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Writing A Blog
If you’ve never considered writing a blog before, you’re not alone. About a year ago, there was no way on earth for me to be writing one, and yet here I am. My main concern was not finding a topic or the time to write, but rather, why I should spend my valuable time doing…
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Play For The Team
During my career I’ve seen many teams of different shapes and sizes, and I’ve noticed that the most effective teams are those where people actually care more about their teammates than themselves. Takehiko Inoue shows this very clearly in his best seller manga Slam Dunk, which also happens to be my favourite. This manga follows…
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The Time Management Matrix
Time is our most valuable resource because it is limited, and we cannot get more of it. If we manage our money, we should certainly manage our time. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey presents a key framework for understanding how to use our time effectively: the Time Management Matrix, also…
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Debunking Myths in Back-End Software Testing
In today’s article I want to debunk what I believe are some myths and misconceptions about testing, based on a broad experience of writing automated tests for back-end applications for nearly two decades. I will start by explaining key concepts about automated testing that will serve as a foundation, before discussing these myths. If you…
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Blameless Culture
A few years ago I watched a very interesting documentary about World War 2. Amongst the new facts I learnt, what surprised me the most was all the chances that Hitler had to win the war, and how the Nazis’ blame culture was one of the factors that contributed to their defeat. Hitler’s generals were…
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Work/Life Balance
What is really Work/Life balance? When I started my career, I thought it was very simple: respect working hours, don’t answer calls or messages outside of these hours, don’t think about work, and don’t do anything work-related during my personal time. It took me many years to realise that not everything was truly black and…
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New Year Goals
This article will be published either on New Year’s Eve or on the New Year, depending on where you are in the world. For reasons I can only guess, this seems to be a time when people spend more time reflecting on their achievements, and setting goals for the new year. As long as you…
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Divide and conquer
Divide and conquer is a very useful strategy that you can use in a range of problems. The first time I heard of it was in reference to the algorithm to break down problems recursively. The idea is to break down a big problem into smaller problems that are easier to solve, and then solve…
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The recipe for success
Last week, CultureAmp hosted a panel to answer questions from students in the Startmate Student Fellowship, and I was very lucky and honoured to have been invited to the panel to answer these questions. At this session, I encountered some bright students that asked very interesting questions. Today, I want to talk about one of…
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The impact of mastering our day to day tools
Would you like to be a more effective software developer? Do you see some of your teammates delivering feature after feature, and you wonder how they do it? When I faced this dilema many years I thought just by coding I would be able to achieve this. Although this is in part true, later in…