Engineering Culture by InfoQ - podcast cover

Engineering Culture by InfoQ

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Software engineers, architects and team leads have found inspiration to build better, high performing teams by listening to the weekly InfoQ Podcast. We have achieved that by interviewing some of the top CTOs, engineers and technology directors from companies like Uber, Netflix and more. Over 500,000 downloads in the last 3 years.

Episodes

Jeff DeLuca on FDD and Transforming Large Organisations to Product Thinking

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Jeff DeLuca, founder of Feature Driven Development and an early agile development pioneer, on the background to FDD, Java modelling with colour and transforming large organisations to product thinking. Why listen to this podcast: • The first value statement of the Agile Manifesto (Individuals and interactions over processes and tools) is the key to agility, and yet agile is often equated with processes and tools today • In...

Oct 08, 201935 min

Deborah Hartmann Preuss on Creating Joyful Workplaces

This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast, recorded at the Agile India 2019 conference, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Deb Preuss about life coaching, creating joyful workplaces, diversity and inclusion.

Sep 09, 201917 min

Dave Thomas & Andy Hunt on the 20th Anniversary Edition of The Pragmatic Programmer

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to David Thomas and Andrew Hunt about the 20th Anniversary edition of The Pragmatic Programmer. Why listen to this podcast: • The importance of curiosity and the mindset of “still figuring it out” • When you optimize, standardize and make things the same you crush any hope of getting it right • The real spirit of agility is about constantly monitoring what you are doing, constantly trying small changes and constantly getting ...

Sep 02, 201925 min

Portia Tung on Coaching, Playful Leadership and the Importance of Play at Work

In this podcast recorded at QCon London 2019, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Portua Tung from the School of Play about agile coaching, helping individuals and organisations adopt a playful leadership style and the importance of play in the workplace. Why listen to this podcast: • Being a coach is learning to become your whole person so you can enable others to live at their full potential • The characteristics of playful leaders are they take calculated risks, they loo...

Aug 26, 201920 min

Randy Shoup on Creating High-Performance Cultures

In this podcast recorded at QCon London 2019, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Randy Shoup, VP of Engineering at WeWork about what is needed to create a high-performance culture. Why listen to this podcast: • Theory X leaders believe that people are inherently lazy and need extrinsic motivation which results in micromanagement and disempowerment • Theory Y says that people are intrinsically motivated and want to perform well, the role of management is to remove impedimen...

Aug 20, 201924 min

A. Dobson on Balancing Risk and Psychological Safety and K. Kirk on Escaping Organisational Hell

This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this episode recorded at QCon London 2019 Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, first spoke to Andrea Dobson on balancing risk and psychological safety and Katherine Kirk on escaping organisational hell. Why listen to this podcast: • Where people work together we see behaviours that need coaching and that’s where organisational psychologists provide value • Psychological safety is ne...

Aug 05, 201938 min

Jossie Haines and Aneri Shah of Tile on Culture, Mentoring, Diversity and Inclusion

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Jossie Haines and Aneri Shah of Tile on the culture at Tile, mentoring, diversity & inclusion and retaining women in technology Why listen to this podcast: • Genuine collaborative and supportive cultures don’t just happen • Corporate values need to be real to people, so they feel able to live them every day • Looking at diversity and inclusion is not a stand-alone activity – you need to address all aspects of the employee ...

Jun 18, 201924 min

Michael Bolton on the Testing Mindset

In this Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Michael Bolton about the current and future state of testing. Why listen to this podcast: • Testing is about evaluating products by learning about them through exploration and experimentation • These is confusion about the difference between testing a small bit of functionality and the complexity that arises when many of these small bits of software are combined into systems • The common approach of using unit tests and checking t...

May 20, 201942 min

Dave Snowden on Liminality in Cynefin and Moving Beyond Agile to Agility

In this Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Dave Snowden at the Agile People conference in Stockholm, Sweden, about the addition of liminal spaces in the Cynefin framework, pre-scrum techniques and the future of agility Why listen to this podcast: • The Cynefin Framework provides a perspective on the world • The latest version of the Cynefin framework include two liminal domains • The strength of approaches like Scrum is holding things in a liminal state long enough to beco...

May 13, 201913 min

Doug Kirkpatrick on Self-Management, Professional Growth and Great Cultures

In this Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Doug Kirkpatrick at the Agile People conference in Stockholm, Sweden, about what self-management actually means for the people in an organisation. Why listen to this podcast: • Self-management enables everyone in the organisation to thrive and do their best work • It’s not about layers of control, rather it’s dense networks of committed self-managers guided by a clear set of principles • It’s the responsibility of each self-manage...

