Cracking Groupthink In Prioritization, Scrum Master - Career or Avocation, Essays and Conversations with Keis Kostaqi, SPaMCAST 827
Software Process and Measurement Cast
Release Date: 09/01/2024
Revisiting Software Measurement with Mauricio Aguiar and Christine Green December 2021, SPaMCAST 838
Software Process and Measurement Cast
The Software Process and Measurement Cast Crew are off for an adventure. We will be back on December 8th with new content. In the interim, we share four gems from our back catalog of over 800 interviews, essays, and conversations. You can check out the entire catalog at . Today we return to December 2021 to remember an interview with Mauricio Aguiar and Christine Green, We discussed their vision of the state and future of Software Measurement. Mauricio, Christine, and I are all Past Presidents of the International Function Point Users Group (the largest international software measurement...
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Revisiting 2019 With Al Shalloway, SPaMCAST 837
Software Process and Measurement Cast
The Software Process and Measurement Cast Crew are off for an adventure. We will be back on December 8th with new content. In the interim, we share four gems from our back catalog of over 800 interviews, essays, and conversations. You can check out the entire catalog at . We return to August 2019 for a two-parter, with Al Shalloway. This was a long interview. We originally spread over SPaMCAST 559 and SPaMCAST 560. Today both parts are united. The conversation with Al was full of huge ideas, concepts, and calls to action. Al and I talked about the troubles dogging classic agile, the...
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Revisiting 2019 With Al Shalloway, SPaMCAST 837
Software Process and Measurement Cast
The Software Process and Measurement Cast Crew are off for an adventure. We will be back on December 8th with new content. In the interim, we share four gems from our back catalog of over 800 interviews, essays, and conversations. You can check out the entire catalog at . We return to August 2019 for a two-parter, with Al Shalloway. This was a long interview. We originally spread over SPaMCAST 559 and SPaMCAST 560. Today both parts are united. The conversation with Al was full of huge ideas, concepts, and calls to action. Al and I talked about the troubles dogging classic agile, the...
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Work Intake Halloween, A Second Opinion, Essays and Conversations with Jeremy Berriault, SPaMCAST 836
Software Process and Measurement Cast
SPaMCAST 836 celebrates Halloween. Over the years instead of just one night, people decorate their houses and celebrate for at least a month - we love a party. In celebration of what has become the seventh-largest retail holiday in the United States, let's take a spooky look at the outcome of poor work intake and celebrate that we can banish the spooks and shades of poor work intake. We also hear from in his Evolutionary Agilist column. In this episode, we discuss the impact of adding new team members to a long-lived, high-performing team when the new person wants to strike out in a new...
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Cake On Tuesday, A Conversation With Elizabeth Bieniek, SPaMCAST 835
Software Process and Measurement Cast
SPaMCAST 835 features our conversation with Elizabeth Bieniek. Elizabeth and I will discuss her new book, , and explore the basics of innovation and leadership. The insights into innovation and intrapreneurship will help all enterprises compete and deliver value to their stakeholders. Elizabeth Bieniek is an author, speaker, and consultant focused on “good peopling” as the secret to exceptional execution. As a founder and Fortune 100 innovation and engineering leadership veteran, her expertise lies in challenging assumptions, embracing diverse perspectives, and leading through...
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Battling The Walls Of Denial, New Kids On The Block – Essays and Conversations with Jon. M Quigley, SPaMCAST 834
Software Process and Measurement Cast
SPaMCAST 834 features our essay titled Battling The Walls Of Denial. The essay begins: One of the problems change agents face is promoting change when individuals, teams, and even organizations fail to recognize how their behavior hurts them and therefore don’t see the need for change. In these circumstances, you often hear fatalistic rationalizations such as, “This is just how we always do it.” Or the equally problematic, “You just don’t understand; we are special.” Just running away is not the only option. We also have a visit from Jon M. Quigley...
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Keeping Secrets Secret, A Conversation With Brian Vallelunga, SPaMCAST 833
Software Process and Measurement Cast
SPaMCAST 833 features our interview with Brian Vallelunga, founder & CEO at Doppler. Brian and I discuss the importance of managing secrets. Brian states, “Secrets are the keys to the kingdom.” Today any organization that does not secure the data they manage is asking for trouble (with a capital T).. Brian Vallelunga is the Founder and CEO of Doppler, the first secrets management platform for developers. Doppler empowers tens of thousands of engineering and DevOps teams to seamlessly orchestrate, govern, and manage their secrets across environments at scale. Brian has been...
