Busy, busy, busy.

In any company (small companies especially), it’s easy for leaders to get busy. Rushing between planning meetings, standups, retros, and one-on-ones, then trying to squeeze in some dev work as well. The work adds up quickly and you can barely catch your breath.

So with all this work, how do you know that you’re making progress? What if you’re just running in place? Let’s take a step back and evaluate the difference between doing the right work and just good work.

When I was a backend team lead I would sometimes jump in and help during sprints by writing code or diving into operations. Occasionally I would even be the best person for the job because I had domain knowledge for that service or sub-system.

So why do I always prioritize dev work dead last on my list of to-dos?