My 2025 Year of Change: From Maker to Manager, and Back Again
If I had to give 2025 a headline, it would be change with purpose. This year stretched me in the best ways—stepping into new leadership responsibilities, growing a team, tightening the way we ship, and learning to listen harder than I speak. Here’s the personal version of that story—no brand names, no customer specifics—just what changed in me and how I showed up.
Stepping Up: The Promotion That Changed My Calendar (and Mindset)
Early in the year I moved into a bigger role. The real shift wasn’t the title; it was the lens. I stopped optimising only for “what I can build” and started optimising for “what the team can deliver repeatedly.”
That meant trading some deep maker time for clearer goals, sharper priorities, and better guardrails. I learned that great leadership isn’t louder—it’s more consistent.
Building the Team: Capability Before Headcount
I focused on capability first: the skills we need, the outcomes we own, and the habits that make our work sustainable. Then I hired for those.
Recruiting became less about “finding a unicorn” and more about complementary strengths: pairing systems thinkers with strong communicators, matching builders with patient debuggers, and balancing speed with steadiness. The win wasn’t filling seats—it was creating a team that could cover for each other and still raise the bar.
Shipping More (and Smarter): Extensions That Reduce Friction
This was a shipping year. We delivered and refreshed a number of small-but-mighty extensions that simplify everyday workflows—things that make sending, tracking, auditing, and revising feel lighter.
My guiding principle was simple: remove one step, add one check. Fewer clicks, clearer states, better logs. The result was a set of releases that felt invisible in the best way: they just worked.
How we kept momentum:
- Micro‑sprints: fifteen‑minute weekly checkpoints to unblock decisions fast.
- One‑page runbooks: enough guidance to get anyone productive, without a wall of text.
- “Prove it’s live” checks: lightweight verification steps built into our deployment flow.
Owning the Plumbing: Pipelines, Permissions, and Environment Boundaries
Shipping more forced me to become a student of the plumbing—credentials, pipelines, environments, and deployment rights. When automation faltered, I documented a clear manual path to production with artefact verification and rollback notes.
I also nudged us toward true test vs. production separation, tightened access, and wrote down the things future‑me would otherwise forget. Unsexy work, essential outcomes.
Raising the Floor: Security, Compliance, and Clarity
Trust isn’t a feature you bolt on—it’s a minimum standard you live by.
This year I helped translate policy into practice: tightening recording rules for sessions, clarifying what AI tools are appropriate in meetings, and setting sensible defaults that make safe behaviour the path of least resistance.
I learned to treat security as an experience challenge: make the right thing obvious, quick, and documented.
Listening More: Field Signals, Release Notes, and Community Threads
A big part of my growth was learning to listen for signal—especially from upgrade notes and practitioner conversations. Those discussions surfaced tiny changes in behaviour that could become big friction later.
By folding that feedback into our defaults and help text, we prevented issues from turning into tickets. Quiet wins are still wins.
What Changed in Me
- From fixes to systems: I stopped “hero‑patching” and started designing repeatable ways to prevent the same issues.
- From shipping to safeguarding: I now see deployments as both delivery and defence—verify, limit blast radius, document.
- From speaking to listening: Feedback isn’t noise; it’s an early warning system if you’re humble enough to hear it.
The Quiet Wins I’m Proud Of
- A deployment playbook that works even when automation doesn’t—with verification built in.
- Extensions that reduce friction and feel intuitive—less clicking, clearer states, better audit trails.
- Policies translated into practical steps—not just rules, but workflows anyone can follow.
Looking Ahead to 2026
Next year is about consistency at scale: fully automated pipelines, cleaner environment boundaries, and guardrails that make secure, compliant delivery the default. My personal goal is to spend more time coaching and documenting, so the team can move faster with fewer surprises.
Thanks for reading—and for being part of the change. If this year taught me anything, it’s that growth isn’t about doing more; it’s about doing the right things, repeatedly, together.