Engineering Culture By Infoq

In this podcast recorded at the Agile 2018 conference Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Seb Rose, a dispassionate developer, and one of the principals of Cucumber Limited about his work at Cucumber, the Cyber-dojo charity, designing a robust certification program and involving testers in code reviews Why listen to this podcast: • Cucumber is more than a testing tool – it is a collaboration tool • There is a lot of confusion around what Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) is and isn’t • BDD is made up of three distinct practices: Discovery, Formulation and Automation – Cucumber is only about the Automation practice • Provide concrete examples to communicate business needs using BDD to ensure that business rules are defined unambiguously • Cyber-dojo is a place for people to practice their coding skills on many platforms • Ideas around designing a robust certification scheme The value of having testers involved in code reviews goes far beyond reading the code

In this podcast recorded at the Agile 2018 conference Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Lyssa Adkins and Halim Dunsky about the current state of agile coaching, the competencies and skills that coaches need to develop and the journey that the Agile Coaching Institute has taken since they became part of Accenture Why listen to this podcast: • The wide range of approaches which exist in agile coaching, while remaining aligned with common learning objectives • There is a marked difference between people who have put in the effort to build deep and wide coaching competency and those who have not done so, and organisation are becoming more discerning about who they engage in the coaching role • Key competencies for effective coaching are about the ability to reach people on a human-to-human level • There shouldn’t be a distinction between the scrummaster and agile coach roles – scrummasters should be coaches • Even the most experienced and knowledgeable coaches can and do fall prey to h

In this podcast recorded at the Agile 2018 conference Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Jeff Patton about moving from project to product thinking; whole team product ownership and satisfying the real customer needs. Why listen to this podcast: • There is a lack of focus on product in the agile community – the emphasis has been on projects • “Project” and “product” are used interchangeably, yet they are two very different things • If you are building a product that is sold to end consumers, then they are your customer, not “the business”; the focus on “the business” means we build products to satisfy the internal perceived needs, not the real customer needs • When we start measuring outcomes, we realize that we’re wrong a lot and begin to embrace experimentation Implementing effective measurement takes engineering – instrumentation needs to be built into the product More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2R9ZiDT You can also subscribe to the InfoQ n

In this podcast recorded at the Agile 2018 conference Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Phil Brock and Paul Hammond of the Agile Alliance about the current state of the Alliance and plans for the future. Why listen to this podcast: • Agile 2018 had around 2400 attendees, from 54 countries and 900 companies, with over 270 sessions across the five days of the conference • The Agile Alliance initiatives represent the areas that the Alliance is involved in and supporting their members globally • The mission of the alliance is to create an inclusive global community, advance the breadth and depth of agile and provide value to the member community • Affiliates are being established where there is a strong community that wants to come together and have a more local focus with support that is appropriate for the local context Being a part of the agile community implies that one is participating, not simply consuming More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2A

In this podcast recorded at QCon New York, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Sangeeta Narayanan of Netflix about improving the developer experience, and why it matters. Why listen to this podcast: • Developer Experience is about making it easy and simple for software to be developed, released and operated • It’s about identifying and removing whatever creates friction in the process of building software • Modern approaches increase the cognitive load on engineers in every part of the process, DevEx tries to reduce that load • The tools and infrastructure you use to build the system is as important as the production environment – treat your tooling in the same way you treat your production environment • DevEx goes beyond the tools into anything which influences the ability to do effective work, the culture, motivation, team and individual health and productivity More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2rwkQeM You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsle

In this podcast recorded at the Agile 2018 conference Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Simon Powers of Adventures with Agile about helping organisations move from siloed groups to large product teams, he gave advice for new managers and discussed the trends he sees happening in large organisations. Why listen to this podcast: • The challenges of making businesses more successful through technology • Today the challenges are less technological and more cultural • The team is everyone who works on the product or service, working collaboratively to meet customer needs – this could be hundreds of people and they all need to have consistent goals • We are looking to create a structure that enables truly self-organizing teams at scale • The role of middle-tier leaders is to truly adopt a servant leadership mindset and help work out what the team can do to solve their own problems, rather than solving the problems for the team ore on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https

In this podcast recorded at the Agile 2018 conference Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Dominic Price from Atlassian about his opening keynote at the Agile 2018 conference. Why listen to this podcast: • Agile is an answer to teams working together effectively, but it is not the only answer • A lot of large-scale “transformations” are about AGILE being thrust around as a compliance regime where the measures of success are the following of rituals • The example of an organisation who moved from “agile transformation” to “new ways of working”. The difference is that “agile” is not the only answer and in a “transformation” there is an expectation of an end-state whereas new ways of working are continually evolving • Many of the things we call “soft skills” are in fact very hard and they are the key to success in making change in organisations • The need to focus on the mental health and wellbeing of people in the organisation – we believe we are custodians of our people More on this: Q

