The 5-Minute Startup CTO #61
Impostor advantage, Joining up discovery and delivery, Team calibration, Code analysis
Hi there,
I hope you’re well!
Here are this week’s top links on People, Product, Process and Tech.
👭 People
First, Zain Rizvi with an interesting observation on the well-know impostor syndrome: how you can turn it into an advantage, to ask the questions others don’t dare to, to take on opportunities precisely when they feel like too much of a stretch.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbfce1fda-e82c-4af7-9046-316fb3b59f74_666x375.png)
🥫Product
Scrum’s focus on delivering a product increment in every sprint often encourages teams to split out ‘product discovery’ from ‘product delivery’, with discovery being conducted outside of sprints, by a different set of people (product / design).
Todd Lankford points out the pitfalls of this approach, and powerfully advocates bringing discovery and delivery back together, within the scope of the Scrum team’s sprints.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4aaccf2-e1db-4a55-8911-36837a5af32a_1400x618.jpeg)
🔄 Process
Team building is much more than hiring a few developers and getting them to play paintball: it is about sharing, building relationships, aligning on a common mission and on methods of working. ProductPlan explains further how you can ‘calibrate’ your team, and why this matters.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff08716de-97b2-4b06-8e9d-3a045d22cdc5_1024x576.jpeg)
⌨️ Tech
Stephen Whitworth (from Monzo) recently explained how static code analysis tools can speed up development, by automatically analysing code for bugs, inconsistencies, and more - and recently followed this with a deeper look at semgrep.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4aa32fae-ee13-48aa-9deb-d11192fb6c61_1456x376.png)
Until next time, have a great week!
Fabrice
The 5-Minute Startup CTO: every Sunday, 4 top insights in 5 minutes for startup CTOs and Tech Leads. Hand-picked by Fabrice, a UK-based consulting CTO.