“Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” — Jesus of Nazareth, 1st century Jewish Rabbi, Lord and Savior Corporate Politics Corporate politics: The human behaviors of exercising power and authority in the workplace. To double-down on this: politics is always the exercise of power and authority. Not sometimes. Always. Politics is neither good nor evil; but it can achieve both.

Introduction What does it mean for a Software Engineering team to be effective? Productive? Happy? Impactful? This has been on my mind a lot as I’ve stepped into management in this part of my career. I’ve begun to collect my thoughts into this post. Many of the ideas apply to projects of any kind, but some of the advice I’ll give will be tailored specifically to software projects projects and teams.

What does it mean for a software application to be good? Here’s my ranked ordered list of “good software” attributes: Solution: Provides a service or solves a problem, and does it well Design: Cohesive, intuitive interface Quality: Minimal bugs and defects; good performance Delivery: Continual, helpful updates Solution and Design: What we don’t control The Solution and Design are the most visible and obvious parts of “good software”, and when the chips are down, they can make up for tons of issues to a shocking degree.