Culture & Methods Trends Report March 2021

05/03/202113/03/2021 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

COVID-19 was the biggest driver of culture change in the last year
There are dramatic differences between good and bad remote work cultures
Management practices are evolving to adapt to the new ways of working and the expectations of the workforce
Creating real psychological safety and focusing on employee experience is hard, but pays off in terms of engagement, motivation and outcomes
Ethical issues, diversity and inclusion and tech for good make a difference and need to be addressed purposefully.

COVID-19 was the largest influence of change in the culture and methods space in 2020 and the knock on effects in 2021 are driving many of the trends we see at this time. The previous trends report was released early in the pandemic and we now have a year’s worth of content to explore how the IT world has adapted and responded. There have been many examples of great collaboration, teamwork and adapting to new ways of working along with plenty of stories of hardship, Zoom Fatigue, mental and physical health challenges and other impacts as people have adapted to working from home, managers have changed long-held beliefs about remote work and organisations have adopted new technologies to support the shift.

Source: Culture & Methods Trends Report March 2021

Software Teams and Teamwork Trends Report Q1 2020

12/04/202012/04/2020 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

Remote work is suddenly the new normal due to the impact of COVID-19, and many teams are not fully ready for the change
The spread of agile ideas into other areas of organizations continues—business agility is becoming much more than just a buzzword
At the practices level, Wardley Mapping is one of the few truly new ideas that have come into this space recently. Invented by Simon Wardley in 2005, they are gaining traction because they are truly a powerful tool for making sense of complexity.
The depth of impact that computing technology has on society has heightened the focus on ethical behavior and the move towards creating an ethical framework for software development, as well as growing concern in the environmental impact the industry has.
Diversity and inclusion efforts are moving forward, with a long way still to go
Practices and approaches that result in more humanistic workplaces, where people can express their whole selves, are recognized as important for attracting and retaining the best people and result in more sustainably profitable organizations

Source: Software Teams and Teamwork Trends Report Q1 2020

Episode 159: What Colour Agile Would You Like Today with Nigel Dalton

16/03/201916/03/2019 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

The Agile Revolution Podcast

Craig is at YOW! Hong Kong and is sitting with Nigel Dalton, Chief Inventor at REA Group and the Australian “Godfather of Agile” and they reminisce about:

Anita Sengupta’s YOW! Hong Kong keynote “The Future of Mars Exploration“
Akin’s Rules of Spacecraft Design – “don’t mess it up, there are people involved”
Nigel Dalton’s YOW! Hong Kong talk “Agile is the Last Thing You Need“
The two early experiments of Agile in Australia – Lonely Planet and Suncorp
The success of the REA technology teams today was the move into multidisciplinary teams where the influence comes from product – it was a difficult decision and chaos at the time
John Sullivan’s YOW! Hong Kong talk “A Presentation to Myself on Organisational Agile Transformations“
ANZ is disrupting the power base of senior management – Shayne Elliott video about their way of working and Bluenotes…

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Episode 154: Agile Rocket Science with Dr. Anita Sengupta

07/01/201907/01/2019 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

The Agile Revolution Podcast

Craig is at YOW! West in Perth and sits down with Dr. Anita Sengupta, a rocket scientist and aerospace engineer at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (and since this interview was recorded now a Senior Vice President at Hyperloop One). They geek out talking about space exploration as well as the important topic of diversity:

YOW! West keynote “The Future of Mars Exploration” and AATC 2017 keynote “Engineering the Red Planet“
7 Minutes of Terror: The Challenges of Getting to Mars
When you are doing something for the first time, you have to come up with out of the box solutions – first you need to make it work, and then you need to make it last
The biggest issue is to get enough people into the pipeline from under-represented groups, one thing we can do is more public outreach at the school level
You come…

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Episode 146: Agile, Architecture and Technology with Rebecca Parsons

25/11/201827/11/2018 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

The Agile Revolution Podcast

Tony and Craig are at YOW! Conference in Brisbane and catch up with Rebecca Parsons, the Chief Technology Officer at ThoughtWorks and the co-author of “Building Evolutionary Architectures: Support Constant Change” and chat about the following:

Rebecca’s keynote talk at YOW! “The Past and Future of Evolutionary Architecture“
Evolutionary Architecture is the next stage on applying Agile practices to software development at the systems level and be able to respond to changes in the environment that affect the architecture
Need to determine for your system what constitutes good, fitness functions are the documentation and tests to ensure your system meets those characteristics
Need to move the needle on architecture, need to develop tools and techniques to decompose the role
Agile Alliance is looking at what it means to truly be an international organisation (there are now affiliates in Brazil and New Zealand), expanding conferences from…

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Episode 124: Talking Testing with Anne-Marie Charrett

18/01/201718/01/2017 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

The Agile Revolution Podcast

Craig is at YOW! Conference and catches up with Anne-Marie Charrett who is well known in the testing community as a trainer, coach and consultant but also for her support of the community:

Don Reinertsen talk “Thriving in a Stochastic World“
Context-Driven Testing
Testing is a verb – it’s a doing thing and not an output, but the challenge is you cannot see doing
Anne-Marie’s class in Exploratory Testing
Where there is risk and failure, there is a job for testing
Exploratory testing – the key is feedback and using the learning to feedback into the next test
Agile testing – don’t try and test everything and don’t try and automate everything either, rather adopt a risk based approach
Unit testing – the usefulness depends on the programmer and the context and figuring out what you are trying to achieve
Sydney Testers Meetup
Speak Easy – Speak Easy…

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Episode 121: Diversity & Frugal Innovation in Africa with Betty Enyonam Kumahor

03/01/201703/01/2017 / Craig Smith / Leave a comment

The Agile Revolution Podcast

Craig and Tony sit down for a conversation at YOW! Conference with Betty Enyonam Kumahor (stands for good for me, on the way there) who is a technology leader in Africa:

Tony and Enyo are mutual members of the Alistair Cockburn fan club
YOW! Conference talk “Frugal Innovation and Scaffolding Software“
Software engineering uptake in Africa is very low, need more technologists because it is is not an industry it is an enabler
Lots of diversity challenges in Africa – lees than 1% of the South African IT industry is women, but also diversity in languages, education and belief systems
Diversity is a multi-pronged issue, need to be patient but not complacent to move the needle forward, give girls the confidence to be competent and to push the boundaries
Frugal innovation in Africa – building technology in a space of constraints such as inadequate power, everything happens by mobile…

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