Inspect and Adapt
Construx
World-class software development requires far more than language/platform expertise and steady sprints. Join us as we describe time-tested, industry-proven software best practices at the team, organization, and leadership levels, sharing examples from recent engagements with software teams of all sizes.Construx is led by industry leader Steve McConnell, author of Code Complete and More Effective Agile. Software experts first and software trainers and consultants second, our team has seen what works and doesn’t work in hundreds of software organizations.Host Mark Griffin spent the first half of his career as an electrical engineer doing silicon hardware design and leading software automation teams. He moved into the sales side of software because he wanted to spread the value of what his company was building. It was supposed to be a one-year assignment that turned into the second half of his career. His balance of deeply technical skills and right-brain artistry also makes him a masterful home brewer!
Episodes
Mentioned books
Aug 1, 2022 • 58min
#31 The Daily
Many, if not most, agile teams include the practice of a daily gathering. It goes by slightly different names: the daily standup, the daily scrum, or walking the board. Join host Mark Griffin with Construx's Jenny Stuart and Earl Beede for an inspect and adapt of the daily. We cover the daily's origins, how it differs across agile approaches, common errors in the daily (we are looking at you, status reporting) and how to adjust it to different environments.This is an edited from a live-stream discussion. If you want to be notified of future live-stream recording, be sure to sign up at our website https://www.construx.com
Nov 18, 2021 • 1h 9min
#30 Scaling Agile: Three Agile Scaling Frameworks and Six Scaling Recommendations
Hearing about different scaling frameworks and wondering which one is for you? Join host Mark Griffin and guest Jenny Stuart for an overview of the popular Agile scaling frameworks SAFe, Nexus, and LeSS, including their strengths and relative weaknesses. We’ll cover the frameworks’ core techniques and approaches; this will provide you with a basis for determining whether one of these frameworks is a good fit. Jenny will also provide six scaling recommendations for you to think about regardless of the framework you might be considering.
Jul 19, 2021 • 1h 8min
#29 Twenty Years Is Enough! It’s Time to Update the Agile Principles and Values
Today’s episode focuses on the very basis of Agile: its principles and values. Steve McConnell recently gave a keynote at XP2021 in which he said they need to be updated. You'll hear a quick recap of Agile’s beginnings, what was happening in software development when people got together at that Snowbird conference: primarily "code & fix" and the SW-CMM (Software-Capability Maturity Model). Steve will describe the current non-agile institutionalization of Agile. Then Steve and Mark will work one by one through the Agile values and principles to describe their relevance (or lack of relevance) to today's software development practices and culture.
Jul 6, 2021 • 47min
#28 Six Ways to Decrease Stress in Development Partnerships
Working with external software development partners often increases stress for the existing internal staff. A Construx client asked us to conduct research with our clients on approaches to reducing this stress. We identified six recommendations and related specific actions that organizations can take to decrease internal stress and improve overall teamwork with their partners.Join Construx Senior Fellow Earl Beede as he describes the results of this client-driven research. You'll learn the six recommendations and specific actions you can take to lower your internal staff’s stress. You'll also hear about some case studies that describe what worked and what didn’t work in the case of several specific external partnerships Construx studied.
May 3, 2021 • 39min
#27 More Effective Kanban, Part 3: Kanban for Portfolios and Programs
Construx VP of Consulting Jenny Stuart and Mark Griffin cleared up common misconceptions about Kanban in Episode #19. In Episode #24, they discussed numerous best practices for establishing and optimizing your Kanban system. Here, they focus on seeing the big picture—working with Kanban at higher levels of workflow. Topics included setting up program-level and portfolio-level Kanban boards. Jenny shares various approaches she's used with clients to determine work items, model the workflow, define exit criteria, and establish WIP limits at the program level, a much higher level of abstraction than user stories. Also discussed are Kanban in the context of SAFe and two-tier Kanban boards, which illustrate multiple levels of abstraction or types of work on one board: epics and features at one level and user stories or children stories underneath.
Mar 11, 2021 • 50min
#26 Software Estimation Lessons Learned from Covid-19 Forecasting
Software estimation expert Steve McConnell shares lessons learned from COVID-19 forecasting, emphasizing the importance of historical data, minimal control knobs, accuracy vs precision, reported data vs ground truth, and closing the loop for forecast accuracy in both pandemic and software estimation models.
Feb 24, 2021 • 50min
#25 Crafting Software, Part 1: Beers to Pair with Requirements, Design, & Estimation
Host Mark Griffin and Steve Tockey use beer as an analogy to discuss software development phases such as requirements, design, and estimation. They compare software design to an English IPA and emphasize the importance of clear communication and precision in both realms. The podcast delves into the concept of design patterns as a form of reuse and explores the blend of software professionalism and consulting services.
Oct 21, 2020 • 1h 15min
#24 More Effective Kanban, Part 2: Operating and Optimizing Your Kanban System
Construx VP of Consulting Jenny Stuart and Mark Griffin cleared up common misconceptions about Kanban in the first episode in this series (episode #19). This time they cover numerous best practices for establishing your initial Kanban system—determining work item types, workflow, work state policies, work-in-progress limits, and more—and running it well, including multiple approaches to handling blocked items and replenishing the queue of work. The conversation concludes with ways to optimize the system to make it better for the business and better for the people using it. Data-driven metrics such as cumulative flow diagrams, cycle time performance, and lead time performance are extremely useful here.This episode went a little longer than we expected—there’s so much information to share! If you’d like to absorb the episode in two sittings, a good stopping/restarting place is at 44:52, where the discussion of metrics begins.
Aug 25, 2020 • 53min
#23 Exploring Metrics: Using Landing Zones to Define and Guide Success
It's a sad truth that many software teams are working with no explicit definition of success.Join Construx Senior Fellow Erik Simmons and Mark Griffin to learn about the landing zone, a table that you can use to define success in a quantified, explicit way. Erik played a role in the development of the landing zone method during his time at Intel, so you're learning about it from one of its earliest proponents.In addition to learning how to build landing zones and when to use them, you'll learn what makes a good success definition, the benefits of using landing zones (including creating accountability and transparency and enabling distributed decision making), tips for creating your first landing zones, who should be involved when creating them, how you can use landing zones with OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), and much more.Learn more about Landing Zones from Erik's on-demand webinar: https://www.construx.com/webinar-value-stream-mapping-for-devops/
Aug 5, 2020 • 37min
#22 More Effective Agile, Part 9: Focus on Throughput, Not Activity; Plan Based on Measured Team Capacity; Decriminalize Mistakes
Steve McConnell completes the series in which he describes the 28 key principles in his new book, More Effective Agile (Construx Press, 2019). The final principles described are: "Focus on Throughput, Not Activity." Similar to managing to outcomes, adding the nuance that busyness is not the objective—getting valuable work done is the objective. (See page 223 in the book.) "Plan Based on Measured Team Capacity." Agile is an empirical approach; teams and organizations should plan their work based on their measured performance. (See page 232.)"Decriminalize Mistakes." Decriminalize mistakes so that teams surface them without hesitation and you can learn from them. A mistake you don’t learn from penalizes your organization twice. (See page 227.)Make sure to check out the first 8 parts in this series to learn all the principles.
