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Deliver Sessions: Why good teams get stuck
It’s been a relaxed start to the year: May’s Deliver Sessions meetup was the first one of 2026! This time we were at Forward Role‘s offices, just off Deansgate in Manchester city centre. Hannah Dell’Armi shared techniques for solving conflicts and frustrations in teams, pairing nicely with Rachelle Williams giving advice on how to teach new…
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Coaching: Questions?
Coaching can involve asking a lot of questions — I’ve mentioned several examples already in “A few things about coaching” (where I was surprised by how much people appreciated some wide-open questions when I thought I had nothing useful to say) and in “Coaching: Understanding the options” (including how useful it can be to discuss…
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Coaching: Understanding the options
I recently wrote a few things about coaching and said I might start a series of coaching notes. Here we go! In that post I mentioned my early habit of breaking into coaching conversations at every opportunity. While coaching’s often useful, it’s not the answer to every question — and and even if I think…
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A few things about coaching
I’ve been a fan of coaching for years, it can really help people or teams improve how they work. When I was first introduced to this skill there were a few things I didn’t find obvious and took a while to learn. First chance to do some training I’d read about coaching and thought I…
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Book look: The secrets of consulting, by Gerald Weinberg
I’d seen recommendations for this book in lots of places, for years, before I got round to reading it. I assumed it’d be long, serious, and probably not too relevant to me (my job isn’t consultancy). I was wrong! It’s short and funny, with handy advice for people in all kinds of jobs. I’ve made…
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Algorithms IRL: Let’s solve a Rubik’s cube!
A few months ago my son asked how you solve a Rubik’s cube. I had no idea so we looked it up. A helpful YouTube video from The Great Courses showed us how to solve one in 8 steps. It took a few watches and lots of back and forth, but we did it! And…
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A list of links after Agile in the Ether IRL 2026
In February 2026 I went to Liverpool for Agile in the Ether’s 3rd one-day, in-real-life annual event. For lots of info on how the event worked and what sessions we had, see Emily Webber’s write up: Agile in the Ether IRL 2026: No Slides, Just Vibes. I always come away from these events with piles…
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Advent of Code 2025: How did it Go?
I posted a few weeks ago about learning Go with Advent of Code. I’m a big fan of these puzzles — they’re still hard enough for me that it’s a fun challenge, and trying to do them in a new language really lets me explore whether I’ve learned it well enough for it to get…
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Optimising Life, using advice from Quake
I’m a big fan of Advent of Code, it’s taught me about lots of topics. Maybe the most generally useful lesson I’ve taken from it followed the “should I stop and read a book” post I mentioned a few years ago: There’s lots of puzzles where my solution looks like a reasonable approach, works just…