

Engineering Culture by InfoQ
InfoQ
Software engineers, architects and team leads have found inspiration to build better, high performing teams by listening to the weekly InfoQ Podcast. We have achieved that by interviewing some of the top CTOs, engineers and technology directors from companies like Uber, Netflix and more. Over 500,000 downloads in the last 3 years.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Jun 8, 2020 • 22min
Steve Crago on Coaching, Mentoring and Facilitating Effective Teamwork
In this podcast recorded at Agile 2019, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Steve Crago about how leaders need to be coaches, being a good mentor and facilitating effective meetings
Why listen to this podcast
• There is an expectation that leaders are able to be effective coaches for their teams today
• There are tools such as the Leadership Circle Profile that can help you understand your own strengths and weaknesses
• You don’t necessarily need to work on weaknesses – often enhancing areas of strength can give better results than focusing on improving areas of weakness
• To effectively mentor someone in an area you need to have deep knowledge and experience working in that domain
• Facilitation is a skillset that is about helping others achieve their goals in a collaborative session
More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2Yk1g5s
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Jun 5, 2020 • 32min
Derek Weeks on the 2020 DevSecOps Community Survey Results
In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Derek Weeks of Sonatype about the results of the 2020 DevSecOps Community Survey and the All Day DevOps conference.
Why listen to this podcast:
• If you’re doing DevOps correctly then DevSecOps is already a part of it
• Organisations with mature DevOps practices have more security tools and security is more tightly integrated into the overall environment
• Organisations with mature teams have a higher percentage of happier developers within their organizations than the immature ones
• Happy developers are 3.6 times more likely to pay attention to security
• In organisations with unhappy developers the primary cause of friction in the development process is management, in happy environments it is other developers
More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/379gYEf
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May 26, 2020 • 32min
Advices for Managers to Promote Mental Wellness in Turbulent Times
In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Dr Michelle O’Sullivan and Douglas Talbot about how managers and team leads can support the mental wellness of their teams through turbulent times
Why listen to this podcast:
• Good work is one of the best things for our mental health. It gives us a sense of purpose and it provides us with a community
• Mental wellness is about how to speak with people, having open conversations, giving people practical support when they need it, and also just creating a safe space and a good culture within your team. Most of it is just about good line management in general.
• Checking in in about how people are sleeping can be a safe conversation and can be good indicator of potential deeper issues
• So if somebody is quite stressed by the pandemic or what's happening with their loved ones, or someone's sick, these are very real fears, and we don't want to pathologize what is a very normal reaction to an abnormal situation
• As a manager it is important for you to model the behaviour you want to see in your team, be vulnerable and open about your own fears and concerns, which gives others permission to be vulnerable too
More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2ZGTaGa
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May 11, 2020 • 36min
Steve Holyer on Running an Effective Open Space and Tim Meyers on Good Coaching
In this podcast recorded at Agile 2019, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, first spoke to Steve Holyer about facilitating open space events, then he spoke to Tim Meyers about the competencies and attitudes needed for good coaching
Why listen to this podcast:
(Open Space)
• Open Space Technology is a powerful tool for engaging participation
• Designing a good Open Space event take careful preparation and support
• Open Space gives the benefit of the hallway conversations that are so valuable in most in-person events
• Open Space events can be facilitated remotely, provided the facilitators are experienced and put care into the design of the event
(Coaching)
• There is a well defined set of competencies for agile coaching
• These competencies include professional coaching, mentoring, facilitation and teaching
• Agile coaching has a bias towards using an agile approach to address problems and opportunities
• Being a coach means you're prepared to partner with people as they improve, as they go through change
• An ethical foundation for coaching is to firstly do no harm
More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2WlQFqz
You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest topics from professional software development. bit.ly/24x3IVq
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May 4, 2020 • 24min
Victor Germano, Deepti Jain and Angie Doyle on How the Agile Alliance Supports Community Initiatives
In this podcast recorded at Agile 2019, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to with Victor Germano, Deepti Jain and Angie Doyle about the ways the Agile Alliance supports community initiatives.
