Software Process And Measurement Cast

Check out Software Process and Measurement Cast 276.  The SPaMCAST 276 features my interview with Dr. Penny Pullan. We discussed her book, Business Analysis and Leadership: Influencing Change, the impact of business analysts on projects and how to make project more effective.  Dr. Pullan has led her consulting firm, Making Projects Work Ltd., since 2007. Penny works with people in multi-national organizations who are grappling with tricky projects (i.e. risky, ambiguous, with diverse stakeholders, with virtual teams). She hosts the global BA Summit in November each year. Recently she's also been in demand as a mentor for business analysts, especially with those keen to develop their leadership skills.  Penny's books include "Business Analysis and Leadership: Influencing change" (published by Kogan Page, 2013), "A Short Guide to Facilitating Risk Management" (Gower, 2011) and a chapter in "The Gower Handbook of People in Project Management" (Gower, 2013). You can find out more at www.makingprojectswork.co.uk a

Check out Software Process and Measurement Cast 275.  The SPaMCAST 275 features our essay on leadership. Leaders and leadership are important, perhaps more important with Agile and lean techniques that no longer use command and control management techniques. Even if you believe that leaders are born, the ability to lead can be honed and developed. Managers typically draw on their hierarchal position for their organizational power and use that power to control those they manage which has been shown in the long term to be less effective and efficient. Leadership is import because leaders generate more value enabling people through providing a path towards their vision. The delivery of value is why organizations exist and why projects are done therefore leadership is not a luxury but a necessity. Kim Pries provides a column this week focusing on paradoxes. Kim’s essay is extremely thought provoking and is a must listen for change agents. Remember to register for the "Influential Agile Leader" events led by Johan

Check out Software Process and Measurement Cast 274.  The SPaMCAST 274 features our interview with Jeremy Berriault.  We talked about testing, test professionalism and testing in academia.  Sometimes it is easy to forget that testing is one of the primary tools to manage quality in software development and that test professionals are a core part of any development department. Jeremy’s bio tells us that his main goals within the Quality Assurance discipline are to ensure that the value is achieved across the organization and that it is a valued profession to be in. He has had 20 year progressive career growth within the Quality Assurance discipline .Jeremy has a wealth of knowledge on QA processes, planning and continuous improvement. Working for large Canadian financial institutions he has a great appreciation of the risk mitigation a QA group can bring to an organization and their clients to ensure there are no financial or privacy impacts.  His long career has introduced him to many leaders and knowledge ex

Check out Software Process and Measurement Cast 273.  The SPaMCAST 273 features our essay on gamification and a new installment of Steve Tedon's column: Tame The Flow.  Gamification is a tool to support process improvement.  It is a technique that leverages a player's innate competitive drive to channel their behavior using game mechanisms. The goal is to have individuals, teams, and organizations adopt process changes and then process improvement. In the second edition of Tame the Flow, Steve and I talk about constraints, bottlenecks and retrospectives. Contact Steve on Twitter @tendon or visit his website at www.tendon.net For the next few weeks the Software Process and Measurement Cast will include a promo for the "Influential Agile Leader" events led by Johanna Rothman and Gil Broza.  Check out the full details at www.InfluentialAgileLeader.com Get in touch with us anytime or leave a comment here on the blog.  Help support the SPaMCAST by reviewing and rating it on iTunes. It helps people find the cas

Welcome to the Software Process and Measurement Cast 272.  The SPaMCAST 272 features my interview with Jeff Anderson.  We talked about The Lean Change Method and the book of the same title! Jeff's Bio: My mission in life is to help technology knowledge workers be awesome at what they do. Having been in the market since 1994, I have harnessed my initial passion for agile software engineering to provide advisory services to clients that want to thrive in a world of market uncertainty and continuous learning.  Over the last several years I have been running Deloitte LEAN, an Agile/Lean transformation service to help clients embrace the knowledge economy.  Our service offering has evolved from coaching teams with agile, to end to end transformation of IT using Lean/Kanban, to now coaching businesses to embrace Lean Startup thinking. I admit to am unbridled enthusiasm for any method that bring creativity and joy to the value creation process. A big part of my job is the synthesis of leading edge thinking into cont

