Hearing about different scaling frameworks and wondering which one is for you? Join host Mark Griffin and guest Jenny Stuart for an overview of the popular Agile scaling frameworks SAFe, Nexus, and LeSS, including their strengths and relative weaknesses. We’ll cover the frameworks’ core techniques and approaches; this will provide you with a basis for determining whether one of these frameworks is a good fit. Jenny will also provide six scaling recommendations for you to think about regardless of the framework you might be considering.

Inspect and Adapt

#30 Scaling Agile: Three Agile Scaling Frameworks and Six Scaling Recommendations

Today’s episode focuses on the very basis of Agile: its principles and values. Steve McConnell recently gave a keynote at XP2021 in which he said they need to be updated. You&apos;ll hear a quick recap of Agile’s beginnings, what was happening in software development when people got together at that Snowbird conference: primarily "code & fix" and the SW-CMM (Software-Capability Maturity Model). Steve will describe the current non-agile institutionalization of Agile. Then Steve and Mark will work one by one through the Agile values and principles to describe their relevance (or lack of relevance) to today&apos;s software development practices and culture.

#29 Twenty Years Is Enough! It’s Time to Update the Agile Principles and Values

Working with external software development partners often increases stress for the existing internal staff. A Construx client asked us to conduct research with our clients on approaches to reducing this stress. We identified six recommendations and related specific actions that organizations can take to decrease internal stress and improve overall teamwork with their partners.Join Construx Senior Fellow Earl Beede as he describes the results of this client-driven research. You&apos;ll learn the six recommendations and specific actions you can take to lower your internal staff’s stress. You&apos;ll also hear about some case studies that describe what worked and what didn’t work in the case of several specific external partnerships Construx studied.

#28 Six Ways to Decrease Stress in Development Partnerships

Construx VP of Consulting Jenny Stuart and Mark Griffin cleared up common misconceptions about Kanban in Episode #19. In Episode #24, they discussed numerous best practices for establishing and optimizing your Kanban system. Here, they focus on seeing the big picture—working with Kanban at higher levels of workflow. Topics included setting up program-level and portfolio-level Kanban boards. Jenny shares various approaches she&apos;s used with clients to determine work items, model the workflow, define exit criteria, and establish WIP limits at the program level, a much higher level of abstraction than user stories. Also discussed are Kanban in the context of SAFe and two-tier Kanban boards, which illustrate multiple levels of abstraction or types of work on one board: epics and features at one level and user stories or children stories underneath.

#27 More Effective Kanban, Part 3: Kanban for Portfolios and Programs

For the past year, Steve McConnell has applied his extensive estimation expertise to a timely problem: Covid-19 forecasting. Steve’s Covid Complete Data Center provides US national data, state data for every state, state scorecards, forecasts, forecast evaluations, and other data on the pandemic: https://stevemcconnell.com/covidcomplete/ His Covid Complete forecasting model has been accepted into the US Center for Disease Control’s “Ensemble” model, which means that it is one of the models driving overall CDC forecasting. In this episode, host Mark Griffin and Steve explore what Steve has learned from his modeling efforts and the lessons learned that are valuable for the software world. You’ll learn the importance of the following for software estimation: using historical data, keeping "control knobs" to a minimum, the difference between accuracy and precision, the difference between reported and actual ground truth, and the absolute necessity of closing the loop and judging your forecasts’ accuracy and effectiveness.

#26 Software Estimation Lessons Learned from Covid-19 Forecasting

We thought we’d do something fun to start our second season and use a familiar vehicle to help new listeners and our old friends understand Construx’s software engineering expertise. And how are we going to do that? We’re going to use beer! You might be thinking, "Well, now you have my attention." Host Mark Griffin and Construx consultant Steve Tockey are accomplished home brewers, with 39 years of beer-brewing experience between them. In this first part of the conversation, they’ll work through the beginning phases of software development—requirements, design, and estimation—choosing beers that pair well with each phase, given the similar desired outcome of the particular beer and the software phase. Learn, for example, how software design is similar to an English IPA. We’re pretty sure you’ve never heard anything quite like this.

