We're moving to a dedicated on-call rotation for support. Two engineers are implementing the new process and it's going well. Before this, I had a dev team that also handled support and I used my own judgment to assign work based on who was best suited for what. Now the rotation decides. I'm fine with delegating. I think it's the right move. But I'm still accountable for release management and product delivery -> the work is no longer mine but the responsibility still is. How do you handle it when you've let go of the work but you're still on the hook for the outcome?

I had my first 1:1 with my new manager today, it was only 30 minutes, a pretty simple meeting, but an important one. I asked him for his vision for Technical Program Managers at our company. Got an answer, and while it wasn't super clear yet, it gave me enough to see where things might go. What I noticed, though, is that a vision at the strategic level needs some anchor in day-to-day actions, otherwise it stays just words, and it is hard to put into action. Still early days and only a first meeting, so that's ok. I also left him with one request: frequent feedback. He's an executive, and feedback from that level gives me a direct line to what the company actually needs and expects; that's not a small thing. What do you ask in a first 1:1 with someone new above you?

As part of the next workshop - budgetting part 2 - I would like to talk about revenue recognition and SRED, two processes that no PM course teaches and yet most professional services agencies will require you to know the basics. How many of you ever dealt with those two topics?

After Salesforce realized that letting a few thousand employees go and trying to replace them with AI was a bad idea, they had to rehire to deal with some of the problems this entire situation created. However, no one is hiring junior-level positions. I don't think we can blame AI for this. I believe this is a sign of a struggling economy. But for us, this is a problem today and 3 years from now. I am preparing the next workshop and it seems like it will be about budgeting challenges. One area where I would typically balance a budget on a longer project is to get a mid-level developer to help with general maintenance, which after 2 months of being on a team and some good oversight, they can do. Still a net positive value add, but at lower resource cost than a senior-level dev. Well, if we are not hiring any junior-level developers today, all intermedate will become seniors and 3 years from now I will struggle to get a balanced team. And AI won’t solve this problem. What makes a good intermediate person worth bringing on the team is critical thinking, which AI struggles with. At least for now. What is the outlook in your line of work?

And why? In preparation for the AI adoption strategy, I am trying ot understand which platform is used the most by members of our community. ChatGPT seems like an obvious choice, but my mind is shifting toward Claude, but that is simply because I got access to it at work; at home, I still mostly use ChatGPT. That shapes what I know and how I interact with AI tools, which will have some impact on the adoption strategy. Also, if there are any particular things any of you want me to cover, do let me know.