Software Process and Measurement Cast

SPaMCAST 756 welcomes back Paul Gibbons. In this visit, we discuss his new book which he co-authored with Tricia Kennedy. I have described Paul’s new book as a Trojan horse. While it dispels myths it more importantly provides the tools for critical thinking which will allow you to tackle new myths as they appear. Pau’s bio: Paul Gibbons is an author, academic, speaker, and business consultant He has authored numerous books, including and The Science of Successful Organizational Change, He lives in the Denver area with his two sons and enjoys playing poker, chess, and other mind sports.  Paul’s Website:  Email: Paul@paulgibbons.net Facebook – Twitter – YouTube – Philosophyfirst LinkedIn – Paul G Gibbons The interview with Paul was huge, so no Re-read Saturday News this week. We will be back next week.  In the interim, buy a copy and catch up.  Use the link to buy a copy of  by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais.  Previous Installments: Week 1: –   Week 2: –   Week 3:  -   Week 4: -   Week 5: -   Week 6: -   Week 7: -   Next SPaMCAST  SPaMCAST 757 will begin an arc on critical thinking. The interview in this week’s podcast has caused me to begin to explore critical thinking and why the idea is important for agile coaches.  We will also have a visit from Susan Parente who brings her Not A Scrumdamentalist column to the podcast.

SPaMCAST 755 features an essay on the relationship between engagement, hierarchy, and fatalism based on a discussion of the topic between the SPaMCAST Columnists. The ideas of hierarchy, engagement, and fatalism struck a nerve within the SPaMCAST family. To a person, the prevailing attitude is that hierarchy has value, but only to a point.  Jon M Quigley joins the cast in the second slot this week with a discussion about making mistakes. Learning from mistakes is important but making the same mistake over and over is not a sign that you are learning.  Re-read Saturday News! This week we finish the re-read Chapter 5 of by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais. As noted last week, Chapter 5 is a powerhouse. This week, let's examine some of the behaviors that the four fundamental team topologies exhibit. Understanding how teams structured in this manner should behave will also be useful for understanding which team type delivers the most value to the organization in a specific context. Buy a copy and read along! -  Previous Installments: Week 1: –   Week 2: –   Week 3:  -   Week 4: -   Week 5: -   Week 6: -   Week 7: -   Next SPaMCAST  SPaMCAST 756 will welcome back Paul Gibbons. In this visit we discuss his new book which he co-authored with Tricia Kennedy. The book gives you the tools to sort the sense from the nonsense -- and there is a lot of nonsense in the change management field.

Today I would like to introduce you to the Software Process and Measurement Cast’s newest columnist,  Keis Kostaqi. Keis is a scrum master and coach. She will bring a Scrumban flavor to the podcast. Keis has experience with teams with complicated work input patterns. Today we get to know Keis - and get some interesting ideas along the way.   Keis Kostaqi is a passionate Agile Coach with years of experience in healthcare, information services, and technology. Currently serving as a Program Manager for the Agile Transformation Team at Northwestern Medicine, she enables individuals and teams to be successful through continual learning and growth and facilitates self-managed continuous improvement. Keis serves at the Greater Illinois Chapter of HIMSS Board of Directors as an Educational Programs Director, where she plans and implements the chapter's programs and educational activities. She is also a Woman in Agile member focused on building mentor-mentee relationships that help the Women in Agile community unlock their full potential. She holds an MBA and is also a Certified Scrum Master and Product Owner. Other interests include traveling, food lover, writing novels, volunteering, and binge-watching TV shows.  Contact Information:  Re-read Saturday News! This week we re-read Chapter 5 of by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais. Chapter 5 is a powerhouse. This chapter lays out the four fundamental team topologies with examples. I read this chapter twice during my first read of the book and I read it twice this week. We will approach thinking through the re-read over two weeks. This week we start with a little practice identifying the four basic team topologies. Buy a copy and read along! -  Previous Installments: Week 1: –   Week 2: –   Week 3:  -   Week 4: -   Week 5: -   Week 6: -   Next SPaMCAST  SPaMCAST 755 will feature an essay on the relationship between team design, flow, and behavior. Organizations passionately espouse the need for increasing productivity and process improvement but rarely tackle the problem of team design. Let's look that scary idea straight in the eye. We will also have a visit from Jon M Quigley who will regale us with wisdom in his Alpha and Omega of product development column.