Welcome to the Software Process and Measurement Cast 271.  The SPaMCAST 271 features our essay titled Revisiting the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  As this is the first new podcast of 2014 we felt that it a good time to reflect and retool with a bit of Stephen Covey!.  The essay begins:  Approximately 23 years ago I was in the middle of the second of three process improvement program reboots brought on by another bank merger. During the stress of the scenario, I picked up a copy of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey.  I was not alone - the copy which I still have as in it 13th printing (Fireside Imprint), nor am I alone now - The 7 Habits sitting at #62 on Amazon’s Best Sellers as of September 15 2013.  The popularity is not only a reflection of timelessness and usefulness of the advice, but also its approachability.  I can pick the book up, and with a bit of reflection, derive value in excess of the effort. One final thought, if you don’t have a copy of the book, buy one (I wo

Welcome to the Software Process and Measurement Cast 270.  The SPaMCAST 270 features my interview with Allan Shalloway. We talked lean, Kanban and SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework).  A great interview to end the old year and bring in the new year! Al Shalloway is the founder and CEO of Net Objectives. With over 40 years of experience, Al is an industry thought leader in Lean, SAFe, Kanban, product portfolio management, Scrum and agile design. He helps companies transition to Lean and Agile methods enterprise-wide as well teaches courses in these areas. Al is a SAFe Program Consultant as well as a co-founder of the Lean Systems Society. Al has developed training and coaching methods for Lean-Agile that have helped Net Objectives' clients achieve long-term, sustainable productivity gains. He is a popular speaker at prestigious conferences worldwide. He is the primary author of Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design, Lean-Agile Pocket Guide for Scrum Teams, Lean-Agile Software Develop

Welcome to the Software Process and Measurement Cast 269.  The SPaMCAST 269 features our essay on Kanban.  It really is all about the flow. Also in the Software Process Measurement Cast 269 we begin a new column called Tame the Flow featuring the ideas and advice of Steve Tendon.   The essay begins: Kanban, which means signal card in Japanese, has been a staple of lean auto manufacturing for years through its application in the Toyota Production System (and in lean manufacturing environments). and ends: Focusing on one item at a time and minimizing wait states requires rethinking how we think and talk about work.  Ultimately and after we adjust to the changes, Kanban improves efficiency and delivery of business value. Listen to the podcast to catch all the stuff in between. For the next few weeks the Software Process and Measurement Cast will include a promo for the "Influential Agile Leader" events led by Johanna Rothman and Gil Broza.  Check out the full details at www.InfluentialAgileLeader.com The Softwar

Welcome to the Software Process and Measurement Cast 268 The Software Process and Measurment Cast features my interview with Gene Hughson.  We discussed agile, solution architecture, people, processes and his blog, Form Follows Function. An early holiday present!  Gene Hughson is an Applications Manager for Fidelity National Financial in Richmond, Virginia.  Gene has over 17 years of experience in software development, combining application and solution architecture, management and process improvement, even managing to do some hands-on coding from time to time.  Gene has been a member of the Richmond Chapter of the Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP), serving as President for 2013 and continuing in that capacity for 2014.  Gene has written guest posts for CitizenTekk (http://citizentekk.com/author/genehughson/) and maintains his own blog, Form Follows Function (http://genehughson.wordpress.com/), where he opines on architecture, management, and software development processes. Other ways

Welcome to the Software Process and Measurement Cast 267 features our essay on story mapping.  Story mapping is a very powerful and under used tool for getting a handle on the big picture. SPaMCAST 267 also features Kim Pries with more logical problems. The essay on story mapping begins: Product backlogs are lists of “work to be done” at different levels of granularity and priority.  They can be large and unwieldy. It is hard to see the big picture of the work, regardless of whether they are in analog form (e.g. sticky notes or 3x5 index cards) or are housed in a tool (e.g. Version One or LeanKit Kanban).  Story Mapping is a technique that teams can use to help visualize a product backlog. Importantly, it lets the stakeholders understand the big picture, prioritize work and plan releases.  The Software Process and Measurement Cast has a sponsor . . . ITMPI provides a great service to the IT profession. ITMPI's mission is to pull together the expertise and educational efforts of the world's leading IT thought

