Video Archive

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14 Nov 2024
4.30 PM UK time

Secret LinkedIn Event - Keeping Work Visible

An event just for my LinkedIn followers, and you can join us too! I'll be talking about how to keep work visible throughout your organisation.

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7 Nov 2024
1030 NYC time

Live in NYC

Join me live in the East Village, NYC. A provocative small-group discussion with New York Squadron members on releasing daily, disappointing helpfully, and whatever else comes up!

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23 Oct 2024
8:30 AM UK time

Product Circle Australia

Product managers from Down Under quiz me about daily delivery, why I think we don't need Scrum Master roles, and anything else that matters in the Antipodes! Note Aussie-friendly start time.

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24 Oct 2024
Afternoon, Paris Time

Live in Paris

I'm in Paris for an event, want to meet up or host an event? Let me know!

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10 Oct 2024
4:30 PM UK time

Ask Squirrel Anything!

I face the toughest questions from the best audience -- execs from the Squirrel Squadron! Previous challenges have included being overwhelmed by too many tech ideas, growing the skills of your CTO, and even how to overcome shame about the poor state of your technology! Anything goes -- sign up and ask a question even if you can't make the live session as I'll be sharing the recording.

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3 October 2024
4:30 PM UK time

Kill the Kickoff Meeting

I’m on a campaign to kill off “kick-off” meetings. When the “agenda” is just to meet everyone, I think you're just wasting time. Join me on this free livestream to discuss why and how you'll learn more from just getting started already!

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26 Sep 2024
4:30 PM UK time

Tech Strategy Blunders

Total rebuilds, "stealth" products built in secret, building software for free; the list of tech strategy blunders I've seen (and made!) is too long to list here. So let's discuss them (and how to avoid them!) in this free exec Zoom call!

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19 September 2024

Communities With Alan Weiss (IPT Podcast)

Use the power of community to build your brand and find new customers—the "rockstar of consulting" Alan Weiss chats with me about how and why communities work, and where technology both helps and hurts when you're building a mini-society of your best clients.

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15 August 2024

Johanna Rothman—Get Budget for Anything (IPT Podcast)

Live recording of the Insanely Profitable Tech podcast with prolific author and management guru Johanna Rothman —and we'll help you navigate the challenges of funding and budgeting for key projects!

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6 August 2024

Ask Me Anything!

I face the toughest questions from the best audience -- execs from the Squirrel Squadron! Previous challenges have included being overwhelmed by too many tech ideas, growing the skills of your CTO, and even how to become a tech billionaire! Anything goes -- sign up and ask a question even if you can't make the live session as I'll be sharing the recording.

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1 August 2024

Topical Tech Trends

A freeform riff from me and you on whatever's in the news and how tech contributes: the latest AI tricks, how to strap on the Vision Pro, whether anyone actually wants a Tesla, and much more drawn straight from the headlines.

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25 July 2024

What Do You Mean, Expansion??

In this first instalment of Squirrel's Case File, I'll tell the story of two executives who debated furiously whether they should expand—then determined they actually agreed! Join me to see how and why it's vital to agree on what important words mean.

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18 July 2024

Clearing Your Schedule

Are you stuck in useless meetings, unable to block time for strategic work or just to gather your thoughts? Join me on this free livestream and I'll clear a whole day on your calendar just for purposeful planning.

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7 July 2024

Ask Me Anything

I face the toughest questions from the best audience -- execs from the Squirrel Squadron! Previous challenges have included being overwhelmed by too many tech ideas, growing the skills of your CTO, and even how to become a tech billionaire! Anything goes -- sign up and ask a question even if you can't make the live session as I'll be sharing the recording.

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27 June 2024

Commercial and Tech Collaboration

Salespeople and engineers don't have to be locked in a tug-of-war over deadlines and deliverables. Join me on this free exec zoom call to discuss techniques like ride-alongs and TDD for People to boost trust, collaboration, and profit!

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20 June 2024

Why Your Meetings Suck (with guest Petri Lehtonen)

Petri Lehtonen is dedicated to exposing the cost of meetings to help you ensure they don't suck. He'll join me for this free livestream to discuss what happens when you cost up every meeting, how you can make your meetings much more collaborative, and who books the most meetings and why. Bring your questions for this interactive session!

