Developer on Fire
Episode 081 | Esther Derby - Making More Humane Workplaces
Esther Derby started her career as a programmer, and over the years she's worn many hats, including business owner, internal consultant and manager. From all these perspectives, one thing became clear: our level of individual, team and company success was deeply impacted by our work environment and organizational dynamics. As a result, she has spent the last twenty-five years helping companies design their environment, culture, and human dynamics for optimum success. She has written over 100 articles, and co-authored two books–Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great and Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management. She writes about management, leadership, collaboration, organizations and change (or another topic I’m currently exploring).
Chapters:
- - Dave introduces the show and Esther Derby
- - Esther's definition of value
- - The things that "light Esther up"
- - Esther's early experiences with creating software and how it was like Agile
- - Abusive disconnect - "too stupid" users
- - How Esther got started in software
- - Esther's story of failure - more an attitude toward failure and resilience and a growth mindset
- - Esther's story of success of which she can be proud - creating environments where people can learn and grow and examine assumption
- - How Esther stays current with what she needs to know
- - Esther's book recommendations
- - The things that have Esther most excited
- - "Create the environment where writing good software is the natural outcome."
- - The greatest sources of pain in Esther's life and work - humiliation and lack of humanity in workplaces
- - Abusive measurement of productivity and its origin
- - The things about which Esther geeks out apart from software
- - Esther's prediction for the future of software
- - Esther's top 3 tips for delivering more value
- - Keeping up with Esther
Resources:
- Esther's Website
- Esther's Monthly Teleconferences
- Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great - Esther Derby, Diana Larsen
- Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management - Johanna Rothman, Esther Derby
- Gerald Weinberg
- Greg Shackles on Developer On Fire
- IBM Flowcharting template
- Carol Dweck
- A Good Podcast Interview With Carol Dweck
- Linda Rising on Developer On Fire
- "Other Esther" Schindler
- Esther on Six Rules for Change
- Woody Zuill on Developer On Fire
- Caitlin C. Rosenthal
Esther's book recommendations:
- Books by Carol Dweck
- Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management - Jeffrey Pfeffer, Robert I. Sutton
Esther's top 3 tips for delivering more value:
1. Understand who is receiving what you deliver.
2. Understand the purpose of what you deliver.
3. Understand the relationship you want to create.