Are you very sensitive to even constructive criticism? Do you agonize over even the smallest mistakes or flaws in your work? Do you downplay your own expertise, even in areas where you are genuinely more skilled than others? The game “Among Us” is all about finding the imposter and throwing it out of the spaceship. When you play as imposter, your job is to sabotage the ship and kill the crew mates. Playing as either role is pretty fun, but it is always a little bit more exciting when you get to ...
Mar 29, 2022•48 min•Season 1Ep. 60
Way back in episode 13, we discussed mobbing, or ensemble programming, with Woody Zuill. While we think this topic deserves more widespread recognition and adoption, there’s no denying that pair programming is more well known, and is being done more. Of course, pairing is not limited to just programming. For example, studies have shown that kindergarteners sharing an iPad enables them to learn more and score better on certain tests, most likely due to forcing them to collaborate, which in turn e...
Mar 15, 2022•51 min•Season 1Ep. 59
Nowadays, everyone wants to make an impact. Nobody wants to do meaningless work. What it means to make an impact is different for everyone, but it is the driving motivation why people do the work that they do, be it helping senior citizens out of their beds, or maximizing profit for multinationals. Indeed, some of the low points of my career as a software engineer is being part of a project that ends up in the bin. Sure, sometimes a project might fail, which in itself is ok, but if you spend a l...
Feb 22, 2022•41 min•Season 1Ep. 58
Is your startup interesting enough to find investors? What kind of effort does it take to have a startup? Start ups are usually considered pretty sexy. They bring about cool new apps that your friends insist you just have to get. They disrupt the market with innovative new goods and services. They display their awesome company culture in such a way that working there becomes a goal in itself. But what about the Business to Business startup? You don't hear a lot about those being the next hottest...
Feb 16, 2022•45 min•Season 1Ep. 57
How to stay engaged while working remote? What can offshoring teach us when working remote? What are Rini's laws? We are, when recording this podcast, in lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The omikron variant is running rampant, so this means most of us are working from the kitchen table, or if you have the room, the home office again. So, entire teams are working remote again, not physically meeting each other for an extended period of time. How do you make sure everything keeps running smo...
Jan 25, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 56
Does the thought of doing a presentation make your stomach churn? Are you comfortable speaking up in front of a group of people? How do you deal with being the center of attention? Fear. We all know the feeling from a terrifying experience at some point in our lives. However, 75% of the people get fearful when having to speak in front of a group of people. Even the idea of doing it is sometimes enough for many people to get fearful. Yes, most of us — even those at the top — struggle with public-...
Jan 18, 2022•58 min•Season 1Ep. 55
Why is it that anxiety disorders are so prevalent? Why is it that depression is now the leading cause of disability? Why is that bullying is still really prevalent? Most people don’t grow up learning very much about their emotions — what they are, how they work, or how to manage them well. This means there are a lot of people out there with perfectly normal levels of academic or social intelligence, but surprisingly low emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence means the capacity to reflect...
Dec 28, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 54
Are you imposing change by decree? Is "the next big change" going to solve everything? Do your people see what is valuable about the future you propose? Even though the world around us is changing faster and faster, it proves challenging for companies and individuals to adapt to these changes. For these, change sometimes comes much slower and more painful than hoped. Changing, or adapting to change, is not simple on any level. Often, there is no right answer, and responding requires trial and er...
Dec 21, 2021•57 min•Season 1Ep. 53
Different problems need different solutions. An approach that aids in decision making is The Cynefin framework, which was created in 1999 by Dave Snowden and was born with principles related to theories of how we perceive things. Cynefin (pronounced “kuh-nev-in”) is a word of Welsh origin that means habitat or place of many belongings. Cynefin is a model that can be used in different sectors, at different levels in an organization and in different contexts, in fact context is the key word for Cy...
Dec 14, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 53
Is the nobel peace prize actually a bad thing? What about that cum laude degree? Did your grades ruin you for the rest of your life? Do awards motivate people? Yes. They motivate people to get rewards. You can pretty much bribe anyone to make them do what you want them to. Consequently, the quality of the work or the learning suffers for it. This goes for children, students, but also in the work place, where reward structures might be in place that incentivize destructive behavior. The book "Pun...
