Engineering Culture By Infoq

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

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby about their memories of Gerald M. (Jerry) Weinberg who passed away on the 7th of August 2018. Why listen to this podcast: • Jerry Weinberg was a highly respected thinker and author • He was instrumental in defining some of the key elements of systems thinking and quality practices for software development • The rule of three – one option is a trap, two is a dilemma and three breaks logjam thinking to enable creativity • “It’s always a human problem” • Jerry inspired people to look at things in different ways • Jerry’s advice to anyone who wanted to be like him – become the best version of yourself More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2vSo7r7 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 Fol

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Michael Cote from Pivotal Labs about “programming the business” to enable support for automation and moving towards DevOps. Why listen to this podcast: • It’s possible to move from deploying on a yearly basis to a daily basis • Adopting a new process or approach often improves things dramatically, frequently because what was being done before was not effective rather than because of the effectiveness of the new way • Change the structures so teams are focused on products, not projects, ensure all the roles needed are in the team and that they are fully dedicated to working on the product • The rift in many organizations between “the business” and IT means that business people don’t expect the software to be agile and responsive to their needs • Businesses which were founded in the tech space are inherently agile and they run using these approaches all the time. The challenge is bringing “traditional” businesses down the same path Mo

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Dan Kreigh about his experiences as the lead structural analyst working on SpaceShipOne and his personal interest in designing and building a flying car. Why listen to this podcast: • Building SpaceShipOne was an iterative and incremental project • There are many parallels between the development of SpaceShipOne and an agile software product • Dan’s definition of a flying car is one that you can drive on the freeway and to the store, then drive to an airport and take off and fly to your next destination • There are a number of debates about the best designs for flying cars with multiple different approaches to addressing the challenges • Dan’s approach is to build a flying car which will fit in a home garage using well understood technologies and incremental development More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2KfKpYo You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hott

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Jeff Dalton about the challenges of agile adoption in large organizations and the need to teach agile leaders how to teach so they can lead the cultural shift that is needed Why listen to this podcast: • The marketing of agility is going far better than the actual on the ground adoption • When process-centric, low trust organisations adopt agile they bring that approach to their agile practices • The link between the soft skills and the hard technical practices of agile is what enables high quality and real agility, but many senior managers haven’t made the connection for themselves • There is no need for a new framework – the need is to enable leaders to leverage agility and teach that to other leaders and to their teams • The re-emergence of a focus on craftsmanship is a great thing, but it is not enough More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2LOc5bq You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newslette

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Edith Harbaugh of Launch Darkly on the way she and her cofounder have deliberately engineered their organisation’s culture Why listen to this podcast: • A good engineering culture is one where there is a lot of respect for different people and roles • Start by good intent on behalf of your colleagues – everyone is doing their best • Be open to continually learning – mistakes will happen, learn from them in a blame-free way • Another aspect of respect is ensuring meetings are purposeful, have the right people involved, have a clear agenda and stay on time • To build mastery it’s OK to be bad at something in the beginning and deliberately get better • Sharing the reason why the customer chooses the product, rather than how much was earned from the sale, is motivational More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2LewoiU You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke with Matt Abrahams of BoldEcho and Stanford Graduate School of Business on becoming effective communicators, especially around speaking in public. Why listen to this podcast: • Everyone has a story to tell • Make sure you understand who you are speaking to and what it is that you can do to help them • It’s important to structuring your message in such a way as to make it easy for your audience to understand • All communication should have a goal which has three parts - information, emotion and action (what, so what, now what) • Overcoming imposter syndrome – most audiences are there to learn, they want you to be successful • It takes bravery to admit that we’re not great communicators and start on a path of learning to improve

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke with Pooja Brown, VP of Engineering at Docusign about building great engineering culture. Why listen to this podcast: • Great culture comes when people are aligned with the organisation’s mission • There are ways to bring the voice of the customer to the ears of the team and doing so creates empathy and results in better products • Transparency and openness around what matters to the company helps ensure people align with those goals • Every engineer is responsible for ensuring that the code they write is reliable, available and secure • Fairness and transparency are key to great culture • Being a people manager requires technical knowledge for credibility but is not about providing technical leadership; many people confuse the two More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2KapXgc You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest topics from professional software dev

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke with Jarrod Overson of Shape Security about the reason for and the content in the Beyond Being an Individual Contributor track at QCon San Francisco, and he offers advice for current and aspirant technical leaders. Why listen to this podcast: • Many technologists get the opportunity to move into leadership roles but receive no training or guidance about what skills such a role needs • Solving other people’s problems as quickly as possible is an important aspect of a leadership role – this is very different to being an individual contributor where the focus is on solving your own problems • Advice for aspirant leaders: assume you are in the role you want and practice doing everything you think should be done in that role • There is a bias among software developers against what is perceived as “old” knowledge – practices that have been around for decades and centuries – this is very wrong • The problems of software engineering have not ye

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke with Susan McIntosh, an InfoQ editor, agile practitioner and scrum master who works in the area of cultural change about the impacts that the lack of diversity in tech has and some ways to address the inherent imbalances in the system. Why listen to this podcast: • There is a significant diversity challenge in the information technology industry • Women are the primary decision makers in shopping but the IT industry as a whole doesn’t consider the women’s perspective when designing and building products • The common misconception that confidence equates to competence and how that impacts people who may be very competent but may be uncomfortable putting themselves forward • Some advice on how organisations can encourage people to “bring your whole self to work” and create a safe, supportive culture • Being valued as a complete person in the workplace improves engagement and commitment to the organisation, and benefits the employee, empl

