2019 – Podcast and Blog Year in Review

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2019 was an interesting year on the blog and podcast. As I did last year (and the year before) the end of the year provides time for introspection.  We delivered 52 audio podcasts, one video, and 200 plus blog entries over the year. The top 10 podcasts were a mixture of interviews, essays, and discussions. If I were to extract a common theme it would be that they all represent practical, implementable ideas.  The top ten are:

 

SPaMCAST 558 – Story Points – Leave Them, QA Focus, Discussions and Essays

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SPaMCAST 558 features our essay Story Points – Leave Them, Don’t Love Them.  Story Points are not evil and they may be useful in some circumstances. But like most tools, at some point, they lose focus. They have outlived their usefulness, therefore, I will leave them when at all possible.  

This week, Jeremy Berriault brings his QA Corner to the podcast.  We talked about focus. How much focus is enough and how much is too much? Mr. Berriault has an opinion and stories to back his opinion up. 

 

SPaMCAST 550 – Conway’s Law And Process Improvement, Test Engineers and Testers, Essays and Discussions

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SPaMCAST 550 features our essay titled, Intertwining Conway’s Law And Agile. Conway’s Law trains a spotlight on how an organization’s structure impacts the product they ship. The “Law” states that the structure of a software product will mimic the structure of the organization that produces the software.  It can (and has) been said that you are shipping the “org structure.” How you are structured therefore is going to impact just how much agile you can achieve.

We also visit the QA Corner with Jeremy Berriault.  Jeremy discusses the differences between test engineers and testers. We also tackle whether every person with the word test in their title should have the ability to code or script. Jeremy’s LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-berriault-mba/

I know this is not the show I promoted last week but my guest, Mike Lynn,  is out of pocket this week and wanted to around when the show went live. Not only am I agile, but I am also flexible therefore we are rearranging the lineup!  

 

SPaMCAST 549 – Seven Issues Testers Experience Being Agile, Distributed Agile, Essays and Discussions

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SPaMCAST 549 features our essay Seven Issues Testers Experience Being Agile.  Recently I attended the QAI Quest Conference in Chicago, during the conference I got to talk with lots of people from across the development spectrum. From the conversations and workshops, I identified seven common threads that test and quality focused personal experience being or trying to be agile. In order to be agile, not just do agile, we need to tackle these seven issues

We also have the completion of Susan Parente’s three-installment discussion of distributed agile.  In this installment of Not a Scrumdamentalist, Susan discusses tools and whether they are the hurdle some people make them out to be.  

 

SPaMCAST 546 – It’s Your Career, Learn And Prosper, An Interview With Michael Milutis

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SPaMCAST 546 features our interview with Michael Milutis. Michael and I talk about putting people back in charge of their careers. Michael provides advice that every listener can put to use immediately and in the long run.

Michael’s Bio:

Michael Milutis is an INFP and IT generalist committed to human capital development and continuous learning within a shifting technology landscape.

 

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!