The Curious Engineer

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Pawel Brodzinski on Leadership in Technology

brodzinski.com

Whatever it takes to lead a team, build a product, and run a business

Engineering management / careersSoftware / engineering practiceAI / ML

’10’15’20’25
Posts
280 from 2 Nov 2006 to 14 Jul 2026
Posting
monthly (8 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://brodzinski.com/feed

2026 6

  1. We 3.5x’d Our Pull Requests with AI: Now We Catch Fewer Bugs
  2. Check Your F**cking Sources, People!
  3. Conway’s Law Teaches a Grim Lesson About AI in Product Development
  4. The Ultimate Question: What Does the Endgame Look Like?
  5. What LEGO Can Teach Us about Autonomy and Engagement
  6. Limited Autonomy Is the Main Reason for Low Engagement Levels

2025 26

  1. Would You Pay to Have Your Resume Read?
  2. A Non-Obvious Answer to Why the AI Bubble Will Burst
  3. Trust Networks as Antidote to AI Slop
  4. We Will Not Trust Autonomous AI Agents Anytime Soon
  5. Care-Driven Development: The Art of Giving a Shit
  6. AI Has Broken Hiring
  7. Radical Candor Is an Unreliable Feedback Model
  8. Fundamental Flaw of Hustle Culture
  9. The Most Underestimated Factor in Estimation
  10. The Renaissance of Full-Stack Developers
  11. Flailing Around with Intent
  12. A Love Letter to Physical Whiteboards
  13. Care Matters, or How To Distribute Autonomy and Not Break Things in the Process
  14. The Role of Alignment
  15. Pivotal Role of Distributed Autonomy
  16. Reinvent Your Daily Meetings
  17. Wholeness Is a Lie
  18. Is Growth Necessary for Survival?
  19. Why Wouldn’t an Intern Fire a CEO?
  20. Levels of Slack Time
  21. Respect (and How It Makes or Breaks Culture)
  22. Milk Kanban
  23. Lateral Skills Are Core Skills
  24. The Case for Subjective Assessment System
  25. (Non-)Challenges of Distributed Decision-Making
  26. Choosing Partners: Make or Break

2019 3

  1. Figuring Out Organizational Culture
  2. Autonomy and Transparency: Both or Neither
  3. Cultural Fit versus Cultural Fit

2018 6

  1. Agile Self-Organization: Band-Aid for a Broken Leg
  2. Why Collective Intelligence Beats Individual Intelligence
  3. Lack of Autonomy: The Plague of the Modern Workplace
  4. Teal is the New Black
  5. Can One Be Too Respectful?
  6. Emergent Purpose

2017 2

  1. Autonomy and Authority
  2. Organizational Culture and Hand Cream

2016 3

  1. Empathy and Respect: What Makes Teams Great
  2. Value for Money
  3. Portfolio Management: Role of Autonomy

2015 15

  1. Don’t Limit Work in Progress
  2. Don’t Mess with Culture
  3. Context Switching: The Good and the Bad
  4. Hierarchy Is Bad For Motivation
  5. Value of MVP and Knowledge Discovery Process
  6. Why We Want Women in Teams
  7. Culture Pockets
  8. Portfolio Kanban Board
  9. The Fallacy of Shu-Ha-Ri
  10. The Cost of Too Many Projects in Portfolio
  11. Why We Fail to Change
  12. Story Points and Velocity: The Good Bits
  13. Decision Making Process
  14. Economic Value of Slack Time
  15. On Feedback (Again)

2014 22

  1. Minimal Indispensable Feature Set
  2. Happiness Index as Team Sustainability Metric
  3. Two Rules of Autonomy
  4. Portfolio Kanban and Doing the Right Thing
  5. Lean Kanban Central Europe Leadership Track
  6. Practices, Principles, Values
  7. There Is No Shortage of Leaders
  8. Scaling Up Is Not the Only Option
  9. Kanban: The Culture Challenge
  10. Portfolio Management: Stop Starting, Start Finishing
  11. Recipes Are (Almost) Useless
  12. Evolutionary Change of Portfolio Management
  13. A Fool With a Tool Is Still a Fool
  14. Hyperproductivity Myth
  15. Personal Ritual Dissent
  16. Unscaling Agile
  17. Why Your Change Program Will Fail
  18. (Don’t) Change Your Job
  19. Why Kaizen Boards (Typically) Don’t Work
  20. No Management Mindset
  21. The Fallacy of the Ideal Team Size
  22. Closing Leadership Gap

