Troubleshooting Agile

It is easy to see our dominant organizational structure of teams divided by roles as natural. But Jon Smart, author of the book Sooner, Safer, Happier, points out that this goes against 1.9 million years of evolution. In this podcast Jon and Jeffrey discuss the link between the outcomes we’re getting and how we organize, and thus how changing our organization can change incentives, which in turn shape behaviors to get us better outcomes. Recorded live at DevOps Enterprise Summit 2022 in Las Vegas. SHOW LINKS: - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathansmart/ - https://soonersaferhappier.com - Dr Ron Westrum: A typology of organisational cultures: https://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/qhc/13/suppl_2/ii22.full.pdf - NUMMI : This American Life: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/403/nummi-2010

Do you find the yourself constantly fighting for making even small improvements? Randy Shoup has a way to avoid such “nickel and dime” conversations: agree with your peers on an innovation budget. In this episode Randy Shoup and Jeffrey discuss why these strategic conversations require learning how to speak executive, and why new engineering leaders often struggle to live up to their role in these conversations. Recorded live at DevOps Enterprise Summit 2022 in Las Vegas. SHOW LINKS: - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/randyshoup/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/randyshoup - Communicating Effectively with Your Business Partners (video): https://www.infoq.com/presentations/communication-business-partners/ --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Dominica Degrandis is an expert on flow and helping companies get the benefits of using flow metrics to make systemic improvements. What does she find as the biggest obstacle to success? A proper investment in change. In this conversation Jeffrey and Dominica talk about the importance of a daily change budget, time you’d expect people to be working in the new way, with some advice for both leaders and practitioners. Recorded live at DevOps Enterprise Summit 2022 in Las Vegas. SHOW LINKS: - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominicadeg/ - Dominica Degrandis: https://ddegrandis.com - Making Work Visible, 2nd Edition: https://itrevolution.com/making-work-visible-by-dominica-degrandis/ - Dominica Degranids past episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/troubleshooting-agile/id1327456890?i=1000458010204 - Donald Reinertsen Principles of Product Development Flow: http://reinertsenassociates.com/books/ --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can ord

Audit, compliance, security, and governance: these words all carry the heavy weight of bureaucracy, the feeling of a burden to be overcome. In the recently published learning novel Investments Unlimited Bill Bensing and coauthors introduce the idea of automated governance, and in this conversation Bill and Jeffrey explore the difference between “governance theater”, automating away bullshit, and acting to get the real benefit. SHOW LINKS: - Investments Unlimited: https://itrevolution.com/investments-unlimited-book/ - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/billbensing/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillBensing - Bill Bensing: https://billbensing.com - Jon Willis part 1: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/john-willis-on-devops-past-present-and-future - Jon Willis part 2: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/john-willis-devops-past-present-future-part2 --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when

If you want to create a “value flywheel” where success breeds success, you need to start with clarity of purpose. Join Jeffrey and his guest David Anderson to learn how David uses the technique of Wardley Mapping to generate shared understanding. But don’t make the mistake of thinking the map is the point! David says throwing away the map is just as important as creating it in the first place. SHOW LINKS: - The Value Flywheel Effect: https://itrevolution.com/the-value-flywheel-effect/ - David Anderson @ The Serverless Edge: https://theserverlessedge.com - Twitter: https://twitter.com/ServerlessEdge - Wardley Mapping: https://learnwardleymapping.com --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Want to know the agenda? We aren’t going to tell you! Join Jeffrey with guests Pascal Dufour & Ronald Doelen to talk about how the “tilted slider” applies to meetings just as much as other software development process. Recorded live at CITCON. SHOW LINKS: - Pascal Dufour: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascaldufournl/ - Ronald Doelen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rdoelen/ - Episode: Tilted Slider: https://agileconversations.com/blog/dont-add-more-metrics/ - Open Space: https://citconf.com/openspace.php - Lean Coffee: http://leancoffee.org - Liberating Structures: TRIZ: https://www.liberatingstructures.com/6-making-space-with-triz/ --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. 
 Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Following last week's debate, Squirrel and Jeffrey share their different takes on the value of having estimated a tech team's planned work when it comes to a retrospective at the end of a cycle, like a sprint or a quarter: Jeffrey sees that checking what the team achieved against what they planned can lead to important lessons about dependencies, inefficiencies, and skills gaps, while Squirrel thinks the risk of the estimates "escaping" is too high, and that the team ought to be able to notice process failings as they go without the "crutch" of estimates. SHOW LINKS: - LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dsquirrel_my-friends-at-cto-craft-are-45-right-about-activity-6983761206993899522-raHE - Squirrel Tweet: https://twitter.com/douglassquirrel/status/1578315480472985602 - You’re Not So Smart : https://www.davidmcraney.com/new-page-1 --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list