In this podcast recorded at the Agile 2018 conference Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Diana Larsen about the evolution of the Agile Fluency model, the rate of adoption of new ideas in organisations, organisation design and being an ally. Why listen to this podcast: • The ideas around agile fluency have evolved through feedback and use in the field • New ideas take time to be adopted in organisations and agile is far from prevalent • Agile ways of working will become “the way we do things” but it will take time • There is a diagnostic instrument which allows teams to undertake self-reflection and explore areas they want to improve • The organisation design community have a lot of knowledge about things that the agile community can learn from • Diversity and inclusiveness are still issues in the agile and broader IT community, but things are improving • The single most powerful tool to combat racism/sexism and help diversity and inclusion grow is the action of bystanders More on

In this podcast recorded after the JAFAC 2018 conference Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke Miki Szikszai and Sandy Mamoli about Snapper’s adoption of holacracy. Why listen to this podcast: • Clarity of purpose is key for an organisation looking to improve their ways of working • The sign of a good coach is when they realise they need to step away so the client can stand on their own • The most important skills are around collaboration, teamwork, innovation and empathy, not technologies and tools • Holacracy is a system to create a self-organising organisation where decisions are made at the right level with a hierarchy of purpose rather than a hierarchy of people • Holacracy amplifies the culture you already have – so get the culture right first More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2zLL7cx You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest topics from professional software development. bit.ly/24x3IVq Subscribe

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Jim Rose of Circle CI about building a great engineering culture in a distributed, remote team. Why listen to this podcast: • Hiring engineers is a difficult task • Working in a completely remote organisation takes a particular type of person • It’s crucial that the engineering teams understand and empathise with their customers • You won’t find new and creative ways to solve problems unless you experiment and try new things, and some of those things won’t work • Ensure that your recruiting and hiring practices match the values of the company and that the onboarding process reinforces this • Ensure there is no “in vs out” – ensure everyone has the experience irrespective of where they are located More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2PB0oHh You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest topics from professional software development. bit.ly/24x3IVq Subscri

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Jeff Foster of Red Gate on their approach to continuous learning through 10% time, open space and running an internal conference. Why listen to this podcast: • The best software is software that people • The only secret to great engineering is simplicity • No matter how hard you try to enable people to take the 10% time, they take their deadlines to heart and the natural inclination is to focus on the work rather than the learning time • Teams should not focus on the backlog items they are completing, rather on the difference they are making for the end user of the product • Running a conference is tough, but by engaging the people in the event organisation it can be powerfully successful More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2zdk21C You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest topics from professional software development. bit.ly/24x3IVq Subscribe: www

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Jutta Eckstein and John Buck about their new book: Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space and Sociocracy – BOSSA-Nova Why listen to this podcast: • The pressing question: if democracy is good, why aren’t businesses using it • The new book is a theoretical framework for organizations to help agile spread philosophy across whole organizations • Just using Agile company-wide is not enough • In the VUCA times we live in require that companies are able to make quick and fast decisions – sociocracy provides this ability • Beyond Budgeting provides guidance on how finance, accounting, HR and management needs to change in the new environment • Open Space is a great way to bring alignment and commitment into the organization More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2PNUOOp You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest topics from professional softwa

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Fred George about the need to solve “fuzzy problems” and approaches to doing so. Why listen to this podcast: • Fuzzy problems are ones which don’t have precise answers but they are the places where most money is being made in the modern economy • Applying the thinking that works for traditional problems to fuzzy problems causes frustration because the underlying assumption that the problem will have a single solution is wrong • The rules for solving fuzzy problems are related to the speed of trying out ideas and learning rather and so competitive advantage accrues to fast delivery • Most organisations have a mix of traditional and fuzzy problems – segregate the teams and use the appropriate approach for the problem type • If you’re doing agile the same way in all your teams you’re probably not doing agile anymore More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2J1xBpg You can also subscribe to the InfoQ ne

