Marcus Blankenship is a technical leadership author, coach and speaker, helping great programmers and coders to become great tech leaders of the future. He is the author of the book “Habits That Ruin Your Technical Team: Pitfalls and Solutions for Technical Managers”. Marcus tells us what technical leadership is and how technical-experts-turn-leaders can fight their impulses to resolve problems themselves and start empowering their teams to resolve them instead. After you finish with the episode...
Mar 25, 2019•48 min
Johanna Rothman is a “pragmatic manager” and longtime leader in the software development community. She has written over a dozen books on various aspects of shipping successful software applications. On this episode, Johanna shares with us how she got into working with legacy code, how long does it take for a greenfield project to become a legacy project, do the resource limitations constrain or boost creativity and what is the role of management in a creative process. When you finish listening ...
Mar 11, 2019•47 min
Esther Derby started her career as a developer who loved machines and struggled with people. Now, she’s one of the world’s top experts in organizational dynamics and a leading thinker on bringing agility to organizations, management and teams. Esther playfully shares with us her intimate story of personal growth from being a satisfied solo coder to a team builder and gives us all some practical tips for learning skills that might be just outside our comfort zone.
Feb 25, 2019•39 min
In today’s episode, we chat with Lisa Crispin, Testing Advocate at Mabl, the co-author of the Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams and one of the most influential testing professionals in the industry. Join us to hear about the significance of the whole team approach, collaboration and feedback in testing, and how the cues of success through teamwork can come from even the most unexpected sources – including from the miniature donkeys!
Feb 11, 2019•36 min
In 2016, Taylor Jones was in a car crash that impacted his vision severely. After recovery, he has continued to code and design for the web even though he's blind. In this moving conversation, we talk with him about accessibility and how his development practices have changed.
Jan 17, 2019•1 hr 10 min
In this episode, we chat with Adam Tornhill. Adam is the author of Your Code as a Crime Scene as well as Software Design X-Rays: Fix Technical Debt with Behavioral Code Analysis . He’s also the founder of Empear , whose flagship product, CodeScene, helps companies prioritize technical debt by identifying “hotspots” within their codebases. During the show we talk about: How Adam's background in psychology informs his work as a software developer. Different ways to measure complexity Using behavio...
Oct 17, 2018•44 min
There's no "one right way" to implement Agile. Diana Larsen believes that software is built in the context of a "more diverse and beautiful world" that meets teams where they are and helps them achieve goals that are best for them. Together, with James Shore, she developed the Agile Fluency Model; a framework that helps chart a course for the team, create alignment with management, and secure organizational support for improvement. You can learn more about the model at https://www.agilefluency.o...
Sep 06, 2018•50 min
Metaphors may seem like a literary device that has no relevance in software, but nothing could be further from the truth. On today's episode, we dive deep into the world of explaining the abstract with Nat Pryce. We touch on George Lakoff, Conway's Law, Lehman's Laws, the difference between cognitive and figurative metaphors, and much, much more. If you've ever wanted to learn how to explain your work better, especially to people who don't code very much, this is one episode you won't want to mi...
Aug 02, 2018•45 min
On this episode, Seb Rose, co-owner at Cucumber Limited and author of several books on Cucumber, gives us a look at how Behavior-Driven Development works alongside Test-Driven Development to tame legacy code. We walk through his personal version of Dante's rings of corporate hell and discuss why we should start thinking of the relationship between Acceptance, Integration, and Unit tests as an iceberg rather than a pyramid.
Jul 03, 2018•40 min
In this episode, we chat with David Kane, a noted Agilist, to explore how legacy code systems mimic biology. By the end, you may just join Andrea by proudly identifying as fungus — the invisible system that holds other systems together. Enjoy!
Jun 04, 2018•40 min
In the open source world, there are a ton of legacy projects. In this episode, we chat with Jerod Santo, host of The Changelog, about legacy code in the open source ecosystem. How do you maintain projects? When do you let projects die? And how can you add value quickly when you want to contribute?
Mar 01, 2018•32 min
Developers spend an average of 50-80% of their day reading code. So why don't we ever work on actively honing this skill? That's the question that Zach Shaw, the Director of Engineering at Brightgrove decided to ask. On today's episode, we geek out about reading code and discover new strategies and tactics to help us do it even better.
Feb 08, 2018•45 min
Ever heard of a little app called Mint.com? Poornima Vijayashanker was the founding engineer and convinced her boss that the name he picked wouldn't get the market share he was looking for. After she successfully grew Mint, she exited after it was acquired by Intuit. Poornima is the Founder of Femgineer and now mentors other developers and founders on how to build better software. In this episode, we chat with her about the importance of selling your ideas so that they can grow. You can find her...
Jan 17, 2018•47 min
When should you replace your software and when does it make sense to transform it? Scott Hanselman joins us to share his thoughts from several projects throughout his career, including Das Blog (the engine that runs Hanselminutes), Windows Live Writer, Tiny OS and .NET Core.
Jan 04, 2018•45 min
To document or not to document? That is the question that we chat about today with Lauri Apple, who works as an Agile Coach and Open Source Evangelist with Zalando. Lauri is also an Ambassador for OpenSource.com and the creator of FeedMeReadMes. We chat about what finding documentation balance, where to find the best README templates, and the difference between corporate and open-source documentation.