Why listen to this podcast:
• The Agile Alliance supports many initiatives which are the way that community members get involved with the work of the Alliance around the world
• Initiatives are mainly member created ideas which support the value dials of the organisaiton: increase the depth and breadth of agile, create an inclusive and global community, bringing value to members
• There are a wide range of initiatives already underway, and the Alliance is always looking for more opportunities to expand the way they reach and serve members around the globe
• There is a process to follow and people who want to help get new initiatives established
• Before proposing a new initiative examine the ones which are already underway to see if what is needed can be met through one of them
More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2YDu2PU
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Apr 27, 2020 • 30min
Collective Sensemaking and Deliberately Developmental Conversations
In this podcast recorded at Agile 2019, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Antoinette Coetzee and Jason Knight about Collective Sensemaking and Deliberately Developmental Conversations
Tags: Agile, Agile 2019, Agile conferences, productivity, teamwork, psychological safety
Key takeaways:
• We are generally unaware of our own developmental stage in building relationships
• Raising awareness and exploring our own perceptions is possible and a powerful tool for building relationships with others
• Psychological safety is a precondition for developmental conversations, and it needs to be paired with psychological challenge
• You can't have psychological challenge without psychological safety and you won't have any growth unless there is psychological challenge as well
• The participants have to be mutually committed to each other's development and to their own development in order to help each other grow in areas that they need
More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2y3Io1j
You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest topics from professional software development. bit.ly/24x3IVq
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Apr 20, 2020 • 28min
Chris Bailey on Productivity Hacking and Hyperfocus
In this podcast recorded at Agile 2019, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Chris Bailey about his book Hyperfocus and techniques for productivity hacking.
Why listen to this podcast:
• For many of us, having available time is not the problem – it’s having available attention
• We all have a chronotype which shows the time of day when we are most productive
• Productivity is about more than just managing time – it’s about managing time, energy and attention
• Research shows that we tend to focus on one thing for only 35-40 seconds before being distracted
• Tasks that lead to procrastination have seven things in common: Those are whether a task is boring, whether it’s frustrating, whether it's difficult, whether it's ambiguous, whether it is unstructured, whether it's lacking in personal meaning, and whether it's lacking in intrinsic rewards.
More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2XPhZyF
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Apr 13, 2020 • 21min
Jono Bacon on Building Community and Remote Collaboration
In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Jono Bacon about building communities, the value of community when suddenly working remotely and remote collaboration.
Why listen to this podcast:
• In the suddenly remote environment caused by COVID-19, community becomes even more important than when teams were mainly collocated
• Every business has got an internal community to a degree, often somewhat accidental in nature, but when you become remote you need to lean on that sense of connectedness with your colleagues a lot more
• One of the things that unifies communities more than anything else is a sense of purpose
• There are three types of communities in the world - consumer, champion and collaborator
• When working remotely it’s very important to be intentional about maintaining the relationships with your colleagues
More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/3cee02z
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Apr 7, 2020 • 27min
Helen Bartimote and Jamie Dobson on Mental Health and Wellbeing During the COVID-19 Pandemic
In this podcast, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Helen Bartimote and Jamie Dobson from Container Solutions about maintaining mental health and wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Why listen to this podcast:
• Mental health and wellness is not a new challenge for the technology industry, and it is more openly discussed today that is has been previously
• The COVID-19 pandemic has put many people into a collective state of shock.
• Acknowledging the emotional reactions and their impact is an important part of being able to cope with what is happening. It's really important to give them time and know that they will pass, come back again and pass, and that’s OK.
• It’s important to identify what you can control and acknowledge what you cannot control, accept that the feelings of being out of control are real and they are stressful, and that you always have control over how we respond to a situation, even if you can’t control the circumstances
• Empathic responding, finding ways to care for and help others, is one of the best ways to respond to a crisis and contributes to our own wellbeing
More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2Ri0283
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Mar 30, 2020 • 31min
Johanna Rothman & Mark Kilby on Their Book From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams
In this podcast recorded at Agile 2019, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Johanna Rothman & Mark Kilby about their book From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams
Why listen to this podcast:
• There are important mindset shifts that are needed to help enable distributed teams to be effective
• You can’t take practices and approaches that are designed for co-located teams and apply them to distributed teams without adapting them to the new context
• Distributed teams need to identify and align on their hours of overlap
• Transparency and experimentation are important for a distributed team to build their culture
• Communication needs to include personal context, not just focusing on the work but get to know the people
• Let the teams identify and evolve their own ways of working, do not impose it from above
More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ bit.ly/2Jwg9u5
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