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13 June 2024

Transformative Conversations for Collaboration (Chinese/English)

In work with 300+ organisations around the planet, I've learnt that the key to software success is conversations (not the latest tech or fancy marketing or "agile" methods). I'll show you three key conversational skills that will get your engineers and customers learning from each other—and transforming your software—at light speed. A special event timed for Chinese Squadron members, with simultaneous translation from English into Mandarin (English speakers very welcome to join as well!)

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7 June 2024

Keynote, Live in Belgium at Journée Agile

Join me at this fascinating Francophone conference on all things software. Look for me to puncture suppositions on Scrum and assumptions about agile, and maybe even speak a little French!

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30 May 2024

Reading the Room

As an executive, it's vital that you match your tone, content, and vocabulary to who's in front of you: customers, staff, or investors. Join me on this free livestream to learn techniques I've used for 25 years to drive alignment, jointly design solutions, and get nerds, marketers, and designers all singing in harmony.

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23 May 2024

Negative Space: Deciding What Your Software Won't Do

In your software product, just as in great paintings, what you don't include is as important as what you do. Join me on this free Zoom call to see how you can slash your "prioritisation" time and vastly improve quality by ruling out what you don't want to do.

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9 May 2024

Roadmapping Without Dates

Lewis and Clark travelled six thousand kilometres through the hostile, uncharted centre of North America, and they never held a "sprint" or estimated a backlog. Your software team is exploring unknown wilderness just as they were; join me to see how you can make speedy, predictable progress without a single deadline.

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2 May 2024

Investors as an Alien Species

Investors think very differently than engineers and product people do. Join me to discuss how to help your developers, product folks, and tech leaders to communicate better with company owners, and maybe even adopt a little of their world-view!

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25 April 2024

Why We Build the Wrong Software (with Vasco Duarte)

I'm back at Vasco Duarte's Product Owner Summit to talk about why we can't "capture" what users want and what to do instead!

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18 April 2024

Live in London - Tech as a Foreign Language

"Zettabytes", "kubernetes", "skeumorphism"—this exotic tech jargon confuses and alienates non-initiates, but it doesn't have to . Join me in person for this free session to discover how to break through technobabble and create trust and profit together with engineers. Not in London? Sign up anyway to get the recording.

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16 April 2024

Convincing Your Boss (Non-Execs Only!)

Most Squadron events are for executives, but this one is only for non-executives ! Let's talk about how and when to "convince" your boss that, say, churning out unwanted features isn't a good idea—and what mindset will give you the best chance of achieving lasting improvement.

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11 April 2024

AI for Sales: A Debate

Joshua Wöhle and I passionately disagree about whether you can use ChatGPT and its friends to automate the hardest form of writing: cold sales emails. On this free livestream, we'll lay out our positions and maybe even ask an AI to write something non-anodyne live.

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4 April 2024

Ban "Requirements"

Customers never "require" anything from your software, other than that it meet legal and regulatory standards. Stop letting clients dictate how you build your product—join me on this free exec Zoom call to learn how to move from "must" to "want" and how that unlocks tremendous value.

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21 March 2024

Research with AI Tools

Stop using ChatGPT and Gemini and other LLMs for writing—they are meant for research! Join me on this free livestream where I'll show you, live and on-screen, how to use tools like Zenfetch to get lightning insights and ideas from undifferentiated data.

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14 March 2024

Stop Being Data-Driven

Beautiful charts and fancy metrics give the illusion of control and certainty, but in complex domains like software they are more misleading than helpful. Join me on this free exec Zoom call to discuss why RICE and MoSCoW and such are false friends.

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7 March 2024

Dealing With the Out-Of-Control Engineer

What do you do when a software developer "goes rogue", ignoring your product process and customer goals to pursue what seems to you like a harebrained, impossible outcome? Is she crazy or inspired or both? Join me on this free livestream to hear about the wild engineers I've worked with and how I've helped my clients tame them.

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29 February 2024

Avoiding Tech Strategy Mistakes

In working with over 300 tech organisations worldwide, I've seen every strategy mistake from reinventing cut-and-paste (really!) to the seven-year re-platforming. Join me on this free Zoom call to discuss why it's so easy to screw up and how not to.

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22 February 2024

Fake Agile with Johanna Rothman

"Agile" teams are far too often rigid, slow, and process-bound. Johanna Rothman wrote the book on managing agile teams, and keeps writing more!—join us on this free livestream as we discuss why and how you can break out of the "fake agile" trap.

