Software Process and Measurement Cast

In SPaMCAST 726 Mr. Allan Kelly returns! We discussed the fact that backlogs often become dumping grounds. Allan suggested an energetic solution. We also discussed OKRs and whether they are related to backlogs. Are OKRs the chicken or the egg? Allan Kelly advises and mentors managers and teams in using agile approaches and OKRs to accelerate delivery, meet deadlines and execute against strategy. He believes these approaches benefit businesses and create more fulfilling work environments. Allan is a keynote conference speaker and author of several books including "Succeeding with OKRs in Agile", "The Art of Agile Product Ownership" and "Business Patterns for Software Developers". He blogs at and can be contacted there or on Linkedin, Re-read Saturday News We complete our re-read of the classic this week with a few final thoughts. I view as a tale of two themes. The first is a book of philosophy and the second is a how-to book full of techniques. The full value of this book requires two readings. The first time I read the book, I took the how-to path. This time the philosophies of agile coaching were more important to me than any individual technique.   Next week we start our re-read of (Amazon Associate Link – buy your copy soon and start reading). This will be less of a re-read than it will be me trying to stay one or two chapters ahead because I am reading the book for the first time. We will begin with a few notes on the logistics of the read and then we will review the front matter.   Previous Installments Week 1: -   Week 2: -   Week 3: -   Week 4: -   Week 5: -   Week 6: -   Week 7: -   Week 8: r -   Week 9: -   Week 10: -   Week 11: -   Week 12:   Week 13: -   Week 14: -     A quick advertisement: Controlling work entry requires preparation and knowledge 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? Email us at tcagley@tomcagley.com or willetsjm@gmail.com Next SPaMCAST  In SPaMCAST 727 we will discuss the assumptions behind Little’s Law and Neglected WIP. Some of the assumptions you can cheat on and still get valuable information. We will also have a visit from Susan Parente who brings her Not A Scrumdamentalist column to the cast.

One of the most common problems teams face is starting more work than they complete. Neglected WIP is the gap between all the work you say you are working on and the stuff you are doing. The natural vagaries of office life can cause an item to get stuck due to someone being out sick or because your co-worker hit the lottery - stuff happens. A little might be ok, but more is bad. When neglected WIP passes that hurdle, real flow time will increase and velocity will slow. The combination of getting less work done and taking longer at it is a prescription for your stakeholders to start looking for torches and pitchforks.      We also have a visit from Jeremy Berriault who brings his QA Corner to the podcast. In this installment, we discussed the QA Lead’s role in agile teams. So just what does a QA Lead do in an agile team . . . Jeremy has some ideas. Re-read Saturday News I am going to combine the conversation of Chapters 12 and 13 of this week because there is a common core in these two chapters. Chapter 12, When Will I Get There?, discusses when will you know that you have become an Agile Coach, and Chapter 13, It’s Your Journey, discusses the journey several coaches have taken to get there. Chapter 12 plots the journey and Chapter 13 provides several travelogues.   Remember to buy a copy of  Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins (SPaMCAST Amazon affiliate line ) and read along!   Logistics Note:  Next week we will wrap up Coaching Agile Teams and then on to  (Amazon Associate Link – buy your copy soon and start reading). Buy a copy now and start reading.  Previous Installments Week 1: -   Week 2: -   Week 3: -   Week 4: -   Week 5: -   Week 6: -   Week 7: -   Week 8: r -   Week 9: -   Week 10: -   Week 11: -   Week 12:   Week 13: -     A quick advertisement: Controlling work entry requires preparation and knowledge 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. We recently delivered the workshop at the 2022 Path to Agility in Columbus, OH to rave reviews. Interested? Email us at tcagley@tomcagley.com or willetsjm@gmail.com Next SPaMCAST  In SPaMCAST 726 we will chat with Mr. Allan Kelly. I missed talking to Allan so we covered a wide range of topics including OKRs, Product Backlogs, and remote working. Allan brings incredible insight to the podcast.

