Episode 92: Agile 2015 Day 1

26/08/201521/09/2015 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

Craig and Renee visit Washington, DC for the Agile 2015 conference and debrief in the Agile Alliance Lounge after day 1:

Luke Hohmann keynote “Awesome Superproblems” – Innovation Games and book, Every Voice Engaged – challenge to play 2 games in the next year that will change the world
Lundy’s Law – “any team of programmers if given enough time will justify a total rewrite of the system”
Paul Goddard talk “Improvisssssing With Agile” – some good examples for team starters, new book “Improv-ing Agile Teams“
Will Evans talk “Learn Like A Scientist” – start with a problem, lots of good models and templates
Lots of different scaling solutions and related certifications being discussed at the conference
Larry Maccherone talk “Probalistic Forecasting for Math Mortals” – monte carlo forecasting is a useful tool for project planning (and superannuation!)
Ellen Grove talk “Games for Talking about Conflict Resolution” – lots of…

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Episode 91: Coding The Architecture with Simon Brown

20/07/201521/09/2015 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

The Agile Revolution Podcast

Craig and Tony talk to Simon Brown at the YOW! 2014 conference in Brisbane. SImon is the author of “Software Architecture for Developers”, creator of the C4 software architecture model and Structurizr. We tracked him down after his talk to talk about:

YOW! 2014 talk “Agility and the Essence of Software Architecture“
Create a software guidebook as opposed to big upfront documentation
Tony is an old BA apparently… Explains a lot 🙂
If you can’t sketch out your architecture, you don’t understand it
C4 model was created after observations many archtecture drawings don’t make sense
Tony shows his age again by referencing Mr. Squiggle (video)
A tiny percentage of architects understand UML – do you teach them UML or teach them something simple?
Structurizr replaces drawing boxes in Visio or OmniGraffle, creates the C4 model from Java code and keeps it up to date, other implementations

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Episode 90: Step Away From The Book

04/07/201521/09/2015 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

The Agile Revolution Podcast

Craig and Renee catch up late in the evening to chat about recent Agile articles and events including:

Havard Business Review article “Time Management Training Doesn’t Work“
turn off Microsoft Outlook notifications (do as we say not as we do)
“Disruption and Recovery of Computing Tasks: Field Study, Analysis & Directions” – if you have read this, tell us about it!
Harvard Business Review article – “How to Help Someone Develop Emotional Intelligence” – find the dream!
Ron Jeffries want his XP back!
“Modern Extreme Programming” by Benji Weber – it’s not dead, just evolved
The 9th Annual State of Agile™ Survey – summary and thoughts
“Let’s Acknowledge SAFe for What It Is and Move On” by Mike Cottmeyer
Reactive Manifesto and how it applies to programming as well as human reactions
Our reading list includes,”No Estimates” beta book by Vasco…

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Episode 89: Intersecting Service Management, People Development & Agile

16/05/201521/09/2015 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

The Agile Revolution Podcast

Craig gatecrashed the Australian ITSMF / ITIL conference, LEADit in Melbourne and in the hallway chats to Korrine Jones (an Organisational Development Consultant and running late for a plane) and Ian Jones (an IT Service Management expert) about how People Development and Service Management are intersecting with Agile and each other:

LEADit is the biggest service management conference in Australia – focus on disruptive service management, Agile, Lean, DevOps, Continuous Delivery
Challenges with virtual teams – not everybody is suited to working this way, need to take time up front on shared values and getting to know each other (and this can be done virtually if need be)
Measuring good teams – satisfaction surveys, team results, engagement levels
Agile Virtual ITSM Teams workshop
Opportunity for convergence between Agile and people development areas
Issue is how to translate Agile to Service Management – learn by continuous improvement and experimentation
Leading ITSM from…

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Episode 88: Scrum Australia Anticast

14/04/201521/09/2015 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

The Agile Revolution Podcast

Adam Weisbart turns the tables hosting an anti-podcast where he interviews Craig, Renee & Tony at Scrum Australia 2014 in Sydney on their highlights from the conference. The conversation included:

* Adam Weisbart’s “Agile Antipatterns” talk and his awesome Agile Antipatterns cards
* Craig Smith’s “40 Agile Methods in 40 Minutes” talk (and the methods on the cutting room floor)
* Agile movements are just as important as methods
* Tony mentions the original Winston W. Royce “Managing the Development of Large Software Systems” waterfall paper – why??
* Henrik Kniberg’s “Scaling Agile @ Spotify” keynote
* Matthew Hodgson’s “Backlogs, Story Mapping and Star Wars” talk
* Knowing one of the organisers like Star Wars helps!
* Renee Troughton’s “Darth Vaderless Daily Scrums” talk
* Important to know the expectations that everyone else should be having on each other to…

