<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Understand and explain: "debug" to understand the current circumstances and "fix the bug" by make sure everybody understand the same (what's happening) </li><li class="ql-align-justify">Make the work easier: workaround by not need as much from the people you're waiting for (the procrastinating component) (reduce your expectations)</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Get organizational support: demonstrate the value of the work to get support from organization --> sometimes you need to escalate to bypass the blockage.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Make alternative plans: change the current (origin) form of (blocking) tasks by creatively create another solution. </li></ul>

Format of techniques to deal with blockage in project.

It's OK if you're not working on the most important thing, but what you're doing should not be a waste of your time.

Know what you are doing

"be autonomous and never have to think about each other's work" ... many many ideas about your current team when you are new or you are "flying in sky" with some good moods. In reality, any big project is going to span multiple teams, departments and job functions ... Many unexpected problems (procrastination) will happen leading to miss an important deadline.

Your dream team is only in a perfect world.

Blocked by coding, configuration problem ... and couldn't solve it immediately, may be give you some relax could help:<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Sleep is amazing</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Vacations can do the same thing</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Take a few days (break time) (totally) away from a problem</li></ul> You will almost come back with better ideas even if you haven't thought about it in the meantime

Give time to solve (long) blocked task

Trying to solve a problem in a narrow space between meetings maybe limit your ideas -> schedule yourself some dedicated time to (really) unpack the situation (this takes time). Bring your best brain to that meeting with yourself:<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Good sleep</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Non-stodgy food</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Plenty of water</li><li class="ql-align-justify">A room with good light and air</li></ul>... "You should know your own problems, do whatever makes you smart"

Increase your capacity

Even you created a "best" software in the world but if users don't know about it or aren't convinced it's worth their time --> you need to do the "marketing" for your software (even internal organization) So farming, creating software may be the same, we all need to "sell" our products.

"Selling" your software / Do the marketing for your software

Don't just tell people about the existing of your solution, you need to "keep" telling them:<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Don't assume that users will find the your product (even after you tell them about it). You need to "help them to find it".</li><li class="ql-align-justify">"Advertisement": Send emails, do road shows, get a slot at the engineering all-hands, posters.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Support & Get feedbacks: Offer special (support) services to specific customers who are likely to advocate for you. And then get feedbacks, testimonials to understand their experiences about your products and do upgrade.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Persistence: keep telling until they start telling each other. </li></ul>

Tell people (about your software/solution/product)

"Whatever you've created, make it easy to find" <ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Put your product at anywhere its intended users are likely to look for it.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Make the search results on any searchable platforms reach to your product at the right place. (plan for likely names, including misspelling, mistyping and any hyphenations people are likely to guess)</li></ul>

Make your product/software/solution discoverable

"The healthy balance of feature work and maintenance work and teams build the time for high quality into the cost of their projects."<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Make sure the user stories for the project include any cleanup work that need to do (a part of user experience or laying foundation for the next feature)</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Use related bug reports or action items after outages to justify the cleanup work.</li></ul>

(Ideally) Shipping a product is not just about the features - it's about the preparing for the future

Need a dedicated time to do necessary engineering work."There's a healthy balance of feature and maintence work, and teams build the time for high quality into the cost off their projects" Building demo versions / lightweight first verions / prototypes to get early user feedback .... take technical debts always needs us to return to improve whatever we've just bypassed. Clean up tasks should be apeared in your projects if not, it's the time to dedicate resource/plan for these tasks.

Everything comes with a price

"Software has an extraordinary number of technology areas, each with its own specialized knowledge and vocabulary. Knowing mobile development, algorithmic computer science... doesn't prepare you for a frontend UX project"﻿

Even very experienced engineers can find themselves being beginners

"... You may find that you're learning from the junior engineers you work with. (This is a good thing!) Here is where your technical knowledge provides a foundation."Even when you cannot recognize the specifics of the problems in a new domain, your general experience should help you recognize their shapes. You can pattern-match the new problem to something you recognize, so it will not be completely "new" now.The broader your scope of experience, the more "hooks" you'll hang new knowledge off and the faster you can learn new things.

Your technical knowledge provides a foundation to learn new things from junior engineers

"Know what high-quality work looks like and aim for that standard in everything you do, not just the parts you enjoy most" It means:<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Writing the clearest documentation you can.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Be the first person to know if your software breaks.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Know the trade-offs: accept quick fixes (when needs) but focus on long-term solution</li></ul> How to: Having High Standards = making your work as good as it can be<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Seek out constructive criticism - put aside your ego and ask someone else to help make you better (review, evaluation...)</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Take your comments seriously .</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Own your mistakes: admit what happened and fix , apologize... </li></ul>

Having High Standards

"Nines don't matter when users aren't happy"                Charity Majors, CTO of Honeycomb "SLOs are useful but they don't tell the whole story"﻿You need to measure success from your users' point of view. Users/Customers could be everyone who uses your service/product.

Care about your customers

"If you can't explain to yourself why what you're doing needs a staff engineer, you might be doing the wrong thing"Even when you're not a staff engineer, if you can't explain (to yourself) why & what you're doing needs you, you might be doing the wrong thing.After know that what to do next is depends on you but not others but if you continue to do the same, it could kill yourself.

How to know you doing the wrong thing

Don't forget seeing a problem doesn't necessarily mean you should jump on it.Choose the opportunities where your help is most valuable and then take deliberate action, with a plan for stepping away again afterward.

Defend your time

just my notes from "The staff engineer's Path" of Tanya Reilly

For years, companies have rewarded their most effective engineers with management positions. But treating management as the default path for an engineer with leadership ability doesn't serve the industry well--or the engineer. The staff engineer's path allows engineers to contribute at a high level as role models, driving big projects, determining technical strategy, and raising everyone's skills.This in-depth book shows you how to understand your role, manage your time, master strategic thinking, and set the standard for technical work. You'll read about how to be a leader without direct authority, how to plan ahead to make the right technical decisions, and how to make everyone around you better, while still growing as an expert in your domain.By exploring the three pillars of a staff engineer's job, Tanya Reilly, a veteran of the staff engineer track, shows you how to:<ul><li>Take a broad, strategic view when thinking about your work</li><li>Dive into practical tactics for making projects succeed</li><li>Determine what "good engineering" means in your organization</li></ul>

How to know you doing the wrong thing

Similar ideas to How to know you doing the wrong thing

Doing the real, useful thing

YOUR WANDERING MIND IS NOT THE PROBLEM, YOUR ADDICTION TO IT, IS.

Focusing on the wrong thing