This week we feature an interview with Indus Khaitan, Founder & CEO at Quolum. A few of the topics covered include:  Why do organizations need help in consuming SaaS at scale efficiently? How can looking carefully at how you are using Saas save organizations tons of money?  How can organizations refocus on delivering value rather than on overhead? What does it take to take a vision and make it a going concern, more than once? Indus Khaitan is the founder of Quolum. Quolum helps companies manage their SaaS spend. He started Bitzer Mobile, a mobile security startup that Oracle acquired. Earlier, he led growth at Chargebee. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Indus’ Profile:  Websites: (AngelList Profile) (Company) Email: khaitan@gmail.com Twitter:   Podcast:   Re-read Saturday News This week we reread Chapter 11 of Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins (SPaMCAST Amazon affiliate link ). Chapter 11, Agile Coach Failure, Recovery, and Success Modes, begins Part 3 of Coaching Agile Teams. Part 3  titled “ Getting More for Yourself.” Chapter 11 hits the topic of failure head-on, sharing both failure and success modes. Anyone that has been in the business of agile coach (coach, Scrum Master, manager, or others) for more than a few years and has pushed the boundaries of culture will have failures on their CV. Coaching is hard, training and continuous learning are important but not enough. A coach without experience is a trainee. A wide range of experience, which opens the door to successes and failures, is a learning opportunity that classes and webinars can’t deliver. Remember to buy a copy of  Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins (SPaMCAST Amazon affiliate line ) and read along! Logistics Note:  We will combine the discussion of the last two chapters in this book and then follow that with a recap before starting. (Amazon Associate Link – buy your copy soon and start reading). Buy a copy now and start reading.  Previous Installments Week 1: -   Week 2: -   Week 3: -   Week 4: -   Week 5: -   Week 6: -   Week 7: -   Week 8: r -   Week 9: -   Week 10: -   Week 11: -   Week 12     A quick advertisement: Controlling work entry requires preparation and knowledge 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. We recently delivered the workshop at the 2022 Path to Agility in Columbus, OH to rave reviews. Interested? Email us at tcagley@tomcagley.com or willetsjm@gmail.com Next SPaMCAST  In SPaMCAST 725 we delve deeper into the concept of neglected WIP highlighting the calculation and a quick case study’ette so you can see the concept in action. We will also have a visit from

SPaMCAST 723 features our essay on neglected WIP. Work that has been started and is now just sitting around is neglected. Running a team or organization above their natural level WIP for any length of time causes flow velocity (throughput) to slow and flow time (cycle time) to increase. When there is too much work, people try all sorts of techniques to get work done. Multitasking is the grandfather of them all and we all know how that turns out (need a hint – badly). In the end, all approaches to trying to do too many ends up with some things being juggled and ignored. That is neglected WIP. We also have a visit from Jon M Quigley and his Alpha and Omega of Product Development Column. In this column Jon and I discuss time. Speaking of time, this is a lost episode…we started the episode discussing snow, last year's snow. We talked last week and were discussing when the first snow will be this year. Sometimes time flys and sometimes it doesn’t. Re-read Saturday News This week we reread Chapter 10 of Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins (SPaMCAST Amazon affiliate link ). The chapter is titled Coach as Coordination Conductor. The two most important items for me during this read of chapter 10 are found in the first part of this chapter. Reflecting back on my previous cover-to-cover read, I think that the number of great facilitation techniques in this chapter caused me to overlook two very important concepts. The first is an approach for differentiating collaboration and coordination. The approach is simple but very powerful. Why would any coach care about observing the difference? Because the two concepts are different and are useful in different scenarios.  Logistics Note:  We have three more chapters in this book which we will follow with a recap before starting. (Amazon Associate Link – buy your copy soon and start reading). Buy a copy now and start reading.  Remember to buy a copy of  Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins (SPaMCAST Amazon affiliate line ) and read along! Previous Installments Week 1: -   Week 2: -   Week 3: -   Week 4: -   Week 5: -   Week 6: -   Week 7: -   Week 8: r -   Week 9: -   Week 10: -     A quick advertisement: Controlling work entry requires preparation and knowledge 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. We recently delivered the workshop at the 2022 Path to Agility in Columbus, OH to rave reviews. Interested? Email us at tcagley@tomcagley.com or willetsjm@gmail.com Next SPaMCAST  Next week we will feature an interview with Indus Khaitan, Founder & CEO at Quolum. Indus and I talked about SaaS, controlling SaaS spending, and serial entrepreneurship.

