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© 2024 Inspect and Adapt
Description
World-class software development requires far more than language/platform expertise and steady sprints. Join us as we describe time-tested, industry-proven software best practices at the team, organization, and leadership levels, sharing examples from recent engagements with software teams of all sizes.
Construx is led by industry leader Steve McConnell, author of Code Complete and More Effective Agile. Software experts first and software trainers and consultants second, our team has seen what works and doesn’t work in hundreds of software organizations.
Host Mark Griffin spent the first half of his career as an electrical engineer doing silicon hardware design and leading software automation teams. He moved into the sales side of software because he wanted to spread the value of what his company was building. It was supposed to be a one-year assignment that turned into the second half of his career. His balance of deeply technical skills and right-brain artistry also makes him a masterful home brewer!
48 Episodes
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Why can't I know—with high precision—the final cost, scope, and time frame of my work effort? One of the biggest reasons you can't know all three at once is illustrated by Steve McConnell's Cone of Uncertainty. In this episode of Inspect & Adapt, Construx's Mark Griffin, Steve Tockey, and Earl Beede talk about what the Cone is, how it impacts your ability to estimate, and how you can use it to increase your estimate predictability.
1If hindsight is 20/20—and it's good practice to look back to find ways you could do better—then why do retrospectives seem like such a waste of time? Shouldn't they be a goldmine that we're excited about rather than just another obligatory meeting? Inspect & Adapt host Mark Griffin gathers fellow Construx staff, Steve Tockey, Jenny Stuart, and Earl Beede, to discuss how we can make retrospectives something to look forward to.
There is a lot of talk and ideas about how to scale agile up from the one-team, one-product base so that multiple teams can support a product (I am looking at you SAFe). But what about the case where one team must support multiple products? That is reverse agile scaling. Join Construx’s Mark Griffin, Jenny Stuart, and Earl Beede as they share strategies and proven techniques to have one team work with multiple products and multiple product owners.
What does "value" mean on your product? How do you know you are working on the most valuable thing? Construx's Earl Beede, Jenny Stuart, and Mark Griffin discuss how to clearly identify and articulate value on development projects. Knowing the targeted value is critical for prioritization and scope control and for knowing when to stop. It is also the key ingredient to meaningful feedback cycles. But how do you reliably identify value? Earl & Jenny will share stories of how they've helped organizations identify their value in a measurable way.
How do you lead product development teams when a company that has always been hardware focused now owes its success to both hardware and software? Construx's Mark Griffin and Earl Beede recently spoke with Inogen's Norbert Leinfellner and Horst Pichler, who have decades of experience leading this transition. We kick off 2024 with an Inspect & Adapt episode on how successful leadership requires a certain system-level mindset to help blend those hardware and software teams.
Listen to Construx's Earl Beede, Jenny Stuart, and Mark Griffin as they assess the role and duties of project managers on software intensive projects. A special focus will be on groups using agile development processes. Earl and Jenny will share stories of what they have seen work and what hasn't with their clients.
Construx's Earl Beede, Jenny Stuart, and Mark Griffin investigate ways to split user stories so they fit in a sprint. Some methods are far preferable—and even easier—than others. Sometimes it just means setting yourself up to make your user stories split-able. Earl and Jenny will share their stories from the trenches and explain how they assist teams to apply the appropriate splitting practices in their environment.
What metrics make sense for a development team? How do you talk about productivity? Construx friend John Belbute joins Construx’s Steve Tockey, Earl Beede, and Mark Griffin to talk about engineering metrics. John has been a software leader at many companies, including Intuit, WebMD, eBay and Capita CCS and is now semi-retired with his own coaching and consulting company. John shares his in-the-trenches experience trying to find the perfect metric to show the rest of the leadership team how well the development teams are doing.
It's been over two decades since we were told that Waterfall development is bad and Agile development is good. Construx's Earl Beede recently did a webinar on the subject (available on YouTube). This Inspect and Adapt looks at some of the comments and questions that came up. Earl is joined by host Mark Griffin and Jenny Stuart as they take a fresh look at Waterfall vs. Agile.
There is a lot of confusion about where the job or role of product owner ends and that of product manager begins. Construx's Earl Beede recently did a webinar on the topic. Now Earl is joined by Construx's Jenny Stuart and Mark Griffin to take a deeper look into how the two roles differ and where they overlap.