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Todd Little, CEO of LeanKanban Inc about how organizations can use Kanban to identify bottlenecks and improve flow in their business processes. Why listen to this podcast: • Kanban is a more natural way of working for more experienced teams • Kanban tells you to start wherever you are at and make change incrementally • Only if you deeply understand your system can you deeply improve it • Kanban helps collaboration through allowing the team focus on where the work is and what we can do to get the work to flow through the system • Continuous improvement is the fundamental underlying idea of Kanban More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2OMVuq5 You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest topics from professional software development. bit.ly/24x3IVq Subscribe: www.youtube.com/infoq Like InfoQ on Facebook: bit.ly/2jmlyG8 Follow on Twitter: twitter.com/InfoQ Fol

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Linda Rising about Daniel Kahneman’s work on Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow, overcoming bias in the employment process and resisting social pressure in decision making. Why listen to this podcast: • Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast Thinking Slow based on the research he did with Amos Tversky into how the human brain works, for which Kahneman win the 2011 Nobel Prize for Economics, is hard to read. Linda wants to make the ideas more accessible • One part is known as System One – the part that reacts quickly, never sleeps, where our cognitive biases reside and is the home of our expertise • The second part known as System Two is the conscious mind, somewhat associated with the prefrontal cortex, it is the part that sleeps and wakes and where considered decision making happens • In the hiring process, and other important decisions, it is vital to involve more than one person because awareness of the possibility of bias enables you

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Bernie Maloney of Persistent Systems about servant leadership and bringing out human potential. Why listen to this podcast: - Servant leadership is about creating a space through which other people can succeed and stepping back to let them do so. It matters because it requires empathy and compassion. - Organizations that don’t change to the new ways of working are being disrupted out of existence - Teams need to learn new ways of working, especially collaboration over individual specialization - There are no models and structures in place to help leaders make the jump to letting go and trusting their teams to do the work – this is new territory. More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2OcVejX You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest topics from professional software development. bit.ly/24x3IVq Subscribe: www.youtube.com/infoq Like InfoQ on Facebook:

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Dave West, Chief Product Owner of Scrum.org about the state of Scrum, the latest revision to the Scrum Guide, the rise of Digital and the way Scrum.org maintains its courseware. Why listen to this podcast: • Scrum continues to be the dominant force in agile/digital/lean startup approaches • As complexity grows in our world the value of Scrum continues to grow • If you’re not doing Scrum per the book it doesn’t mean you’re “wrong”, just don’t call it Scrum • It’s not optional to improve how you work – it’s mandatory! • Scrum is fundamentally about dealing with complexity and improving productivity • Digital is about building organisations that are very different and able to take advantage of new technologies with new business models • Organisations need to move very strongly towards a product mindset and a product structured organisational architecture More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2xjpDDv

In this podcast recorded at the Agile India conference Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to John Le Drew about solving technical problems by addressing the people issues. Why listen to this podcast: • Very diverse teams will naturally have conflict, but they still produce better outcomes despite the journey being more of a struggle to get there • Cognitive biases are real and are an evolutionary survival tactic and we need to be very mindful of them • We all like to think that we aren’t biased, but the imbalances in team formation and hiring practices are still perpetuated • We can’t reprogram our brains to remove biases, the way to overcome them is to be aware of them • If you address your people as unique human beings with individual needs and work out how to support them in the best way possible for their needs then you will get better outcomes More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2x79tfD You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receiv

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Aurynn Shaw about how DevOps, Microservices and other “technical” approaches are in fact cultural constraints on technical ideas and what’s needed to make the culture sustainable. Key takeaways: * Running and testing a program on the developer desktop is not running the program * You must rethink the approach to building the software based on the way it will be deployed * DevOps isn’t about the tooling – it is about the context in which we find ourselves * Sustainable DevOps is about understanding the system that makes up the organisation ecosystem and what needs to change to enable the new ways of working * Design the system to help prevent dangerous actions rather than laying blame when something goes wrong * As a technologist you want to say “yes” – fix the systems around you that force you to say “no” * When examining the system we will discover that we’ve done things that we’re not happy about and must accept that they happene

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Sanjeev Sharma, a Distinguished Engineer at IBM, on the challenges for large enterprises adopting DevOps at scale and what it really means to have a DevOps culture Why listen to this podcast: • There is no single “why” for adopting DevOps – each organisation is unique and the adoption approach should be based around what they are trying to optimize • DevOps is not a methodology – it is a set of guiding principles • As more and more parts of the business get to the higher levels of maturity you get to DevOps adoption at scale • The biggest challenge to adopting DevOps in a large enterprise is overcoming cultural inertia • The cultural impact of DevOps needs to be about building trust across silos in the organisation • There is a need for DevOps coaches who have skills that go deep into the operations areas, not just rebranded Agile coaches More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2wmiDEv You can also s