We are back with new content this week! The bears did not eat us as we trekked in three national parks. We did see bears but kept a respectable distance from them. Today the SPaMCAST 722 features an interview with Scott Showalter, Agile Career Accelerator. We discussed the definition of an agile coach. Building on that definition we wrestled with how to scale the business of agile coaching.  Note - I mispronounced Scott’s name at the beginning of the interview, rather than re-record the faux pax, it triggered a great story so I left it in.   Scott is an active enterprise agile coach working in the trenches with execs and leaders at a Fortune 10 organization, and what he has learned throughout the journey of his career is that what feels impossible only becomes achievable once we shift our perspective.  Scott has a passion for helping people design, grow and automate their products and their lives so that they can focus on what's truly important and have a greater impact on this planet. He coaches IT professionals and entrepreneurs on income growth and career advancement, and on the weekends he has been known to perform laugh-out-loud stand-up comedy. Scott’s LinkedIn Profile Website (Personal) Twitter Re-read Saturday News During the last few weeks, I have read and reread Chapter 9 of Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins (SPaMCAST Amazon affiliate link ). The chapter titled Coach as Conflict Navigator talks about the value and danger of conflict. What stuck with me was the model of levels of conflict and how at a certain point there can be no constructive outcome. Teams aside, scary thoughts for the world we live in. Remember to buy a copy of  Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins (SPaMCAST Amazon affiliate line ) and read along! Previous Installments Week 1: -   Week 2: -   Week 3: -   Week 4: -   Week 5: -   Week 6: -   Week 7: -   Week 8: r -   Week 9: -   Week 10: -   A quick advertisement: Controlling work entry requires preparation and knowledge 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. We recently delivered the workshop at the 2022 Path to Agility in Columbus, OH to rave reviews. Interested? Email us at tcagley@tomcagley.com or willetsjm@gmail.com Next SPaMCAST  Next week SPaMCAST 723 will feature an essay on neglected WIP. Work that has been started and is now just sitting around is neglected.  We will also have a visit from Jon M Quigley and his Alpha and Omega of Product Development Column.

The SPaMCAST is on a three-week hiatus. We will be back with new programming on September 25. In the interim, I asked the SPaMCAST columnists (Jeremy, Jon, Susan, and Tony) for a couple of favorite columns they delivered.  Today we have: Jeremy Berriault from SPaMCAST 571 Jiu-Jitsu and Teams, Want to listen to the full podcast? Susan Parente from SPaMCAST 556 Agile In Name Only, Want to listen to the full podcast?   Tony TImbol from SPaMCAST 692  Agile Requirements, Want to listen to the full podcast? Enjoy! Do you have questions that you would like Susan, Jon, Jeremy, Tony, or myself to answer?  Leave a voice message at 01.440.668.5717 or an email at . Re-read Saturday News I am packaging this show well ahead of time therefore all I can say for sure about the re-read is to remember to buy a copy of Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins (SPaMCAST Amazon affiliate link ) and read along! A quick advertisement: Controlling work entry requires preparation and knowledge 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. We recently delivered the workshop at the 2022 Path to Agility in Columbus, OH to rave reviews. Interested? Email us at tcagley@tomcagley.com or willetsjm@gmail.com Next SPaMCAST  Next week we are back…unless bears have eaten me (I've been hiking in the Rockies). SPaMCAST 722 will feature an interview with Scott Showalter, Agile Career Accelerator. We discussed the definition of an agile coach. Building on that definition we wrestled with how to scale the business of agile coaching.

The SPaMCAST is on a three-week hiatus. We will be back with new programming on September 25. In the interim, I asked the SPaMCAST columnists (Jeremy, Jon, Susan, and Tony) for a couple of favorite columns they delivered.  Today we have: Jon M Quigley - SPaMCAST 397 – Project Strategy - Want to listen to the full podcast? (Note: this was Jon’s debut column and he doesn’t know I am slipping this in.) Susan Parente and Jon M Quigley- SPaMCAST 585 - Most Agile Transformations Ignore Technical Skills - Want to listen to the full podcast? Enjoy! Do you have questions that you would like Susan, Jon, Jeremy, Tony, or myself to answer?  Leave a voice message at 01.440.668.5717 or an email at . Re-read Saturday News I am packaging this show well ahead of time therefore all I can say for sure about the re-read is to remember to buy a copy of  Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins (SPaMCAST Amazon affiliate line ) and read along! A quick advertisement: Controlling work entry requires preparation and knowledge 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. We recently delivered the workshop at the 2022 Path to Agility in Columbus, OH to rave reviews. Interested? Email us at tcagley@tomcagley.com or willetsjm@gmail.com Next SPaMCAST  Next week we feature more of Jeremy Berriault, Susan Parente, and Tony Timbol.

