Software Process and Measurement Cast

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 Team Topologies: Organizing Business And Technology Teams For Fast Flow 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! - Team Topologies: Organizing Business And Technology Teams For Fast Flow Previous Installments: Week 1: Front Matter and Logistics – http://bit.ly/3nHGkW4 Week 2: The Problem With Org Charts – https://bit.ly/3zGGyQf Week 3: Conway's Law and Why It Matters - https://bit.ly/3muTVQE Week 4: Team First Thinking - https://bit.ly/3H9xRSC Week 5: Static Team Topologies - https://bit.ly/40Q6eF2 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: www.Laurabellmain.com www.safestack.io/ mobile.twitter.com/lady_nerd www.nz.linkedin.com/in/lauradbel l Re-read Saturday News! Chapter 3 of Team Topologies: Organizing Business And Technology Teams For Fast Flow 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! - Team Topologies: Organizing Business And Technology Teams For Fast Flow Previous Installments: Week 1: Front Matter and Logistics – http://bit.ly/3nHGkW4 Week 2: The Problem With Org Charts – https://bit.ly/3zGGyQf Week 3: Conway's Law and Why It Matters - https://bit.ly/3muTVQE Week 4: Team First Thinking - https://bit.ly/3H9xRSC 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 Team Topologies: Organizing Business And Technology Teams For Fast Flow 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 - Team Topologies: Organizing Business And Technology Teams For Fast Flow Previous Installments: Week 1: Front Matter and Logistics – http://bit.ly/3nHGkW4 Week 2: The Problem With Org Charts – https://bit.ly/3zGGyQf Week 3 Conway's Law and Why It Matters - https://bit.ly/3muTVQE 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: https://businessagility.institute/ Re-read Saturday News! This week we tackle Chapter 1 of Team Topologies: Organizing Business And Technology Teams For Fast Flow 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 Team Topologies: Organizing Business And Technology Teams For Fast Flow. 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 - Team Topologies: Organizing Business And Technology Teams For Fast Flow Previous Installments: Week 1: Front Matter and Logistics - http://bit.ly/3nHGkW4 Week 2: The Problem With Org Charts - https://bit.ly/3zGGyQf 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 Team Topologies: Organizing Business And Technology Teams For Fast Flow 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 - Team Topologies: Organizing Business And Technology Teams For Fast Flow Previous Installments: Week 1: Front Matter and Logistics - http://bit.ly/3nHGkW4 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 Badass Agile Coaching: The Journey from Beginner to Mastery and Beyond. 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 Badass Agile Coaching: The Journey from Beginner to Mastery and Beyond. 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 - Badass Agile Coaching: The Journey from Beginner to Mastery and Beyond Previous Installments: Week 20: Wrap-up - http://bit.ly/40pFwTY Week 19: Sharpening Your Badass Saw - http://bit.ly/3JQCXEY Week 18: Setting Up a Badass Agile Coaching Community of Practice - http://bit.ly/3JyPT27 Week 17: Dojo Practices - http://bit.ly/3FlftW7 Week 16: Badass Agile Coach's Guide to Starting Your Day - http://bit.ly/3Y4Kcgy Week 15: Situational Awareness as a Badass Agile Coach - http://bit.ly/3KnoJMv 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 SPaMCAST 745). 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 Badass Agile Coaching: The Journey from Beginner to Mastery and Beyond. 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 - Badass Agile Coaching: The Journey from Beginner to Mastery and Beyond Previous Installments: Week 19: Sharpening Your Badass Saw - http://bit.ly/3JQCXEY Week 18: Setting Up a Badass Agile Coaching Community of Practice - http://bit.ly/3JyPT27 Week 17: Dojo Practices - http://bit.ly/3FlftW7 Week 16: Badass Agile Coach's Guide to Starting Your Day - http://bit.ly/3Y4Kcgy Week 15: Situational Awareness as a Badass Agile Coach - http://bit.ly/3KnoJMv Next SPaMCAST SPaMCAST 748 features our interview with Bob Galen. Bob and I will discuss Extraordinary Badass Agile Coaching: The Journey from Beginner to Mastery and Beyond and wrap up the re-read.