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8 February 2024

Software Architecture for Dummies

Lambdas, web servers, firewalls, Kubernetes—the language of system administrators can be daunting. In this free livestream, I'll show you tools you can use to cut through the hype and understand whether your software is robust and scalable.

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31 January 2024

Painless Culture Change

You don't have to be a politician or a cult leader to make radical changes in an organisation's thinking—and you don't even need to be the boss. In this free executive Zoom call, I'll share techniques my coaching clients have used to make rapid, wholesale shifts in technology, sales process, marketing, and more!

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25 January 2024

Asking Technical Questions When You’re Clueless

I'm always encouraging non-technical people to ask lots of questions of us techies, but how do you build confidence and trust through good queries? Join me on this free livestream for tips and tricks that will help you stay credible and well-informed!

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18 January 2024

Keep Your Software Fast With Performance Tests

These days, everybody's software is fast at first—but to keep it that way and retain users, you have to anticipate demand with tests and constant tuning. I'll show you how and help you with your performance challenges on this executive Zoom call.

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11 January 2024

Hiring Star Techies When You Don’t Code

There's no royal road to tech hiring, but there are key steps you can take to ensure you hire highly skilled engineers who fit your culture—let's discuss on this free livestream!

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14 December 2023

Finding the Big Boss

When tech and business are misaligned, it helps to appeal to a senior executive who can redirect resources and align departments. But you may not have a relationship with that person, or even know her name—so how do you locate her, and then get her excited about a shift in direction? Join me on this free livestream to hear about stories and strategies that can help you make an appeal based on profit rather than politics.

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7 December 2023

CTO + CFO = BFF

Finance isn't all about budgets, and tech isn't just for cool demos. I'm constantly coaching technical and financial leaders to collaborate on creative funding and clever cost reductions. Join me on a free Zoom call to discuss building trust and accountability between the CTO and the CFO.

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30 November 2023

No Code "Ownership"!

Locking engineers into teams based on their skill or product specialty seems good for efficiency, but it actually limits flexibility and productivity. Join my free livestream to see how your tech team can generalise and thrive.

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16 November 2023

Live In London: Does Your Tech Measure Up?

Even if you've never written a line of code, with a few deft questions you can assess your technological assets, probe your engineering team's strengths and weaknesses, and find the profit-making opportunities hidden in your software. Join me live in central London to work through real examples drawn from hundreds of evaluations, using my Tech Radar assessment tool.

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9 November 2023

Agencies: A Dangerous Software Shortcut

Hiring an agency to build new software, or add to an existing system, is a seductive shortcut. I'm all in for testing product-market fit cheaply and early, but I've also seen tech hampered and held hostage in an agency relationship gone wrong. Join me for this free livestream to discuss how to make the best (cautious!) use of software agencies.

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2 November 2023

The "Big Bang" is Bonkers

Engineers love to rewrite software, and sometimes it's actually needed—but what almost never works is switching from old to new all at once. Join me for a free session on the dangers and alternatives, featuring the erstwhile Strangler Fig plant.

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26 October 2023

Swiss Army Knife Tech Teams–Beyond Cross-Functional

It's not enough to have "cross-functional" or "full-stack" tech teams that include two or three different technical disciplines. To get the flexibility and speed that enables insane profitability, you need skills all the way from marketing to data cleansing. Join me to see how to pack all those capabilities into a team that only needs two pizzas for lunch.

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18 October 2023

Colleen Francis Livestream - AI and Sales

This week I'm visiting Colleen Francis, world-renowned sales expert, on her regular livestream, and we're discussing how to use AI tools like ChatGPT in sales—and when not to use them! Note change to our usual day and time.

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12 October 2023

What Do We Need Testers For?

Software testing isn't how we improve quality or eliminate bugs or meet compliance requirements. We need quality experts in software teams to ensure the software is designed and documented well. Join me to learn why, and how to find those experts in a sea of "zombies".

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21 September 2023

Having Fun, The Key to Tech Team Profit

Software is so intrinsically rewarding that many people write programs just for the joy of it. The best engineering teams bring this excitement and sense of fun to the workplace—and when you have it, your developers are motivated, creative, and profitable. Join me on this livestream to find out why and how to harness fun for your tech team!

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14 September 2023

Squirrel in Munich

I'm speaking at a client's conference in Munich and a Squadron member is co-ordinating an informal get-together for Bavarian friends and colleagues while I'm there. Sign up, I'd love to meet you in person!