Welcome to the Software Process and Measurement Cast 266 features my interview with Raja Bavani. We discussed distributed agile! We also discussed the new Global Distributed Agile Consortium (GDAC) to nurture an open community of practice and promote knowledge sharing. Visit http://blog.distributedagile.org Raja Bavani is Chief Architect of Mindtree and plays the role of Agile Evangelist. Raja has more than 20 years’ experience in the IT industry and has presented papers at international conferences on topics related to code quality, distributed Agile development, customer value management, and software estimation. His areas of interest include global delivery models, Agile software development, requirements engineering, software architecture, software reuse, and customer value management. Raja is a member of the IEEE and the IEEE Computer Society and regularly interfaces with educational institutions, offers guest lectures, and writes for technical conferences. He has written article for magazines such as Cu

Welcome to the Software Process and Measurement Cast 265 The Software Process and Measurement Cast 265 features our essay on retrospectives.  Retrospectives are part of most methodologies, even though there are many different terms. For instance, most waterfall frameworks call them post implementation reviews or postmortems. And each methodology focuses on different nuances. Agile, as a macro set of frameworks, has more aggressively embraced retrospectives than waterfall or iterative frameworks.  Retrospectives in Agile reflect the adoption of the principle of kaizen (Japanese for improvement, often interpreted as continuous improvement). They should be focused on discovering what will make the team or organization deliver more value. While many retrospective techniques posit the questions “what worked well” and “what did not work,” the real reason to do any retrospective is to identify, agree on and plan for what can be done better. The exact process any team uses is a reflection of the technique the team wa

Welcome to the Software Process and Measurement Cast 264 The Software Process and Measurement Cast 264 features my interview with Alexei Zheglov.  We discussed lean, work-in-process limits and flow. A summary of Alexei's bio from LinkedIn . . . How does value flow through your knowledge-work organization? The reality for many knowledge-work organizations today is, not very well. Therefore, we need to design, evolve, discover and help better systems of work emerge. Alexei's present drive and ability to help guide people to those better ways go back to his programming since the 80s (professionally since the 90s), mastering many practices and discovering manyproblems and solutions. It was more than 10 years ago that I created my first test doubles and human-readable acceptance tests. He was in the engineering trenches of a lean startup long before there was such a term. Alexei doesn't "roll out" "methodologies." He draws from a large number of approaches - such as Kanban (and, by extension, many innovations

Welcome to the Software Process and Measurement Cast 263 The Software Process and Measurement Cast 263 our essay on Transactional Analysis.  People are the heart of the interactions that drive every organization and team. Increasing the effectiveness of communication between people will directly translate to higher productivity. To improve communication you need to develop an understanding of psychology. Transactional analysis is one of the most useful psychological theories for IT professionals.  The Software Process and Measurement Cast has a sponsor . . . As many you know I do at least one webinar for the IT Metrics and Productivtity Intstiute (ITMPI) every year. The ITMPI provides a great service to the IT profession. ITMPI's mission is to pull together the expertise and educational efforts of the world's leading IT thought leaders and to create a single online destination where IT practitioners and executives can meet all of their educational and professional development needs. THe ITMPI offers a premiu

The Software Process and Measurement Cast 262 features my interview with Kevin Kruse (@Kruse) best selling author of Employee Engagement for Everyone.  If you are involved with people and want to improvement engagement this is an important interview  Kevin's Bio Serial entrepreneur and bestselling author, Kevin Kruse, used a relentless focus on talent and employee engagement to build and sell several, multi-million dollar technology companies, winning both Inc 500 and Best Place to Work awards along the way. He is currently an investor and advisor to Team Capital Bank, one of the fastest growing banks in America with a billion dollars in assets. Kevin is also the author of several books including the NY Times bestseller, We: How to Increase Performance and Profits Through Full Engagement, which was named one of the top leadership books in 2011 by 800-CEO-Read.  In Employee Engagement 2.0, Kevin provides a detailed action plan that turns “task-managers” into “people-leaders” and in his latest book, Employee E