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Chris Manuel who heads the global test engineering service for Mindtree about continuous testing, cultural change and creating a culture of quality in organisations Why listen to this podcast: • The application portfolio of every organisation has become much more complex and this needs different ways of approaching the testing challenges that just having legions of people banging away at keyboards • The value of moving away from testing at the end to injecting quality throughout the lifecycle • This needs to extend beyond just testing functionality in the product, it needs rethinking about testing at the different levels and different targets in parallel • The value of bringing analytics into the right-hand side of the software development lifecycle and feeding that information into the ongoing development activities • There are lots of things that prevent the effective collaboration and mitigate against developer-tester collaboratio

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Dominica DeGrandis about time thieves, making work visible, the important themes from the DevOps Enterprise Summit and ways to be more productive. Why listen to this podcast: • If we can understand the thieves of time better we can get some time back from our overburdened work-life • Having too much work in progress is the mother of all the other thieves of time • Much of our work is based on arbitrary rather than real due dates • Most daily stand up events take too long because of the focus on status - Instead of talking about what people are doing rather talk about what’s blocking them • Different type of works needs different time focus – managers vs makers • The value of having a regular cadence for meetings and for “Do Not Disturb” time • The danger, and harm, that comes about from believing there are “best” practices which can be applied in complex or complicated domains More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on Info

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Steve Holyer about collaboration, culture and teams, and the state of the Agile Fluency projects. Why listen to this podcast: • Diverse lived experiences make people better individuals and team members • How important psychological safety is for teams • We all have unconscious biases and our language reflects this • The value in the Agile Fluency Model is the outcomes we can produce by using it • The Agile Fluency Model helps teams and organisations figure out how to identify value and prioritize work • The product owner as the facilitator of conversations so the shared understanding of value can emerge More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2jUipyu 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/In

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Shannon Mason, Laureen Knudsen and Steve Wolfe about a wide range of topics from agile marketing to using data effectively to drive strategy, to organisation incentives and neuroscience. Why listen to this podcast: • While there are differences in the application of agile ideas in different domains, the principles apply across the board • An effective agile environment produces good data for executive decision making • To be able to use the data effectively the culture needs to support psychological safety • Agile adoption forces organisations to confront dysfunctional practices • The shift from seeing oneself as the individual contributor to part of a collective group who achieve success together is very hard • Define your ways of working so they work with how people’s brains work, and there is no single process which works for everyone or every area of the organisation More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ ht

This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Diana Larsen about organisational design for team effectiveness, having the best possible worklife and the evolution of the Agile Fluency Model Why listen to this podcast: • Organisation design is a distinct subset of organisation development • For teams to be effective, every team needs a clear purpose – why are we doing this work • Team effectiveness comes from every member of the team committing to working on the purpose together in collaboration and committing to making the best possible worklife for everybody else on the team • Many organisation’s motivation systems mitigate against teamwork and care for each other’s wellbeing • Deliberate practice is the investment you make in learning that gets you to a state of fluency which allows you to take on the next challenge More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https:/

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, talks to Tony Grout and Chris Matts about building an IT risk management framework at a large bank and using that as a catalyst for a digital transformation. Why listen to this podcast: • Just deploying another prescriptive method will not make an organisation agile and adaptive • A risk management framework can be a catalyst for change • The components of a simple framework which enables adaptation at the team level while ensuring alignment to organisational outcomes • The importance of an organisational-level backlog which is transparently prioritised to ensure the teams who need to collaborate have clarity about cross-cutting priorities • Ensuring that controls are as easy to evidence as possible and that there very low overhead in gathering the metrics 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 Lik

In this podcast recorded at Agile 2017, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Ahmed Sidky and Michael Robillard of Riot Games about their experiences in product management for a comprehensive gaming experience Why listen to this podcast: • The need for a framework to make really tough product decisions • The importance of a clear strategy when faced with many good ideas - selecting which ones not to pursue • In the Agile community most of the conversation is about being better product owners, not having better product strategy and this is a gap • In the product space there are lots of loosely defined terms (outcome, impact, mission, vision, strategy…) so aligning on common terminology and meaning was an important early step • There are models and frameworks for strategic product management which draw on multiple sources • To have agility in the tactical space you need to have it in the strategic space • Anybody in the product development lifecycle should be able to think strategically M

In this podcast recorded at Agile 2017, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke Troy Magennis about his talks at the conference on “I love the smell of data in the morning” and “10 ways to choose what to start next” Why listen to this podcast: • The absence of data means all you have is an opinion • The simplest way to start gathering data in software development is to put the starting date/time on one corner, the ending date/time on another corner and use different colour post-its for different types of work • It’s the trend that’s important, not any one week of data • Your job is to make better decisions with the least amount of effort • Context is hard to spot if you are in the middle of it – you need to be able to step away and see from a different perspective • The job of a leader is to help the people who report to you understand the bigger picture and the impact of their decisions on the whole More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2HAIBcs You can a