February 23, 2021
Even though Communities of Interest and Practice have two very different sets of goals requiring very different approaches, organizations often combine the two ideas. The common goals are:
| Community of Practice (CoP) | Community of Interest |
| Synchronization of behavior | Distribution and sharing of knowledge |
| Expanding knowledge | Maintain the health of the community |
| increased capacity (or performance) |
February 21, 2021
Chaos Engineering comes to the Software Process and Measurement Cast this week delivered (chaotically) by Mikolaj Pawlikoski. Miko and I talked about the definition of chaos engineering, why chaos is not scary, and most importantly his new book Chaos Engineering, Site reliability through controlled disruption. One of the most important side effects of chaos engineering is uninterrupted sleep caused by things not going bump in the night!
(more…)February 20, 2021
Today we dive into the main part of Fixing Your Scrum, Practical Solutions to Common Scrum Problems, by Ryan Ripley and Todd Miller, published in 2020 by The Pragmatic Programmers. In this installment of Re-read Saturday, we tackle both Chapter 1: A Brief Introduction To Scrum and Chapter 2: Why Scrum Goes Bad.
Chapter 1: A Brief Introduction To Scrum
I am going to make the assumption that the great majority of my blog and podcast listeners have a good handle on what scrum it is. If not I certainly have a class to sell you :-). That’s a way of saying that I am not going belabor this chapter. I would like to highlight that there are several really good references that Todd and Ryan point out that everyone should read and digest. Three in this chapter are:
(more…)February 18, 2021
Communities of Interest (CoI) are groups of people with common interests that come together to share experiences and knowledge. The community is focused on the subject rather than the people involved or meeting a common goal which often leads to little interaction between members outside meetings or events. I attend the NorthEast Ohio Scrum Users Group (NEOSUG). There is a core group that regularly attends and any number of transitory attendees. When in-person meetings were possible, the pizza and the content were both good. Topics over the last few meetings ranged from WIP limits, Agile Coaching Code of Ethics, and the new Scrum Guide. The meetings delivered information, discussion, and a bit of networking. NEOSUG is a community of interest not a community of practice. Most CoI’s have two primary goals.
(more…)February 16, 2021
Organizations are increasingly becoming more diverse and distributed, while at the same time pursuing mechanisms to increase collaboration between groups and consistency of knowledge and practice. Communities are one tool organizations use to keep people involved and increase capabilities. A Community of Practice (COP) is one type of community (we will explore the COPs first cousin, the Community of Interest (CoI) next). Organizationally, CoPs have three primary goals. They are:
(more…)February 14, 2021
This week we connect with Paul Clayson to talk about cybersecurity in the IoT space. When you are dealing with extreme constraints being secure is complicated and doing nothing is a really bad option. Paul also weighs in on the CMMC (new security model) and serial entrepreneurism.
(more…)February 13, 2021
Today we begin the re-read of Fixing Your Scrum, Practical Solutions to Common Scrum Problems, by Ryan Ripley and Todd Miller, published in 2020 by The Pragmatic Programmers. I interviewed Ryan and Todd when the book first came out and they sang praise for Dawn Schanafelt who edited the book. As a point of context, I consider the front matter all of the pages numbered using small Roman numerals. In this book, there are 14 chapters, albeit a chunk of those are in the table of contents and I am not re-reading the table of contents UNLESS I am looking for advice on a specific Scrum issue. The important parts we will cover today are the Forward and a Preface. The remainder of the book consists of 14 chapters and an index covering 208 pages. This a relatively concise book; densely packed with text. I personally could have used my white space, but those that I have discussed the book with are far more sanguine on the topic.
(more…)February 7, 2021
This week the Cast features our essay titled, “Collaboration – Disconnected.” The improvement imperative is driven by the need to stay competitive at a holistic level. One would expect that continuous process improvement or continuous improvement would be discussed earnestly at every staff meetings at every level of an organization, and at every meeting. It isn’t.
Jon M. Quigley returns with an installment of the Alpha and Omega of Product Development. Jon and I completed an arc on product quality with a discussion of the cost of poor quality.
(more…)February 6, 2021
On November 28, 2020, we began the reread of Great Big Agile by Jeff Dalton. Since jumping over quite a few chapters last week I have received a few emails asking what was up. For the record, I have not had any significant traumas falling during my daily runs and walks (I was asked – I think tongue in cheek). During the re-read, we primarily focused on the chapters that revolve around the Agile Performance Holarchy (APH). I chose not to focus on the almost encyclopedic listing of techniques that is an important feature of the book, but not most groundbreaking. The listing of techniques is useful even if not using agile methods. For example practices such as continuous integration or arc of conversation aren’t dependent on using a specific framework.
(more…)
