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Hi everybody! Time for your somewhat regular pie-mail!

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Thank you so much to everyone who donated to my Movember campaign - it's really appreciated!

There's still time to donate if you feel inspired - it's a good cause. It would be great if we could tip it over $350 before the month is out!

Aside from moustache antics, it's been a meeting heavy week. All important meetings, but, meetings - especially over video call - can be pretty draining.

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I'm glad to be able to take a break from it for a bit, to put this newsletter together - so - I hope you like it! I've also played with the format again, let me know if you have any feedback!

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🏃 It's a marathon, not a sprint 🏃

One of the themes for my team this week has been "how do we go faster?"

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Let's talk about something I love - running!

In 2018 I ran my first (and only) ultramarathon.

My goal for this race was just to get to the finish line. Which I did, even though it took more than thirteen hours!

That meant - making sure I had enough food and water. It meant taking breaks. It meant having a plan for the journey and knowing where the big climbs were. It meant walking the difficult parts, being careful not to injure myself.

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In other words, I had to make sure my pace was sustainable.

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I think there's a lot of parallels between this and the way we build software. It's tempting when we hear "go faster" to interpret that as write more code, work extra hours, and cut corners (like code reviews and tests) to get more things out the door.

But, this isn't sustainable. Eventually, the cut corners come back to haunt you, and the engineers burn out. It's like not making it to the finish line, because you expended all your energy too early.

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Of course, sometimes the goal is not just to finish the race! We have pressure to get features in front of customers, make profits, and beat the competition.

With this in mind, I've been thinking about the person that came first in my race. My goal was to finish, theirs was to win.

But they wouldn't have won by just "going faster". Of course, they did go faster, but this is the result of - better training, better preparedness, more experience.

To me, that means that as much energy needs to go in to learning and getting new skills, and preparation, as it does to execution.

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Two week 'sprints' are pretty common in software development. But software projects are much more like a marathon than a series of sprints - it's important to keep prepare well, keep moving at a sustainable pace, with the end goal in mind.

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So we want to go faster - but what's important is that we're faster in the long term, not the short term, and that speed is sustainable!

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📖 Read

External auditors - arrogant beyond their competence:

James Christie is one of my favourite writers on misadventures in auditing. He has a wealth of experience. In this article, he shares some quick horror stories about the pitfalls of external auditors. It's worth checking out some of his writings on the Fujitsu/Post Office scandal from the UK too - really interesting and thoughtful commentary.

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How do you actually prevent bugs?

When I'm coaching testers, one question that comes up a lot is this: "We want to test early in the development cycle - but how do we actually do that?" Here Nicola Lindgren offers up at least one really good answer to this question.

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A simple rule for product decision making:

​This post from Adam Knight was my favourite read of the week. It again ties in to not just going fast, but making things better as you go, or as he puts it, "Don't pass up an opportunity to progress to where you want to be long term".

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🎧 Listen

Pushpay - Founders, CEOs and Product Management:

The final part of the Six-Four interview with the early leaders at Pushpay.

I promise, I'm not sponsored by Six-Four or anything, I've just really enjoyed this series. This time they talk about something I find really interesting - making product decisions, when there are competing priorities, and dealing with a CEO/founder in the mix too.

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📺 Watch

We scare because we care:

I linked this event last time, here's the recording if you missed it. Maaike Brinkhof on her journey into DevOps, and how it changed the way she tested. It was worth getting up at 5am for, but there's a recording now, so you don't have to.

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🎮 Play

LinkedIn - the game:

Can you win at LinkedIn?

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🎟️ Events coming up

I think all dates are in NZT btw

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Green coding, and Recovering from Mistakes (Mon, Nov 29) (that's TONIGHT):

This month Xero talks features two speakers - First up, Annie Freeman, on mitigating climate change as an engineer. Then, John Bowker, on mistakes he's made as a Product Manager (and how he's recovered).

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Fast Forward - A Virtual Open House (Tues, Nov 30):

This one is for jobseekers, but not just for jobseekers. Four of NZ's most exciting up and coming companies are opening their doors to you, virtually. Join the teams from Imagr, FirstAML, Kami and Narrative to find out more about them, what they do, and how they do it.

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Workshop - Building and Testing a RESTful API (Thu, Dec 2):

Josh Grant and Ministry of testing present this FREE 99 minute workshop. I like that this is build AND test - a really good way to learn about APIs and how to test them, is to build one!

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Sunshine for Jobseekers, Monsoon for Recruiters (Thu, Dec 2):

Ministry of Testing Auckland hears from two recruitment experts - Molly Workman from RUSH, and Ryan Humphrey from Serko. They'll be giving their views on the job market at the moment, the challenges and opportunities it brings, and what it means for you!

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Lightning talks with Countdown UX (Fri, Dec 3):

UX Auckland present Alex Smith, Bliss Ng, Michael Turley and Shira Natovich Ashkenazi from Countdown UX. They'll be sharing some learnings and reflections from this year - and for a company like Countdown, I'll bet it's been an interesting year!

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👋 Thanks for reading! 👋

I really appreciate the time you've taken to read this, and I hope you've found it useful.

Feedback always welcome, or if you just have something interesting to share - please reach out.

Take care, and reach out to me any time on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Cheers,

James a.k.a. JPie 🥧

​https://jpie.nz​