Apr 29, 201913 min

Dave West on the State of Scrum

In this Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Dave West, CEO and Product Owner at scrum.org about the current state of scrum and the latest initiatives by scrum.org Why listen to this podcast: • Scrum has been used for over 25 years and people are using it in different areas and the challenges are not around the rudimentary aspects of adoption rather it is about optimising the way of working in different contexts • The need to move beyond adherence to a single approach into a...

Apr 22, 201925 min

Phil Abernathy on Employee Happiness and the Bureaucracy Mass Index

In this Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Phil Abernathy about his work helping organisations focus on employee happiness to drive customer happiness and shareholder return and the Bureaucracy Mass Index as a tool to identify where companies are bloated and ineffective. He also spoke about what’s needed for real transformation. Why listen to this podcast: • Great companies are realising that in order to attract great talent you have to have a great place to work • If you ...

Apr 16, 201920 min

Mik Kersten on Moving from Projects to Products

Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Mik Kersten of Tasktop about his new book, Project to Product and how the Flow Framework can be applied to changing the way of working in organisations. Why listen to this podcast: • The project model of software development is fundamentally broken • The management techniques which were invented in and needed for managing in the era of industrial revolution are not applicable or useful in the era of software development • Most organisatio...

Apr 09, 201928 min

Nigel Dalton on Taking Back Management

In this podcast recorded at the Agile India conference Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Nigel Dalton, Chief Inventor at REA Group about his experiences and the need to take back management as an important practice in today’s organisations Why listen to this podcast: • There is a science of invention – deliberately combining things that you might not have thought of combining before • What matters more than having an agile process is having a resilient organisation – boun...

Apr 01, 201922 min

Jason Box and Paul Johnston on What Technologists can do About Climate Change

In this podcast recorded at QCon London 2019, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Jason Box and Paul Johnston about the impact climate change is having, how information technology contributes to greenhouse gasses and what technologists can do to help combat it. Why listen to this podcast: • Climate change is the challenge of our time • Data centers are a real problem IRO global warming and greenhouse gas emissions • Data centers have the same emissions impact as the aviatio...

Mar 13, 201922 min

Kim Scott on Radical Candor

In this podcast recorded at the Agile 2018 conference Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Kim Scott, author of the book Radical Candor about what radical candor is and how it can be applied in teams and relationships. Why listen to this podcast: • Radical candor is the behaviour which comes about when people both care personally and are able to challenge directly in a relationship • Telling each other about problems or praising each other in a way that is productive is diff...

Mar 06, 201916 min

Anna Obukhova on The Biology of Leadership and Working with Tired Teams

In this podcast recorded at the Agile 2018 conference Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Anna Obukhova about the neuroscience and biology of leadership and what it takes to coach and work with tired teams. Why listen to this podcast: • When we change a process we also impact and cause change to the body and brain of the people involved in the process • Behavioural ethology shows how the perception of being in a “caged environment” impacts hormone production and results in ...

Feb 18, 201924 min

Ash Coleman on Testing, Ethics, Diversity and What it Means To Be an Ally

In this podcast recorded at the Agile 2018 conference Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Ash Coleman . Why listen to this podcast: • Testing is not a simplistic process that can be reduced to automation, although automation helps • Ethics matter in software development I we need to build products that the builders are proud of, that people will use in real life and that is safe for them to use • The lack of diversity in teams producing AI/ML based products results in very ...

Feb 11, 201925 min

Chloë Bregman on High Performance Design

In this podcast recorded at the Agile 2018 conference Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Chloë Bregman about high performance design. Why listen to this podcast: • High-performance design is design that fits with the customers needs and is successful • Design is worthless unless it is creating ROI in some way • Design is not “one thing” – there are many aspects which need to be addressed and these aspects have tension between them • All design is human experience design • ...

Jan 30, 201919 min

Jeff Patton on #NoProjects and Product Management

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...

Jan 07, 201924 min

Phil Brock & Paul Hammond on the State of the Agile

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 thei...

Dec 19, 201821 min

Simon Powers on Transitioning to Product Teams and Advice for New Managers

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...

Dec 03, 201823 min

Dominic Price on Why Agile is Not Always the Answer

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 organi...

Nov 29, 201823 min

Diana Larsen on Agile Fluency, Organisational Design and Being an Ally

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 “th...

Nov 23, 201822 min

Jutta E. and John B. on Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space and Sociocracy

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 w...

Oct 22, 201829 min

Fred George on Solving Fuzzy Problems

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 wr...

Oct 15, 201817 min

Linda Rising on Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow, Ethics and Overcoming Biases

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...

Oct 01, 201827 min

John Le Drew on Solving Technical Problems by Addressing Human Issues

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 th...

Sep 11, 201854 min

Michael Cote from Pivotal on Programming the Business

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 • Chang...

Aug 13, 201832 min

Dan Kreigh on Building SpaceShipOne and Designing Flying Cars

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...

Aug 01, 201821 min