SPaMCAST 198 - Philippe Back, Culture, Organizational Change

Welcome to the Software Process and Measurement Cast 198! The Software Process and Measurement Cast 198 features my interview with Phillipe Back covering culture and organizational change. Philippe is another long time listener that is bringing his phenomenal intellect to the podcast! Philippe started his career in ‘92, designing, coding, and deploying interactive voice response systems. To exit the “one-man, one-project” syndrome that was the rule at the company, he moved the whole development team to an object oriented approach, leveraging C++ in the process. The need to explain the concepts properly to team mates, marketing, clients, and management kick started his journey into modeling and software engineering best practices. But software is only a bit of a success and that led him to investigate more areas of business. The best school being real practice where cold cash must change hands, he went solo in 2000. This led to exposure to interesting challenges, projects, and individuals. That’s also when he started teaching and coaching hundreds of others on how to model systems, design architectures that hold water, code, and manage requirements properly. After a while, he ended up convinced that technology was often not the key issue. The main hurdle appeared to be people-centric, namely moving away from compliance and lip service and towards commitment. Today, Philippe helps organizations establish a shared culture to foster success. With a shared culture, you are better armed to deal with change. You are able to integrate innovations much easier. And you are able to manage change in a flexible and coherent way. Standard trainings and buzzwords just don’t work. They are the equivalent of junk food: giving you a sugar rush but no solid energy stream in the long run. Philippe is married to his soul mate and wife Catherine. He is also active in the open source field, taking part in the Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware and Pharo Smalltalk projects. Web: philippeback.euBlog: philippeback.beTwitter: @philippebackYoutube: youtube.com/philippeback Shameless Ad for my book! Mastering Software Project Management: Best Practices, Tools and Techniques 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, neither for you or your team." News just in . . . We also just got word that the SPM book has been adopted for a class at the University of West Flroida for the Fall. Have you bought your copy? Contact information for the Software Process and Measurement CastEmail: spamcastinfo@gmail.comVoicemail: +1-206-888-6111Website: www.spamcast.netTwitter: www.twitter.com/tcagleyFacebook: http://bit.ly/16fBWV Next The Software Process and Measurement Cast 199 will feature a discussion about the case against brainstorming (cue the thunder sound effects)!