Engineering Friction Series
Engineering Friction Series
The hidden costs slowing engineering teams down: cognitive load, process bottlenecks, status theatre, context switching, and the tax that drains velocity.
October 3, 2025·10 min read
Stop Wasting Brainpower
How many times have you found yourself saying: “I worked all day, but I didn’t get anything done.” I know, we have all been there. We feel bad about it, too. On the surface, it...
November 8, 2023·4 min read
Achieve More by Meeting Less
Meetings are part of leadership. We need them to align and understand. Yet, we often do it at the expense of action. The success lies in the milestones achieved. In essence, "Fe...
November 10, 2023·6 min read
Cracking Coding Bottlenecks
In software development, we obsess over component benchmarks and algorithmic complexity, chasing milliseconds latency and BigO wins. But, time and after time, I’ve found that th...
March 6, 2026·15 min read
Escaping Status Theater
I still think about one migration project where everything was green until the final month. We did not have the luxury of extending the deadline. This was tied to external regul...
July 1, 2019·11 min read
What's wrong with Agile Frameworks
Some time ago, I attended a course and became . It wasn’t a huge deal. I was already doing the job. But as time went on and I gained more experience, my view of agile frameworks...
July 3, 2019·4 min read
Minimum Viable Agile
In , I criticized agile frameworks for bringing too much complexity with too little impact. What was meant to make teams more adaptive often ends up doing the opposite. They slo...
December 17, 2017·5 min read
I'm no longer a Scrum Master
Recently, I received an email from Scrum Alliance. My Scrum Master Certificate has expired. As expected, the email was suggesting to get certified again, a friendly nudge to sta...
April 18, 2026·6 min read
The Work Runs on Different Maps
A project can be obviously important, technically sound, budgeted, and still go nowhere. I don’t mean slowness. I mean the weird kind of stalled where everyone involved can poin...
May 4, 2026·10 min read
When Too Many Maps Overlap on One Person
You have a proposal. And someone suggested checking with Mike. It does not sound like a problem. It sounds like due diligence, like someone being careful, like a team that knows...