As authors, we are always interested in what our readers find interesting or useful.  Online we can see general article level interest through hit rates, etc.  In the print world, we can gauge interest based on book sales.  But neither of these approaches allows us to see what within an article might spark interest or be seen as useful by our readers.    Amazon’s Highlight utility within their Kindle format gives us that opportunity.  We thought we would share the most highlighted pieces of The Art of Scalability with you here.  You can see these quotes as well as new ones and changes in number of highlights over time here

 

You can delegate anything you would like, but you can never delegate the accountability for results.  Highlighted by 30 Kindle users

Management means measurement and a failure to measure is a failure to manage.  Highlighted by 28 Kindle users

As your resource pool dwindles, the tendency is to favor short-term customer facing features over longer-term scalability projects. That tendency helps meet quarterly goals at the expense of long-term platform viability.  Highlighted by 24 Kindle users

Bad behaviors are as good a reason for removing a person from the team as not having the requisite skills, because bad behavior in any team member creates a vicious cycle of plummeting morale and productivity.  Highlighted by 21 Kindle users

An organization that does not foster the creation, distribution, and acceptance of standards in coding, documentation, specifications, and deployment is sure to decrease efficiency, reduce quality, and increase the risk of significant production issues.   Highlighted by 19 Kindle users

These usually consist of teams responsible for the overall architecture of the product (architecture), the software engineering of the product (engineering), the monitoring and production handling of the product (operations), design and deployment of hardware for the product (infrastructure engineering), and the testing of the product (quality assurance).  Highlighted by 18 Kindle users

By having a single person or organization responsible, you are abiding by the “one back to pat and one throat to choke” rule. A gentler way of saying this is that distributed ownership is ownership by no one.  Highlighted by 17 Kindle users

Leadership is important to scale as it not only sets the direction (mission) and destination (vision) but it inspires people and organizations to achieve that destination.  Highlighted by 16 Kindle users

The tool we most often use is called RASCI. It is a responsibility assignment chart and the acronym stands for Responsible, Accountable, Supportive, Consulted, and Informed. Highlighted by 16 Kindle users

Although there are always exceptions even to this broad range of choices, our low boundary for team size is six and our upper boundary is 15.  Highlighted by 15 Kindle users