You have engineering managers and you want to adopt agile - or are already doing agile - development. Where does your engineering manager fit? What activities and roles do engineering managers play in the agile development organization? Join Construx's Jenny Stuart, Mark Griffin, and Earl Beede as they discuss how organizations can Inspect & Adapt the job of the engineering manager.
At the end of 2022, Construx surveyed our clients to hear their best disaster stories of 2022 and what areas they want to improve so they won't repeat their disasters in 2023. Join host Mark Griffin with Construx experts Earl Beede and Steve Tockey as they Inspect and Adapt those disaster stories and improvement opportunities.
Is there a "best" way or process to develop software? Is there one size fits all? Construx has always said, "no". One of our 10x Principles is "Tailor the Solution to the Problem". Join host Mark Griffin with Construx's Earl Beede and Steve Tockey for an Inspect and Adapt of right-sizing software development process. We cover the process for figuring out what your process should be–the "meta process".If you want to be notified of future live-stream recordings, be sure to sign up for our newsletter at our website: www.construx.com
Individual expert judgment estimation (a.k.a. best guess, gut, swag, etc.) is the most common method of estimating development projects. Yet it almost always is not a good estimate. Join host Mark Griffin with Construx's Earl Beede and Steve Tockey for an Inspect and Adapt of individual estimation. We cover the pitfalls of individual estimation but counter with specific ways you can make individual estimation a bit better.If you want to be notified of future live-stream recordings, be sure to sign up for our newsletter at our website: www.construx.com
Backlog Refinement is a practice that most agile teams should do - but many don't. Join host Mark Griffin with Construx's Jenny Stuart and Earl Beede to Inspect & Adapt backlog refinement. We cover how backlog refinement has become a critical part of agile teams, how it should work, common mistakes in backlog refinement, and how it adapts to different situations.This episode is edited from a live-stream discussion. If you want to be notified of future live-stream recording, be sure to sign up at our website https://www.construx.com
"How much testing is enough?" is a question Construx gets asked a lot. Join host Mark Griffin with Construx's Brian Daugherty and Steve Tockey for an Inspect and Adapt of the enough testing question. We cover the drivers of testing, strategies to help determine "enough," and the common mistakes organizations make when developing and executing tests.If you want to be notified of future live-stream recordings, be sure to sign up for our newsletter at our website: www.construx.com
What does it mean to bring your full self as a woman to leadership in a software or technical organization? Join Construx's Mark Griffin as he interviews Jessica Garcia about how to deal with the challenges of leadership specifically as experienced by women. Jessica leads and coaches women toward both leadership and authenticity. She will go over her six week leadership seminar and share key practices for women in technical leadership.
Many, if not most, agile teams include the practice of a daily gathering. It goes by slightly different names: the daily standup, the daily scrum, or walking the board. Join host Mark Griffin with Construx's Jenny Stuart and Earl Beede for an inspect and adapt of the daily. We cover the daily's origins, how it differs across agile approaches, common errors in the daily (we are looking at you, status reporting) and how to adjust it to different environments.This is an edited from a live-stream discussion. If you want to be notified of future live-stream recording, be sure to sign up at our website https://www.construx.com
Hearing about different scaling frameworks and wondering which one is for you? Join host Mark Griffin and guest Jenny Stuart for an overview of the popular Agile scaling frameworks SAFe, Nexus, and LeSS, including their strengths and relative weaknesses. We’ll cover the frameworks’ core techniques and approaches; this will provide you with a basis for determining whether one of these frameworks is a good fit. Jenny will also provide six scaling recommendations for you to think about regardless of the framework you might be considering.
Today’s episode focuses on the very basis of Agile: its principles and values. Steve McConnell recently gave a keynote at XP2021 in which he said they need to be updated. You'll hear a quick recap of Agile’s beginnings, what was happening in software development when people got together at that Snowbird conference: primarily "code & fix" and the SW-CMM (Software-Capability Maturity Model). Steve will describe the current non-agile institutionalization of Agile. Then Steve and Mark will work one by one through the Agile values and principles to describe their relevance (or lack of relevance) to today's software development practices and culture.
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