The key to getting business people and developers to work well together, and building a world-class engineering culture, is for the business people to share problems, not solutions, with the developers. 
So bringing developers into the big issues you're trying to solve and leveraging their full skills.

Why Developers Matter

Ask your developers what happens after an outage. <ul><li>Is the person to blame or the process?</li><li>Are people encouraged to learn quickly, even at the risk of making mistakes?</li><li>Do you provide venues for learning from each other and even take risks by giving younger leaders the reins to parts of the business?</li></ul>

The Aftermath

The core of Agile is the ability to move quickly and easily, change direction quickly and respond to changing inputs.A Product Manager or leader needs to question the following: <ul><li>Ask your developers whether they want product managers to be gatekeepers or facilitators of customer interaction? Do PMs view their role similarly?</li><li>Do they collaborate to groom road maps coming from a shared customer understanding, or do they divide and conquer where PMs know the customers and engineers know the code?</li></ul>

An Agile Environment

<ul><li>Off-the-shelf software is for general purposes and does not give an edge over your competitors. </li><li>Businesses need to become more software orientated to gain that edge. You need to build your own software or die.</li><li>To stay on top of competitors, you need to innovate. To innovate, you need to experiment. Experimentation is the prerequisite to innovation.</li><li>You need to ensure that there's tolerance for failure - both personally and organizationally - it's the primary key to unlocking innovation.</li></ul>

Innovation At Hyperspeed

A company's structure built on teams of around ten people is a way to scale up a company without losing the urgency, focus and quality of talent that characterises a startup by building a large company out of what are essentially many startups.<ul><li>"Single-threaded" leaders have only one thing on their mind - how their team can win.</li><li>They are empowered to make their own decisions and be responsible for them.</li></ul>

Small Teams

An open learning environment is where the company is receptive to not having all the answers, is comfortable with uncertainty, and strives to get better every day.It means being flexible instead of rigid and having a culture where people continually seek the truth. You want knowledge and truth to win, not politics.

An Open, Learning Environment

Make sure your customer feel you're on their side. Encourage developers to talk directly with customers, listen on a call or attend a meeting with customers regularly to get a human connection with the customer and understand their problems better.Ask your developers what customer problems are they solving/working on?

Wearing The Customer's Shoes

<ul>
<li>Great product managers are not a layer between customer needs and developers. They actually remove layers, eliminate preconceived solutions and erroneous presumptions, and streamline communications.</li>
<li>Great product managers facilitate the understanding of customer problems, not only for developers but for all people involved in building the product or feature.</li>
<li>Good ideas can come at any time, from anywhere, not necessarily when management requires it.</li>
</ul>

Removing Layers, Not Adding More

Jeff Lawson, software developer turned CEO of Twilio, creates a new playbook for unleashing the full potential of software developers in any organization, showing how to help management utilize this coveted and valuable workforce to enable growth, solve a wide range of business problems and drive digital transformation. From banking and retail to insurance and finance, every industry is turning digital, and every company needs the best software to win the hearts and minds of customers. The landscape has shifted from the classic build vs. buy question, to one of build vs. die. Companies have to get this right to survive. But how do they make this transition? Software developers are sought after, highly paid, and desperately needed to compete in the modern, digital economy. Yet most companies treat them like digital factory workers without really understanding how to unleash their full potential. Lawson argues that developers are the creative workforce who can solve major business problems and create hit products for customers—not just grind through rote tasks. From Google and Amazon, to one-person online software companies—companies that bring software developers in as partners are winning. Lawson shows how leaders who build industry changing software products consistently do three things well. First, they understand why software developers matter more than ever. Second, they understand developers and know how to motivate them. And third, they invest in their developers' success. As a software developer and public company CEO, Lawson uses his unique position to bridge the language and tools executives use with the unique culture of high performing, creative software developers. Ask Your Developer is a toolkit to help business leaders, product managers, technical leaders, software developers, and executives achieve their common goal—building great digital products and experiences. How to compete in the digital economy? In short: Ask Your Developer.

teamwork

Teamwork

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Books

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Computer Science

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Product & Design

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Software Engineering

Jeff Lawson, developer turned CEO of Twilio (one of Bloomberg Businessweek's Top 50 Companies to Watch in 2021), creates a new playbook for unleashing the full potential of software developers in any organization, showing how to help management utilize this coveted and valuable workforce to enable growth, solve a wide range of business problems, and drive digital transformation.From banking and retail to insurance and finance, every industry is turning digital, and every company needs the best software to win the hearts and minds of customers. The landscape has shifted from the classic build vs. buy question, to one of build vs. die. Companies have to get this right to survive. But how do they make this transition?Software developers are sought after, highly paid, and desperately needed to compete in the modern, digital economy. Yet most companies treat them like digital factory workers without really understanding how to unleash their full potential. Lawson argues that developers are the creative workforce who can solve major business problems and create hit products for customers—not just grind through rote tasks. From Google and Amazon, to one-person online software companies—companies that bring software developers in as partners are winning. Lawson shows how leaders who build industry changing software products consistently do three things well. First, they understand why software developers matter more than ever. Second, they understand developers and know how to motivate them. And third, they invest in their developers' success. As a software developer and public company CEO, Lawson uses his unique position to bridge the language and tools executives use with the unique culture of high performing, creative software developers. Ask Your Developer is a toolkit to help business leaders, product managers, technical leaders, software developers, and executives achieve their common goal—building great digital products and experiences. How to compete in the digital economy? In short: Ask Your Developer.

Jeff Lawson is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. Jeff Lawson has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. Jeff Lawson's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

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