Today marks the end of year 15 on the Software Process and Measurement Cast, and we are closing the year with pitchfork and torches. We discussed the world of knowledge work in 2022. Leadership, principles, value, and values take center stage. Panels like this make me want to do panels every week!

The panelists (other than myself) are:

Jeremy Berriault https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-berriault-mba/ Web: https://berriaultandassociates.com/ 

Jon M Quigley linkedin.com/in/jonmquigley Web: https://www.valuetransform.com/product-development-tools/

Kevin Rush linkedin.com/in/kezrush Twitter: @Kezrush

Chris Hurney linkedin.com/in/chrishurney Web: https://www.inspiradoconsulting.com/ Twitter: chris_hurney

Participating in spirit (they were on part one last week)

Susan Parente linkedin.com/in/susanparente Web: http://www.s3-tec.com/

Jeremy Willets linkedin.com/in/jeremywillets   Blog: https://www.jeremywillets.com/ 

 

Re-Read Saturday News 

Week 3 of our re-read of  Agile Conversations by Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick tackles Chapter 2, Improving Your Conversations. Chapter 2 begins the heavy lifting of improving conversations. This is a chapter I strongly suggest reading at least twice while you are putting the ideas into practice. The authors spend the first part of the chapter building a case for why conversations are so powerful. The authors state that through conversation “we are able to create and believe in shared fictions.” There is a ton to think about and practice!

My experiment of the week:

First an update on my conversation experiment from last week. Last week I wanted to review my conversations to determine if I was correctly assessing scenarios using the Cynefin Framework. There was at least one conversation where I misjudged the complexity.  Whereas the participants viewed the scenario being discussed to be complicated (the solution being a framework or best practices), I viewed the scenario as complex or possibly chaotic.  The differences in mental models made the conversation tense and ungratifying. In my mind, my failure was not recognizing the issue until I was reviewing the conversation after the fact (one of the Four Rs in Chapter 2). I think a better approach, for me, will be to assess the complexity of the scenario before the conversion in the future. Perhaps a form of conversational premortem. 

This week I am going to use the conversational analysis process on two or three different types of hard conversations – my weeks are always interesting. One of the areas I am interested in contemplating is whether different kinds of conversations have different question ratios. 

 

https://amzn.to/3vEjr55 

Week 1: Logistics and Introduction - https://bit.ly/3EZspxT 

Week 2: Escaping The Software Factory - https://bit.ly/3HIlivg 

Week 3: Improving Your Conversations - https://bit.ly/3ty0nYe 

 

Next SPaMCAST 

Next week we have an interview with Martin Foster. Mr. Foster and I wrestle with the question, “Why don’t most agile transformations deliver tangible business value?”  A valuable start to year 16 and 2022!