Cracking Groupthink - Solutions When Balancing Urgency and Importance, SPaMCAST 831
Software Process and Measurement Cast
Release Date: 09/29/2024
Symptoms Are Not The Root Cause Of Pain, New Team Mates, Essays and Conversation with Susan Parente, SPaMCAST 842
Software Process and Measurement Cast
In January of 2024, JRoss Publishing brought Mastering Work Intake by and I to the world. The activities supporting the book have been a blast! One of the common problems we have observed as we have spread the message is that often those with the biggest work intake problem get mesmerized by the symptoms and fail to see the root cause of the problem. When this happens the symptom becomes the root cause causing people and organizations to spend significant amounts of time and money fixing the wrong problem. To borrow a line from Manfred Mann, they are “.” We will discuss this topic in a...
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Open Source, Learning, Careers, and Leadership with Gorkem Ercan, SPaMCAST 841
Software Process and Measurement Cast
We are back from our adventure and our trips down memory lane (at least for a while). Today we feature our interview with Gorkem Ercan. We discussed open source, leadership, and learning. FYI – this podcast has a ton of great advice for anyone pursuing a career in software development! Gorkem Ercan is a founding Distinguished Engineer and CTO of Jozu. Gorkem has experience working and leading teams with various technologies ranging from building IDEs, to building mobile phones, and CI/CD systems. He is an avid contributor and supporter of open source. Gorkem is the creator of the wildly...
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Revisiting Paul Gibbons and Impact, SPaMCAST 840
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 . Our final trip down memory lane with Paul Gibbons. This week we step back to SPaMCAST 582 from January 2020. In this episode, Paul and I discussed his new book I. The interview started by exploring the high-level factors that influence change and then spun down into areas such as the future of work, biases, and...
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Revisiting Jodie Kane and Product Owners In Retrospectives. SPaMCAST 839
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 June 202 (SPaMCAST 605) for a conversation with Jodie Kane. Jodie and I discussed involving product owners in retrospectives. Jodie suggests the answer should not be cut and dry but rather context-driven. Master Work Intake! Join one of two upcoming Mastering Work Intake Workshops to help you learn...
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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...
info_outlineSPaMCAST 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 her You Are Not Alone column to the podcast.
Master Work Intake!
Mastering Work Intake by Jeremy Willets and myself is your path to addressing IT’s most nefarious dirty little secret…poor work intake. Simply put if you don’t control work intake IT CONTROLS YOU! Buy a copy and begin to control the flow of work for your team and organization.
Order a copy of the book from JRoss Publishing - https://bit.ly/474ul6G or via Amazon - https://bit.ly/474ul6G
Re-read Saturday News
Chapter 6 of How To Be A Stoic by Massimo Pigliucci (buy a copy and read along) is titled God or Atoms? discusses the Stoic view of God. As I have discussed this chapter with friends it becomes very easy to conflate Stoism with religion. I remind myself in these scenarios that Stoicism is not a religion. At a high level, the difference is that philosophy seeks to understand and question while religion often provides answers and a framework for belief and practice. The difference and the interrelationship are stark.
Week 1: Logistics and Opening Thoughts
Week 2: The Unstraightforward Path
Week 3: A Roadmap For The Journey
Week 4: Some Things Are In Our Power, Others Are Not
Week 5: Live According To Nature
Week 6: Playing Ball With Socrates
Week 7: God or Atoms?
Next SPaMCAST
SPaMCAST 832 is a rerun of SPaMCAST 550 (I will be hiking in the Appalachian Mountains). This cast features our essay titled, Intertwining Conway’s Law And Agile. Conway’s Law shines a spotlight on how an organization’s structure impacts its product. The “Law” states that the structure of a software product will mimic the structure of the organization that produces the software. It can (and has) been said that you are shipping the “org structure.” How you are structured therefore will impact just how much agility you can achieve.
We also visit the QA Corner with Jeremy Berriault. Jeremy discusses the differences between test engineers and testers. We also tackle whether every person with the word test in their title should have the ability to code or script. Jeremy’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-berriault-mba/