All entries of my technical and business blog

3 Tough Conversations from Stakeholders and Upper Management

Sep 15, 2020 business management

This is part of a series of articles from the retired The Dev Manager website. It was called The Dev Manager Crash Course. Looking for entry two? Click here

When you manage a team, the conversations you have change a lot. No longer are you justifying your own estimates or explaining your coding decisions. Now, you’re responsible for many different estimates, many different decisions, and many different personalities.

3 Important Management Books to Read This Quarter

Sep 10, 2020 business management

This is the beginning of a series of articles from the retired The Dev Manager website. It was called The Dev Manager Crash Course.

Welcome to the New Dev Manager Crash Course! Whether this is your first time managing a group of developers, or you’ve run the gamut a few times, I’m happy you’re here. My goal is to give you some useful tips and direction from my experience managing multiple development teams. I learned a lot of this the hard way, but hopefully you won’t have to!

The Pitfalls of Buying Pre-Made Software

May 11, 2020 business

When you’re working on a project with a tight timeline, it can seem really attractive to buy pre-made software to save time. But, there are a number of problems and pitfalls to be aware of before you do this.

How to make a Zabbix Test Notification

Feb 13, 2020 zabbix

A big challenge when setting up a new Zabbix installation is “how do I test my media+action+notification+trigger” setup? I’ve come up with a pretty easy way to do this that doesn’t require butchering your server or messing with it’s historical data.

Share Your Results with Your Mentor

Dec 4, 2019 business

A question I’m asked often is “how do I pay back my mentor?” (If you’ve read other entries, you know I’m a big fan of mentoring.) Well, mentors have various reasons for doing their work, so not one solution fits all. But, I can tell you one thing that they’ll appreciate no matter what.