" on a flight to Madrid, and was able to immediately begin to put it to use.

Somewhere, long ago, I learned of a technique I like to employ when onboarding new team members

“Whether a human is involved in pressing the deploy button or not, you are going to deploy a bad update eventually.”

"Process" gets a bad rap these days. Claiming you don't have a process is like claiming you don't breathe.