Squirrel helps teams split their work into tiny "slices" they can release daily or weekly, and finds that the biggest obstacle is all the things that developers think they know about users, many of which they have to first unlearn.
 
SHOW LINKS:
- Original tweet: https://twitter.com/douglassquirrel/status/1435602671306674176
- Falsehoods programmers believe about names: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/
- Elephant carpaccio: https://alistair.cockburn.us/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Elephant-Carpaccio-exercise-instructions.pdf
- Will Rogers: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/11/18/know-trouble/
 
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Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!
 
We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.
 
Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Unlearning Helps You Slice Your Work

When your team misses a sprint goal, or you let down a stakeholder, you or your team may feel guilty—but we make concrete recommendations, using Pixar movies and Adlerian psychology, for grief as a more effective alternative that leads to faster recovery and improvement.
 
SHOW LINKS:
- The Courage to be Disliked: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43306206-the-courage-to-be-disliked
- Feeling Good podcast: https://feelinggood.com
- Wisdom at Work meetup: https://www.meetup.com/Wisdom-at-Work-Online-MeetUp
- Sadness and Joy from Inside Out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6FdhKriB8
- Just Say No to Need: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/just-say-no-to-need
 
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Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!
 
We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.
 
Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Choosing Grief over Guilt

This week, we bring you one of our most popular previous episodes to refresh your memory or listen to for the first time.

The first chapter of Agile Conversations is all about people-centred development, and we tell the story of our own journey from over-determined software factory to today's feature factories, with similar Taylorist theories of management in both. In today's episode, we go into more depth on the causes of this tragic journey, touching on old and new topics like Theories X and Y, the Cynefin framework, and why there isn't a JIRA plugin for conversational quality.

SHOW LINKS:
- Taylorism: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management
- Theories X and Y: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y
- 12 Signs You're Working in a Feature Factory by John Cutler: cutle.fish/blog/12-signs-youre…n-a-feature-factory
- Cargo cults: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult and www.jamesshore.com/Blog/Cargo-Cult-Agile.html
- Cockburn on people: web.archive.org/web/2014032920365…tware+development
- Cynefin: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework

Episode transcript: https://agileconversations.com/blog/software-factory-to-feature-factory/

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Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.
 
Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Greatest Hits - Software Factory To Feature Factory

Turning our usual subject on its head, this week we start a short series on how to make sure your team does NOT improve. The first assumption to this end: the belief that you understand the situation while others don't. The change that's needed is obvious; all you have to do is convince others to adopt it. Easily adaptable to kanban, scrum, SAFe, or any other method that seems (to you!) to be the solution to your problems. Try it today, and tune in to further episodes for more ways to ensure you don't succeed in making effective changes!

SHOW LINKS:

- How Unilateral Control Undermines Team Results and Relationships, Schwarz: http://www.schwarzassociates.com/managing-performance/how-unilateral-control-undermines-team-results-and-relationships-2/

- Naive realism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism 

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We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.

Email us: see link on troubleshootingagile.com

Tweet us: twitter.com/TShootingAgile

Also, if you'd like to leave us a review on iTunes (or just like and subscribe), you'll find us here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/troubleshooting-agile/id1327456890?mt=2

How to Fail by Acting Unilaterally - Part I

We answer a listener question about standups for feature teams, but we think the problem is actually a larger one of disengagement. A common symptom is people sitting down for their standup (oxymoron alert!) We recommend some ways to overcome disengagement using Coherence Busting and the Ladder of Inference, tools we've been discussing on recent podcasts.

SHOW LINKS:

- Feature teams: http://featureteams.org
- Ladder of Inference episodes: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/test-driven-development-for-people and https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/introspection-with-the-ladder-of-inference
- Coherence busting: https://blog.jeffreyfredrick.com/2016/04/08/coherence-busting-explained/ and https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/removing-the-blame-frame

***

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.