2013 37

  1. What Value Is Exactly
  2. Portfolio Management: The Search for Value
  3. Why People Don’t Learn
  4. Why Bonus Systems Don’t Work
  5. Multitasking Teams
  6. Estimation Quality
  7. 5-Minute Board Test
  8. What Does Project Management Mean to Me
  9. Options, Options, Options
  10. Hiring for Cultural Fit
  11. Teams
  12. Portfolio Visualization
  13. What Makes Project Attractive
  14. Limit Work in Progress Early
  15. No Estimates Middle Ground
  16. Cumulative Flow Diagram
  17. Kanban Landscape and Portfolio Kanban
  18. All Sorts of Kanban
  19. Kanban Leadership Retreat: Portfolio Kanban
  20. Manager-Free Organization
  21. MVP Thinking
  22. Hire the Best
  23. What Makes Teams Better
  24. It’s the People, Not the System
  25. Better Standups
  26. Maturity of Kanban Implementation and Kanban Kata
  27. WIP Limits by Conversation
  28. Happiness Chart
  29. Portfolio Kanban: Why Should I Care?
  30. Brickell Key Award Nomination
  31. Why I Don’t Limit WIP (On Occasions)
  32. Making Use of Estimates
  33. No Authenticity, No Leadership
  34. Retrospectives Reloaded
  35. Emergent Explicit Policies
  36. Flying Office
  37. Gemba Walk Is Not Enough

2012 48

  1. Price versus Quality
  2. Against Rightshifting
  3. (Sub)Optimizing Cycle Time
  4. On Transparency
  5. Kitchen Kanban, or WIP Limits, Pull, Slack and Bottlenecks Explained
  6. Why Organizational Transformations Fail
  7. WIP Limits Revisited
  8. Leadership, Fellowship, Citizenship
  9. Why Burn-up Chart Is Better Than Burn-down Chart
  10. Refactoring: Value or Waste?
  11. Code Better or Code Less?
  12. Kanban Coaching Professional
  13. Is a ScrumMaster of Any Value?
  14. Don’t Ask For Permission
  15. Local Optimizations Aren’t (Always) Evil
  16. Splitting Huge Tasks
  17. Radar Charts and Maturity of Kanban Implementations
  18. Feedback Culture
  19. Pitfalls of Kanban Series: Stalled Board
  20. Scott Berkun on Consultants and Practitioners
  21. Practitioner versus Consultant
  22. Cadences and Iterations
  23. Trap of Estimation
  24. Visualization Should Be Alive
  25. On Feedback
  26. Pitfalls of Kanban Series: Wishful Thinking
  27. Kanban and Behavioral Change
  28. Slacker Manifesto
  29. Ball Flow Game
  30. What Do You Want To Do In Two Years From Now?
  31. Slack Time
  32. Pitfalls of Kanban Series: Abusing WIP Limits
  33. The Project Portfolio Kanban Story: Better Board
  34. Pitfalls of Kanban Series: Kanban Board Not Up To Date
  35. Pitfalls of Kanban Series
  36. You Can Deliver Late
  37. The Project Portfolio Kanban Story: Why Standard Board Design Is Not a Good Choice
  38. How Much Work In Progress Do You Have?
  39. Instant Feedback Culture
  40. What Is Slack Time For?
  41. Better Conferences or Better Learning?
  42. Learn. Adapt. Experiment. Repeat.
  43. A Myth of 100% Utilization
  44. Naming Issue
  45. On Agile Once Again
  46. The Project Portfolio Kanban Story: First Changes
  47. In Defense of Difficult Decisions
  48. Why You Should Ask: “Why?”

