Five for Friday – 8/18/2023

August 18, 2023
Five for Friday

After a week of great weather for the Iowa State Fair, the temperature is rising…just in time to step outside for another airshow this weekend in Kansas City (on the Kansas side of the border) with the U.S. Navy Blue Angels. It will be to my great regret that I haven't used my free ticket to the fair yet…if I go this weekend. If you're outside this weekend, stay cool, or stay indoors and check out these great articles.

We all spend time in meetings. Many of us loathe them and wonder when we'll have time to do “real work”. So how do we make meetings more effective? A good first step is knowing “why you are meeting and who needs to be there.” If you know the WHY, you can establish a process to help reach the desired outcome and what you'll produce as a result.
Teams I've worked on in the past have benefited the most from two practices: team whiteboarding sessions and team demos. Every time a team has gotten away from these, they've returned as a team retro item. While I don't believe that every user story needs to be demoed, there's tremendous value in showing your work and sharing that knowledge with your team. Before you add another column to your favorite board, check out the Benefits of a Dev “Show Me”.
I watched a short video recently that said we are all born as creative geniuses. Somewhere along the way, we're programmed to start specializing and in turn, we stop exploring. Maybe it's time to flip the “Pyramid of Life” upside down.
I've done some testing of Google's Bard AI tool, with some comparison to ChatGPT. I've used them both to create some simple functions (in your language of choice) to add two numbers together, like with a calculator. I'm still learning how to take full advantage of AI to assist with writing code (since I write very little). If you're looking to enhance your AI skills like I am, check out Using ChatGPT to help write scripts by Chris Kenst.
Ash Winter shares a nugget in (Too) Great Expectation s that I've also observed about great teams: “Stable teams with deep domain knowledge who seek feedback can deliver amazing things. Which delight their customers.” Unfortunately, most of us don't get to pick our team. If you want some tips on managing team change, check out Dynamic Reteaming by Heidi Helfand.