Dec 07, 2021•30 min•Season 1Ep. 51
Does financial incentives promote commitment and motivation? Is your company really doing well when you make the budgeted revenue? Is your decision-making on hold while the numbers for the budgets are being negotiated? Creating a budget is one way to stay on top of your expenses. Most companies spend a lot of time analyzing past performance to come up with budgets for the next year, trying to stick to them as close as possible. However, due to todays rapid changing markets, traditional budgeting...
Nov 30, 2021•59 min•Season 1Ep. 50
What if you could elect your boss? Why aren't companies run as countries? How does sociocracy fit in with agile? In the age of liberated companies, there are different models of governance where individuals are responsible to undertake actions on behalf of their company. With a participatory decision making process and distributed leadership at its core, sociocratic governance is at odds with the traditional vertical management system. A sociocratic organization allows the individual to express ...
Nov 23, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 49
What did John F. Kennedy and Steve Jobs have in common? Would George Washington be a successful founder of a startup? Would we remember Herbert Hoover as the Jeff Bezos of his time had he been elected eight years earlier? The president of the United States is usually considered the most powerful person on the planet. Indeed, the US has the biggest economy, the most powerful military, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Hollywood and NASA. How did America become such a powerhouse? With a little imaginat...
Nov 16, 2021•55 min•Season 1Ep. 48
Is it hard to write a book? Do product owners need to be aware of software development practices like Behavior Driven Development? How do you cope with writer's block? On the show, we have talked a lot about books, and we have even had a few guests that wrote one. It has crossed our minds to write a book of our own a few times as well. Today, we are roasting marshmallows with Wouter Lagerweij. Wouter is currently in the process of writing a book called: "A Product Owner's Guide to Escaping Legac...
Nov 09, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 47
How do you deal with team compositions during times of explosive growth? Are you looking to spread knowledge across teams? What metrics are out there to track team performance? Ever since the dawn of humanity people had to work together and form teams in order to achieve a common goal. These goals could be something as vital as survival, but also, as civilizations were growing to build great structures, or in modern times, building awesome apps on your phone! Like the times teams can and will, c...
Nov 02, 2021•56 min•Season 1Ep. 46
Have you ever had an opportunity to make a change, but you chose not to take it? Did you maybe respond with "What if it doesn't work?" Or maybe with "Are you sure that's a good idea?" Fear of change is subtle. It operates in your subconscious, convincing you that it's there to protect you. It will keep you safe. Or does it? Embracing change can help bring growth, and with that, fulfillment and ultimately success. Both for individuals, but also for organizations. Today we are roasting marshmallow...
Oct 26, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 45
Are all your teams dependent on a few key persons calling the shots? Is your organization as transparent as it can be to both employees and customers? When serving millions of customers all over the world, a classic, top-down approach to decision making is not very scalable. This was the realization that the company our guest today works at made, and has since then reversed the chain of decision making to enable the teams to make the day to day decisions by themselves. For the last few years he ...
Oct 19, 2021•58 min•Season 1Ep. 44
Is your organization relying on the decision making of one person? What kind of leadership model dos your organization use? Do you need someone else to empower you? Imagine being on a submarine with your colleagues, heading out to open waters, potentially being together in a cramped space for several months. If morale and performance amongst you and your fellow colleagues is low, you would probably be reluctant to go. Our guest today had to deal with this, being assigned command of the nuclear s...
Oct 12, 2021•33 min•Season 1Ep. 43
When should you start selling your product? Is there a difference between Sales and Marketing? How do you stand out amongst the competition? Ask someone what marketing is, and they will often tell you "Advertisements and catchy slogans", and maybe they continue describing a scene they've recently seen on Mad Men. The truth is, the internet has changed how people look at the impact of interruption type marketing, like for example ads or a cold call. When we receive anything that looks like plain ...
Oct 05, 2021•53 min•Season 1Ep. 42
What if we said that there's a list that will help you with software development, or even with your company in general? It's called Heuristics for Effective Software Development Organisations: A continuously evolving list , and it contains as of this episode 27 nuggets of wisdom for your benefit. It started out as a way to present the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto in a clearer and more contemporary way, although the author, Allen Holub, has added a few things. Who is Allen Holub? ...