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7 September 2023

Keeping Work Visible

Invisible work with no measured outcomes is time and money wasted. Instead, use the techniques we'll discuss in this free Zoom call to ensure you know exactly what profit you're making from tech "refactoring" or conference attendance or "agile training" every single time--and determine where your investment could be misdirected.

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31 August 2023

Onboarding: Make Customers Love You Forever

Keeping customers can be as costly and challenging as finding them in the first place, but retention expert Donna Weber knows the hidden secrets to patching your "leaky funnel". Join Donna and me on this free livestream to discuss how to create customer loyalty and where technology can help—and hurt!

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24 August 2023

Creating a Tech Money Machine

Compared to a factory, an engineering organisation is a profit-maker's dream: infinitely adjustable products that can be evaluated instantly, with nearly zero cost of delivery and a minimal supply chain that's never disrupted by wayward ships stuck in canals. Join me on this free livestream to discuss how you can use this incredible gold mine—and the tricks and traps that keep many of us from getting the most from it.

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17 August 2023

How to Tell People They’re Wrong

Tech teams make and receive outrageous requests and demands all the time: to delay Christmas, to build superconductors or time machines, to put off vital customers in favour of "refactoring". Join me on this free Zoom call to explore techniques for addressing the interests not the positions of your colleagues and clients—while keeping your sanity.

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10 August 2023

Death To The Weekly Recruitment Meeting

Meeting your recruiter only once a week is not only a recipe for periodic boredom, but needlessly slows down your pipeline and forces out the good candidates who have plenty of competing offers. Join me and Europe's best tech exec headhunter, James Goodrich, as we discuss alternatives that move your search along at lightning speed.

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3 August 2023

The Bus Factor for Engineering Teams

It's far too easy to let knowledge and experience in your software team gravitate to just one or two engineers, so you can't imagine the team functioning without those key people. Join me on this free Zoom call to discuss how to decentralise and de-risk your team, so anyone can step in to make vital changes even in terrifying "legacy code".

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25 July 2023

Tech And Supply Chain

Join me and global supply chain expert Lisa Anderson as we discuss all things tech operations. Dark stores, China dependence, just-in-time orchestration, and much more on this free livestream.

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20 July 2023

Tech Without Profit

Join me and Australian strategy expert Andrew Hollo to discuss what tech means for "purpose-driven" organisations like nonprofits and governments. How do you measure success against a mission instead of a balance sheet? Note lunchtime start.

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13 July 2023

Roadmap-Free, On-Time Software

You don't need a detailed tech roadmap for the next year, or even the next quarter, to get control of what your engineers are doing and keep your software engine on track. Stop planning and estimating and refining, you have nothing to lose but your Jira tickets.

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6 July 2023

Tech Presentations To Wow Your Board

Tech is the most effective profit-booster you have; a powerful presentation to your investors and board members can unlock the investment and commitment you need to deliver on its promise.

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29 June 2023

Mark To Market

Do you release your software and measure your tech against real customer demand every single day? If not, you're missing a chance to "mark to market" and learn from actual usage—and your engineers already know how to do it, they just don't believe you want to.

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22 June 2023

Live From London: The Hidden Virtuosity of ChatGPT

I'm back live in London, explaining why "artificial intelligences" are better actors than Benedict Cumberbatch and demonstrating how ChatGPT can help you with research and improving your management skills—but not your writing .

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8 June 2023

Cross-Functional Tech Teams

"Feature teams" never get stuck waiting for others and have all the tech skills and business knowledge they need right inside the team. How do you set them up and what are the pitfalls and opportunities in managing and profiting from this structure?

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1 June 2023

Tech Strategy Case Study

How can writing a tech strategy turn around your engineering team? Community member Simon Taylor joins me for a free livestream to explore how he used napkins and my "X pattern" to understand and direct his tech organisation.

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25 May 2023

Use Compliance To Go Faster

My clients cure diseases, provide theraputic interventions, and make medical devices—but they still release software daily or weekly, and their compliance teams and regulators are ecstatic about it. Join me to discuss how and why governance doesn't mean having to grind to a halt, in any industry.

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18 May 2023

Talking Not Typing, Live Keynote ACE Krakow

I'll be delivering a keynote speech at the ACE conference in Krakow, Poland. Join me to learn how to improve your conversations, build better software, and make your tech team insanely profitable!