2011 46

  1. Effective Standups around Kanban Board
  2. Product Owner versus Product Ownership
  3. The Project Portfolio Kanban Story: A Basic Approach
  4. The Purpose of Retrospectives
  5. Get Rid of Estimation
  6. Hand-Offs Are Bad (But Unavoidable)
  7. The Project Portfolio Kanban Story: Project Portfolio Kanban? Why?
  8. The Project Portfolio Kanban Story
  9. Collaborative Spirit of Kanban
  10. What Makes a Good Retrospective
  11. Alternative Kanban Board Design
  12. Don’t Stick to Standard Kanban Board Designs
  13. When Kanban Fails
  14. Team Retreat
  15. Learn! Or How to Get a Better Job
  16. Visual Management
  17. Be Passionate!
  18. Kanban Story: Kanban Board Should Reflect the Reality
  19. What Kanban Really Is
  20. Pull and Push in Kanban
  21. The Worst Management Task Ever
  22. Kanban: When It Is Hard to Map a Process to a Kanban Board
  23. On Making Difficult Decisions
  24. Trainers, SMART Goals and Context
  25. The Kanban Story: Skipping Part of Process
  26. Communication: Quality versus Quantity
  27. Visualization: Don’t Get Attached to a Specific Tool
  28. Give Honesty a Try
  29. Kanban Leadership Retreat
  30. Challenge your Rules
  31. Visualize Everything
  32. Procedure Is Not an Answer
  33. Experiment!
  34. Surprising Truth about Kanban Improvements
  35. The Kanban Story: Standard-Sized Features
  36. Project Management in One-Man Project
  37. Limiting WIP Is a Buzzword
  38. Taught Helplessness
  39. Visualization Stupid!
  40. People Are Not Our Most Valuable Resource
  41. Scrum versus Kanban
  42. Mechanics of Kanban Improvements
  43. Project Management Styles: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
  44. Good Waterfall Is Better Than Bad Agile
  45. Kanban Board: Keep It Simple Stupid
  46. Why Money Doesn’t Motivate

2010 36

  1. Definition of Done
  2. The Kanban Story: Retrospectives
  3. Money and Motivation
  4. We Are Unique Syndrome
  5. Kanban Basics
  6. The Beauty of Kanban
  7. The Value of Certification
  8. Being a Leader
  9. The Kanban Story: Moving Cards Back
  10. Embrace Failure
  11. So You Promoted Wrong People to Management, What Now?
  12. How to maintain backlog?
  13. Implementing Change
  14. One Measure to Appraise Them All
  15. The Kanban Story: Small Tricks Do the Job
  16. The Role of Manager
  17. Performance Reviews Are Dead, Long Live Performance Reviews
  18. The Kanban Story: When and Why We Abuse Limits
  19. Why I Prefer to Hire Women
  20. Don’t Promote Best Engineers to Management Positions
  21. Choose Your Battles
  22. You Can Manage Your Boss
  23. We Know Nothing about Our Teams
  24. When Kanban is the Best Choice
  25. The Kanban Story: Swarming
  26. The Kanban Story: Coarse-Grained Estimation
  27. The Kanban Story: Measuring Lead Time
  28. The Kanban Story: Kanban Boosters
  29. Why We Don’t Write User Stories Anymore
  30. Manual Testing Is a Must
  31. Managers Are Clueless
  32. The Kanban Story: Kanban Board Revisited
  33. Fighting with Status Quo
  34. Big Companies Are The Best… In Maintaining Status Quo
  35. The Kanban Story: Pseudo Iterations
  36. The Kanban Story: Throwing Sticky Notes Out

2009 22

  1. The Kanban Story: I Don’t Know, Experiment!
  2. The Kanban Story: Kanban Alone Is Not Enough
  3. The Kanban Story: Kanban Board Evolution
  4. The Kanban Story: What We Do and What We Don’t Do
  5. The Kanban Story: Kanban Board
  6. The Kanban Story: Implementation of Kanban
  7. No Meeting Culture
  8. The Kanban Story: A Discovery of Kanban
  9. Co-location Rules!
  10. The Kanban Story: First Issues
  11. The Kanban Story: Initial Methodology
  12. The Kanban Story: The Beginning
  13. The Kanban Story
  14. Technical Leadership and People Management
  15. Random Thoughts on Estimation
  16. A Company Which Didn’t Know How to Fire People
  17. Is It Possible to Over-Communicate In Project?
  18. Sure Shot Method to Improve Quality of Your Estimates
  19. Evidence Based Scheduling – One More Way to Improve Your Estimates
  20. Role of Leaders in Startups
  21. Lessons Learned: Startup Failure Part 2
  22. Lessons Learned: Startup Failure Part 1

2007 4

  1. Money as a Motivator
  2. Role of the First Job
  3. Long Career as a Developer
  4. Team Management: Find Your Way

2006 4

  1. Good Enough
  2. My Micromanagement Experience
  3. Micromanagement
  4. My Biggest Mistakes