Pawel Brodzinski on Leadership in Technology

Whatever it takes to lead a team, build a product, and run a business

  • Options, Options, Options

    I think the first time I’ve heard that we should consider that a project backlog is simply a set of (unexercised) options it’s been from Ellen Gottesdiener It took me some time though to translate this, otherwise attractive, concept to something more down-to-earth in my own context. The catalyst in this case was one of Kanban […]

  • Hiring for Cultural Fit

    I definitely don’t keep the count but I believe that throughout my career I run more than a thousand interviews and hired way more than a hundred people. I have a confession to make: vast majority of these interviews were run poorly and many of those hires, even the right ones, were made on wrong […]

  • Teams

    What is a team? A group of people sitting in the same room? No. Folks having the same boss? Um, really? Those who work on the same project? Again, negative. No matter how badly we’d like one of above to be true, it isn’t. OK, maybe we should start somewhere else. What are crucial ingredients […]

  • Portfolio Visualization

    I’ve been lucky enough that throughout my career I’ve had occasions to work on different levels: from personal (that’s pretty much everyone’s experience, isn’t it?), though team and project to program / PMO / portfolio level. Not only that. In most of my jobs I’ve been involved in all levels of work concurrently. This means […]

  • What Makes Project Attractive

    Throughout years of my professional career I’ve heard all sorts of ideas what makes a project attractive for people working on it. A favorite technology. Greenfield work with no legacy code. Scalability challenges. Number of users. Potential to change the world. A genuine idea. Big money involved. Freedom to choose any tools. Code quality. Probably […]

  • Limit Work in Progress Early

    We’ve just started another project. One of things we’ve set up at the very beginning was a Kanban board. It wouldn’t be a real Kanban board if we haven’t had work in progress limits. There are two common approaches I see out there in terms of setting WIP limits. One is to work for some […]

  • No Estimates Middle Ground

    The idea of no estimates (or #NoEstimates) is all hot these days. People would choose different parties and fight a hell of fight just to prove their arguments are valid, they are right and the other party got it all wrong. I’d occasionally get into the crossfire by leaving a general comment on a thread […]

  • Cumulative Flow Diagram

    One of charts that give you a quick overview of what’s happening in a project or product work is Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD). On one hand in CFD you can find typical information about status of work: how much work is done, ongoing and in backlog, what is the pace of progress, etc. This is […]

  • Kanban Landscape and Portfolio Kanban

    One of reasons why Kanban Leadership Retreat (KLRAT) is such an awesome event is that it pushes our understanding of Kanban to a new level. No surprise that after the retreat there’s going to be much content related our work in Mayrhofen published here. One of sessions was at KLRAT was dedicated to sort out […]

  • All Sorts of Kanban

    Some of you who pay more attention to what is happening in the Lean Kanban community may have noticed that there’s an ongoing discussion about what Kanban is or should be. It’s not about what do we use Kanban for but how exactly we define Kanban. Another incarnation of this discussion was started by Al […]

Hi, I’m Pawel and I’m your host.

Leadership in Technology is a blog dedicated to wide variety of topics related to running a technology business.

Among others you will find here: product management, agile and lean, leadership, organizational design and more.

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