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11 May 2023

Disappointing People Helpfully

The "overwhelmed" executives I coach are missing an important opportunity: if they let others down more and explained why , they'd reinforce the right priorities and culture. Join me to learn how effective disappointment can boost tech, product, sales, budgeting, and every other part of your business.

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4 May 2023

AI Revolution: Cataclysm or Blessing?

Just a year ago, it seemed incredible that a computer might be able to hold a coherent conversation or draw an original, beautiful image. Now "artificial intelligence" seems to be everywhere and teachers, artists, and technologists are reeling from the effects. Should we welcome or fear our robot overlords? Join me and Dan Garrett as we take opposite sides of the debate.

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27 April 2023

Tech/Non-Tech Common Language

Far too often, I see tech and non-tech leaders talking to each other but using words and concepts that are utterly foreign to the other party. I'll show you how to agree a "ubiquitous language" (the language of business!) that will serve as a lingua franca —and eliminate costly misunderstandings.

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20 April 2023

Demystifying Technical Debt

Tech debt can seem like a convenient excuse for technical delays and errors. What is it really, and how can we pay it off? And who decided to incur the debt in the first place? Join me to lift the veil on "tech debt" and learn how to get back in the black.

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13 April 2023

Guiding Geeks—When You're Not One

Alignment is the key to building a successful software product—but the jargon and culture of engineers can get in the way. Join me to discuss techniques like back briefing and joint design for overcoming the perceived "tech barrier" and leading a profitable tech team, without having to know a bit from a byte!

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30 March 2023

Learning In A Mob

Better quality, faster results, shared knowledge—what if your tech team got these benefits from the seemingly crazy practise of putting every engineer in a room with a single computer and coding like mad? Join me in conversation with Vimal Patel on the ups and downs of "mob programming", and how to apply its lessons outside the tech team too.

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23 March 2023

Making It Up As You Go

As an executive, it's not only normal to feel like you're improvising and inventing your role all the time—great executives lean in and use uncertainty and vagueness as offensive weapons. Join me on this free Zoom call to practise practical lessons from improv theatre that will make you an outstanding leader.

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16 March 2023

Grow Your Own Recruiter

Too many recruitment agencies load up the shotgun with CVs and spray you willy-nilly with random candidates, hoping one will stick. Kick them to the kerb and get yourself a dedicated, internal recruiter who runs custom campaigns, builds your employer brand, and finds you great engineers in days. One of London's top internal recruiters, Stevie Buckley, joins me for this free livestream.

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8 March 2023

Elephant Carpaccio—Live From London

Make visible, profitable progress every single day in your live software with methods your engineers already understand. In this free session, live in a convenient London location, I'll show you how to cut the "elephant" of your software projects into super-thin slices, eliminating lengthy estimation and "refinement" sessions and demonstrating live progress to real customers daily.

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2 March 2023

Centaurs and the Future of AI

You've probably heard of or played with ChatGPT or DALL-E, the bots that seem to promise an end to writing, drawing, and other intelligent human activities. But if you join me for this free livestream, I'll draw lessons from chess and self-driving cars to illustrate why the human/computer hybrid (a "centaur") is really the way forward, and what that means for your business.

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23 February 2023

Geeks Talking To Customers

There's no need to write ever more detailed design documents and estimate to the nth degree when your engineers have a direct line to customers. I'll show you how to overcome resistance—yours and theirs!—to engineers going to user research sessions, helping on sales calls, and responding to customer-service requests, and we'll discuss how to turn this information flow into faster delivery and greater profit.

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16 February 2023

Learning From Disasters

Southwest Airlines cancelled 60% of its flights with no warning this Christmas—and the real cause wasn't a storm or poor planning. Like crypto exchanges or the Three Mile Island meltdown, there were systemic factors like "tight coupling" that mean one extra demand on the system leads quickly to an irrecoverable spiral. Join me and Chris Clearfield, author of Meltdown, on a free livestream to discuss what disasters can teach us and how we can learn to avoid them.

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26 January 2023

Feature Teams and Handoff Hell

If your engineers keep saying "I'm waiting for the mobile team" and their co-ordination plans that make every bug sound like building the Taj Mahal, you've missed a trick. In my experience, the functional division of technical organisations leads to endless dependencies and bottlenecks, but there's an alternative, the cross-functional "feature team", that can wipe out those delays (and it's much more fun too). Join me to see how to apply these methods to simplify and accelerate your tech progress.

