Insufficient JIRA Dashboards; Aspirational Leadership; Great Code Review Communication; Developers' Skills Atrophy with AI
Issue #49 Bytes
đ± Dive into Learning-Rich Sundays with groCTO —ïž
Why is JIRA Dashboard Insufficient?
JIRA dashboards can be a bit... myopic. This blog from Typo argues that while JIRA is a project management superhero, its dashboard gadgets alone can leave you in the dark, missing crucial context from the actual code trenches. Forget static "done" statuses and individual metric tunnel vision!
The real power-up? -Marrying JIRA with Git data. Read the full blog and level up your engineering management game.
Article of the Week â
âYouâre not building software. Youâre building the system that builds software. And that system is human.â âTobias Mende
Being the Leader Your Team Actually Wants to Follow
When we think of great leaders, it's tempting to imagine the confident visionary with all the answers. The person who always knows what to do. But in real-world teams, especially in fast-moving tech environments, that kind of leadership often backfires.
Tobi brings 10 inspirational ideas straight to your inbox this week on what makes aspirational leaders worth following.
1. Clarity Over Chaos
Great leaders donât pretend to have all the answers; they focus on creating clarity of direction, expectations, and priorities. Even when things are fuzzy, people crave a signal to orient around. Itâs worth pointing that transparency over what the business understands to be known unknowns and willing tradeofs is more important than having the right answers to everything.
2. Composure Is Contagious
How you show up in the storm sets the tone. âWartimeâ startups can be chaotic and so fast paced that itâs difficult to stay up to date, calm and clear headed amidst an environment that peace-time organizations would consider a rush. How you show up and what emotions you choose to emphasise and show will send ripples across your team. Do not underestimate how much influence your non-verbal presence has.
3. Listen to Learn, Not to React
Communication, especially in meetings is all about giving your peers the platform and opportunity to be seen and feel heard and valued. Pick your battles and be a sponge for information, not all ideas and questions are a problem to be solved, look for underlying opportunities to reward curiosity and learning-oriented risk takers within the team.
Identify and reward champions, even if you disagree with them, as long as they have meaningful goals and constraints to guide them.
4. Communicate Like a Human
The software delivery pipeline may look like automation, but the vehicles pumping work through the system are all human. They require kindness, attention and care, not corporate fuel.
5. Trust Isnât Earned â Itâs Given First
Use trust like an accelerating stepping-stone. Witholding trust only invites micro management and localisation of effort, creating the risk of siloâs and cliques forming within the departments.
Explore Tobiâs full post for the remaining six tips:
Lead Yourself First
Grow People, Not Just KPIs
Let Go of the Plan, Hold on to the Purpose
See the System
Stay Humble. Keep It Light.
đą Live DORA Webinar
Level up your engineering game! Join our LIVE webinar, "The Hows & Whats of DORA," with experts from Contentsquare & New Relic! Get REAL insights from Typo users' challenges & learn the how, why, and what of using DORA & right engineering metrics to drive tangible improvements.
Engineering leaders, managers, platform engineers â this is your playbook for metric-driven success! Don't miss out â register NOW!
Other highlights đ
Looks GREAT To Me: Getting Past Bare Minimum Code Reviews
From last weekâs DORA Community Discussion: Adrienne dives into the nuts and bolts of creating a better code review experience for both reviewers and authors. Her insights offer an action plan for making them more objective, efficient, and psychologically safe.
At the core of her approach is the Triple R pattern: Request, Rationale, Result. Her method that encourages feedback focused on the code rather than the developer, eliminating ego and promoting clarity.
Her presentation highlighted a study on what kind of phrases and words spark more toxic impressions upon the reader of the review and what to replace them with.
Work in focused 25â45 minute review bursts to maintain diligence without burnout. She recommends using conventional comment labels (like âNeeds Change,â âRework,â or âNitpickâ) to help authors prioritize quickly and reduce ambiguity.
For large pull requests, the guidance is:
đŠ Break them into atomic, contextual chunks.
đŹ Stay specific. Avoid preference-driven feedback.
đĄ Use review tools like suggestions and comment decorations to reduce friction.
On the communication front, Adrienne highlights the importance of:
Summarizing offline conversations in the PR thread to preserve context,
Using PR templates and working agreements for consistency, and
Leveraging automation tools like code owners or DevOps reviewer assignment to streamline the process.
Finally, she advocates for a positive, growth-oriented review culture:
Encourage with intent, especially junior devs.
Be your own first reviewer.
Separate identity from code, feedback isnât personal.
đą Stakeholders donât need speculation
Ever wonder what transformational leadership looks like inside an actual, real team doing real engineering? With real problems and real bad habits, the amount of obstacles pile up and keep everyone busy and confused-enough not to have time for large transformational initiatives, even when backed by DORA-led research.
Finding the time often requires estimations, speculation and squeezing out a bit of leeway in the teamâs time who are already over capacity in pumping features through the pipeline. Want to learn how to get through to the team, the engineers and stakeholders without driving each other crazy? Sign up for this monthâs workshop. Link below.
Disclaimer: The workshop is not sponsored nor hosted by typo.ai. It is run by Denis, one of our groCTO editors.
Avoiding Skill Atrophy in the Age of AI
Addy in his latest piece warns about the complacency developers are at risk of exposing themselves to by putting too much faith into under-polished AI tools rather than making mistakes on their own.
The best developers of tomorrow will be those who didnât let todayâs AI make them forget how to think.
It's to ship code without needing to understand the underlying systems when GPTs can churn out a large part of the boilerplate and logic. Thatâs great for speed, but can lead to a slow erosion of core engineering skills.
For teams that want to stay resilient and engineers who want to grow beyond their stack, making space for this kind of curiosity isnât optional.
Subtle signs your skills are atrophying
Debugging despair. Reaching for AI tools rather than debuggers or testing. The struggle of trying to understand whatâs wrong is part of the learning experience that makes the product better. Ask the AI to help you understand it, rather than fix it outright in blind attempts.
Blind Copy-Paste coding. Remember Stack Overflow?
Architecture and big-picture thinking. A single prompt cannot fit entire codebase, let alone entire business vision and mission. Architecture is about all those little details that helps people work faster and more easily, but AI tools are often bereft of that understanding unless explicitly prompted with all the rules each time.
Diminished memory & recall. Itâs not human. There isnât a general trend to practical memory and improvement as youâd expect with a coworkers. Sometimes youâll want the GPT to delete its memory so it stops hallucinating, and other times youâd wish it knew what you asked it last week. As long as tokens are the dominant pricing strategy, these trade offs will remain a hard constraint for a âreal pairing partnerâ.
Find Yourself đ»
Thatâs it for Today!
Whether youâre innovating on new projects, staying ahead of tech trends, or taking a strategic pause to recharge, may your day be as impactful and inspiring as your leadership.
See you next week(end), Ciao đ
Credits đ
Curators - Diligently curated by our community members Denis & Kovid
Featured Authors - Tobias Mende, Adrienne Braganza Tacke, Addy Osmani
Sponsors - This newsletter is sponsored by Typo AI - Ship reliable software faster.
1) Subscribe â If you arenât already, consider becoming a groCTO subscriber.
2) Share â Spread the word amongst fellow Engineering Leaders and CTOs! Your referral empowers & builds our groCTO community.