Sep 21, 2021•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 41
Are your employees engaged? Can your organization keep up with the rapid changing world? Would you like to know more about the power of OpenSpace Agility? There’s a crisis in most workplaces. The pace of change, driven by technology, is accelerating. Change is happening more frequently. And the impact of these changes is often big. The workforce also brings with them their distinct values, biases and opinions. And nowhere are these distinctions more striking than in the way they view leadership ...
Sep 14, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 40
What is Large-Scale Scrum, aka LeSS? Which rules does LeSS require you to follow? Why should you adopt LeSS rather than plain old scrum for your teams? After an earlier episode about SAFe, we felt it is only fair to put LeSS in the spotlight! While you cannot really compare the two, much like apples and oranges, they both promise to bring agility to the enterprise. Being a certified LeSS instructor, Viktor will show us how and why LeSS works for his clients. Viktor is a Software developer, Agile...
Sep 07, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 39
What if your team would address issues immediately instead of waiting for a retro? How effective is it to identify action points that end up not being chased? When do you celebrate success? The old saying "hindsight is 20/20" is usually used when someone should've known better. It has a pretty negative or condescending tone to it, but for agile software development, it can be valuable to apply some hindsight when preparing for the next iteration of your product. Indeed, reflecting on past perfor...
Aug 31, 2021•56 min•Season 1Ep. 38
Are you able to do your best work? Do you feel proud being an employee of your company? Are you enjoying the work you do? Do you feel like you fit in with the people? Are you expecting to work their for a long time? These might sound like a lot of different questions, but they all boil down to the same: are you happy at your work? Today we are roasting marshmallows about our company history: why did we choose to leave our previous companies, and why did we choose to stay at FourScouts? Finding t...
Aug 24, 2021•55 min•Season 1Ep. 37
Is your work / life balance in a state of equilibrium? Do you keep your personal issues from spilling over into work? Are you able to talk about your problems with your colleagues? Everyone deals with their personal issues in a different way. At some point, your personal issues could affect your work: your concentration is affected, you might lash out at co-workers, or even worse, customers. Today, we are sharing our stories about how our personal life affected us at work, and how we dealt with ...
Aug 17, 2021•48 min•Season 1Ep. 36
The legend says that when you promote a Senior Developer into a Manager, you end up with a subpar Manager and you lose a great Engineer. We have heard these stories of lose-lose outcomes over and over again. Then once in a blue moon we find that perfect blend of a skilled engineer who is competent, can clearly voice their ideas, understand the business domain, are tuned to the needs of the management as well as to the needs of the developers and can rally people towards a mutual goal. Then, we e...
Aug 10, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 35
Are you prepared to sink your time, money and effort into something you believe in? How many features you think you need before you can start promoting your product? What strategy should you employ to find customers? Do you recognize your most important feature(s) and are you willing to kill other features? On this podcast we have talked about start-ups before, but the mystic qualities that get attributed to them are by no means rooted in reality. You have to work hard, recognize opportunities a...
Aug 03, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 34
Does copying agile practices of other successful companies work for your company? Are your teams doing a daily standup and calling themselves agile? Is your company flexible and both rapidly responsive and resilient to change? A book that can help companies achieve true agility is "Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy". Today around the campfire we have one of the authors: Jutta Eckstein. Jutta Eckstein, works as an independent coach, consultant, trainer, autho...
Jul 27, 2021•57 min•Season 1Ep. 33
How much are you able to learn on your own? For some people, reading books, articles, and going to certain training courses are all they need to keep steadily growing their skillset. For teams however, things are a bit more challenging. Retrospectives are indeed a great help, but these are still from the team's own perspective. Sending a team to training could help as well, but how do you know what training to pick? Sometimes external help, in the form coaching, can be beneficial for you and you...
Jul 20, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 32
Why is it that it seems like there is a smaller presence of women in tech than men? What female role models are out there for the tech industry? Is there a gender stereotype that suggests that "boys are better with computers"? What difficulties do women face in tech focused teams? Can we attract more women to become engineers? As a first today on roasting marshmallows, we have two guests! Ankita Sahni and Maike Visschedijk , who are both software engineers, and they will share with you their exp...
Jul 13, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 31