This week we discuss the Manifesto for Organizational Agility with Jeff Bubolz and Chad Beier. Jeff and Chad developed the manifesto to help organizations get agile and stay agile. Many organizations rush into agile finding early success that turns sour a few months or years down the road. This pattern is indisputable. The Manifesto seeks to highlight the core issues that lead to this pattern (you will also want to listen to the interview with Bob Galen on SPaMCAST 748 due to be posted on 26 March). You can read the Manifesto for Organizational Agility at http://bit.ly/3mOnBaU Chad and Jeff's Bios: Chad is an organizational agility advisor and external change agent with Wisconsin Agility and Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) with Scrum.org. He promotes organizational agility and positive pressure for change through speaking, advising, coaching, and training. Jeff is a Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) with Scrum.org, organizational agility advisor, podcast host, and speaker. Jeff brings storytelling, a broad array of experience, along with a collaborative approach to teaching and speaking. Contact information and More: Wisconsin Agility: https://www.wisconsinagility.com/ Agile Wire Podcast (one of my favorites): https://www.wisconsinagility.com/pages/the-agile-wire-podcast Chad Beier: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chadbeier/ Chad Beier's Agile Songs: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrE4EJKhiUtc3j5aAnRlskg Jeff Bubolz: linkedin.com/in/jeffbubolz Re-read Saturday News! Chapter 19 of Extraordinary Badass Agile Coaching: The Journey from Beginner to Mastery and Beyond is titled " Setting Up a Badass Agile Coaching Community of Practice." I have strong opinions about Communities of Practice (CoP). They can be a very valuable tool, when done well, for supporting movements within an organization. As Mr. Galen points out, a CoP, is a place for learning and feedback. Done poorly they are invasive and harmful. CoPs will get like-minded people together to learn, support each other, interact, and become a community. Buy a copy and upgrade your coaching skills - Badass Agile Coaching: The Journey from Beginner to Mastery and Beyond Previous Installments: Week 18: Setting Up a Badass Agile Coaching Community of Practice - http://bit.ly/3JyPT27 Week 17: Dojo Practices - http://bit.ly/3FlftW7 Week 16: Badass Agile Coach's Guide to Starting Your Day - http://bit.ly/3Y4Kcgy Week 15: Situational Awareness as a Badass Agile Coach - http://bit.ly/3KnoJMv Next SPaMCAST We will continue our exploration of fatalism's impact on change in organizations (listen to the essay in SPaMCAST 745). Fatalism does not have to be permanent. How that transition away from fatalism can be made varies depending on context. In the next installment in this series, we will look at a few approaches to tackling this problem. We will also have a visit from Jon M Quigley who will bring his Alpha and Omega of Product Development to the podcast.

Fatalism stops process improvement and agile transformations in their tracks. One of the definitions of fatalism is the belief that all events are predetermined and therefore inevitable. Just accepting the status quo because it is the status quo isn't pragmatism it is stagnation. We also have a visit from Tony Timbol who brings his To Tell A Story column to the podcast. Sign up for his free newsletter (https://forms.aweber.com/form/73/322717473.htm) and get a copy of the ebook on agile requirements we discussed. Re-read Saturday News! Chapter 18 of Extraordinary Badass Agile Coaching: The Journey from Beginner to Mastery and Beyond is titled "Dojo Practice for the Badass Agile Coach." The coaching dojo in Chapter 18 has a much smaller footprint than other dojos I have participated in and is easily implementable. I ran two this week and have plans for several more. Buy a copy and upgrade your coaching skills - Badass Agile Coaching: The Journey from Beginner to Mastery and Beyond Week 17: Dojo Practices - http://bit.ly/3FlftW7 Week 16: Badass Agile Coach's Guide to Starting Your Day - http://bit.ly/3Y4Kcgy Week 15: Situational Awareness as a Badass Agile Coach - http://bit.ly/3KnoJMv Next SPaMCAST The next Software Process and Measurement Cast will feature a conversation with Jeff Bubolz and Chad Beier. We discussed their Manifesto for Organizational Agility ( Agility.https://www.wisconsinagility.com/pages/organizational-agility-manifesto) - a new manifesto for the dynamic world of work.

This week Nikhil Nandagopal and I talked about building teams. Teams are the heart and soul of software development in all of its many aspects. Nikhil provides pragmatic advice for organizing people into teams. We also discussed the democratization of coding that low-code platforms deliver. Nikhil Nandagopal, a co-founder of Appsmith, leads the development of the company's product – the first open-source low-code platform for developers. He is a software engineer and entrepreneur with 10 years of experience building apps. Nikhil's GitHub Website: https://app.appsmith.com/applications Nikhil's Profile: linkedin.com/in/nikhil-nandagopal-05534241 Twitter NikilNandagopal Re-read Saturday News! Chapter 17 of Extraordinary Badass Agile Coaching: The Journey from Beginner to Mastery and Beyond is titled "The Badass Agile Coach's Guide to Starting Your Day" which provides a structure or ritual for beginning each coaching day. I almost see this as a macro planning arc that Bob has recommended for all coaching sessions. Thinking about Christmas presents for your coaching friends? (302 days from today!) Buy a copy and beat the rush - Badass Agile Coaching: The Journey from Beginner to Mastery and Beyond Week 16: Badass Agile Coach's Guide to Starting Your Day - http://bit.ly/3Y4Kcgy Week 15: Situational Awareness as a Badass Agile Coach - http://bit.ly/3KnoJMv A quick advertisement: Controlling work entry requires preparation, knowledge, and building to establish a path to control work entry (magic wands are normally not available), which is why Jeremy Willets and I have developed a work entry workshop. Interested? Please email us at tcagley@tomcagley.com or willetsjm@gmail.com Next SPaMCAST In the next Software Process and Measurement Cast, I want to talk about one of the great enemies of change - fatalism. Phrases like "that's not our culture" or "that won't work here" are discussion killers. We will also have a visit from Tony Timbol who brings his To Tell A Story column to the podcast.