BOSS-it host, Mark Edwards has a wide-ranging chat with CTO and author, Mark Herschberg, who, it turns out, has been a guest on 180 podcasts. No pressure there then for our host to ask some decent questions :-)
Brief Bio for Mark Herschberg
Back in the 90s, during the .com era, Mark was a software developer. At the same time, he recognised the skills required to be successful were leadership, communication and networking. These were skills that were not taught in college, so he ended up teaching them at MIT - for the past 20 years.
Mark has followed these two careers in parallel and is still a CTO.
Best Lessons Learned
Mark says the best lessons he has learned came from a book called "Peopleware", by Tom de Marco & Timothy Lister – The essence of the book is that most software projects fail not because of technological (software) issues but for sociological reasons – In other words, because your team didn’t talk to each other and plan and communicate well, they messed up the project.
He outlines the most important things to do to avoid this scenario:
1) Set the overarching goal – What are we trying to achieve? – Not just what it is but how it's positioned.
2) Have a clear process - How are we going to work together? Have a clear idea for what happens when there’s an issue? – How do you raise that to your teammate? Where do we use Slack, versus an email or a meeting? Don’t leave this to chance.
3) Agree the definition of “Done”? – You need a common definition so that everybody knows when a job is actually complete.
Links:
The Career Toolkit – Mark A Herschberg
https://www.thecareertoolkitbook.com/
Download the career development kit:
https://www.thecareertoolkitbook.com/author
Peopleware by Tom de Marco & Timothy Lister
https://menloinnovations.com/
The BOSS-it Podcast:
https://www.bossequity.com/resources/podcasts