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19 January 2023

Grumbles To Gold

It's a good sign when your team is complaining about work location or failing tests or annoying requirements. It's an opportunity to learn and improve quickly, and it means you have the right culture of psychological safety to implement what you learn.

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12 January 2023

Let The Robots Do It, Live From London

Tech is tying down your operations and customer service teams with needless complexity and byzantine, bizarre processes that keep the machines happy and people apoplectic. Join me for a hands-on live session to solve your knottiest ops problems and create automations that remove work rather than creating it.

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8 December 2022

Blast Through Barriers

What's stopping you speeding ahead isn't legacy code or budgets or team skills. An exec mindset means never saying "wait", creating productive conflict that bursts open doors. Join me on Zoom and I'll show you how.

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1 December 2022

PyData Data Science Executive Q&A

Join me and Ian Ozsvald for this special event, part of the PyData Global Conference.

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24 November 2022

Eliminate Your Training Budget

You're wasting most if not all of the money you're spending on training engineers--because you're not measuring the return. Hywel Carver of Skiller Whale will join us to discuss what you can do instead to get real improvements in relevant team skills.

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17 November 2022

On Time Without Estimates

Vasco Duarte wrote the book (literally) on abandoning estimates to make your tech team incredibly productive. He'll join me to discuss how you can do it too!

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3 November 2022

Demystifying Search Engine Optimisation

When you weren't looking, somehow "The Algorithm" took over every aspect of growing your business. Find out what's really going on in "SEO" with special guest Eli Schwartz!

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27 October 2022

Hurry Up and Do Nothing

Feeling bored and useless is normal for a new executive–it shows you’re doing simple things that have big effects. Stop equating busy-ness with business!

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20 October 2022

Live From Vienna: Are My Engineers Doing Anything ??

Software development can be infuriatingly opaque. If you're wondering what's really going on in the black box of your tech team, come along to the Anyline office in central Vienna (or sign up for the recording) to see how you can shine a light into the darkest IT corners.

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13 October 2022

Making Tech Insanely Profitable

Your investment in tech is huge, but how do you measure the return? Don't just settle for value for money, demand and get outsize profits with crazy leverage.

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6 October 2022

Unleashing Chaos for Fun and Profit

Be as paranoid as possible to keep your software systems running. Assume your users, and Amazon, and every SaaS you touch is out to get you, and break things yourself before they can. Let's talk about how and why pessimism is vital for robust systems, with scalability expert Jon Topper!

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29 September 2022

Live From Berlin: The Time-Bomb of Tech Misalignment

If your engineers are adding servers and data pipelines while customers are crying for bug fixes and critical features, you're headed for a catastrophic explosion. Join me in central Berlin (or get the recording) to find out what to do when tech and business are pulling in opposite directions!

rabbit
22 September 2022

Electric Shock Strategy

Setting objectives should never be boring! Zap your whole organisation with strategic direction that astonishes them and creates productive debate and energy.

pinecone
15 September 2022

Estimates Are Lies

Every time an engineer invents an estimate, a fairy dies. Estimation is sucking time and energy out of your tech team, freezing their creativity and blocking progress on crucial changes. Why are you chasing the fantasy of predctiability when you don't really need it ?

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8 September 2022

Live From London: Say Yes To Everything

"Yes" is the most powerful answer to a feature request, or a customer complaint, or an outrageous demand from the CEO or the Board. Live and in person in London, I'll work with you to master methods from improv theatre (no kidding!) that mean you really can please everyone all the time.

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1 September 2022

Winning With Ambiguity

Respond with cheers, not dread, when stakeholders and customers don't know what they want. Unclear requirements from users, conflicting demands from your peers, confusing technical updates from your engineers—all represent fantastic opportunities to define the terms of discussion and bring clarity to the debate.

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25 August 2022

Don't Test Until It's Live

Your software has bugs. Who can find them better than real customers? Let's discuss how to use clever methods like feature flags and canary releases to eliminate testing delays and learn from real users safely, without riling any $

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18 August 2022

The Art of the Reprimand

"You screwed up and I feel disappointed." I know of no faster way to communicate a cultural and behavioural expectation than a brief, emotionally charged, supportive reprimand. Stop being afraid of conflict and tell your staff how to stop making mistakes.

