Essential Links in June 2021 - Part I

Beginning of June I finished the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. It beautifully describes how you gradually shape new habits that bring you nearer to your goals. By applying tiny changes to your daily life - one after another - you create large paradigm shifts in the long run. The approach of the book describes how you bind the path to your goals to your unconscious behavior - the trigger-and-reaction game we humans learned before there was language and reason. I highly recommend the book, it definitely had an impact on me and I am already applying the insights to my life.

Now I am reading Unwinding Anxiety by Dr. Jud Brewer. A book again based on research and science connects to Atomic Habits somehow, since it describes how to deal with the triggers and automated behavior you have already learned - the one that leads to anxiety and being afraid. I find it much harder to read. Dr. Brewer often uses a much more casual language and sometimes judges pretty hard on things (which could use some more of a Beginner's Mind).

Links in the first weeks of June

• Finally a new episode of Stories Connecting Dots! Markus Andrezak interviews Luke Hohmann on his company First Root that circles around participatory budgeting in schools. They range through various more topics: Strategy, Agile & SAFe, Training & Workshops (and how to do them, hint: show, don't tell) and it is a pleasure to listen to them throwing topics at each other.
• Just when I needed it! Scaling in teams will make your dependencies transparent. You will find out that you have more than you thought. Here‘s how you tackle dependencies in scaling teams on scrum.org.
• The Gitlab Handbook has been a great resource for me to understand how distributed, asynchronous work works. When you switch from presence to home office and video conferencing, your interactions and the flow of knowledge in your organization changes. This is why I am excited that Matt Mullenweg, whose company Automattic works from remote, interviews Sid Sijbrandij, CEO of Gitlab, on remote work in his new podcast.
• After finishing his series of posts on microservices, Uwe Friedrichsen now takes on software quality - what it is, why we need it. Recommended reading!
• We are collecting our experiences with working from home. Here's Shane Hasties article on remote work and the risk of toxic work culture it may create.
• Liz Keogh has collected some well thought-through advice of their coaching experience.
• Julian Shapiro shares how start-ups generate their ideas in a Twitter thread. You can read it unrolled here.
• Dave Bailey shares how what you think about your team may reflect your own issues as a leader.
• We are talking about bias everywhere now it seems. Here is a great article on the availability bias, making us trusting information that are most easily available.
• Aaaaah, beautiful technical debt. The beginning of a friendship's end. So many resources talk about it, discuss it, praise it and condemn it. Here is another article with a slightly different perspective, that may open your mind.

Now this is it for this two weeks. I have split the large monthly list into 2 so they are more easily digestible. If you like, just tell me what you think of it by giving me feedback on Twitter.