The SPaMCAST is on a three-week hiatus. We will be back with new programming on September 25. In the interim, I asked the SPaMCAST columnists (Jeremy, Jon, Susan, and Tony) for a couple of favorite columns they delivered.  Today we have: Jeremy Berriault - Your Scrum Master Is Not Yout Team Admin from SPaMCAST 705 Want to listen to the full podcast? Tony Timbol - Agile Requirement Lifecycle from SPaMCAST 709 - Want to listen to the full podcast? Susan Parente - Virtual Agile from SPaMCAST 589 - Want to listen to the full podcast?   Enjoy! Do you have questions that you would like Susan, Jon, Jeremy, Tony, or myself to answer?  Leave a voice message at 01.440.668.5717 or an email at . Re-read Saturday News I am packaging this show well ahead of time therefore all I can say for sure about the re-read is to remember to buy a copy of  Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins (SPaMCAST Amazon affiliate line ) and read along! A quick advertisement: Controlling work entry requires preparation and knowledge 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. We recently delivered the workshop at the 2022 Path to Agility in Columbus, OH to rave reviews. Interested? Email us at tcagley@tomcagley.com or willetsjm@gmail.com Next SPaMCAST  Next week we feature Jon M Quigley and Jon and Susan Parente together (a Jon and Susan-polza?)

Earlier this year I attended Agile 2022; It was a fantastic conference. One of the undercurrent themes was the use of OKRs (objectives and key results for the uninitiated) to enable agility, align organizations, and cure Covid. There is no such thing as a silver bullet, especially with the wide range of interpretations of what an OKR is and how to apply them. Luis Gonçalves retunes to the podcast to set us straight.   Luis’s Bio Luis Gonçalves is an Entrepreneur, Best Seller Author, and International Keynote Speaker. When consulting he works exclusively with Entrepreneurs, Founders, and Senior Leaders on the implementation of his game-changing "ADAPT Methodology". By following the "ADAPT Methodology" Executive Leaders will be able to transform their traditional project-oriented companies into modern digital product companies. OKR Guide: Website:   Website:  Podcast: https://adaptmethodology.com/podcast/ LinkedIn:  Re-read Saturday News This week, Chapter 7 of by Lyssa Adkins. While observing and facilitating might be the most prolific coach activities, at times teaching takes front and center. Teaching encompasses a wide range of behaviors, but the goal is always the same - to elevate the person or team you are teaching. Teachers are there to help PEOPLE to become better at something. Remember to buy a copy of  Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins (SPaMCAST Amazon affiliate line ) and read along! Previous Installments Week 1: -   Week 2: -   Week 3: -   Week 4: -   Week 5: -   Week 6: -   Week 7: -   Week 8: r -   A quick advertisement: Controlling work entry requires preparation and knowledge 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. We recently delivered the workshop at the 2022 Path to Agility in Columbus, OH to rave reviews. Interested? Email us at tcagley@tomcagley.com or willetsjm@gmail.com Do you have questions that you would like Susan, Jon, Jeremy, Tony, or myself to answer?  Leave a voice message at 01.440.668.5717 or an email at . Next SPaMCAST  The SPaMCAST will be on a three-week hiatus. We will be back with new programming on September 25. In the interim, I asked the SPaMCAST columnists (Jeremy, Jon, Susan, and Tony) for a couple of favorite columns they delivered. For the next three weeks, we will serve you the best of the best.

Flow Load has a special place in flow metrics, it is a leading indicator of value delivery as exhibited in flow velocity (throughput) and flow time. We review one experiment and propose another. In the end, you either control work entry or it controls you. A quick advertisement: Controlling work entry requires preparation and knowledge 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. We recently delivered the workshop at the 2022 Path to Agility in Columbus, OH to rave reviews. Interested email us at tcagley@tomcagley.com or willetsjm@gmail.com Also this week we are joined by Tony TImbol and his To Tell A Story column. In this installment, Tony focuses on the impact of delayed requirements on agile teams.  Do you have questions that you would like Susan, Jon, Jeremy, Tony, or myself to answer?  Leave a voice message at 01.440.668.5717 or an email at . Re-read Saturday News Chapter 6 of is titled Coach as Facilitator. As a coach, I suspect I spend more time facilitating and observing than playing any other sub-role. Chapter 6 provides a number of gems that piqued my interest more during this read than in the first. Remember to buy a copy of  Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins (SPaMCAST Amazon affiliate line ) and read along! Previous Installments Week 1: -   Week 2: -   Week 3: -   Week 4: -   Week 5: -   Week 6: -   Week 7: -   Next SPaMCAST  SPaMCAST 718 features our most recent discussion with Luis Gonçalves.  Luis and I talked about OKRs. We will cover the gamut; the good, the bad, and the OMG they’ve turned into annual reviews all in one session! Luis last appeared on the cast in .