SPaMCAST 382 – Ben Linders, Continuous Process Improvement

Software Process and Measurement Cast 382 features our interview with Ben Linders. Ben revisits the Software Process and Measurement Cast to discuss his recent series of articles on targeting, finding, and eradicating impediments. Ben discussed a platform for continuous process improvement that delivers continuously increasing value! Ben’s Bio: Ben Linders is an Independent Consultant in Agile, Lean, Quality and Continuous Improvement, based in The Netherlands. He is the author of Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives, Waardevolle Agile Retrospectives, What Drives Quality and Continuous Improvement. As an adviser, coach and trainer he helps organizations by ddeploying effective software development and management practices. He focuses on continuous improvement, collaboration and communication, and professional development, to deliver business value to customers. Ben is an active member of networks on Agile, Lean and Quality, and a frequent speaker and writer. He shares his experience in a bilingual blog (Dutch and English), as an editor for Agile at InfoQ and as an expert on TechTarget. Follow him on twitter: @BenLinders.  Ben's impedements articles http://www.benlinders.com/2015/handling-impediments-why-it-matters/   Ben's new book on continuous improvement is available on leanpub: https://leanpub.com/continuousimprovement   Re-Read Saturday News We take a break for Podcamp Toronto and to begin the process of picking the next book. What are your suggestions? In the meantime catch up on the re-read of How to Measure Anything, Finding the Value of “Intangibles in Business” Third Edition by Douglas W. Hubbard on the Software Process and Measurement Blog.   Upcoming Events I am facilitating the CMMI Capability Challenge. This new competition showcases thought leaders who are building organizational capability and improving performance. Listeners will be asked to vote on the winning idea which will be presented at the CMMI Institute’s Capability Counts 2016 conference. The next CMMI Capability Challenge session will be held on March 15th at 1PM EST. http://cmmiinstitute.com/conferences#thecapabilitychallenge   I will be at the QAI Quest 2016 in Chicago beginning April 18th through April 22nd. I will be teaching a full day class on Agile Estimation on April 18 and presenting Budgeting, Estimating, Planning and #NoEstimates: They ALL Make Sense for Agile Testing! on Wednesday, April 20th.  Register now! Upcoming Webinars IIST Webinar: Scaling Agile Testing Using the TMMi Date: February 26, 2016Time: 11:00am ESTPresenter: Tom Cagley, VP of Consulting, TMMi Accredited Assessor Agile methods, principles and techniques are core to how many IT organizations develop and maintain software. However, even though techniques like Test-Driven Development and Scrum are widely practiced, one common complaint is that it is difficult to scale these practices. The webinar will outline the TMMi and provide a process for using environmental, technical and project context to effectively integrate testing into an Agile development environment, measuring the effectiveness of the process. Budgeting, Estimation, Planning, #NoEstimates and the Agile Planning OnionMarch 1, 2016, 11 AM ESTThere are many levels of estimation, including budgeting, high-level estimation and task planning (detailed estimation). This webinar challenges the listener to consider estimation as a form of planning. Register Here Next SPaMCAST The next Software Process and Measurement Cast features our essay on focus. The essay is a reaction to an earlier discussion of hyper-connectivity and the techniques to combat the downside of hyper-connectivity, which has convinced me that we are dancing around the bigger workplace issue of how can you stay focused on delivering real business value in an environment that seems to be designed to promote making incremental progress on lots of projects, rather than getting any one of them done. We will also have new entries from the Jeremy Berriault’s QA Corner and a discussion with Steve Tendon on Chapter 8 of Tame The Flow: Hyper-Productive Knowledge-Work Performance, The TameFlow Approach and Its Application to Scrum and Kanban. Mastering Software Project Management: Best Practices, Tools and Techniques co-authored by Murali Chematuri and myself and published by J. Ross Publishing. We have received unsolicited reviews like the following: “This book will prove that software projects should not be a tedious process, neither for you or your team.” Support SPaMCAST by buying the book here. Available in English and Chinese.