The Software Process and Measurement Cast 799 discusses why all communication is not collaboration. It is a commonly held belief that complex problems require collaborative efforts to solve. Couple that with an almost fad-like insistence that if a little collaboration is good, more is better, which leads to everything being deemed collaboration. We can do better with a little effort.
We will also have a visit from Jon M Quigley and his Alpha and Omega of Product Development column. Mr Quigley and I talk about prioritization as micromanagement. And how if you are not there to pick up the pieces when work is pushed into an organization you have a poor perspective.
We are on our annual holiday and will return with new programs on October 22nd. The Software Process and Measurement Cast 775 is a re-release of SPaMCAST 635 – Practical Ways to Manage, A Conversation with Johanna Rothman. The show was originally released on January 24, 2021. It was one of the SPaMCAST’s many anniversary editions. Enjoy our conversation
The Software Process and Measurement Cast 772 features our interview with Ahmed Wasfy. We discuss the role of the engineering manager and how people learn to be engineering managers. Coming to grips with the new role requires learning new skills not just rehashed technical skills. Ahmed, advises new leaders to take control of their careers and not to be a victim.
Ahmed is an experienced engineering leader, having led teams at Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. In addition to his day job, Ahmed also helps engineering managers become effective leaders through his coaching.
In SPaMCAST 707 Susan Parente and I discuss the difference between leadership and management in her Not A Scrumdamentalist column. These two concepts are related but not the same.
The votes are in! The next three books for Re-read Saturday are:
How work comes to a team and the decision process deciding which work to start is the definition of work entry. Every team has a work entry process. Work entry ranges from highly controlled (Scrum for example) to everyone for themselves. The term, work entry, doesn’t have the fuzziest, user-friendly feel to it, however, you ignore this process at your own peril. It is the single most important determinant of whether an organization, team, or individual is going to embrace the ideals of the agile mindset. Understanding work entry requires grasping four concepts:
Cue the music . . . Happy Birthday, Software Process and Measurement Cast! Today we begin year 15 with a visit from Johanna Rothman. We talked about her THREE new books:
Practical Ways to Manage Yourself: Modern Management Made Easy, Book 1 https://amzn.to/2LXKkiQ
Practical Ways to Lead & Serve (Manage) Others: Modern Management Made Easy, Book 2 – https://amzn.to/39Viwnj
Practical Ways to Lead an Innovative Organization: Modern Management Made Easy, Book 3 – https://amzn.to/3qS90Z3
We of course covered more ground. For example about 2/3rds of the way through we talked about why the word experiment is a dirty word in most organizations. This is a longer interview, but when I grow up I want to be just like Johanna (I am serious). Here is her bio:
Johanna Rothman, known as the “Pragmatic Manager,” offers frank advice for your tough problems. She helps leaders and teams do reasonable things that work. Equipped with that knowledge, they can decide how to adapt their product development.
With her trademark practicality and humor, Johanna is the author of 18 books about many aspects of product development. Her most recent books are the Modern Management Made Easy series, From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams (with Mark Kilby) and Create Your Successful Agile Project: Collaborate, Measure, Estimate, Deliver.
See all her books, blog, and other resources at jrothman.com and createadaptablelife.com.
The Software Process and Measurement Cast is a proud media sponsor of the DevOps Online Summit.
Not to put too fine a point on it, one of the best ways to get your message heard is to speak. The crew at the DevOps Online Summit provides a phenomenal platform to network with fellow practitioners from all over the world. Start the journey to speaking at the DevOps Online Summit 2021 by submitting at https://bit.ly/3syp2c5
User Stories and Tony Timbol will take center stage. User stories are ubiquitous in agile. Getting them right is really important. Tony gives us some ideas to move the ball forward.
Work-in-progress, work entry and “no” are highly interrelated. Not saying no generates a cascade failure that reduces efficiency, quality, and value, while at the same time increasing cost, time-to-market, and turnover. Any way you slice an organization not judiciously saying no is a prescription for disaster. In the essay, Why Work Entry Is Important In Agile, we discussed the serious disruptions that occur when a team can’t or won’t control the flow of work to the team. The uncontrolled flow of work causes:(more…)
SPaMCAST 544 features our interview with Jeppe Hedaa. Mr. Hedaa and I discuss his new book, Nucleon: The Missing Formula That Measures Your IT Development Team’s Performance. Our discussion centers on the book but also touches on meritocracy and why you want top performers on a team. This is a wide-ranging interview with thought-provoking ideas as we talk about Nucleon!
Jeppe’s bio:
Jeppe Hedaa has been working with complex systems development for more than 30 years, serving the largest IT development departments. He is the CEO and owner of 7N, who is an agent for top 3% IT specialists. 7N has departments in the US, Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Poland, India and Denmark. In September 2018 he published the book “Nucleon: The missing formula that measures your IT department’s performance”, where he describes how to calculate a hard number for an IT team’s performance that could best be compared to that of horsepower in a car. In the book, he also measures the factors that hold back an organization’s delivery and identifies the most impactful areas for improvement.
Nucleon by Jeppe Hedaa is a short and concise book that is rich in thought-provoking ideas. To give you a sense of scope, the subtitle, “The Missing Formula That Measures Your IT Development Team’s Performance” speaks volumes. The book weighs in at 119 pages with front matter (always read the front matter), six chapters and eight pages of endnotes. I will admit that I am a sucker for grand unifying theories. I am still rooting for Stephen Hawking to posthumously pull a rabbit out of the hat (I sure hope someone is looking through Hawking’s personal papers). Mr. Hedaa, founder and CEO of 7N, developed the theory that team effectivity is a function of the sum of each person’s effectivity (the ability to be effective). Effectivity is a function of people, organizational, and complexity factors. Arguably the idea that people, organizational, and complexity factors influence effectivity is not controversial. But, these factors can be consistently measured and then used in a deterministic manner to predict performance is controversial. Mr. Hedaa spends the six chapters of the book developing a logical argument based on experience and data for the premise that there are ways to measure the factors that matter and that knowing the answer matters to leaders that want to get the maximum value from the money they spend on software development (the broad definition that includes development, enhancement, and maintenance). The Nucleon formula is:(more…)
Today we begin the re-read of Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Not counting the endnotes, my copy has 448 pages and is comprised of an introduction, 39 chapters in five parts, and two appendices — if this were a blog the book would be approximately 41 separate entries, which is my current approach to the re-read (plus one week for a recap). The chapters are, on average, relatively short, however, I am reticent to suggest out of the box that I will combine chapters during this re-read. Therefore, I am planning that this re-read to take 42 weeks. Kahneman’s writing, while engaging, is FULL over ideas that are useful for anyone that thinks of him or herself as a leader and change agent. As I noted last week, I will need your help calling out the parts of the book that resonates with you. If you do not have a favorite, dog-eared copy please buy a copy. Use the links in this blog to books help to support the blog and its alter-ego, The Software Process and Measurement Cast. Buy a copy on Amazon. Now it is time to get reading! (more…)
Software Process and Measurement 