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Conway’s Law and Agile. Testers and Test Engineers, Essays and Conversations With Jeremy Berriault, SPaMCAST 832
Software Process and Measurement Cast
SPaMCAST 832 is a later summer-early fall rerun! In July 2019, SPaMCAST 550 premiered. The cast included an essay titled, Intertwining Conway’s Law And Agile and an episode of the QA Corner with Jeremy Berriault. Jeremy discussed the differences between test engineers and testers. These topics are favorites of mine, so…while I am hiking and camping I would like to reshare the core content of SPaMCAST 550 with you. Remember all 18 years of content are available at . We will be back next week with new programming. Master Work Intake! Mastering Work Intake...
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Cracking Groupthink - Solutions When Balancing Urgency and Importance, SPaMCAST 831
Software Process and Measurement Cast
SPaMCAST 831 features our essay, Cracking Groupthink - Solutions When Balancing Urgency and Importance. Issues occur when groupthink affects the balance between urgency and importance in decision-making. This leads to inefficiencies, risk aversion, and misaligned priorities. The key challenge is that groups tend to perceive urgency and importance differently from individuals, often influenced by psychological and social dynamics such as the diffusion of responsibility, conformity, and shared information bias. There are solutions! We also have a visit from Keis Kostaqi who brings...
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Upcoming Book Club: Mastering Work Intake Announcement
Software Process and Measurement Cast
Jeremy and I will host a 4-session book club to discuss Mastering Work Intake (4 sections => 4 sessions!) beginning October 18th. We are looking forward to a great set of conversations! Join us by registering on Maven. Use the QR code below at or follow the link - Note: We are charging a nominal $1 fee, which Maven requires. Participation in the book club assumes you have (or have access to) a copy of the book and do the reading so you will be prepared.
info_outlineIn the SPaMCast 827, we will begin cracking groupthink in prioritization with a discussion of urgency vs. importance Evaluating the interplay between urgency and importance is a powerful work intake approach. Teams and project management offices regularly use an Eisenhower Matrix or variant to visualize the relationship between these two factors. The bottom line in this approach is that you should prioritize work that is important and urgent above work that is just urgent.
We also have a visit from Keis Kostaqi, MBA who brings her You Are Not Alone column to the podcast. Keis and I discuss the career path of a Scrum Master. Is there a career path or is the role a life avocation?
Master Work Intake!
Mastering Work Intake by Jeremy Willets and I hit the bookshelves earlier this year. We have also been running cohort-based workshops to help expose and solve this dirty little secret. Two of the questions we have gotten as we have promoted the workshops are:
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What is a cohort-based workshop?
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What value will I get if I join?
Both are greater questions and we have an answer!
Join us for a one-hour open house on September 11th at 11 am EDT to explore how to diagnose and solve work intake challenges, the most critical issue facing organizations today. This session will provide an overview of our course designed to help you master work intake and ensure your organization thrives.
We’ll cover key takeaways such as effective prioritization, navigating organizational structures, measuring work intake flow, and diagnosing common work intake issues. You'll leave with actionable insights and a clear plan to address work intake problems immediately.
Sign up on Eventbrite! https://bit.ly/MasteringWorkIntake
Re-read Saturday News
Chapter 2 of How To Be A Stoic by Massimo Pigliucci (buy a copy and read along) is titled “A Roadmap For The Journey.” In recent months, my wife and I have been beginning to travel in a class B van. We are taking short trips (learning the ropes) with longer trips in the offing. We rely on GPS a lot. I guess that’s not very different from most travelers. However, the more we deviate from the heavily populated and traveled routes, the less ubiquitous and solid WiFi and cell coverage we find. GPS becomes somewhat unreliable. When the GPS is intermittent you must plan for it to be unreliable. We have discovered that we need an old-school paper map. For those of a certain age, a paper map provides turn-by-turn instructions via a static interface. It also provides a sense of the overall broad journey; an early version of a search albeit manual. Chapter 2 titled “A Roadmap For The Journey“ is a paper roadmap for the remainder of How To Be A Stoic.
Week 1: Logistics and Opening Thoughts
Week 2: The Unstraightforward Path
Week 3: A Roadmap For The Journey
Next SPaMCAST
The SPaMCAST 828 will feature our conversation with Arash Parsania. We will talk about his exciting new methodology, Hyperid.is a flexible hybrid method that fits a wide range of different types of work.