#25 Crafting Software, Part 1: Beers to Pair with Requirements, Design, & Estimation

Construx VP of Consulting Jenny Stuart and Mark Griffin cleared up common misconceptions about Kanban in the first episode in this series (episode #19). This time they cover numerous best practices for establishing your initial Kanban system—determining work item types, workflow, work state policies, work-in-progress limits, and more—and running it well, including multiple approaches to handling blocked items and replenishing the queue of work. The conversation concludes with ways to optimize the system to make it better for the business and better for the people using it. Data-driven metrics such as cumulative flow diagrams, cycle time performance, and lead time performance are extremely useful here.This episode went a little longer than we expected—there’s so much information to share! If you’d like to absorb the episode in two sittings, a good stopping/restarting place is at 44:52, where the discussion of metrics begins.

#24 More Effective Kanban, Part 2: Operating and Optimizing Your Kanban System

It&apos;s a sad truth that many software teams are working with no explicit definition of success.Join Construx Senior Fellow Erik Simmons and Mark Griffin to learn about the landing zone, a table that you can use to define success in a quantified, explicit way. Erik played a role in the development of the landing zone method during his time at Intel, so you&apos;re learning about it from one of its earliest proponents.In addition to learning how to build landing zones and when to use them, you&apos;ll learn what makes a good success definition, the benefits of using landing zones (including creating accountability and transparency and enabling distributed decision making), tips for creating your first landing zones, who should be involved when creating them, how you can use landing zones with OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), and much more.Learn more about Landing Zones from Erik&apos;s on-demand webinar: https://www.construx.com/webinar-value-stream-mapping-for-devops/

#23 Exploring Metrics: Using Landing Zones to Define and Guide Success

Steve McConnell completes the series in which he describes the 28 key principles in his new book, More Effective Agile (Construx Press, 2019). The final principles described are: "Focus on Throughput, Not Activity." Similar to managing to outcomes, adding the nuance that busyness is not the objective—getting valuable work done is the objective. (See page 223 in the book.) "Plan Based on Measured Team Capacity." Agile is an empirical approach; teams and organizations should plan their work based on their measured performance. (See page 232.)"Decriminalize Mistakes." Decriminalize mistakes so that teams surface them without hesitation and you can learn from them. A mistake you don’t learn from penalizes your organization twice. (See page 227.)Make sure to check out the first 8 parts in this series to learn all the principles.

#22 More Effective Agile, Part 9: Focus on Throughput, Not Activity; Plan Based on Measured Team Capacity; Decriminalize Mistakes

Steve McConnell continues to describe the 28 key principles in his new book, More Effective Agile (Construx Press, 2019). The principles described this time:"Express Clear Purpose with Commander’s Intent." Support your teams’ ability to make timely, local decisions by clearly communicating your objectives for the desired end state. (See page 220 in the book.)"Model Key Agile Behaviors." Effective leaders model the behaviors they want to see in others. (See page 224.)"Manage to Outcomes, Not Details." Support your team’s Autonomy by clearly communicating desired outcomes while leaving the team free to define the detailed means by which it completes its work. (See page 219.)

#21 More Effective Agile, Part 8: Express Clear Purpose with Commander’s Intent; Model Key Agile Behaviors; Manage to Outcomes, Not Details

Steve McConnell continues to describe the 28 key principles in his new book, More Effective Agile (Construx Press, 2019). The principles described this time:"Create and Use a Definition of Done." A good Definition of Done helps catch incomplete or faulty work early, minimizing the gap between defect insertion and detection. (See page 157 in the book.)"Maintain a Releasable Level of Quality." Maintaining a releasable level of quality helps catch additional defects that slip through an earlier DoD. (See page 160.)"Use Automated Tests, Created by the Development Team." Automated tests help to minimize the defect detection gap. Making everyone on the team responsible for the tests reinforces the idea that quality is everyone’s responsibility. (See page 168.)

