Healthy Developer

When talking about the differences between scrum (or kanban) and agile development, the motor and steering wheel of a car can be a useful analogy.

When your team is working to write requirements, write code, test, and deploy releases of your software – they probably follow a development process like scrum or kanban to get work done.

This work can be thought of as the motor of the car that propels the software product forward, changing or adding new features to it.

However software companies sell products in a changing market – competitors can force us to change, customers can force us to change, and our own team members can discover information that forces us to change.

This is when the leadership of a software team especially need to trust their other team members to make changes.

Each time the team makes one of these changes to respond to unplanned events, they are being agile.

Being agile in software development is like using the steering wheel of the car.

When things change, the direction of the features needs to be turned so the "power" of the engine is focused on something different.

In software development, we steer the car by putting new product backlog items (or kanban tickets) at a high priority to make satisfying our customer paramount.

Customers won't buy a software product when we've built everything WE think they want – but only what THEY accept.

In this episode, I share some thoughts around this analogy and how you might use it to ask this question next time you're making a software development process decision:

"Is this practice going to help, or hurt our team's ability to 'steer' the car that is our software product's queue of work to be done?"

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Is there a time to just stop learning and write code?

Software development draws many of us in with endless opportunities to learn, but is it right for every project?

Early in my career I wanted to know everything possible about the software companies I worked for. But a couple of years in software consulting taught me I could actually be a better developer by learning to ignore information sometimes.

In this episode, I share a story of a project I was on where the relationship was in trouble between my agency and a client. Fixing the relationship was the most important thing to do - but it could only be done by solving their problems quickly.

The relationship was repaired quickly - but only through ignoring learning some things about the software!

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At some software companies, it can be hard for people to learn from mistakes they make as a developer, product manager, or any other role that works together on a project.

Because building software requires so much communication, it's natural for things to get lost in translation and mistakes to occur.

But we can treat mistakes as an opportunity to blame someone else, or a chance to encourage them to learn.

And this also reflects back on us, showing others we can use encouragement too when we make mistakes.

I hope this episode gives you some useful advice to prevent you from having the mindset I did earlier in my career –

…that people should be held to the same expectations of reliability as a computer!

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You can also watch this episode on YouTube.

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There's no shame in getting help from a friend on a software project!

Let me tell you the story of a project I worked on soon after moving to Austin, Texas.

I was new to the consulting side of the software development industry, and didn't know anyone in town. After being put on a project with a more experienced consultant, I ran into a few challenges.

But after realizing the other consultant wanted to help, I got myself out of a jam that was starting to make me feel pretty stressed out.

I hope this story helps you think about the next time you're struggling to get some work done. There's no shame in asking for help, or even giving your work over to someone else. Businesses pay us to get value delivered to customers - but we don't always have to be the ones to do it!

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You can also watch this episode on YouTube.

Visit me at thrivingtechnologist.com

It's always been popular to tell people how they're "doing it wrong" and agile software development is just as easy to call "fake".

But in working with many teams who read these same articles, they still get lost in a sea of opinions and need a definitive answer.

So I made this short episode to help you spot fake agile teams in under 7 minutes.

With this information, you'll know the truth, but may be disappointed with whether your project even benefits from agility.

There are really only two questions you need to ask!

By the end of this episode, you'll be able to know in an interview whether the team you're joining is agile, call B.S. on an agile coach who misses the point, and help the people on your team work together better.

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You can also watch this episode on YouTube.

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Let me tell you a story about one of the weirder software projects I've been on – and how trying to change the culture went wrong.

Early in my programming career I had a taste of some successful projects at a Fortune 500, and I focused entirely on technology and basically had *no* soft skills.

So coming into a small company that wanted to grow their technology business seemed like it would be "easy".

Little did I know how simple decisions about the relationships I made (and didn't make) would lead to disaster.

There were also things outside my control, and those always seem present on every project to this day.

Whether you want to help a team be "more agile", maybe try and achieve DevOps, or just use the latest Javascript framework – I hope this short story helps you avoid culture problems if you ever want to change your software development team.

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You can also watch this episode on YouTube.

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Iain Lowe is an experienced software developer and manager based out of Montreal, Canada.

Iain found me on Twitter after viewing a short clip from my interview with Scott Nimrod.

In this interview, Iain and I discuss the controversy around the Reddit post about estimating that I created from my interview with Scott Nimrod, organizational culture in the tech industry, the dogma of transformation in agile practices, and considerations for the career of growing developers.

Follow Iain on Twitter where he provides a lot of great advice and support for budding software developers: https://twitter.com/realilowe

Iain also has a YouTube channel you can check out: https://www.youtube.com/user/iainlowe

Join my Patreon: https://thrivingtechnologist.com/patreon

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TechRolepedia, a wiki about the top 25 roles in tech: https://thrivingtechnologist.com/techroles

The Thriving Technologist career guide: https://thrivingtechnologist.com/guide

You can also watch this episode on YouTube.

Visit me at thrivingtechnologist.com

I'm still figuring out how to help more software developers understand how important consulting skills are!

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TechRolepedia, a wiki about the top 25 roles in tech: https://thrivingtechnologist.com/techroles

The Thriving Technologist career guide: https://thrivingtechnologist.com/guide

Visit me at thrivingtechnologist.com

Scott Nimrod is an experienced Software Consultant based out of Miami who specializes in Test Automation, WPF, Functional Programming, and a variety of other technologies.

He was an early subscriber to my channel and has given me a lot of great advice and support since I started out on YouTube in 2017!

In this interview, Scott and I discuss some serious topics related to software craftsmanship and consulting.

Specifically the dynamics between consultants and managers, working with difficult people, career growth, testing – and the direction of the software industry.

Scott also runs a YouTube channel with great interviews and live coding exercises: https://www.youtube.com/user/Bizmonger

Join my Patreon: https://thrivingtechnologist.com/patreon

Learn about one-on-one career coaching with me: https://thrivingtechnologist.com/coaching

TechRolepedia, a wiki about the top 25 roles in tech: https://thrivingtechnologist.com/techroles

The Thriving Technologist career guide: https://thrivingtechnologist.com/guide

You can also watch this episode on YouTube.

CHAPTER MARKERS

(9:55) Rescuing Projects with Quality (13:17) Short-Term Product Decisions (17:40) Continuing Developer Education (20:34) Accepting Unmotivated Employees (26:01) Getting Blamed for Failures (29:11) Staying Positive and Fearless (35:31) Establishing Industry Authority (42:53) Unpredictability and Estimating (48:45) Forcing Process Changes on People (58:40) Focusing Your Passion on People (1:00:27) Coping With Corporate Politics

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It's like I have a filter - I can't even tell you everything I want to!

Join my Patreon: https://thrivingtechnologist.com/patreon

Learn about one-on-one career coaching with me: https://thrivingtechnologist.com/coaching

TechRolepedia, a wiki about the top 25 roles in tech: https://thrivingtechnologist.com/techroles

The Thriving Technologist career guide: https://thrivingtechnologist.com/guide

Visit me at thrivingtechnologist.com