Nick Hazekamp on Atomic Spin

3 Steps to Creating Spikes with Lasting Value

Spikes are great for exploring and de-risking problems. I'll outline three steps I take to make sure that spikes have lasting value for a software project.

Project & Team Management

5 Tips for Preparing a Project and Team for Your Parental Leave

We recently had our first child, and let's just say things didn't go as planned. Here are a few tips to prepare you & your project for your parental leave.

Project & Team Management

Changing Team Habits is Hard: Get Them Right the First Time

Good team habits are not established by accident (though bad habits might be). They take diligence and intentionality to get right.

Growing as Makers

4 Tips for Facilitating an Engaging Discussion with Your Team

Here are four tips I used for facilitating a discussion with my team about soft skills, keeping it engaging and avoiding the need to lecture.

Effective communication

3 Ways to Nip Software Project Problems in the Bud

Here are three strategies to put in your toolbox for resolving software project concerns, with an emphasis on early and honest communication.

Project & Team Management

How to Give New Developers Meaningful Work

Onboarding a new developer is a fun but hectic time for any project. I have found that assigning meaningful work can be the biggest challenge.

Project & Team Management

3 Tips for Writing Meaningful Stories

Building a workflow piece by piece and story by story will drive development and clearly communicate the purpose of your development stories.

Development Practices

Better Documentation Through Low-Fidelity Diagrams

Low-fidelity diagrams generate more accurately documented systems than complex master diagrams. Here's how I use them on software projects.

Personal Optimization

10 Ways to Combat Project Burnout

Burnout is not something that can be fixed in an instant; it is a process of re-orienting expectations to a manageable place. I hope my experience will come in handy when you're fe

DevOps & System Admin.

Creating and Using a Local NuGet Package

What a NuGet Package is, how to create one, where to add it locally, and how to consume it from a NuGet feed. This will allow you to quickly create and test your NuGet packages loc

Project & Team Management

Derisking vs. Unrisking Stories – Are You Trying to Pre-solve Development Problems?

When you groom stories for a sprint, don't flesh out every solution. Instead, outline (at a high level) how the problem could be approached.

Development Practices

6 Tips for Testing Large Legacy Codebases

Adding tests to legacy projects is daunting. The goal is to provide confidence around crucial code. Here's how I navigate uncovered code and make meaningful testing updates.

Nick Hazekamp

Keep up with our latest posts.