Around the code, not inside it
Two client engagements in parallel for much of the year. What wears you down at that pace is never the model: it is the review, the estimate, the handover.
Two engagements run head-on, in retail and distribution, and a clear sense that technical skill is no longer the limiting factor. The friction is elsewhere: how a team decides, delegates and says things to itself. The year ahead will likely see me writing less code and discussing more how it gets written.
What no course teaches: reading code you did not write, getting your own reviewed, estimating, saying no. Worth handing to anyone arriving, experienced included.
Technical team management handled as concrete gestures (the one-to-one, delegation, the hard piece of feedback) rather than principles. Useful even without a team: it shows what you are entitled to expect.
To be read with suspicion and profit. Its typology of organisations explains why two clients of comparable size are steered nothing alike; its promise of a higher stage needs checking somewhere other than in the companies it selected.