Squirrel and Jeffrey have different takes on the value of estimating a tech team's planned work at the beginning of a longer cycle, like a sprint or a quarter: Jeffrey says the discussion of an estimate often leads to insights and better outcomes, and Squirrel says you can get the same results without the estimates. Both agree that sharing and measuring against the estimates outside the team is counterproductive! SHOW LINKS: - LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dsquirrel_my-friends-at-cto-craft-are-45-right-about-activity-6983761206993899522-raHE - Squirrel Tweet: https://twitter.com/douglassquirrel/status/1578315480472985602 --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Squirrel and Jeffrey discuss various ways to make statements about the future ("this feature will take a week" or "users will buy 20% more if we cut prices in half") and disagree about exactly how valuable they are and how to use them. SHOW LINKS: - Tilted Slider: https://agileconversations.com/blog/dont-add-more-metrics/ - Toyota Kata: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mrother/Homepage.html - Thinking in Bets: https://www.annieduke.com/thinking-in-bets/ - Estimates are Lies: https://squirrelsquadron.com/events/2022/09-15-estimates.html - Superforcasting: https://www.amazon.com/Superforecasting-Science-Prediction-Philip-Tetlock/dp/0804136718 - Betting Market: https://manifold.markets Events: - Jtf at CITCON Europe Oct 14th & 15th: https://citconf.com/zwolle2022/ - Jtf at DevOps Enterprise Summit Oct 18th-20th: https://events.itrevolution.com/lasvegas/ - Squirrel live in Vienna Oct 20th: https://squirrelsquadron.com/events/2022/10-20-vienna.html - Squirrel live in Miami early November: https://squirrelsquadron

One of Jeffrey's clients solves their burnout problem, and then the same problem comes up in other coaching sessions: needing the freedom to disagree. Squirrel finds a related problem of burnout from being unwilling to disappoint others. Both the need to disagree and to disappoint require difficult conversations, but you can’t really say yes without being able to say no! SHOW LINKS: - The Uncanny Valley of a Functional Organization: https://stratechery.com/2013/the-uncanny-valley-of-a-functional-organization/ - Amy Edmondson (author of Teaming): https://amycedmondson.com/#books - Hard Work Not Hard Conversations: https://agileconversations.com/blog/hard-work-not-hard-coversation/ Upcoming Events: - Squirrel live in Berlin Sept 29th: https://squirrelsquadron.com/events/2022/09-29-berlin.html - Jtf at CITCON Europe Oct 14th & 15th: https://citconf.com/zwolle2022/ - Jtf at DevOps Enterprise Summit Oct 18th-20th: https://events.itrevolution.com/lasvegas/ - Squirrel live in Vienna Oct 20th: https://squirrelsquad

Squirrel has a suggestion for collaborating with people who are irrationally wedded to particular "agile processes", and Jeffrey has related ideas for working to their polar opposite, the anti-zealots who say no process will ever work. SHOW LINKS: - Squirrel's tweet on zealotry: https://twitter.com/douglassquirrel/status/1570321020543696897 - CITCON Europe: https://citconf.com/zwolle2022/ - DevOps Enterprise Summit: https://events.itrevolution.com/lasvegas/ - Squirrel in Berlin and Vienna: https://squirrelsquadron.com/events.html - Xavier Amador, LEAP: http://dramador.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnbOizw_zS0 --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. 
 Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Squirrel describes how deals with overly vague strategy descriptions: tune them until they’re specific enough that someone could disagree with them. He and Jeffrey discuss how this applies beyond strategy, the value of asking probing questions, and the productive conflict that can arise from getting past the "motherhood and apple pie" answers. SHOW LINKS: - Podcast episode, Adversarial Analysis: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/scoring-briefing-and-back-briefing - Agile Conversations: https://agileconversations.com

