--- title: "Growing People: articles" url: "https://www.5whys.com/articles/category/Growing%2BPeople.md" canonical: "https://www.5whys.com/articles/category/Growing+People" tags: [] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "Articles on growing developers instead of hunting for them, through code reviews, asking for solutions, TDD katas, the Core Protocols and feeling stupid." usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # Growing People: articles Articles on growing developers instead of hunting for them, through code reviews, asking for solutions, TDD katas, the Core Protocols and feeling stupid. HTML: https://www.5whys.com/articles/category/Growing+People · 23 linked entries (each is plain Markdown) · Site index: [llms.txt](https://www.5whys.com/llms.txt) - [A Value System for Code Reviews, and How to Scale Them for a Large Project](https://www.5whys.com/articles/a-value-system-for-code-reviews-and-how-to-scale-them-for-a.md) (2014-09-18): How one company replaced slow, tool-based architect code reviews with quick in-person reviews and a learning third reviewer so the process could scale. - [Feeling Stupid is Highly Recommended](https://www.5whys.com/articles/feeling-stupid-is-highly-recommended.md) (2013-02-10): Videos of Roy Osherove's first two days of skiing, used to show that feeling stupid and frustrated is a normal and necessary part of learning a new skill. - [Video: Lejla Giske on Listening Modes and Techniques](https://www.5whys.com/articles/video-lejla-giske-on-listening-modes-and-techniques.md) (2012-09-14): A video interview with Bouvet consultant Lejla Giske about listening modes and listening techniques, recorded by Roy Osherove in Norway. - [Video: The Team Leader Manifesto, Growing Effective Teams](https://www.5whys.com/articles/video-the-team-leader-manifesto-growing-effective-teams.md) (2012-06-15): The page for Roy Osherove's NDC Oslo 2012 talk on the Software Team Leader Manifesto; the embedded video is gone but a Vimeo link remains. - [Should you grow even a short-term consultant in your team?](https://www.5whys.com/articles/should-you-grow-even-a-short-term-consultant-in-your-team.md) (2012-05-06): Why a team leader should still grow short-term consultants and temporary team members, treating everyone they lead as if they would stay forever. - [What should a good code review look and feel like?](https://www.5whys.com/articles/what-should-a-good-code-review-look-and-feel-like.md) (2012-05-02): How a good code review should feel: short, in person, side by side, done by everyone on the team, and aimed at learning rather than tool comments. - [Grow your "feature teams" into just "teams"](https://www.5whys.com/articles/grow-your-feature-teams-into-just-teams.md) (2012-05-01): Why feature teams built from specialists carry a bad bus factor, and why team leaders should grow them into teams where everyone can do each other's work. - [The architect as a leader, and other specialists](https://www.5whys.com/articles/the-architect-as-a-leader-and-other-specialists.md) (2012-05-01): Why an architect or any specialist on a team is a bottleneck, and should act as a coaching leader who spreads knowledge until they are no longer needed. - [The Fear Of Failure And What To Do About It](https://www.5whys.com/articles/the-fear-of-failure-and-what-to-do-about-it.md) (2011-06-30): Using a Milton Glaser video on the fear of failure, a look at why team leaders must take personal risks and how timed experiments can lower them. - [Video: The Mistake at the heart of Agile - Michael Feathers, NDC 2011](https://www.5whys.com/articles/video-the-mistake-at-the-heart-of-agile-michael-feathers-ndc.md) (2011-06-17): A note about a Michael Feathers NDC 2011 talk on the mistake at the heart of agile, whose video is gone, tied to getting teams out of comfort zones. - [What to do if some people in the team just don't want to take a task?](https://www.5whys.com/articles/what-to-do-if-some-people-in-the-team-just-dont-want-to-take.md) (2011-06-06): How a Scrum team leader should respond when team members won't pick tasks in sprint planning, with different tactics for each team maturity stage. - [Slides: Team Leadership In the Age of Agile](https://www.5whys.com/articles/slides-team-leadership-in-the-age-of-agile.md) (2011-03-19): Slides from a QCon London 2011 talk on the three maturity stages of a software team and how a team leader adjusts leadership style to each one. - [Exclude a team member – and you’re an idiot](https://www.5whys.com/articles/exclude-a-team-member-and-youre-an-idiot.md) (2010-05-25): Why a team leader must never exclude a difficult team member from meetings or lunch, and why firing should come only after months of trying to grow them. - [The 3 maturity stages of a software team and how scrum fails to identify them](https://www.5whys.com/articles/the-3-maturity-stages-of-a-software-team-and-how-scrum-fails.md) (2010-05-17): The chaotic, mid-life and mature stages of a software team, the leadership each one needs, from dictator to coach, and why Scrum Masters miss them. - [Dev Anti Pattern: Unworkable Machine](https://www.5whys.com/articles/dev-anti-pattern-unworkable-machine.md) (2009-10-24): The developer whose machine is always broken: common phrases, causes such as boredom or bug recreation, and fixes like using a virtual machine. - [Check-in: sharing emotions in an effective way](https://www.5whys.com/articles/check-in-sharing-emotions-in-an-effective-way.md) (2009-10-23): Yves Hanoulle explains the Check-In protocol from The Core Protocols, using mad, glad, sad and afraid to share emotions at work and at home. - [The hidden leadership lessons we can learn from music conductors](https://www.5whys.com/articles/the-hidden-leadership-lessons-we-can-learn-from-music-conduc.md) (2009-10-21): Lessons for software team leaders from Itay Talgam's TED talk on great conductors: self-direction, letting people grow and control without control. - [The Core Protocols Introduction](https://www.5whys.com/articles/the-core-protocols-introduction.md) (2009-10-16): Yves Hanoulle introduces The Core Protocols, team rules Jim and Michele McCarthy distilled from their team-building workshops, and invites you to try them. - [How to measure programmer productivity using TDD Katas](https://www.5whys.com/articles/how-to-measure-programmer-productivity-using-tdd-katas.md) (2009-09-30): How repeating a TDD kata daily builds muscle memory, and how timing it measures programmer productivity and mastery of shortcuts, snippets and tools. - [Leading Through Learning: The Responsibilities of a Team Leader](https://www.5whys.com/articles/leading-through-learning-the-responsibilities-of-a-team-lead.md) (2009-09-30): Cory Foy argues that the core responsibility of a team leader is growing people, creating learning opportunities with the team as a safety net. - [Be Productive and Go Mouseless](https://www.5whys.com/articles/be-productive-and-go-mouseless.md) (2009-09-25): A short video on YouTube about being a more productive developer by going mouseless and working from the keyboard. A companion to the Stop Using XML video. - [Growing developers: Ask for solutions instead of giving them](https://www.5whys.com/articles/growing-developers-ask-for-solutions-instead-of-giving-them.md) (2009-09-18): Why a team leader should ask developers for three possible solutions instead of handing out answers, and what to do when they can't decide or lack skills. - [5 ways to grow great developers instead of desperately looking for them](https://www.5whys.com/articles/5-ways-to-grow-great-developers-instead-of-desperately-looki.md) (2009-09-16): Five ways a software team leader can grow existing developers instead of hunting for super developers, from homework and comfort zones to code reviews. --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/