#20 More Effective Agile, Part 7: Create and Use a Definition of Done; Maintain a Releasable Level of Quality; Use Automated Tests, Created by the Development Team

Join Construx VP of Consulting Jenny Stuart and Mark Griffin for the first in a series of episodes describing the power of Kanban. In this episode, they&apos;ll cover the most common misconceptions about this extremely useful method: #1 Kanban is only a board, #2 Kanban is good only for support, #3 Kanban is good only for small teams, #4 Kanban can&apos;t support long-range planning, and #5 Kanban or Scrum is an "either-or" decision.Some organizations still aren&apos;t using Kanban because of these misconceptions, but many would be well served by some use of Kanban!

#19 More Effective Kanban, Part 1: Five Misconceptions About Kanban

Sixth in our series in which Steve McConnell describes the 28 key principles in his new book, More Effective Agile (Construx Press, 2019). The principles described this time:"Refine the Product Backlog." Backlog refinement ensures the team is working on the highest priority items, is not filling in gaps in requirements on its own, and is not starved for work. (See page 187 in the book.) "Create and Use a Definition of Ready." Part of backlog refinement is ensuring that requirements are truly ready before the team begins implementing them. (See page 188.)"Minimize the Defect Detection Gap." The cost to fix a defect tends to grow the longer it stays in process. A benefit of Agile’s focus on continuous quality work is detecting more defects closer to the source. (See page 155.) 

#18 More Effective Agile, Part 6: Refine the Product Backlog, Create and Use a Definition of Ready, Minimize the Defect Detection Gap

Join Construx Senior Fellow Erik Simmons and Mark Griffin as they discuss the ins and outs of metrics for software teams. To kick off, they draw a distinction that can help alleviate overarching concerns about metrics and measurement in general: operational measurement (How are we doing? Metaphor: dashboard) and aspirational measurement (What’s our progress toward our goals? Metaphor: map). The remainder of the episode addresses realities within the dashboard context.The first unfortunate reality is that few organizations do any measurement. Culture plays a large role here, specifically a lack of trust. Erik describes how trust is created and the three principle factors in trust: ability, benevolence, and integrity. Without these, people cannot trust one another and measurement will fail. A second cultural issue is the restriction of measurement to the perception of effort and to resource utilization—none of the benefits of really good metrics and indicator programs can come from that. Even worse is the use of metrics for penalization. In fact, the irony of such misuse or lack of measurement within the larger context of Agile and Lean methodologies is that those methods are all about inspecting and adapting for continuous improvement, which require good, trustworthy, safe measurement.Erik and Mark continue by defining the following specific elements of a measurement program: a measure, a metric, an indicator (sentinel indicator vs. rate-based indicator). They also discuss the importance of leading metrics/indicators vs. trailing ones.The conversation continues with a description of how to envision, launch, and run an effective measurement program, including setting priorities, matching metrics to the nature of your work, and setting appropriate scales for your measurements (natural, scale, and proxy). Erik and Mark discuss techniques for ensuring that your measurement program is both valuable and cost-effective. Erik concludes by describing specific metrics-related work with Construx clients. 

#17 Exploring Metrics: Cultural Issues, Metrics vs. Indicators, Launching a Program, and Controlling Costs/Time

Join Construx Senior Fellow Earl Beede and Mark Griffin as they discuss methods for improving the chances of success by driving down inherent uncertainty (common-cause variation) for large software efforts.These methods involve early decision making related to primary consumers, possible technologies, and broad software estimation. The conversation continues with a description of the Cone of Uncertainty, how to record your early decisions and their varying scopes and importance, and the helpful technique of priming the product backlog.

#16 Preproject Planning: Lowering Inherent Uncertainty on Large Work Efforts

World-class software development requires far more than language/platform expertise and steady sprints. Join us as we describe time-tested, industry-proven software best practices at the team, organization, and leadership levels, sharing examples from recent engagements with software teams of all sizes.Construx is led by industry leader Steve McConnell, author of Code Complete and More Effective Agile. Software experts first and software trainers and consultants second, our team has seen what works and doesn’t work in hundreds of software organizations.Host Mark Griffin spent the first half of his career as an electrical engineer doing silicon hardware design and leading software automation teams. He moved into the sales side of software because he wanted to spread the value of what his company was building. It was supposed to be a one-year assignment that turned into the second half of his career. His balance of deeply technical skills and right-brain artistry also makes him a masterful home brewer!

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Inspect and Adapt

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