Agile Software Engineering

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Agile Engineering Deep Dive, Alessandro Guida explores why hiring should be treated as a long-term leadership investment rather than a short-term operational task. Many organizations focus on speed, cost, and visible output when hiring engineers. But these signals often hide the real risks: poor role definition, mismatched expectations, underinvestment in on...

Send us Fan Mail Do legacy systems really slow organizations down - or are they quietly holding everything together? In this episode of The Agile Engineering Deep Dive , Alessandro Guida challenges a belief many organizations take for granted: that legacy software is something to avoid, escape, or replace as quickly as possible. When legacy systems are neglected or treated as second-class citizens...

Send us Fan Mail Do hero cultures really make organizations strong - or do they quietly make them fragile? In this episode of The Agile Engineering Deep Dive , Alessandro Guida challenges a belief many organizations take for granted:  that relying on heroes is a sign of strength. When systems depend on exceptional individuals to keep things running, knowledge concentrates, ownership blurs, and res...

Send us Fan Mail Do we really put users first in Agile - or do we just ask them to debug our assumptions? In this episode of The Agile Engineering Deep Dive , Alessandro Guida challenges a common Agile belief: that frequent feedback automatically means meaningful user involvement. When users are shown isolated features instead of full interaction flows, feedback becomes guesswork. User stories des...

Send us Fan Mail New podcast episode: “Clean Code, Clean Planet – How Software Design and Coding Practices Shape Our Digital Carbon Footprint” In it, I explore a simple idea that often goes unnoticed: software may be virtual, but its impact is physical. Everyday engineering decisions — from algorithms and design choices to architecture, usability, and team culture — quietly consume real energy and...

Send us Fan Mail I just published an improved version of my article:   “From Toyota to Agile: Using Lean Tools in Engineering” In it, I share how a few Lean tools I first learned from “The Toyota way” have followed me throughout my career - and how they fit beautifully into Agile engineering to make it more powerful and effective. Some of my favorites include:  🔹 Value Stream Mapping  🔹 Visual M...

Send us Fan Mail Throughout my career, the most meaningful achievements were not technologies, architectures, or deliveries - they were the people who grew around me. Many of them went on to become leaders, architects, innovators, and trusted voices in their organisations. For me, that has always been the real success measure of leadership. In this new podcast, I reflect on what it truly means to...

Send us Fan Mail The Secrets of Efficient Stand-Ups - Why They Fail, and How to Make Them Work Most stand-ups feel like this: “Yesterday I did X, today I’ll do Y, no blockers.” A round of micro-monologues… and very little actual coordination. In my new article, I explore why stand-ups so easily drift into status reporting-and how small changes can transform them into the most valuable 15 minutes o...

Send us Fan Mail SPECIAL EDITION! “THE HUMAN AI DETECTORS - And Other Familiar Enemies of Progress” Today’s post is a little different from my usual deep dives into engineering culture, architecture, and leadership. This one is a Special Commentary Edition - because sometimes the funniest (and most revealing) lessons about modern work come from outside the codebase. We’ve all lived through the sam...

Send us Fan Mail SAFe can bring structure and alignment across large organizations. But applied mechanically, it often feels less agile than Scrum — and resistance follows. In this article, I argue that real success comes from: Anchoring SAFe in mindset over mechanics Adapting it to context , not copying a framework Empowering Scrum Masters and Release Train Engineers as true change agents 🔎 Does...

Send us Fan Mail Vibe Coding is here. And it’s impressive -but also risky. We’re entering a new era where developers describe what they want, and AI generates entire applications: logic, UI, tests… everything. So the big question becomes: Is this the breakthrough we’ve been waiting for -or just the latest silver bullet? To find out, I built a real example using only natural language. It worked -bu...

Send us Fan Mail Most Agile models assume teams can work fully independently. But in real R&D organisations — especially those with shared platforms, legacy systems, or compliance constraints — inter-team dependencies are everywhere. Ignoring them doesn’t make you more “agile.” It just makes the blockers invisible. In this podcast, I explain how light-weight discipline (not heavy frameworks) c...

Send us Fan Mail This edition examines Agile Transformations — not as a process rollout, but as an organizational maturity journey. If Agile is to help us build better software, not just follow rituals, we need to understand how culture, architecture, leadership, and context interact. I hope you’ll enjoy this updated edition — and join the newsletter if you haven’t already. You can read the full a...

Send us Fan Mail It’s time to treat software engineering seriously. For years, Agile has relied on playful metaphors — tribes, squads, trains, sprints, even pigs and chickens. These made the frameworks easier to sell, but they also made our profession look less like engineering and more like a playground. Today our systems run hospitals, railways, satellites, and financial infrastructure. The lang...

Send us Fan Mail From Moonshot to Sustainable Innovation Most companies celebrate their first big idea — the moonshot that gets them off the ground. But very few manage to repeat it. Why? Because real, continuous innovation isn’t luck. It’s a system — built on people, environment, and structure. In this new article, I share the simple 3-part framework I’ve used across multiple companies to transfo...