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11 August 2022

Why You Don’t Need a Platform

Your software is a program: it runs on a computer and does the bidding of users. Dressing it up as a "platform" that everyone can use to build more software is needless overcomplication in almost every case. Most likely, you need opinionated design and thoughtful configuration, a sleek Apple rather than a generic Dell. Join me on this free livestream to discuss and debate!

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4 August 2022

Truce!—Resolving Product/Engineering Combat

Productivity and morale are the casualties when product and engineering teams dissolve into unproductive conflict. On this free executive Zoom call, let's discuss how to rebuild trust and collaboration—with tools as simple as a T-shirt.

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28 July 2022

Knee-Jerk No

Some tech teams start with "no" to everything. They've learned to be helpless, believing that every new idea is doomed, that they'll never be able to fix the tech debt or meet a real customer, so they keep their heads down, pad their estimates, and do their best with what seems to be an unchangeable situation. Let's talk about how to wake up and inspire such a team on this free livestream.

owl
21 July 2022

Telling Stories To The Boss

Whether you're a CEO, CTO, or head of product, you're probably working with a Big Boss (like the Board chairman or company owner) who seems like a member of an alien race. Unlike most people in the organisation, he or she thinks finance first, welcomes conflict, and doesn't hesitate to switch priorities or demand changes on a dime. But you don't need to be a xenobiologist to manage upward effectively; composing clear story-based narratives can build the confidence and trust you need to collaborate effectively. Join me on this free Zoom call to discuss the best techniques for managing the tricky Big Boss.

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14 July 2022

Tech Career Ladders

You don't need six-stage progression frameworks and ten-page job descriptions to guide your engineers to career growth. One size doesn't fit all; you can customise and tailor the path forward for each member of your technical team, avoiding bureaucracy and ensuring growth. Join me and my guests Jonny Burch and Neil Cameron of Progression on this free livestream!

london
7 July 2022

Live! Tech Baloney

Artificial intelligence, blockchain wizardry, the endless "refactoring"—exaggerated claims from your vendors, partners, and your own tech team can seem impossible to detect. How do you sif$ unlikely when you're not an expert? Join me live in London to learn the signs and discuss how to $ the most common types of "snake oil".

duck
30 June 2022

Tough Choices

Faster software or better experience? More runway or more growth? New territories or invest at home? With wars, pandemics, and downturns on every side, we're facing more dilemmas than ever. We'll talk about ways to act decisively without all the information, the value of the undo button, and how to disappoint people helpfully.

culture
23 June 2022

Positive Engineering Culture For Fun and Profit

Working your developers harder and longer doesn't get more done. The trick is to address vital human needs while aligning everyone with the results the organisation wants to see. As a result, you get motivated engineers working on the right things, and a great reputation to boot. Discuss with me and my special guest Ben Summers, who built an amazing technical culture at Haplo.

goose
16 June 2022

Fear is Your Friend

We're too afraid of fear! Even when it's obvious our teams are paralysed, afraid to release on Friday or to phone a concerned customer, we think bringing the fear to the surface will somehow make it worse, that discussing it is dangerous. Instead, learn how to recognise "normalisation of deviance" as a sign of fear and how to harness that fear as a signpost to learning opportunities, using tools like coherence busting and the Fear Chart.

risk
9 June 2022

Facing Risk Without Cowering

"Managing" risk in too many organisations means smothering it with risk registers, committee meetings, and tonnes of red tape. It often seems better to do nothing than to incur downtime, bugs, or angry customers—but let me show you ways you and your tech team can control the risk monster with tools like coherence busting and test guardrails.

no-code
26 May 2022

Software Without Engineers

I was shocked a few years ago when a client told me they had built a complex operations-heavy system without hiring a single developer. Now, with increasing prevalence of "no-code" tools like Salesforce, Airtable, and Zapier, I'm seeing more and more of these "Frankensystems", and they seem to work. But what are the challenges and pitfalls? Join me to find out!

owl
19 May 2022

Beyond Specs

I don't believe in "specifications" and you shouldn't either. Massive documents are not the way to clarify "requireme$ or to reduce bug rates. Let me show you how to effectively and efficiently communicate what's needed and when, with "$ iterative delivery.

estimation
12 May 2022

The Secret of Estimation

I often hear that "engineers can't estimate" or that "agile doesn't mix with deadlines". Nothing could be further fro$ handled properly. Join me to learn how to deliver software on time— because you deliver it often, and w$ than rockets.

london
5 May 2022

Bold Technology—Live From London!

