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

We continue our mini-series on how to learn by considering ways to realise your learning - that is, how to convert what you've learnt (say, from a retrospective) into changed behaviour. We discuss how and why to create pre-planned actions in response to situations where you'd like to do better, for instance software outages or suspiciously optimistic delivery dates.

SHOW LINKS:

- Feynman on the Challenger disaster: https://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/rogers-commission/Appendix-F.txt

- Reg Revans, Action Learning: https://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/ocsld/resources/theories.html#action

- Helicopter pilot story: https://www.verticalmag.com/features/ejection-decision/

- Ejection Decision: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa1Ba_NEobs

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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

Ways to Learn Continued: Pre-Planned Actions

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

Your brain has two halves - not called left and right, but System 1 and System 2. Today we explain how these two halves of your own brain wind up fooling you and your team into believing things like "New York decided to do this", "customers don't want that feature", and "the business won't let us write tests" - and what you can do to keep your brain from tricking you into believing suspiciously coherent stories.

Join us in London on 19 March for our talk on "Sprinting In Place: The Cost of Missing Leadership Conversations"!

SHOW LINKS:

- Thinking, Fast and Slow by Kahneman: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0141033576  

- Our SkillsMatter talk on 19 March: https://skillsmatter.com/meetups/11800-leadership-matters

***

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

Why You Shouldn't Listen to Your Brain

You can invest a lot of your time in making your software delivery predictable (a la NASA) or in making your team productive (a la early stage startups). Which is best? We introduce the idea of a "tilted slider" to explain this tradeoff, and the "gravity" that pulls you toward predictability even when it may not be the best emphasis. And as usual, we have stories of effective and ineffective action from our own experiences.

SHOW LINKS:
- Cowboy coding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_coding

***

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

Predictability - Productivity Axis

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

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

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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

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