In this episode Bob and Josh discuss patterns and practices that can be used to inrease preditability in your sprints.  Nothing wears a team down faster than sporadic sprint planning and execution.  If your team's velocity chart looks like an EKG graph, give our suggestions a try and make your team happier!  If you have any other tricks, please let us know!

In this episode Bob and Josh divulge some tips and tricks we use when hiring for an agile team.  We walk through a few of our hiring practices and even talk through a few sample questions.  The strength of your team directly depends on your hiring practices, so we hope that this podcast will help you strengthen your team over the coming months.

What tips and tricks do you have when hiring someone for an agile team?  Please share in the comments.

50 episodes!?!? 

After 3 years and 50 episodes spanning all kinds of crazy topics, we get back to basics in this show.  In our last meta-cast we discussed how Agile has "jumped the shark" (I guess we should have known the answer to that since we capitialize it now...), Bob and I start all over again.  In an effort to remove all of the fluff and buzzword bonanza that dominates many Agile discussions today, we talk through what is really at the core of Agile.  How important are standups?  What one ceremony is non-negotiable?  

Enjoy the episode and please leave feedback in whatever channel you prefer!

In this episode, Bob and Josh discuss whether or not Agile has jumped the shark.  After educating Bob on what that term means, we dig into the reality of the situation and what we can do about getting Agile back to its roots.  We have some ideas that we plan to tackle in future podcasts, but would love to hear what our listeners think we (the community) can do to fix this situation...

In this episode Bob and Josh discuss the concept of Open Allocation and how it could be applied to a company.  As a primer, here are some links that augment the podcast as we repeatedly refer to Valve's and GitHub's implementation of Open Allocation.  

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• Valve's Employee Handbook
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• FastCo article detailing GitHub's lean management approach
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Let us know your thoughts on wheather or not Open Allocation could/should be applied to your business/team.

In this episode, Bob and Josh discuss the numerous times that saying no is required.  We discuss the issues preventing many folks from saying no when their gut is telling them that they have to speak up and say no.  Aside from identifying the key moments, we help you out by giving tips and tricks on how to say no.

As you likley read on Twitter, we had a little issue with our new microphone that generated some feedback during our last recording.  Because of that static, we chose not to post the episode.  However, we are returning to the topic of technical debt in order to meet the requests of our listeners.  This is a shortened version of our discussion on technical debt.  While it is shorter, we cover all of the primary topics and hope that it meets your needs.  As always, please let us know what you think!

In this episode Bob and Josh discuss the issues we see in the lagging agile adoption dilemma that seems rather prevalent these days.  Is it poor teaching?  Is it teams that just don't listen?  What is the problem and what can do you about it?  We have the answers you need!!!

Part of our solution we offer at the end is the prescriptive agile adoption framework we built in our Agile Starter Kit series.  Here they are if you need to do a little catchup or need to jump start your team.

The Agile Starter Kit Series:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3 

Part 4

In this episode Bob and Josh discuss the importance of estimation in the world of software development.  Can a project survive without estimation?  Is estimation a skill that can be honed and improved over time?  We cover all of these questions and a bit more.  Where do you stand on these topics?  Let us know in the comments.

In this episode Bob and Josh discuss common misconceptions and missteps in retrospecitves.  You'll quickly learn how passionate we are on this subject as the discussion heats up.  We provide ideas and direction on how to heal your struggling retrospectives.