Andrew Boyagi's Linkedin Analytics

The last few years teams have been under pressure, and they're sacrificing the one thing they need to keep improving. Reflect. Learn. Improve. It's not a secret, teams are now expected to do more with less. When you're expected to do more, deliver faster, and be involved in more things, something will eventually fall by the wayside. What's being dropped? Retrospectives. It's the one thing that ALL teams should do. I get it, it's not something mandated by most organizations so it's easy to drop. They can also feel repetitive and like nothing comes of them. Sometimes, just reflecting on things as a team can lead to improvement. If you haven't had a retro in a while, and the thought of moving virtual post-it notes is making you sleepy - mix it up a little. Pick one thing that you worked on as a team, and just talk about it. Why was it good? Why wasn't it good? What would you do next time? No whiteboards, no post-its, just talk. Apart from improving as a team, it's also nice to take some time away from the grind and talk to your teammates 😊 #DevOps #Culture #Team

"If you want something done right, you need to do it yourself" Sometimes. Generally, this is a negative mindset for a leader to have. That line between doing vs coaching can be a difficult one to get right... at first. I speak with many new leaders who default to doing things themselves because their team doesn't do it "right". Not doing something the same way as the leader, doesn't mean it's not right. Most leaders would actually learn from their team if they gave them the freedom to get to an outcome the way they thought was best. Most of the time the team members approach is probably more effective than the leaders. Coaching is far more powerful than doing. Let's say that the team doesn't do it "right." how will they ever develop and grow if the leader does things themselves? It's a leader's job to coach employees toward the desired outcome, helping them to develop along the way. The person you're coaching will coach someone else one day. There are times when the leader should do rather than coach, but this should be a rare exception. #leadership #culture

There's a lot of AI BS out there. It takes away from the genuine ways it helps. Here's a simple way it saved me: It was 9 pm, and I was working on slides for a meeting with a customer CIO the following day. I planned to show her a Rovo agent that we used internally, but hadn't released externally yet. I needed a GIF showing the agent in use. I'd seen a GIF of the agent, but I couldn't remember where or who showed it to me. At 9 p.m. Sydney time, both Sydney-based and US-based teams were offline. I had no one to ask for help finding the GIF and felt stuck. I had two choices: 1 - Slack the US team and hope they send it to me overnight, then quickly finish my slides ahead of my 7am flight 2 - Try and find the GIF, with almost no search criteria I decided to use Atlassian Rovo to try and find it. "Someone showed me a GIF of a Pull Request Rovo agent. Where can I find it?" In about 20 seconds, I had: - A description of the Rovo agent - A Google Slides presentation that contained the gif - Links to a bunch of Confluence pages with more information It's a basic use of AI, but it made a massive difference for me in that moment. I see so many outlandish claims about companies replacing their workforce with AI. It's a level of BS that's unnecessary, AI is amazing even for a simple search use case. #AI

Imagine a life without email. That's my life. People always ask me how I work without using email. Effectively is the answer. Instead of defaulting to email, I pick the right tool for the job. I use Slack for all internal messaging. It's faster, less formal, and best of all, it doesn't lock knowledge away in inboxes. Confluence + Loom is where I capture longer form content / knowledge. This not only replaces never-ending email threads but also cuts down on meetings. Comments in Confluence replace the need for long email threads. As a bonus, when people comment, I update whatever I've written to improve it. The only use for long email trails is people thinking they're somehow protecting themselves from their colleagues by having things in writing. Not using email makes it tricky to communicate with people externally. My preference is to use LinkedIn messaging. Most of the time, we're just organizing a time to meet - there's nothing sensitive there and LinkedIn is fine for that. If I have absolutely no other choice, I'll use email, but it's rare. I sent 9 emails last month. This is completely in your control. For every email you send, you'll probably get 5 in return. Don't send the email - pick the right tool for the job. You don't NEED email, you're choosing it.

People have the whole developer productivity thing backwards. Productivity is a product of the system you create. It's about how productive you enable people to be. Let's assume everyone who goes to work wants to be productive. They can only be as productive as your system of work enables them to be. No one can be productive sitting in long, unnecessary meetings, dealing with mountains of tech debt, and spending hours per week searching for information. It's not about the individual developer, it's about the system. If you really want people to be productive, sort out the things that are getting in their way. Fix prioritization, give managers proper leadership training, and end the meeting madness. Productivity is an output from your system of work. You can't expect your teams to constantly try to beat the system... #DevOps #DeveloperExperience #Culture

You can have great teammates without having good teamwork. One doesn't automatically lead to the other. I've come across this more frequently lately, it's worth understanding the difference. Working in a team where everyone gets along really well, is passionate about their work, and a good team vibe is a sign of having great teammates. Teammates = individuals in a team. Signs of great teamwork: Creating psychological safety Leveraging each other's strengths Working together towards shared goals Teamwork = how the team functions together. You can have a team full of great teammates and not have great teamwork if the individuals don't communicate and work effectively together. Great Teammates + Good Teamwork = High Performing Team Having both great teammates and good teamwork is one of the secrets to building a high-performing team. Have you noticed the difference between great teammates and good teamwork? #culture #leadership #TeamWorkMakesTheDreamWork

Measuring Developer Experience can be tricky, but there's a fundamental issue with most approaches I come across. You should be measuring how BAD your developer experience is, not how GOOD it is. I've been noodling on this for the past few weeks. I think there is an unintentional bias in what people choose to measure and how they interpret results. It feels a little unnatural to look for the bad/negative aspects of anything... Especially when you need to broadcast results. Improving developer experience is about removing friction points from the day-to-day for developers. This means finding the bad parts of the experience and measuring improvement over time. It feels good to reflect on the good parts, but that won't improve things. Wondering if others have also noticed the same? #DeveloperExperience #DevOps