Troubleshooting Agile

Last week, Domenica DeGrandis talked with us about making work visible. Today, we distinguish that idea from a related one, that of making your *output* visible. How can your team show its results frequently? What symptoms indicate that this might help you? What results can you expect from showing meaningful business value often? SHOW LINKS: - Domenica's Making Work Visible book: https://itrevolut...

Sunday is the new Monday, and that’s a bad thing - says our guest today, Dominica DeGrandis, author of Making Work Visible. How can you move from default yes to an effective, smooth flow of work? Dominica addresses this question while touching on queueing theory, empathy, and hope! SHOW LINKS: - Dominica’s Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/dominicad - Domenica’s web site: https://ddegrandis.com/ -...

Have you ever "flipped the bozo bit" on someone, concluding that he or she is completely clueless and communication is hopeless? We tell some tales of bozo bits we've seen flipped, describe some causes and consequences including the idea of "duelling ladders", and suggest how to get out of the bozo bit trap. SHOW LINKS: - The Bozo Bit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bozo_bit - Jim McCarthy's book o...

Today we finish our conversation with author, podcaster, and DevOps expert John Willis https://twitter.com/botchagalupe . John covers a wide variety of topics at lightning speed, including: SHA - a hash algorithm, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-1 CAB - Change Advisory Board, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change-advisory_board Jim Benson on Kanban - http://personalkanban.com/pk/about-us/...

Today we speak to author, podcaster, and DevOps expert John Willis https://twitter.com/botchagalupe . John covers a wide variety of topics at lightning speed, including: SHA - a hash algorithm, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-1 CAB - Change Advisory Board, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change-advisory_board Jim Benson on Kanban - http://personalkanban.com/pk/about-us/team/jim-benson/ And...

Listener Jamie let us know about a sequel to one of our favourite blog posts, John Cutler on the Feature Factory. We focus on just one of John's well-made points, the idea of lowering Work In Progress to improve throughput. We tell a story about on "death by spreadsheet" project management and the futile and counterproductive attempt to get utilisation to 100%. This brings us back to lean methods,...

Our new book is all about what people miss in their digital/agile/lean/devops transformations: cultural changes that underlie human-centred development and the conversations that can lead you to those changes. Inspired by the book Accelerate!, we look at Westrum's Three Cultures and reflect on how the culture you're in affects how you transform to the culture you want. SHOW LINKS: - Accelerate!: h...

Alistair Cockburn gets us thinking about how agile methods are spreading, even to non-software teams like sales. Further, we bring in the idea of Wardley Mapping to see how, ironically, this very spread can lead to the conclusion that agile development is headed for the dustbin, but conclude (phew!) that agile methods have a healthy future. Apologies for a minor audio problem about 12 minutes in....

Following on further from Avery Pennarun's intriguing article on "what executives do", we ask how, exactly, executives (and others!) can trigger action, if they are not themselves going to carry it out? It turns out we've covered our favourite technique for this before - Bungay's Briefing and Back Briefing - but this time we have a scoring checklist that can help you use the technique, and two new...

We respond to an intriguing and dense article from Avery Pennarun about what executives do. He takes us back to Andy Grove’s classic High Output Management and we reflect on the leverage leaders can use, how they and their staff can fool themselves into thinking they have the right information, and a mindset exercise to help you find “unknown unknowns”. SHOW LINKS: - What do executives do, anyway?...

We conclude our conversation with Ryan Singer, Head of Strategy at Basecamp and author of Shape Up, by asking him how the team functions without requiring code reviews or QA checks. Then he goes on to describe in detail their "hill" metaphor for progress measurement and why this method provides a useful narrative that goes way beyond sprint duration or story points. SHOW LINKS: - Shape Up: https:/...

We continue chatting with Ryan Singer, Head of Strategy at Basecamp and author of Shape Up. Ryan explains the "shaping" and "betting" processes in more detail, including who does the various roles and what is crucial to get right when you set up a design-and-build system like the one they advocate. SHOW LINKS: - Shape Up: https://basecamp.com/shapeup/?ref=df - Daring Fireball intro to Shape Up: ht...