Email us: see link on troubleshootingagile.com

Tweet us: twitter.com/TShootingAgile

Also, if you'd like to leave us a review on iTunes (or just like and subscribe), you'll find us here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/troubleshooting-agile/id1327456890?mt=2

The Sit-Down Standup and Other Woes

The US Defense Department (yes, the huge bureaucratic government body) recently released a brief and readable guide to troubleshooting your agile team. We have a look at three of its six key recommendations for figuring out whether you're agile team isn't really agile - which leads us to discuss what end-users really are and why financial traders are so insane.

SHOW LINKS:

- Detecting Agile BS: https://media.defense.gov/2018/Oct/09/2002049591/-1/-1/0/DIB_DETECTING_AGILE_BS_2018.10.05.PDF

- The Defense Innovation Board: https://innovation.defense.gov

***

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.

Email us: see link on troubleshootingagile.com

Tweet us: twitter.com/TShootingAgile

Also, if you'd like to leave us a review on iTunes (or just like and subscribe), you'll find us here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/troubleshooting-agile/id1327456890?mt=2

How to Detect Agile BS - Part 1

We're up to chapter 4 of Agile Conversations: "Fear: The Default Feeling". We look at why defaulting to fear was a successful adaptation for our ancestors and why it serves us poorly now, for example leading to the phenomenon of "greenshifting" that can lead to catastrophic misunderstandings. We explain why starting sentences with the phrase "I'm afraid that..." can help you expose and reduce fear in your team.

SHOW LINKS:

- Previous episodes and blog posts on fear and related techniques: 
    - https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/overcoming-normalisation-of-deviance
    - https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/removing-the-blame-frame
    - https://blog.jeffreyfredrick.com/2016/04/08/coherence-busting-explained/
    - https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/greenshifting
- Greenshifting: https://www.drdobbs.com/dr-dobbs-agile-newsletter/191600661

Episode transcript: https://www.conversationaltransformation.com/posts/fear-the-original-sin-of-unproductive-conversations/

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Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://conversationaltransformation.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.
 
Email us at info@conversationaltransformation.com

Fear: The Original Sin of Unproductive Conversations

Squirrel describes a client of his that is "thrashing"—trying to do so many different things that they aren't getting anything finished. We reflect on why this happens, including the idea that being busy feels good while increasing focus can mean disrupting comfortable routines. We suggest asking "why can't we finish this today?" as a forcing mechanism for discovering bottlenecks and alternative approaches.

SHOW LINKS:
- Theory of Constraints: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_constraints
- Domenica DeGrandis, Making Work Visible: https://itrevolution.com/book/making-work-visible/

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Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://conversationaltransformation.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.
 
Email us at info@conversationaltransformation.com

Thrashing vs Focus

One of Squirrel's clients finds herself "harping on" a particular point in her technical team, and is frustrated that behaviour doesn't change. Squirrel and Jeffrey discuss how this and other "tells" indicate that you're stuck and how to come up with a pre-planned action to address these that will help you be curious and get to improved performance.

SHOW LINKS:
- Self-sealing: https://pages.uoregon.edu/mgall/designmemo%233.htm
- Bozo bit: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/the-bozo-bit-and-duelling-ladders

---

Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://conversationaltransformation.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.
 
Email us at info@conversationaltransformation.com

How to Stop "Harping"

A reader asks whether following the "bad idea" advice from last episode can lead to an unrecoverable local maximum, sentencing the team to endless patches and obscure bugs. Squirrel and Jeffrey have different takes on this based on their ancient greybeard stories.

SHOW LINKS:

- The Power of a Bad Idea episode: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/the-power-of-a-bad-idea
- Local maximum: https://www.mathsisfun.com/algebra/functions-maxima-minima.html
- The Strangler Fig Application: https://martinfowler.com/bliki/StranglerFigApplication.html

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Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://conversationaltransformation.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.

Email us at info@conversationaltransformation.com

A Series of Unfortunate Ideas?

Troubleshooting Agile is a problem-solving session for agile teams. Jeffrey Fredrick and Douglas Squirrel look at common problems agile teams face and provide practical, immediately useful advice for getting back on track.

Popular tracks tagged #troubleshooting agile