Nov 28, 2017•43 min
Emily Gorcenski is an expert on aerospace software based in Charlottesville, Virginia. When we first reached out to her, we wanted to discuss estimating and budgeting for government projects. Then, tragedy struck. In this episode, we dive into a deep discussion about the intersection of technology, activism and identity politics in the context of Emily's on-the-ground account of the tragic violence that happened in her hometown.
Oct 14, 2017•59 min
David Bernstein, author of Beyond Legacy Code, chats with Scott and Andrea about nine development practices that can help us make it easier to work with (and even prevent) legacy code.
Sep 29, 2017•49 min
What does Britain leaving the European Union mean for the software industry? On a recent trip to London, Andrea found out through an insightful conversation with Krishna Thakur ( http://www.capriconsulting.co.uk/ ). In this episode, we'll explore how Brexit is likely to impact developers on both sides of the pond.
Sep 13, 2017•40 min
Bryan Beecham (https://www.industriallogic.com/people/bryan) is an Agile consultant with over 20 years of comprehensive IT experience as well as a Human Refactoring Guide. In this episode, we discuss becoming a minimalist developer, intentionally taking time off to increase your productivity and how passion doesn’t have to lead to burnout.
Aug 09, 2017•42 min
Edafe Onerhime (https://ekoner.com/) is a consultant on Data Science and Data Analysis who has over 20 years of experience answering difficult questions about open data. She has helped governments, charities and businesses make better decisions and build stronger relationships by understanding, using and sharing their data. In this episode, we discuss the history of open data, its importance in building communities and its similarities to open source and open science.
Jul 20, 2017•44 min
In this special episode recorded at the AATC 2017, Andrea Goulet speaks with Martin D. Lund, a scrum-certified software engineer who helps run an engineering team and a parent to three children on the autism spectrum. Founder of Agile for Autism ( http://www.agile4autism.com/ ), a nonprofit initiative to help parents build educational and therapeutic programs for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, Marty shares tips for working with someone on the autism spectrum and how he successfully imp...
May 25, 2017•29 min
In this special episode, returning guest, speaker and Agile technical coach Llewellyn Falco co-hosts with Corgibytes’ Chief Code Whisperer M. Scott Ford. They recap the talks they attended and cover topics such as pitching talks, the value of meetups and practice, adapting talks on-the-fly, pair programming, how technical “debt” is like credit card debt and weight gain, and more.
May 04, 2017•1 hr 2 min
Returning guest Woody Zuill is a veteran programmer, sought-after consultant and international speaker, as well as credited with both the “no estimates” and the “mob programming” movements. In this episode, we discuss estimates, working on a problem versus working on a symptom, paradigm shifts, and much more!
Apr 06, 2017•1 hr 10 min
Dean of Arts & Sciences at SUNY Polytechnic Institute, Andrew Russell is a trained historian and researcher covering topics such as the history of technology and the history and societal aspects of computing. He is also the co-author, with Lee Vinsel, of Hail the Maintainers , and, together, they are behind The Maintainers , a global, interdisciplinary research network, which holds an annual conference in April . In this episode, we discuss the love of maintaining vs creating, why maintenanc...
Mar 23, 2017•1 hr
Scott Nimrod is a thriving entrepreneur, software consultant, and blogger who founded Bizmonger , a business that focuses on native application development for mobile and desktop environments, test automation, and the art of engineering reliable software. In this episode, we discuss being a software craftsman, taming code with empathy, functional programming, and taking charge of your professional life.
Mar 09, 2017•53 min
Robert Sösemann is an Agile and lean-code enthusiast, Lead Product Developer at Up2Go International , and inventor of ApexMetrics , a Code Climate engine. Lorenzo Frattini is a Salesforce-certified Technical Architect and creator of Clayton.io , a code-review robot. In this episode, we discuss code quality, how to measure it, when code is “done,” its business value, and more!...
Feb 22, 2017•55 min
Michael Feathers ( R7K Research & Conveyance ) is a luminary, expert in software and organization design, and author of Working Effectively with Legacy Code . Over the past 20 years, he has spoken at conferences around the world, and some even call him the “godfather of legacy code.” In this episode, we discuss software best practices, Conway’s Law – or as Michael sometimes calls it, The Fundamental Theorem of Software Engineering –, the impact of code that could be deleted, and feature sele...
Feb 08, 2017•45 min
From early employee at AppFolio and Citrix to international consultant and speaker on team dynamics, Heidi Helfand is also the author of Dynamic Reteaming: The Art and Wisdom of Changing Teams. In this episode, we cover team stagnation, its causes, elements and best practices of dynamic reteaming and when reteaming should be an option.
Jan 25, 2017•43 min
Rebecca Dovi, who has over 20 years of experience teaching computer sciences, is the Director of Education at CodeVA , an organization that wrote legislation and worked with policymakers to make Virginia the first state where every child will receive access to essential Computer Science literacy – including coding – from kindergarten through graduation. In this episode, we discuss what that law entails, gender-bias triggers, how to attract more women to the field, and much more!...
Jan 11, 2017•46 min
Pavneet Singh Saund is a web developer, a team lead at Komplett Group (a leading Scandinavian player in e-commerce) and founder of a blog called Coding with Empathy ( http://codingwithempathy.com/ ). In this episode, we explore the various aspects of empathy, how sympathy and empathy are different, and the application of empathy for developers.
Dec 13, 2016•43 min
