Time For A Celebration Or Two!

Nothing Says Celebration Like Fireworks!

When I first started blogging in November 2006 and then a little later podcasting (later January 2007), I did not specifically envision still being at it over 11 years later. During this period we went from a random entry to blogging daily for a few years to a cadence of four times a week.  I began the podcast publishing every other week and now we are publishing weekly. In June we (there are now a few people involved in the podcast and blog) we passed the milestones of 500 podcasts (not listening? Check out http://www.spamcast.net) and over 1700 blog entries. I still feel that I have a ton of things to explore, explain, and expand upon, but for today’s post, I’m celebrating. There were the milestones on the blog and podcast, my city is celebrating its bicentennial, in June my wife and I celebrated our 37th wedding anniversary and on July 4th we are celebrating my wife’s and my country’s birthday.  The month between June 7 and July 4 has been exciting (and busy)!For the first 6 months of the year:Top Five Podcasts:

1. SPaMCAST 473 – Six Important Flow Metrics and Tameflow Chapter 20 Part 3
2. SPaMCAST 482 – Natalie Warnert, Diversity and Women in Agile
3. SPaMCAST 486 – Daniel S Vacanti, Actionable Agile Metrics
4. SPaMCAST 471 – 20 Transformation Killers, QA and Requirements, Systems Thinking
5. SPaMCAST 484 – Andriy Bas, Teal, Holacracy, Creativity, Productivity and Flat Organizations

Top Five Blog Entries Published in 2018 (so far)::

1. Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability by Daniel S. Vacanti, Re-read Saturday Week 11: Introduction to Cycle Time Scatterplots
2. Coaching versus Mentoring
3. Eight Categories of Muda
4. Life Cycle of A User Story: Hierarchy
5. The Definition of Done: Simplicity and Complexity Revisited

The lists we will share on December 31 will probably look very different. Like the Billboard Hot 100, there are quite a few entries that are charging up the list! I enjoy the competition between entities. Are there particular interviews or blog entries you would like to see? The entries from the Re-read Saturday series remain popular.  For those who participated in the recent poll, I would like to announce that the next book we will read is The Checklist Manifesto  (it was very close). The link to buy a copy and support the podcast is here.One last thing before I go off to watch fireworks. I am working on getting a new feature for the podcast off the ground.  I would like to interview people that would like to share one thing they do that they feel makes them successful. I am looking for a quick five-minute interview to share a short idea that someone involved in testing, developing or helping people that are delivering value think will help. Are you interested? Reach out to me at spamcastinfo@gmail.com or tcagley@tomcagley.com and let’s discuss doing a short interview.Have a marvelous day!  We will be back to our theme on Culture on Thursday!

 

Celebrating 2017!

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With 2018 on the horizon I want to spend a few moments to showcase the most popular podcasts and blog entries published in 2017.

For those of you who read the blog and don’t listen to the podcast, a quick reminder — the Software Process and Measurement Podcast explores the varied world of software process improvement and measurement, providing solutions and advice on how to improve value delivery effectiveness. SPaMCAST combines essays, commentaries, interviews, question and answer sessions, and your feedback to serve up ideas, options, opinions, and advice that can be applied in the real world. In a nutshell, the cast provides advice for and from practitioners, methodologists, pundits, and consultants!

The podcast is published every Sunday, 52 times a year (except when we have equipment failure). We publish two types of podcasts. The first type features an interview, and the second is more of a magazine and includes an essay from the blog and two or three columns from a great group of contributors. The current cast of incredible minds include:

• Gene Hughson (Architecture)
• Jeremy Berriault (Quality Assurance)
• Kim Pries (Software Development)
• Steve Tendon (Lean and Kanban)
• Jon Quigley (Product Development)
• Steven Adams (Agile Practitioner)

Are you interested in participating? Pitch me! The more voices the better!

 

Software Process and Measurement Cast 433 – Delayed

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The Software Process and Measurement Cast 433, an interview with Jeff Dalton is delayed. I had anticipated recording the introductory material for the interview with Jeff Dalton in my hotel room in Mumbai. However, the microphone broke during my flight to India and rather than shouting into the built-in microphone in my laptop I am working on alternate methods. I may be able to record using my cell phone. If the quality is acceptable, I will release the podcast early in the week. If not, we will skip a week and resume when I have access to my studio equipment. For now, I need to learn to pack better and to have a backup microphone while traveling!

Do you have suggestions for remote recording alternatives?

 

SPaMCAST Schedule Change for Vacation

Just Say No!

 

I am in Sweden for the  Øredev conference with a day of sightseeing thrown in. If you are attending, let’s connect! The trip to Sweden has been eventful (not a word professional travelers want to hear). Travails included: delayed luggage, flight maintenance and running in airports (not where I like to run). My wife is still waiting on her luggage.  Both United and SAS Airlines have done a great job helping (not something you don’t hear a lot of when talking about airlines).  That said, the planned posting of my interview with Larry Cooper scheduled for today will happen next Sunday, 13 November, with next magazine entry posting on the 27th (there is a trip to Brazil following on the trip to Sweden).  We will be back to weekly posting in December.  

