Leadership in the age of AI. Does it change, or does it just enable good leaders and find out the bad ones? We’ve spent an enormous amount of time discussing how AI is going to change the work people do, not least in software development. I’m increasingly interested in a slightly different question. What happens to leadership when AI changes the nature of the team itself? My thinking on AI in software development has shifted considerably over the last couple of years, and mos

How often have you heard someone say of a leader, "They blow hot and cold," or, "Try to catch them on a good day"? We're all human. Even the best leaders have bad days. Deadlines pile up, difficult conversations happen, and sometimes life outside work inevitably spills into the working day. But if people regularly feel they need to judge your mood before deciding whether to approach you, then it's worth asking yourself whether you're being as consistent as you think you are.

A team of people mirroring their leader's helpful behaviours You have influence! When you are a leader with teams of people looking to you for direction and guidance, it is important to understand the influence you have on their behaviour and attitudes. Your actions, words, and your demeanour can set the tone for the entire team. This concept is encapsulated in the idea that "people take their lead from their leaders." You are a role model, for good and bad As a leader, you a

The problem Are you a business leader wishing your technology delivery was faster, even though they always seem busy? You know the symtoms. Roadmaps slip. Priorities compete. Delivery timelines feel longer than everyone wants them to be. The instinctive reaction is often to increase pressure, hire more people, demand firmer commitments, increase reporting, introduce more governance, push teams harder. You might think the problem is all within the technology team, but there m

If you're a business leader, frustrated that your technology provision isn't keeping pace with growth. You're probably already thinking about some kind of transformation. And the real measure of success in transformation isn't the technology itself. It's what the business can achieve because of it. I talk to so many technology leaders who describe their transformation success in terms of the software they shipped, the team they grew and the changes the implemented to the ways

A Common Problem If you lead a business or a function that has a software development team, there’s a good chance someone has tried to explain Agile to you at some point. There’s also a good chance that explanation involved words like velocity, story points, sprints, retrospectives, and epics, and left you none the wiser about whether your team is actually going to deliver what you need, when you need it. That’s not your fault. It’s not necessarily theirs either. It’s a commu

If your stakeholders are telling you the tech team isn’t delivering, it’s very easy to accept that as fact. But don’t assume they’re right. Be open to it, for sure, but investigate it and form your own view. Because sometimes, the team isn’t the problem. The Situation I stepped into a leadership role where the narrative was already set. “The development team are poor at delivery”. That view was strongest from account managers, the people closest to customers. And the expectat

Sometimes good enough is good enough Introduction Today I'm tackling something lots of leaders wrestle with. The fact that there's rarely room for perfection when you're leading lots of functions in a business or a multi-disciplined teams. If you stopped to strive for perfection in everything you do, you'll be a bottleneck. That "I'm a bit of a perfectionist" claim that many people make may sound admirable, and it could be viewed as a positive trait. But more often than not i

Estimating around a whiteboar If you’ve worked in software delivery, you’ll recognise this tension: Stakeholders want a date. The team resists committing to one. They say, “We can’t give you a date because we’re agile” The problem is… the rest of the business still runs on dates and needs you to forecast one. Marketing needs to plan campaigns. Finance needs forecasts. Customers need commitments.The business needs to know when the team will be available to work on something el

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Anyone who knows me knows that I like to operate a meritocracy in my teams or with my clients on a day to day basis. Everyone has their...

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Whenever I start a new leadership role, whether permanent, interim or fractional, I like to Take Control of Day One. There are lots of...

How often have you heard people talk about “IT” and “The Business” as if they’re completely different things? It's wrong on so many...

The whole subject of vehicle autonomy fascinates me. I see lots of debate about when the technology will be “good enough” to become...