You're leaving profit on the table because your software team are taking safe options instead of imaginative risks. Computers make the cost of failure lower than ever and recovery super-simple, but the message hasn't got through yet, to them, you, or the rest of your business. Discover how to replace "abundance of caution" with "intelligent experiment" at this exciting live, in-person event in central London. (Not in London? Register anyway to get the video.)

world
28 April 2022

Cycling Faster and Faster

The most important metric I use in gauging a software team's maturity is its "cycle time", the cadence at which it can make a change to the system, deploy it, and evaluate the results. If you aren't going through this cycle at least weekly, you're way behind; the best teams can do it hourly or even faster, enabling incredibly fast evolution and improvement. Come along for a deep dive into the benefits, risks, and profit opportunities of rapid experimentation.

Continuous Integration
21 April 2022

Releasing Software 50 Times A Day—The Easy Way!

One of IT's best-kept secrets is that almost every software system, no matter how complex, can be updated with new features and bug fixes in a matter of minutes—without users even noticing. Many teams have "continuous integration" tooling installed, but only pay lip service to this miracle of modern engineering; join me and special guest Jeffrey Fredrick to learn how to squeeze it hard for maximum speed and profit.

hats
14 April 2022

Managing Your Own Psychology

It's totally normal to feel like a complete failure as a CTO, but nobody tells you that. After all, who else is to blame when the star engineer quits or the site is down? Skills like Seligman's Learned Optimism can be lifesavers, if you know about them—join me to hear how I and others mastered our psychology and how you can too!

Don't Knock IT
7 April 2022

Don't Knock IT!

We may all be geeks, but IT folks and software developers are totally different breeds. As a CTO, I've laid ethernet cables and fixed printers to build capacity and trust, and outsourced where my engineers' skills reached their limit. With special guest Daniel Mitchell of Lifeline IT as our guide to the ins and outs of internal IT.

squirrel
31 March 2022

Stop Worrying And Learn to Love Compliance

ISO-27001, HIPPA, FedRamp—a confusing forest of compliance framework names, but also your way out of endless questionnaires and conflicting regulatory requirements. Guided by special guest and compliance guru Niall Giggins of JRNI!

Security
24 March 2022

What You Absolutely, Positively Have To Know About Security

Securing user data seems like an onerous, technically fearsome task that could consume all your time and energy. But there's a "theoretical minimum" that's smaller and simpler than you think, freeing time to make your product worth securing.

hat
17 March 2022

Wearing Too Many Hats

Holes in the org chart can lead to exhaustion as you or your exec team try to juggle all the roles and manage huge numbers of direct reports. But don't worry, there's a way out!

Actually Intelligent Business Intelligence
10 March 2022

Actually Intelligent Business Intelligence

You know there's something amiss when you have three, or four, or more "single sources of truth" about the state of your business, and they're all wrong. There are ways to fix or avoid this situation—and there's no need for expensive new tools. With special guest Ben Newel$

How Not To Use Your Data Team
3 March 2022

How Not To Use Your Data Team

Data scientists are extremely hard to find, very expensive, and can produce enormous value. So why are their talents so often wasted, with no visible output or profit from their work? With special guest Ian Ozsvald.

Why Do I Need a Data Lake?
24 February 2022

Why Do I Need a Data Lake?

There's huge untapped potential in the data that passes through your software. A data lake is a relatively simple way to ensure you're capturing this valuable resource, even if you're not ready to use it yet.

Why You Should Ignore Blockchain and Cryptocurrency
17 February, 2022

Why You Should Ignore Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (for now)

Stop wasting your time—and the energy of your tech team—chasing an immature technology.

What is Web3 And Why Should I Care?
10 February, 2022

What is Web3 And Why Should I Care?

Web3 is supposed to "make the web distributed again". But what does that mean and will it mean a real improvement in privacy and scalability, or just more hype? With special guest Tal Oron.

Where does my CTO fit in?
3 FEBRUARY, 2022

Where Does My CTO Fit In?

I’ll sort through the confusing forest of role titles—featuring special guest James Goodrich.

Squirrel's Office Hours - January 2022
27 January, 2022

Squirrel's Office Hours - January 2022