Leadership Micro Katas

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Assumption Inventory

A ticket lands for refinement.

List every unstated assumption
Flag any that would invalidate the approach

Most mid-sprint surprises were visible before the sprint started.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Pre-Mortem Minute

You are about to commit to a technical approach.

Write: “This has failed in production. Why?”
List 3 specific reasons
Check if your plan addresses the most plausible one

Risk is visible before momentum makes it impolite to raise it.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Opinion or Observation

Your review comment uses “should,” “better,” or “prefer.”

Replace it with something observable
Name a failure mode, principle, or cost
If you cannot, soften it to a question

The discipline is knowing why you hold the position you hold.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Blocker Brief

You need to communicate a technical constraint to a non-engineer.

Write it before you send it
Sentence 1: What
Sentence 2: Why
Sentence 3: Options
Remove any word they would need to look up

If they cannot act on what you said, you did not communicate.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Tradeoff Statement

You make or advocate for a technical decision.

Write one sentence naming what you give up
Not the gain. The cost.

If you cannot name the cost, you do not understand the decision.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Question Before the Answer

A teammate brings you a problem you already know how to solve.

Ask one question first
Answer only if they are genuinely stuck

The reflex to be useful by being right blocks growth.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Line Before the Pressure

You are uncertain whether to escalate or handle it yourself.

Write the condition that makes escalation correct
Make it measurable
Check if it is true

Escalation should be a decision, not a stress response.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Thing You Did Not Say

A standup, planning session, or retro just ended.

Write one thing you noticed but did not say
Write why you did not say it

Writing it down makes the reason for your silence visible.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Debt Sentence

You are about to ship code you know is not right.

Write what specifically is wrong
Write what it will cost to fix later
If you cannot write both, you cannot ship it responsibly

What you do not name, you forget.

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

About

These katas are short exercises for the moments of tech leadership that keep showing up. They started as habits Yannis Rizos picked up over 20 years of engineering work.

Training the next group of tech leads at Epignosis gave a reason to write them down. Each habit became a kata short enough to practice in the middle of a working day.

20 years of habits, written down for the next lead.

Rationale

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Rationale

Software engineers who move into lead roles lose the feedback loops that made them good. Code compiles or it does not. Tests pass or they fail.

Whether you just answered a question someone needed to work through themselves produces no signal of any kind. Neither does staying silent about a risk nobody else has named.

Without something to correct against, the defaults win.

Why Katas

The kata as a learning format arrived in software in 2003, when Dave Thomas introduced Code Katas as a way to give developers what musicians and athletes already had: a short, repeatable exercise designed to build fluency through repetition.