Squirrel describes how he tells clients to handle overly specific, too-coherent directions: consider what an adversary would do to comply with the direction and still get bad results. He and Jeffrey discuss illustrative examples and applications from military history, economics, and pizza delivery. SHOW LINKS: - Little Bobby Drop Tables: https://xkcd.com/327/ - Goodhart’s Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law - Pizza Arbitrage: https://www.readmargins.com/p/doordash-and-pizza-arbitrage - Art of Action, Briefing and Back-briefing: https://www.stephenbungay.com/Books.ink - Podcast episode, Briefing and Back-Briefing: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/briefing-and-back-briefing - Podcast episode, Scoring Your Briefing and Back-Briefing: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/scoring-briefing-and-back-briefing --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love

A client challenges Squirrel on his directive style when coaching, wondering whether this clashes with his espoused belief in joint design and inquiry. Jeffrey and Squirrel reflect on the crucial differences between being asked for advice and help, and manipulating the situation and information flow to "win" an argument. These considerations turn out to be relevant to product and technical decisions too! SHOW LINKS: - Unilateral control & mutual learning values: https://infed.org/chris-argyris-theories-of-action-double-loop-learning-and-organizational-learning/#_Model_I_and - Coaching Kata: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mrother/The_Coaching_Kata.html --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Squirrel and Jeffrey trade stories about leaders who live in fear of key software developers leaving, and therefore avoid honest feedback and effective reprimands. The ironic result is that this "skilled incompetence" leads to exactly what they're trying to avoid: the best engineers do leave because of the negative and secretive culture. The way out, of course, is the Accountability Conversation. SHOW LINKS: - Tweet: https://twitter.com/douglassquirrel/status/1559121793830379521 - Squirrel Squadron: https://squirrelsquadron.com - One Minute Manager: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_Minute_Manager - Unilateral control values: https://infed.org/chris-argyris-theories-of-action-double-loop-learning-and-organizational-learning/#_Model_I_and - Accountability Conversation episode: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/accountability-leaders-are-accountable-too --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you

Responding to a listener's question, Jeffrey and Squirrel reflect on the difference between a product owner and a process owner, and how IT projects differ from building products for external users. Unsurprisingly, methods for delivering value and saying no feature prominently! SHOW LINKS: - Project to Product: https://itrevolution.com/book/project-to-product/ - Mik Kersten interview: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/project-to-product-with-mik-kersten - Reengineering the Corporation: https://bookshop.org/books/reengineering-the-corporation-a-manifesto-for-business-revolution/9780060559533 --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

We look at why "prop trading" companies like Jane Street have phenomenally profitable technology operations, and how we can learn from them and improve, even in organisations where IT is a "cost centre". SHOW LINKS: - Jane Street article: https://www.thediff.co/p/jane-street - DevOps Enterprise Summit: https://events.itrevolution.com/virtual/ - Spike and Stabilise: https://dzone.com/articles/patterns-effective-delivery-%E2%80%93 - Previous episode on ROI: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/troubleshooting-agile/id1327456890?i=1000574885063 --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Squirrel and Jeffrey look at two ways to "thin" features to achieve a better return on investment, for both customer features and productivity improvements. SHOW LINKS: - Squirrel’s tweet: https://twitter.com/douglassquirrel/status/1554153810876157953 - Feature thinning: http://www.agilekiwi.com/other/agile/feature-thinning/ - Poppendieck lean book: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/194338.Lean_Software_Development --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Taking iterative development to heart, Squirrel and Jeffrey discuss a learning loop topic, Summer Shorts and Learning Loops: OKRs, in five minutes or fewer. Take just a few minutes with us to improve your team's learning and speed! --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Taking iterative development to heart, Squirrel and Jeffrey discuss a learning loop topic, Summer Shorts and Learning Loops: Retrospectives, in five minutes or fewer. Take just a few minutes with us to improve your team's learning and speed! --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com