👋 Hi everyone! Sorry for the delay in getting the latest issue out - I've had some unexpected family needs that required a lot of my time and attention, and I wasn't able to get an issue out.

Thank you for your patience!

Onto the issue.

At some point in your career, you’ll be on a project that is running behind.

Maybe the scope was bigger than expected. Maybe a few technical risks exploded. Perhaps the estimate was wrong from the start. Most likely, it was a little bit of all of those.

No matter the reason, the situation is the same: you’re not going to deliver on time. And that realization is a tough one — especially as a software engineer, where hitting deadlines often feels tied to your professional reputation. If you’re the tech lead on the project, it feels like the whole world is slowly collapsing.

But here’s the truth: being late doesn’t mean you’re bad at your job. It means you’re working in an environment where real-world constraints — complexity, uncertainty, competing priorities — sometimes win.

What matters most now is how you respond.

Team-Building Exercise

Communication is hard, and this week I want to focus on how to improve one side of the communication problem: making sure you understand what someone else has said.

Often in technical discussions, someone will say something that is a little unclear or confusing (or potentially very clear, but somewhat surprising). In these cases, the risk of misunderstanding someone's idea or statement is very high, and this risk can put projects, timelines, or strategic decisions at risk. Even if you think you understand the idea, it's worth a quick check to make sure.

A tool to help ensure you understand them is to raise your hand and say, "Can I say back what I think you just said?" and then repeat their idea as best as you can.

When you ask this question, you are setting yourself up (and the other person) for better knowledge transfer to occur.

If you got the idea right, great! You both have acknowledged the idea and agreed on what it means. If other people are in the meeting, they also get to see the exchange and now probably have a deeper understanding of the idea as well.

If you were off, you've now opened the door for the original communicator to clarify their thoughts and sharpen your own understanding. This is better than if you say, "I don't understand. Could you explain it differently?" While the intention is still to learn and transfer knowledge, you've now made the job of the original communicator very hard: they have to find a new way to explain something and relatively quickly (which can ironically actually make things more confusing!).

Use this question whenever you find yourself wanting to double-check your understanding of someone else's idea, and you'll improve the knowledge transfer (and the relationship) between you and the other person.

Here are some more resources from me to help you build better teams!​

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