I will be highlighting interviews on Twitter and Facebook that I have done with Øredev conference participants this week (people like Allan Kelly and Marcus Hammarberg to name two).

 

SPaMCAST 410 – Jessica Long, Storytelling in Agile

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In Software Process and Measurement Cast 410, we feature our interview with Jessica Long.  Jessica and I discussed storytelling. I find that storytelling is a useful tool to help individuals, teams, and organizations.  Projects can use stories to generate user stories and as a tool in retrospectives.  Stories are also a tool in generating a vision of the future in organizational transformations.  Those are just a few of the multitude of uses for storytelling in changing how value is delivered!

Jessica and I will both be presenting on using stories at the Agile Philly, Agile Tour 2016 on October 10th.  If you are in the Philadelphia area please register and attend!

Jessica’s bio:
Jess Long is an Agile Coach, a writer, a speaker and a mother with a passion for driving meaningful stories across multiple iterations in all facets of life. Transforming Corporate America and living to tell about it is no small feat. She keeps some level of sanity by finding humor in otherwise absurd situations.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/scrumandginger
Blog: https://scrumandginger.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-long-pmi-acp-csp-cspo-87626614

Re-Read Saturday News

This week we reach the penultimate week in our re-read of Kent Beck’s XP Explained, Second Edition with a discussion of Chapters 24 and 25. Chapter 24 discusses the value and power in communities. Chapter 25 is Beck’s conclusion and reflection on the book: XP is about people!

Next week we’ll wrap this re-read up and get ready to read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni (published by Jossey-Bass).  This will be a new book for me, therefore an initial read, not a re-read!  Steven Adams suggested the book and it has been on my list for a few years. Click the link (The Five Dysfunctions of a Team), buy a copy, and in a few weeks we will begin to read the book together.

Next SPaMCAST

The Software Process and Measurement Cast 411 will be a big show featuring our thoughts on servant leadership. In SPaMCAST 411 we will have a visit from the Kim Pries, the Software Sensei. We will have more from Steve Tendon on the Tame The Flow: Hyper-Productive Knowledge-Work Performance, The TameFlow Approach and Its Application to Scrum and Kanban published J Ross (buy a copy here).  And anchoring the cast will be Gene Hughson with an entry from his Form Follows Function Blog.  

Shameless Ad for my book!

Mastering Software Project Management: Best Practices, Tools and Techniques co-authored by Murali Chematuri and myself and published by J. Ross Publishing. We have received unsolicited reviews like the following: “This book will prove that software projects should not be a tedious process, for you or your team.” Support SPaMCAST by buying the book here. Available in English and Chinese.

 

SPaMCAST 404 – Ryan Ripley, The Business of Agile

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Software Process and Measurement Cast 404 features our interview with Ryan Ripley.  We discussed The Business of Agile: Better, Faster, Cheaper at Agile. We discussed why having the answer for whether Agile is better, faster and cheaper is still important in the business world. Along the way we wrestled with the concept of value and why having value sooner is not the same as going fast.  

Ryan Ripley has worked on agile teams for the past 10 years in development, scrum master, and management roles. He’s worked at various Fortune 500 companies in the medical device, wholesale, and financial services industries.

Ryan is great at taking tests and holds the PMI-ACP, PSM I, PSM II, PSE, PSPO I, PSD I, CSM and CSPO agile certifications.

Ryan lives in Indiana with his wife Kristin and their three children.

He blogs at ryanripley.com and hosts the Agile for Humans podcast.

You can also follow Ryan on twitter: @ryanripley

Re-Read Saturday News

 

SPaMCAST 403 – Agile At Scale, Real Transformations, Forewarned is Forearmed

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The Software Process and Measurement Cast 403 features our essay on Agile practices at Scale. Scaling Agile is a contentious topic.  Frameworks and techniques for scaling are often lambasted as semi-Agile or perhaps even backdoor waterfall techniques. Occasionally you still hear that if a piece of work is too big for one team to complete in a reasonable period of time it should be broken down or just not done. Rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater, many organizations have taken a more pragmatic approach and adopted techniques to scale Agile. We discuss the issues and some of the steps that can be taken to address them!

We will also have a visit from the Software Sensei, Kim Pries. Kim discusses making real transformations using his experience learning Tai Chi.  Kim points out that change like deep learning is not instantaneous.

Gene Hughson anchors the cast with an entry from his Form Follows Function Blog. We discussed his article titled,  NPM, Tay, and the Need for Design.  Gene points out that being forewarned is forearmed. While it has always been true, in today’s dynamic environment, an architect needs to be forearmed.

Re-Read Saturday News

This week we continue our re-read of Kent Beck’s XP Explained, Second Edition with a discussion of Chapters 8 and 9.  Chapter 8 changes gears and provides advice on how to get started with XP.  Beck suggests that there is no single place to start for everyone. Where you start depends on where you are beginning.  Chapter 9 provides a list of corollary practices that build on the primary practices discussed in Chapter 7.  

Use the link to XP Explained in the show notes when you buy your copy to read along to support both the blog and podcast. Visit the Software Process and Measurement Blog (www.tcagley.wordpress.com) to catch up on past installments of Re-Read Saturday.

Next SPaMCAST