Welcome to the Software Process and Measurement Cast 261 The Software Process and Measurement Cast 261 features our essay on distributed agile.  Distributed agile takes effort but can pay HUGE benefits. The essay begins: What is distributed Agile? The phrase distributed Agile is often used indiscriminately, therefore definitions can cover a wide range of situations and evoke a wide range of emotions. A precise definition encompasses three concepts. The first is a team, project or program that is using Agile techniques. The second is geographic distribution describing where team members are located. The location of team members in a distributed team can range from being spread across a single building to members sprinkled across continents. Finally, the third is organizational distribution, meaning that teams that can be comprised of members from different companies. The Software Process and Measurement Cast has a sponsor . . . As many you know I do at least one webinar for the IT Metrics and Productivtity Int

Welcome to the Software Process and Measurement Cast 260 The Software Process and Measurement Cast 260 features my interview with Dr Richard Sykes.  Dr Sykes is the chair of the Board of Directors of the TMMi Foundation. The TMMi is the Testing Maturity Model Integration. When it comes to testing the TMMI is more than just a model! Dr Richard Sykes is a businessman with a breadth of involvement & experience that spans the chemical industry, the IT industry and the world of arts. He has held senior executive roles in a major global multinational and non-executive chairmanships in a number of smaller ventures - and has lived and operated internationally. Today Richard has a personal practice ('Dr Richard Sykes') as a board-level trusted advisor, assurer, strategic coach & facilitator. He works with senior management in the practical shaping of effective business information & communications technology (ICT) strategies & their implementation, sourcing & governance. He has a particular experti

Welcome to the Software Process and Measurement Cast 259 The Software Process and Measurement Cast 259 features an essay title Agile Testing. Testing is an important step in the delivery of any piece of software. It is the processes required to find and remove defects from functionality before that functionally is delivered into production. For those of you that have not written code or been an integral part of a software project, a project of any size rarely jumps from that idea directly into executable code without a few hiccups (call ‘em whatever you’d like… explicative deleted, defects or problems). There are two basic ways to find these gremlins – testing (including reviews) before implementation or letting your customers find them after implementation. The SPaMCAST 259 also includes Kim Pries's column.  Kim discusses rubrics and why they are important to software development. And just in case you are confused . . . we are not talking about the "cube."Measurement Cast has a sponsor . . . As many you know

Welcome to the Software Process and Measurement Cast 258 The Software Process and Measurement Cast 258 features my interview with Steve Tendon!  Steve focuses on helping to create high-performance organizations and teams.  He is also the the author of Tame the Flow.  Are you ready to make the jump to hyper-productivity? Steve's Bio: Steve is a senior, multilingual, executive management consultant, experienced at leading and directing multi¬national and distributed knowledge¬work organizations. Expert in organizational performance transformation programs. Adviser, consultant, coach, mentor, speaker and author, specializing in organizational productivity, organizational design, process excellence and process innovation. Steve helps businesses create high-performance organizations and teams.  Steve can be contacted at: Email: steve.tendon@gmail.comWeb: http://tendon.net/LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/tendon Measurement Cast has a sponsor . . . As many you know I do at least one webinar for the IT Metrics a

Welcome to the Software Process and Measurement Cast 257 The Software Process and Measurement Cast 257 features the essay "Why Agile Implementations Fail." Unfortunately failure seems to be an option.  Why?  Is it always a bad thing? Measurement Cast has a sponsor . . . As many you know I do at least one webinar for the IT Metrics and Productivtity Intstiute (ITMPI) every year. The ITMPI provides a great service to the IT profession. ITMPI's mission is to pull together the expertise and educational efforts of the world's leading IT thought leaders and to create a single online destination where IT practitioners and executives can meet all of their educational and professional development needs. THe ITMPI offers a premium membership that gives members unlimited free access to 400 PDU accredited webinar recordings, and waives the PDU processing fees on all live and recorded webinars.  The Software Process and Measurement Cast recieves a fee if you sign up using the URL in the show notes.   http://mbsy.co/fGdw