Scaling software development is hard. Several patterns have emerged that moderately successful organizations use when scaling. The patterns focus on how to package the work, where and when to make decisions, and how to get teams to collaborate. Join Mark Griffin, Earl Beede, and Steve Tockey as they explore scaling patterns.

All development organizations use software's F word: Feature. But what they actually mean by the word is often unclear, since the software industry has two—somewhat incompatible—definitions of feature. Join host Mark Griffin as he asks Construx's Steve Tockey and Earl Beede to explain those two different uses of the word feature on development projects.

Total Project Quality, Construx's course on how to insert quality throughout a work effort, hasn't always gotten the traction it deserves. Why not? In this podcast, we examine the subject of quality and our (perhaps poorly-named) Total Project Quality seminar. Join Construx's Steve Tockey, Earl Beede, and Mark Griffin as they Inspect & Adapt the Total Project Quality course, the topic of quality in general, and the practical things you can do to improve quality and efficiency on your proj...

We develop software primarily on teams, but how do you develop the teams? Construx's Mark Griffin and Earl Beede Inspect & Adapt the different ways you can organize your development team. They look at the pros and cons of different approaches and even offer some help for when you're stuck with a team organization that isn't the best.

How should you spend your always-limited testing resources? Is one part of the product more important to test than another? Construx's Steve Tockey and Earl Beede join host Mark Griffin in looking at one approach to answering those questions: risk-based testing. Steve and Earl look at how to do risk-based testing along with its pros and cons.

In an earlier webinar, Construx's Earl Beede took on many organizations that create product visions with phrases like, be the world's best ‘x’ or dazzle our customers. Not bad ideas but pretty much worthless in helping you make day-to-day decisions on what work is the most important for your business. This is a follow-up, with Earl and Mark Griffin delving a bit deeper into some of the questions that came up during the webinar. You can find the webinar here: https://youtu.be/yVA-k6aWE0k

Construx welcomes Onorio Catenacci to the microphone to ask questions about software development that continue to puzzle him and perhaps to see whether Construx has the answers. Join Contrux's Mark Griffin and Steve Tockey to see if they can give sound, helpful, and actionable answers to Onorio's questions—and find out whether Onorio can stump Construx!

Construx's Jenny Stuart is retiring from the software industry, and we will miss her! In this podcast, Jenny Stuart looks back on her three decades in the software industry and shares stories and wins from her long career. Joining Jenny are three of her Construx work companions for the last 20 years, Mark Griffin, Steve Tockey, and Earl Beede.

Why do software gurus keep talking about the Cynefin Framework? What is it? How is it even pronounced? In this episode of Inspect & Adapt, Construx puts many brains on the topic with Mark Griffin, Jenny Stuart, Steve Tockey, and Earl Beede making the link between Cynefin and doing actual software development work. They cover where Cynefin is best applied and where this sense-making system just doesn't make sense.

Most folks know that the product owner, scrum master, and developers make up the Scrum team, but did you know that these roles are also an accountability triad critical to scaling? In episode #52 of our Inspect & Adapt podcast, Construx’s Earl Beede and Jenny Stuart define the triad and describe its role in scaling agile. Earl and Jenny focus on how each abstraction level in a scaled agile deployment replicates the triad while maintaining the single point of truth (SPOT) rule for that le...

To be a professional usually means a commitment to ongoing professional development. Doctors, engineers, nurses, accountants, and teachers all require periodic training to maintain their professional status, but what constitutes professional development in software? Can we consider ourselves professional without it? The Construx team will look into the state of professional development in software and give their assessment.

The product owner is often considered the most critical accountability in the triad of <product owner, scrum master, developers>. Why? Because garbage in from the product owner gets garbage out of the developers, so it's crucial to give serious consideration to who is best to staff the product owner role. Listen to Construx experts share best practices, things to watch for, and stories from the field as they Inspect & Adapt the staffing of the product owner.

What do we do when we are faced with "The New"? When something is new to us, it's harder to estimate, harder to plan, and harder to execute. Some development projects involve much more that is new than others. How do we identify the new and deal with it in a constructive way? In this episode of Inspect & Adapt, Construx's Mark Griffin, Steve Tockey, Earl Beede, and Jenny Stuart dive into ways to have the best development project when dealing with 'The New."

Why can't I know—with high precision—the final cost, scope, and time frame of my work effort? One of the biggest reasons you can't know all three at once is illustrated by Steve McConnell's Cone of Uncertainty. In this episode of Inspect & Adapt, Construx's Mark Griffin, Steve Tockey, and Earl Beede talk about what the Cone is, how it impacts your ability to estimate, and how you can use it to increase your estimate predictability.

If hindsight is 20/20—and it's good practice to look back to find ways you could do better—then why do retrospectives seem like such a waste of time? Shouldn't they be a goldmine that we're excited about rather than just another obligatory meeting? Inspect & Adapt host Mark Griffin gathers fellow Construx staff, Steve Tockey, Jenny Stuart, and Earl Beede, to discuss how we can make retrospectives something to look forward to.

There is a lot of talk and ideas about how to scale agile up from the one-team, one-product base so that multiple teams can support a product (I am looking at you SAFe). But what about the case where one team must support multiple products? That is reverse agile scaling. Join Construx’s Mark Griffin, Jenny Stuart, and Earl Beede as they share strategies and proven techniques to have one team work with multiple products and multiple product owners.

What does "value" mean on your product? How do you know you are working on the most valuable thing? Construx's Earl Beede, Jenny Stuart, and Mark Griffin discuss how to clearly identify and articulate value on development projects. Knowing the targeted value is critical for prioritization and scope control and for knowing when to stop. It is also the key ingredient to meaningful feedback cycles. But how do you reliably identify value? Earl & Jenny will share stories of how they've h...

How do you lead product development teams when a company that has always been hardware focused now owes its success to both hardware and software? Construx's Mark Griffin and Earl Beede recently spoke with Inogen's Norbert Leinfellner and Horst Pichler, who have decades of experience leading this transition. We kick off 2024 with an Inspect & Adapt episode on how successful leadership requires a certain system-level mindset to help blend those hardware and software teams.

Listen to Construx's Earl Beede, Jenny Stuart, and Mark Griffin as they assess the role and duties of project managers on software intensive projects. A special focus will be on groups using agile development processes. Earl and Jenny will share stories of what they have seen work and what hasn't with their clients.

Construx's Earl Beede, Jenny Stuart, and Mark Griffin investigate ways to split user stories so they fit in a sprint. Some methods are far preferable—and even easier—than others. Sometimes it just means setting yourself up to make your user stories split-able. Earl and Jenny will share their stories from the trenches and explain how they assist teams to apply the appropriate splitting practices in their environment.