[stackdestroyer]

1. Being informed about what the top level company goals are as well as department context and goals. If you can't draw a straight-ish line between what you're working on and those goals, it's probably not aligned. Make sure you have a defined and prioritized backlog of projects so that when you have the time/resources, you can easily pluck the next one off of the stack.

2. Repeating myself over and over and over (typically ~7 times) to get a message out to the team/org. Even smart people act dumb sometimes, and don't listen/read when they should. It feels like babysitting, sometimes.

3. Books, blogs, industry friends, and some mentors. I have found it difficult to make external mentor friends, but still working on it.

4. It's never about the tools. Jira sucks, slack sucks, and so do most tools. Make sure you keep your workflow simple and make it transparent, however you do it, so that not only can YOU see what's going on, you can confidently share it with others (see? THIS is why your feature isnt being worked on right now, etc.)

[handrous]

> 2. Repeating myself over and over and over (typically ~7 times) to get a message out to the team/org. Even smart people act dumb sometimes, and don't listen/read when they should. It feels like babysitting, sometimes.

This is often a sign of there being too many channels of communication or authoritative sources of information, and/or of lots of low-value information being sent out over those channels. Unfortunately, that's not always something one manager in an organization can fix, as it may be cultural or organizational-structural.