We start our conversation with Ryan Singer, Head of Strategy at Basecamp, by asking him to help us understand how their Shape Up process works and how they developed it. He explains how the fear of not shipping drove their movement to frequent delivery of carefully designed (or "shaped") features, why their teams avoid single-page apps to ensure designers can make the maximum contribution, and why...

Squirrel adds to last week's story, describing how being transparent and curious helped him uncover a conflict that helped lead to insight and better alternatives. SHOW LINKS: - The HiPPO effect: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2017/10/26/data-driven-decision-making-beware-of-the-hippo-effect/ - The Uncanny Valley of a Functional Organization: https://stratechery.com/2013/the-uncanny-vall...

Squirrel tells a story in which digging for emotional signals helps a technical team find alternatives to an arbitrary-looking initiative. Jeffrey explains how nonviolent communication provides a framework for seeking emotional understanding first. SHOW LINKS: - Nonviolent communication: https://www.cnvc.org - Feelings inventory: https://www.cnvc.org/training/resource/feelings-inventory - Kano mod...

We saw last week how inflexible implementation killed checklists at hospitals - and the same disease affects agile development, we've found. Do you think there's a single "recipe" for agile, like our friends at Basecamp who claim they're not agile because they don't use post-its, backlogs, or standups? If so, we think you're missing some important opportunities for building internal commitment and...

Troubleshooting Checklists Checklists are a great way to capture learning in any organisation, but sometimes they don't work - why not? A recent study of hospitals with varying levels of success in adopting checklists helps us reflect on similar adoption challenges for agile methods. SHOW LINKS: - Checklist article from Nature: https://www.nature.com/news/hospital-checklists-are-meant-to-save-live...

Our first interview ever! We welcome to the studio Chris Clearfield, co-author of Meltdown, a book all about system failure and the reasons for it. Chris explains ideas like tight coupling (not the OO kind!) and system complexity, and we explore how they apply to technical debt and bug prioritisation. We get to hear some of the best stories from the book as well, including the hedge fund that lost...

Our first interview ever! We welcome to the studio Chris Clearfield, co-author of Meltdown, a book all about system failure and the reasons for it. Chris explains ideas like tight coupling (not the OO kind!) and system complexity, and we explore how they apply to technical debt and bug prioritisation. We get to hear some of the best stories from the book as well, including the hedge fund that lost...

Our first interview ever! We welcome to the studio Chris Clearfield, co-author of Meltdown, a book all about system failure and the reasons for it. Chris explains ideas like tight coupling (not the OO kind!) and system complexity, and we explore how they apply to technical debt and bug prioritisation. We get to hear some of the best stories from the book as well, including the hedge fund that lost...

Our first interview ever! We welcome to the studio Chris Clearfield, co-author of Meltdown, a book all about system failure and the reasons for it. Chris explains ideas like tight coupling (not the OO kind!) and system complexity, and we explore how they apply to technical debt and bug prioritisation. We get to hear some of the best stories from the book as well, including the hedge fund that lost...

This week, Jeffrey and Squirrel discuss the history of “software for humans”, the agile, lean, and devops movements. No links this week as the book deadline looms, but feel free to ask us if you can’t find a reference. Normal service will resume shortly! *** We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us: see link on troubleshootingagile.com Tweet us: twitter....

A listener question about running a Troubleshooting Agile study group inspires advice on keeping your learning from becoming lunchtime entertainment, as well as surprisingly relevant stories about a pottery class, a management seminar, and the Israeli military. SHOW LINKS: - Joel's tweet requesting advice on his study group: https://twitter.com/joelchippindale/status/1143137854278840321 - Our seri...

The engineers know the project is in terrible trouble, but the executives think it's going great. This "greenshifting" anti-pattern occurs at NASA, software companies, and everywhere in between. We tell a few related stories, including a fable, and suggest methods that might work to counteract the greenshifting tendency in your organisation. SHOW LINKS: - "The Mushroom Song" by Steve Savitsky: htt...

You can invest a lot of your time in making your software delivery predictable (a la NASA) or in making your team productive (a la early stage startups). Which is best? We introduce the idea of a "tilted slider" to explain this tradeoff, and the "gravity" that pulls you toward predictability even when it may not be the best emphasis. And as usual, we have stories of effective and ineffective actio...