New manager running new office

Hi, everybody. I'm Susan Davis, and I'm the software development manager for the Toronto office of a technology company. My team is responsible for delivering our next-generation software platform. I had the luxury of being able to recruit our entire team, which let me set the bar as high as possible, and to recruit high performers rather than just looking for people with specific combinations of technologies on their resumes.

I've had a number of team leadership positions in the past, one or two of which had a matrix-y project management component to them, but this is my first time as the formal team manager with responsibility for hiring, firing, coaching, performance management, and so forth. I stumbled on MT through a recommendation in a technical blog that I read... and happened to choose the April 1 podcast on receiving feedback as the first podcast to listen to to see what MT was like. I was just about ready to flip the bozo bit on Mike and Mark and walk away when they admitted that the whole beginning was an extended April Fool's joke. I'm glad that I stuck around.

Our team uses XP as our development process, and I'm struck by a number of parallels between MT recommendations and things that we already do as a matter of course. In particular, the "soft wash" looks a lot like our retrospectives, minus the action step at the end.

Anyway, it's good to meet everyone, and I look forward to learning a lot.