Troubleshooting Agile

We are joined by Matt Parker, author of the new book A Radical Enterprise, and discuss how many organisations are achieving significant success with astonishing levels of autonomy and devolution. Transcript: https://agileconversations.com/blog/a-radical-enterprise-pt1/ SHOW LINKS: - Matt's website: http://mattkparker.com - A Radical Enterprise: https://itrevolution.com/a-radical-enterprise/ - Demi...

Squirrel and Jeffrey continue discussing what to do with a giant backlog of work for your tech team, and suggest ways to think about paying off your tech debt and thin your features for faster feedback. SHOW LINKS: - Feature thinning: http://www.agilekiwi.com/other/agile/feature-thinning/ - Technical debt: http://wiki.c2.com/?WardExplainsDebtMetaphor --- Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out n...

Squirrel and Jeffrey discuss how to help a listener whose team has a mountain of work growing beyond all proportion, and how to work with sponsors to tame (or even better, delete!) a 5-year backlog. SHOW LINKS: - Gold Owner / Goal Donor: https://wiki.c2.com/?GoalDonor - Mythical Man-Month: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month - Induced demand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_...

Squirrel describes an amazing Christmas present that captures perfectly why user empathy is vital for all types of agile teams — even in hardware. SHOW LINKS: - The Braille Cube: https://twitter.com/douglassquirrel/status/1476967045430398979 --- Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mai...

Squirrel and Jeffrey trade stories about two types of organisations: ones that want to give developers perks and opportunities to learn, and those that actually want disruptive change and new ideas. Then they invite listeners to weigh in on what they're aiming to get from this podcast, on a Twitter or LinkedIn poll (see below). SHOW LINKS: - Twitter poll: https://twitter.com/TShootingAgile/status/...

Continued conversation with one of our favourite authors, James Shore, who joins us to discuss the new edition of his semnal book, The Art of Agile Development. SHOW LINKS: - Twitter: https://twitter.com/jamesshore - Website: https://www.jamesshore.com - AOD2: https://www.jamesshore.com/v2/books/aoad2 - Bookclub: https://www.jamesshore.com/v2/books/aoad2/book_club - Book: Accelerate: https://itrev...

One of our favourite authors, James Shore, joins us to discuss the new edition of his seminal book, The Art of Agile Development. SHOW LINKS: - Twitter: https://twitter.com/jamesshore - Website: https://www.jamesshore.com - AOD2: https://www.jamesshore.com/v2/books/aoad2 - Bookclub: https://www.jamesshore.com/v2/books/aoad2/book_club - Book: Accelerate: https://itrevolution.com/book/accelerate/ -...

Responding to a provocative Twitter thread, Squirrel and Jeffrey discuss why pull requests may be harmful to collaboration, and explore the seemingly mad world of mob programming (20 people and 1 keyboard?!). We discover how these "co-creation" techniques can help increase psychological safety and reduce errors. SHOW LINKS: - Dragan's Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/d_stepanovic/status/1470009...

This week, we bring you one of our most popular previous episodes to refresh your memory or listen to for the first time. The first chapter of Agile Conversations is all about people-centred development, and we tell the story of our own journey from over-determined software factory to today's feature factories, with similar Taylorist theories of management in both. In today's episode, we go into m...

Jeffrey and Squirrel draw lessons from unlikely sources like Henry Ford and Eliezer Yudkowsky on creating a culture that favours innovation and inquiry. SHOW LINKS: - Henry Ford article: https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/experts/ - Hero License: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dhj9dhiwhq3DX6W8z/hero-licensing - Dan Luu on productivity: https://danluu.com/productivity-velocity/ - Chris Matts o...

When your team misses a sprint goal, or you let down a stakeholder, you or your team may feel guilty—but we make concrete recommendations, using Pixar movies and Adlerian psychology, for grief as a more effective alternative that leads to faster recovery and improvement. SHOW LINKS: - The Courage to be Disliked: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43306206-the-courage-to-be-disliked - Feeling Good...

