Tom Dalling

Subclinical Bullying And Grace

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 00:00:00 -0000

In medicine there is the concept of a disease being “subclinical”, and I think the concept can apply to bullying in the workplace.

Every workplace has a threshold for bad behaviour, and subclinical bullying is bad behaviour which doesn’t cross the threshold. Much like how a doctor often won’t treat a subclinical disease, your manager often won’t address subclinical bullying. There are lots of reasons why this might be the case, for better or for worse. One of those reasons might be that your manager is showing grace, which can feel unfair, but is also important for a healthy team dynamic.

Tom's Philosophy Of Project Management For Software Development

Sun, 14 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0000

Below is an excerpt from Tom’s Expectations For Project Management — a private document written for engineers who report to me and who are running projects in a technical lead role, which lists out a set of project management responsibilities and expectations.

Leprechauns, Root Causes, And Other Fairy Tales

Mon, 21 Jul 2025 00:00:00 -0000

This is a short talk I gave a while ago about how complex systems fail, and root cause analysis. Transcript is below.

Milestones As Talking Points

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 00:00:00 -0000

Recently someone said to me “stakeholders only care about milestones,” and something clicked for me.

Work In Thin Vertical Slices

Sat, 12 Jul 2025 00:00:00 -0000

Work should be completed in a series of small changes, where each change is a polished, fully-working improvement.

The Difference Between Management And Leadership

Tue, 13 May 2025 00:00:00 -0000

The tl;dr is that management is a set of powers and accountabilities that the role confers upon you, whereas leadership is the ability to motivate followers. Anyone can be a leader, and teams run on leadership not management. Management is not necessarily bad, but management without leadership is pretty dang terrible! Also management is like the nervous system of an octopus.

Feedback Is Literally A Gift

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 00:00:00 -0000

Feedback is a gift.

Some gifts are little treats for you to consume. Think of a box of chocolates. You enjoy them and then they’re gone, but you remember the thought that was put into them.

Sometimes gifts are utilitarian, like getting socks for Christmas. They are not the most exciting thing to receive, but you kind of need them as part of your normal day-to-day life, and you’ll get use out of them.

Against Must-Haves (Part Three)

Sat, 22 Feb 2025 00:00:00 -0000

In this, the third and final part of this series, I’m going to present 10 recommendations for avoiding the pitfalls of using bucketed prioritisation (e.g. must haves, nice to haves, etc.), covered in the previous two parts.

High Performance Requires Process

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0000

Processes are a prerequisite for high-performance in software engineering teams due to their ability to amplify the skill of the team. I believe there exists no team, given that there is little to no process to begin with, whose performance could not be improved by adding appropriate process.

Ditch The Umbrella And Grab Some Sunnies

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 00:00:00 -0000

Engineering Managers (EMs) are sometimes said to be “shit umbrellas”. They are supposed to keep all the distractions away from the team: the short-lived whims and fancies of various stakeholders, vague plans that are going to change several times before being solidified — all that stuff. Distractions are poisonous to good software, so hiding them should help the team deliver more and better software. A large part of this is true.

However, I would like to argue here that behaving like an umbrella is probably not a good thing. Umbrellas are shields that block rain. And what are these EMs blocking? Hopefully distractions, but also information and reality.