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Episode 87: Coffee From The Trenches with Henrik Kniberg

16/03/201521/09/2015 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

The Agile Revolution Podcast

Renee and Craig catch up with Henrik Kniberg at Scrum Australia 2014 where he tries coffee for the first time in ten years at the Paramount Coffee Project (the best coffee in Sydney according to Renee). Apart from getting his verdict on the brew, they also talk about:

First time back in Australia in a long time to keynote at Scrum Australia 2014
Craig’s interview “Henrik Kniberg on Lean From The Trenches, Translating the Agile Manifesto and Living Agile” from Agile 2012 in Dallas on InfoQ
“Scrum and XP From The Trenches” and how the book was written in 3 days
Ivory Tower Syndrome – you can get good at describing crap in a believable way if you don’t have connections to reality
“Kanban and Scrum: Making The Most of Both“
Spotify – 25 coaches with 25 pet approaches, the culture and the fundamentals in…

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Episode 86 : Sticky Notes and Agile Stuff

24/02/201521/09/2015 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

The Agile Revolution Podcast

Renee sets the tone for the Podcast, talking sticky notes and a great new app Post it plus by 3m and tests them live on the podcast .

This week the team talk about :

Are performance reviews a waste of time ? Review from the Business insider
@agilescout Remove your constraints article piques Tony’s interest and then ends up with a debate around star treks relevance
Renee interrupts to provide the results of her tests with the sticky notes app

stickytest2

We discuss the new update to the LeSS (large scale scrum) framework by @less_works
Craig asks questions of Renee and Tony from an Agile Coaching course
Tony proves it’s live as he runs off to sooth his daughter, Craig and Renee take the opportunity to have some fun in his absence
Books The Revolutionists are Reading: Impact Mapping (Gojko Adzic), Lean Startup (Eric Ries), Bridging the Communication Gap (Gojko Adzic)

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Episode 85: Scrum Australia 2014 Vox Pop

31/01/201521/09/2015 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

The Agile Revolution Podcast

Tony and and sometimes over modulated Craig (with Renee popping up from time to time) roam the floor at lunchtime at Scrum Australia in Sydney and talk to some interesting Scrum folks along the way about their thoughts on the conference and the Scrum community in general:

Shane Sendall (Suncorp) – end to end delivery and design patterns for teams, minimum loveable products, looking at flow efficiency
Justin Urbanski (Rally) – Scrum Alliance Coaching Clinic, minimum viable bureacracy, scaling
Ben Hogan (Tabar) and Martyn Frank (CBA) – teams overcommitting, Scrum in 60 seconds, visual facilitation inspired by Lynne Cazaly, kanban in curriculum development in universities
Neil Killick (MYOB) – spoke with Craig Brown running the #noestimates Puzzle Game, 40 Agile Methods in 40 Minutes, Tony suggests #lotsofestimates, Neil’s posts on #noestimates
Jason Yip (ThoughtWorks) and Sunish Chabba –…

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Episode 84: Retrospectives in Middle Earth with Rachael Tempest Wood

18/12/201405/01/2021 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

The Agile Revolution Podcast

Rachael Tempest Wood from Nomad8 in Wellington joins Tony and Craig in the Brisbane Queen Street Mall over lunch with a bonus busker on saxophone and they discuss:

PMI and Agile are completely different mindsets, PMI Project Managers are “the CIOs of their projects”
AgileWelly – strength through the struggle of doing Agile in government
Wellington Agile community led by TradeMe, Snapper, BNZ
Gojko Adzic – Specification by Example and Impact Mapping
Agile NZ conference
Retrospective design – creativity in facilitation is a gap
Esther Derby’s model for restrospectives
Paper Airplane game – using an abstract process to apply learnings to the real process

TheAgileRevolution-84 (25 minutes)

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Episode 83: Making Impacts with Gojko Adzic

30/11/201405/01/2021 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

The Agile Revolution Podcast

Gojko Adzic “does computers” which means he helps people deliver software and he caught up with Craig on a recent YOW! DepthFirst tour of Australia. Gojko is the author of numerous books including “Bridging The Communication Gap“, “Specification by Example“, “Impact Mapping” and “50 Quick Ideas to Improve Your User Stories“.

XP – started with “Extreme Programming Explained” which was really about developers ruling the world – XP is not dead, it won!
TDD has crossed the chasm to mainstream
Sturgeons Law – 90% of anything is going to be crap
Continuous integration and automation has opened up a world of possibilities
“Bridging the Communication Gap” – about finding ways to break dysfunctional processes in organisations
“Agile Testing” by Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory
The most valuable companies in the world are software companies
It’s more about the right people…

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