Continuing from last week's episode on Gemba Walks, we explore how leaders can use information they gather from the "coal face" to tell compelling stories and change culture and direction. SHOW LINKS: - Last week's episode: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/gemba-walks-and-ride-alongs - Three Perspectives on Future Search: http://www.marvinweisbord.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Future%2...

Squirrel and Jeffrey tell two stories of leaders who "walked the floor" to see what work was being done, in two very different situations, and how the resulting stories helped transform their teams. SHOW LINKS: - Gemba Walk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemba - Container Stacking blog post: https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/an-unexpected-victory-container-stacking-at-the-port-of-los-angeles...

Squirrel and Jeffrey consider the benefits and risks of building a feature for just one user. When is this advisable and when is it a product cul-de-sac? SHOW LINKS: - Alan Cooper on personas: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44098.The_Inmates_Are_Running_the_Asylum - Poppendiecks on lean software (waste of software development): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/194338.Lean_Software_Developm...

A listener asks about "de-silo-ifying" data science and how to match cadences between data teams and product teams. Data expert Ian Ozsvald tells stories of insurance forms and data horrors as he helps us explore ways to address this cadence mismatch. SHOW LINKS: - Ian Ozsvald: https://ianozsvald.com - PyData London: https://london.pydata.org/ - Gemba walk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemba#Gemb...

Squirrel and Jeffrey explore their different reasons for recommending that you remove the word "need" from your vocabulary. SHOW LINKS: - “Need” tweet: https://twitter.com/douglassquirrel/status/1445683926983340037 - Correct vs useful episode: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/correct-vs-useful --- Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where yo...

A listener asks about conditions where ringfencing might make sense, and we explore the differences among ringfencing, focus, and empowerment. SHOW LINKS: - Listener question: https://twitter.com/DeliverItCast/status/1443304167313915907 - Ringfencing episode: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/the-ringfencing-trap - The Goal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goal_(novel) --- Our new book...

Jeffrey tells the story of his team writing code that gives incorrect but still useful results, and we reflect on why it can be hard to choose to "pay to learn". SHOW LINKS: - Thinking, Fast and Slow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow - Worse is Better: https://dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html --- Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.co...

Squirrel helps teams split their work into tiny "slices" they can release daily or weekly, and finds that the biggest obstacle is all the things that developers think they know about users, many of which they have to first unlearn. SHOW LINKS: - Original tweet: https://twitter.com/douglassquirrel/status/1435602671306674176 - Falsehoods programmers believe about names: https://www.kalzumeus.com/201...

Squirrel tells stories of clients whose attempt to ringfence developers on certain tasks ended badly, and we explore why hiding from a difficult conversation with "dedicated" engineers doesn't work. SHOW LINKS: - Original tweet: https://twitter.com/douglassquirrel/status/1435602662796537861 - https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/solving-the-problem-of-siloed-it-in-organizations/ --- Our new book, A...

We discuss making radical change in an organisation by violating its norms in use and producing productive conflict. SHOW LINKS: - How Should the Company Decide?: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/how-should-the-company-decide --- Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing...

We consider the dynamics—or perhaps statics!—of an organisation that is stuck running the same agile processes or following an unchanging strategy, even though it isn't providing any improvement, and consider why an organisation might get stuck in this way. SHOW LINKS: - Double-Loop Learning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-loop_learning --- Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See...

We discuss why daily delivery via "elephant carpaccio"—already challenging for engineers—is doubly difficult for designers, and what to do about it. SHOW LINKS: - Elephant Carpaccio: https://alistair.cockburn.us/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Elephant-Carpaccio-exercise-instructions.pdf --- Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy...

A listener asks how to find a great company to work for, and Jeffrey and Squirrel share a few opinionated, biased heuristics for discovering great environments to work in. SHOW LINKS: - CITCON conferences: https://citconf.com/ - DevopsDays: https://devopsdays.org/ - DOES conference: https://events.itrevolution.com - Joel Test: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-steps-to-bet...

Squirrel and Jeffrey trade stories about coaching people who feel trapped by a decision seemingly outside their control—and how a recursive question can help unlock more options and a better result. SHOW LINKS: - Unilateral control: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/how-to-fail-by-acting-unilaterally-part-i - Mutual learning: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/mutual-learning-mo...