How I work

Staffing

Hard problems get one named owner. I don't leave them as "the team."

When product escalation lived in chat with rotating developers on the front, I killed that loop. QA owns first-line now. Developers get pulled when QA needs them, not because it's their week. I shipped the Chat intake bot and the time-to-resolve board so the new staffing call has a shared clock the org can see. That build is on Selected work.

I hand ownership over. I don't keep it. I coached a developer on my team into running meetings. He owns backlog estimation now, and he leads stand-up.

I've fired. If someone owns a release, they write the plan and walk it. I don't ghostwrite their page so it looks sharp in a meeting.

What I kill

I kill work that burns the week and never lands a clear yes or no.

Rotating developers through first-line escalation is over. My scorecard doesn't hire on hobbies or "curious about new tech." I won't run a release plan the group fills in while the named owner just nods. And I won't accept "look for a bug" as the plan on a hard night.

Custom work for one customer doesn't land on the dev board through stand-up. When that ask shows up, I send it to product for a decision. If product says yes, it comes in like any other work.

I don't start courses I won't finish. I don't pad headcount. I run about 8 people. If I can't stand behind a number, it stays off this site.

Incidents

On a hard night I want a short written page before we pile on without a plan. Not a postmortem two weeks later.

What we can see, for whom, on which version. Two hypotheses. One check that picks which is true. Named owner. Next action with a time. Write what yes and no look like before anyone runs the check.

Don't start with another backup. Run the check that tells you which path you are on. If files are gone, say so. If you don't have root cause that night, don't fake it. The day-0 example is on Selected work, and the blank page I use is here.

Hiring bar

I score people on a written card, not on gut feel.

QA and Dev share the same bar: escaped defects, a written repro in two hours, response, ownership, helps teammates, follow-through. Dev also has Ships: a named change in a customer build this quarter. "Likes new tech" isn't a row. No dated example from the last thirty days means fail.

You can read the whole card, row by row: hiring scorecard.