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Coach, Mentor, Developer

I’m Harry Bailey and I help foster tech teams and the humans who help form and fuel them. My work creates better outcomes, more value, happier humans and solid autonomous teams.

My experience as a product owner, business owner, tech strategist and software developer enables me take a team-focused approach. I look to support value creation at every level from pair coding through to business strategy.

Some describe my role as Delivery Coach and some as Agile Coach. My preference is Agility Coach. ‘Agile’ isn’t something to be achieve, and our focus as members of software development teams should be on removing the impediments that limit agility. I work with teams of all sizes and experience levels to be better tomorrow than they are today.

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Offboarding as a priority

There is nothing quite like the heart sinking feeling other team members get when a developer announces they’ll be leaving a small team.

Mild panic sets in, and everybody looks to each other for reassurance. Yet that moment is the right time to switch mindsets to focused offboarding. Ensuring the remaining members are left in the best state possible to continue their great work.

Team size is critical here. One developer leaving a team of five often has a huge impact relative to a developer leaving a team of 20. Small teams need to run offboarding in a way that acknowledges this size frailty and mitigates the short and long term risks associated with developer churn.

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Fuelling Your Team

What we eat plays an important role in our ability to focus. Our choices around what and when we eat and drink affects our productivity, energy and general mood. It directly impacts the quality and quantity of our output at work. It compounds within small teams and has an even greater effect.

It’s been shown that those who form new habits around drinking plenty of water and eating the right foods see a better version of themselves within just a few days. Measurably better.

These simple insights into diet aren’t new information though. Most people are already aware that more water, less salt and less sugar are recommended for health and mood. People don’t do their body damage intentionally, but through choosing the path of least resistance when it comes to workplace food and drink habits.

The moral dilemma is of course, do we have any right influencing these choices and the diets of those we work with?

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Being outranked for your own name in search engines

I was involved in a discussion on Twitter recently about the pitfalls of having a name which isn’t unique. Another person with your name who was, or is, more famous than you are.

To add insult to injury, in our cases there were people who’ve shared our names in the past who have been less than perfect human beings.

In my case for example, another Harry Bailey was a doctor in Australia and was using some pretty awful treatments on people. His wikipedia page is the top result for Harry Bailey, and has been since I can remember.

The second Harry Bailey that used to outrank me is a character in a well known black and white Christmas film. He’s the brother of the main character and is referenced across various websites.

Thankfully, my writing and link building for Harry Bailey replaced the later on the first page of several search engines with my own content.

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