SPaMCAST 753 features our essay on the impact of hierarchies on engagement and fatalism. Like most things in life, the relationship is not straightforward. Hierarchies giveth and taketh away. If you don’t get the balance right you can say goodbye to engagement, innovation, and fun at work. We also have a visit from Tony Timbol who brings his insights on the life cycle of user stories to the podcast in his To Tell A Story column. In this installment, we talk about the “Wall of Confusion.” When stories are created and then tossed over the wall to another team even high-performing teams slip into the slow lane. Re-read Saturday News! This week we re-read Chapter 4 of by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais. The title of Chapter 4 is Static Team Topologies. One of the underlying messages in the chapter is that team topologies should not be static. However, not being static isn’t the same as playing musical chairs. Buy a copy and read along! -  Previous Installments: Week 1: –   Week 2: –   Week 3:  -   Week 4: -   Week 5: -     Next SPaMCAST  SPaMCAST 754 introduces Keis Kostaqi. Keis is a scrum master and coach. She will bring a Scrumban flavor to the podcast with a column on agile teams with complicated work input patterns. Keis begins her column with a bit of an introduction and a bucket load of experienced-based advice.

SPaMCAST 752 features our interview with Laura Bell Main. We discuss the confluence of fast-growing companies and security. Maybe I should say collision instead of confluence. Note: Laura provides an incredible amount of wisdom in the interview; however, due to a user error (mine) I lost the first minute of the interview. The abrupt start of the interview means we hit the ground running with very little preamble. Laura Bell Main specializes in securing some of Australia and New Zealand’s fastest-growing organizations. She has over twenty years of experience in software development and information security. It's her mission and passion to bring security into organizations of every shape and size.  Laura is the founder and CEO of SafeStack Academy, an online education platform offering flexible, high-quality, and people-focused, secure development training for fast-moving companies, with a focus on building security skills, practices, and culture across the entire engineering team. SafeStack is a value’s driven company on a mission to make cybersecurity accessible for everyone and any organization.  “To protect each one of us, we must protect all of us” Connect With Laura Bell Main:       mobile.twitter.com/lady_nerd  l    Re-read Saturday News! Chapter 3 of by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais is titled Team First Thinking. Using teams to get work done in all walks of life is undeniable. Whether the idea of “team” emerged a century ago or last week is less important. What is important is the knowledge that very little work happens without teams. Team-first thinking makes simple sense.   Buy a copy and read along! -  Previous Installments: Week 1: –   Week 2: –   Week 3:  -   Week 4: -   Next SPaMCAST  In SPaMCAST 753 we will return to our discussion of fatalism to examine the relationship between hierarchy, fatalism, and engagement.  We will also have a visit from Tony Timbol who will bring his To Tell A Story column to the podcast.

I have been considering the relationship between privilege and fatalism. Boiling down the impact of privilege to a single word, we find power. Whether it is the ability to make decisions about the work you will do, the power to direct others to do work, or even just to be heard, privilege is power. That power can generate fatalism in those without the power privilege delivers. In SPaMCAST 751 we discuss! Jeremy Berriault brings his QA Corner to the podcast. Mr. Berriault and I discuss why continuous improvement is important. Our discussion ties neatly into the essay on privilege and fatalism. We all have to commit to getting better every day or risk becoming irrelevant. Re-read Saturday News! Chapter 2 of by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais is a deep dive into Conway’s Law both forward and backward (the Reverse Conway Manuver). Conway’s Law states simply: the way people are organized influences software architecture. Buy a copy and upgrade your coaching skills - Previous Installments: Week 1: –   Week 2: –   Week 3  -   Next SPaMCAST  SPaMCAST 752 features our interview with Laura Bell Main. We will discuss the confluence of fast-growing companies and security. Maybe I should say collision instead of confluence.

SPaMCAST 750 marks the return of Evan Leybourn to the podcast. Evan and I discuss the different domains of business agility, the relationship between behavior and culture, and whether Taylorism still has a place in the world.  Evan is the co-founder of the Business Agility Institute; an international membership body to both champion and support the next generation of organizations. Companies that are agile, innovative, and dynamic - perfectly designed to thrive in today’s unpredictable markets. Evan is also the author of Directing the Agile Organisation (2012) and #noprojects; a culture of continuous value (2018). Website: Re-read Saturday News! This week we tackle Chapter 1 of by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais. The authors open Chapter 1 with a quote from Naomi Stafford, Guide to Organizational Design. “Organizations should be viewed as complex and adaptive organizations rather than mechanistic and linear systems”   The quotes set the tone for . Chapter 1 is titled The Problem With Org Charts. In this chapter, the authors point out problems in how organizations describe and organize themselves.  Buy a copy and upgrade your coaching skills -  Previous Installments: Week 1: -   Week 2: -   Next SPaMCAST  SPaMCAST 751 will feature an essay on the collision of fatalism and privilege. Let's just say…it isn’t pretty. Jeremy Berriault will bring his QA Corner to the podcast. Mr. Berriault and I will discuss testing, Quality, and evolving behavior.

