SPaMCAST 461 - Agile - Leadership Required, Skills, Common Cause Variation

SPaMCAST 461 features our essay - Agile -- Leadership Required.  For an Agile transformation to be effective and then stay effective there are four cornerstones of Agile leadership constancy that must be addressed with passion and constancy of purpose. Our second column this week is from Kim Pries (The Software Sensei). Kim fills in the middle of the cast with a discussion of the conceptual skills a software developer should have. To be good in this industry you need to be more than a set of coding languages or testing techniques.   Steve Tendon, brings chapter 19 of Tame The Flow: Hyper-Productive Knowledge-Work Performance, The TameFlow Approach and Its Application to Scrum and Kanban published J Ross (). We tackle Chapter 19, which is titled Understanding Common Cause Variation.  Steve share insights that caused me to rethink the whole idea of common cause variation. Here is a promo for my appearance during the Denver Startup Week.  On Thursday, September 28th at 8 AM I will be sharing Storytelling: Developing the Big Picture for Agile Efforts.  The presentation, in Denver, Colorado, will be at held at Industry.  !!!! A well-done Agile project reminds us that the focus of any set of requirements needs to be on an outcome rather than a collection of “whats” and “whos”. Storytelling is a powerful tool to elevate even the most diehard requirements analyst from a discussion of individual requirements to a discussion of outcomes. Attend this session and learn how to peel away the proverbial layers of the backlog evolution “onion” by using storytelling techniques to understand the big picture. Perfect for PMs and leaders of any agile driven project. For other events, SPaMCAST team members will be attending check the recent blog entry titled   Re-Read Saturday News This week Steven completes Chapter 9 of Paul Gibbons’ book .  Chapter 9 is the capstone of the book, putting all of the pieces-parts together.  Steve sums the chapter up and ties a bow on it!  We will have a final wrap up next week then . . . I will hold the poll open for a few more days.  Currently, we seem to be experiencing a slugfest between Vacanti and Senge; however, I am starting to see rally flags for Kevin Kruse’s book! This week and previous installments:      A Call To Action The Software Process and Measurement Cast needs your help!  Please give the SPaMCAST a short, honest review in iTunes, Stitcher or wherever you are listening.  If you leave a review somewhere, please send a copy to we will call you out on the show!  Reviews help guide people to the cast and blog! If you interested in promoting your conference or event on the Software Process and Measurement Cast please reach out to us at to discuss how that can happen! Next SPaMCAST SPaMCAST 462 will feature our interview with Jon M Quigley (remember him?)  We discussed his new book Project Management for Automotive Engineers. Jon co-authored the book with Roopa Shenoy. The book and the ideas in the book are relevant to all types of projects whether they use Agile or not!  A fun and informative conversation! Shameless Ad for my book! co-authored by Murali Chematuri and myself and published by J. Ross Publishing. We have received unsolicited reviews like the following: “This book will prove that software projects should not be a tedious process, for you or your team.” Support SPaMCAST by buying the book nglish and Chinese.