In SPaMCAST 749, we discuss the attributes of good work input/entry. There is no perfect approach to bringing work into an organization or team. Arguably since people are involved, perfect may not be something that can exist in the real world but instead, there are good approaches. There are nine key concepts for good work entry. Good work entry requires that these nine have to be present in some form regardless of whether you are using Scrum, Kanban waterfall, or some mix of frameworks. We want to be crystal clear, deciding to forego any of these characteristics other than for the briefest moment will set you on the path to the ninth circle of work entry hell. We also have a visit from Susan Parente who brings her Not A Scrumdamentalist column to the podcast. Susan and I diagnose why some organizations think that a product owner can also be a scrum master.  Re-read Saturday News! Today we begin the re-read of by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais. The book contains front matter, including a foreword and preface (22 pages), 8 chapters, a conclusion (190 pages), and end matter (glossary, recommended reading, references, notes, index, acknowledgments, and about the authors). Today we tackle the approach to the re-read and the front matter.  Buy a copy and upgrade your coaching skills -  Previous Installments: Week 1: -   Next SPaMCAST  SPaMCAST 750 will mark the return of Evan Leybourn to the podcast. Evan and I discuss the different domains of business agility and whether Taylorism still has a place in the world.

SPaMCAST 748 features our interview with Bob Galen. Bob and I discuss Extraordinary . With the interview, we wrap up the re-read and then moved on to talk about improving coaching and the agile industrial complex. Bob Galen is an Agile Practitioner, Trainer & Coach based in Cary, NC. In this role, he helps guide companies and teams in their pragmatic adoption and organizational shift towards agile methods of working. Bob has been doing that since the late 1990s, so he’s deeply experienced. He is the Director of Agile Practice at Zenergy Technologies, a leading business agility transformation company. Bob is also President and Head Coach at RGCG a boutique agile coaching firm. Bob regularly speaks at international conferences and professional groups on topics related to agile software development, testing, scaling, and organizational leadership. He is a Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC), Scrum Alliance CAL trainer, and an active member of the Agile & Scrum Alliances. He’s published four agile-centric books: The Three Pillars of Agile Quality and Testing in 2015, Scrum Product Ownership, 3’rd Edition in 2019, Agile Reflections in 2012, and Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coaching in 2022. He’s also a prolific writer & blogger (at - www.rgalen.com and www.agile-moose.com) and podcaster (at www.meta-cast.com ) Bob may be reached directly at: bob@rgalen.com or networking via: http://www.linkedin.com/in/bobgalen Re-read Saturday News! This week we conclude our re-read of Extraordinary . Extraordinary Badass Agile Coaching is my new go-to coaching reference. It will be the book I recommend to anyone playing a coaching role in an agile environment. As we know a wide variety of organizational roles such as team leads, Scrum Masters, managers, and of course agile coaches coach. Coaching is dynamic and complex. What would you expect? There are people involved. Bob and his co-authors provide the tools to help a coach go from meh to badass. Buy a copy and upgrade your coaching skills -  Previous Installments: Week 20: -   Week 19: -   Week 18: -   Week 17: -   Week 16: -   Week 15: -     Next SPaMCAST  In SPaMCAST 749 we will discuss the attributes of good work input/entry. We have discussed patterns and anti-patterns. We explore what makes good work entry, good.   We will also have a visit from Susan Parente who brings her Not A Scrumdamentalist column to the podcast.

This week we continue our exploration of fatalism’s impact on change in organizations (listen to Part 1 in ). Fatalism does not have to be permanent. How that transition away from fatalism can be made varies depending on context. In this installment of the series, we will look at a few approaches to tackling this problem.  We also have a visit from Jon M Quigley. Jon and I discussed succession planning and why planning needs to be more diverse to support organizational health.   Re-read Saturday News! This week we re-read Chapter 20 of Extraordinary . Bob notes that Stephen Covey’s seventh habit in his classic, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, is sharpening the saw.  This is a reminder that who and where we are today can’t be who or where we are tomorrow. This habit is a prescription for balanced self-renewal. This is the last chapter of Extraordinary Badass; next week we will discuss the afterword and final thoughts.   Buy a copy and upgrade your coaching skills -   Previous Installments: Week 19: -   Week 18: -   Week 17: -   Week 16: -   Week 15: -   Next SPaMCAST  SPaMCAST 748 features our interview with Bob Galen. Bob and I will discuss Extraordinary and wrap up the re-read.