SPaMCAST 187 - Who Owns Estimation In Agile Projects, Part 1

The Software Process and Measurement Cast 798 features my interview with Steve Taplin of Sonatafy Technology. Steve and I discussed the nuances and benefits of nearshore software development. Steve also provided his thoughts on why building an uplifting culture both inside and outside the organization reaps powerful rewards for everyone it touches. Steve Taplin leads Sonatafy Technology as its CEO, bringing an entrepreneurial flair and inspirational leadership to the forefront of nearshore software development. His career is marked by a series of successful business scalings, showcasing his ability to tackle complex challenges within the tech industry. Steve's expertise spans across critical business domains, driving Sonatafy to excel in delivering top-tier software solutions.  Contact Information: Re-read Saturday News This week we put a bow on our re-read of with a few final thoughts. This book has earned a place on my useful bookshelf. The quote from last week sums up my rationale for Re-read Saturday.  “We take action because of our relentless pursuit of improvement. That is what professionalism is all about.” Next week we will begin our re-read of  by Cal Newport.  Buy a copy and get reading – .     Week 1: – Week 2: – Week 3:   –   Week 4: – Week 5: –   Week 6: –   Week 7: –   Week 8: –   Week 9: –   Week 10: -    Week 11: -   Week 12: -      Week 13: s -                                                                                                                 Next SPaMCAST  The SPaMCAST 799 will feature an essay on why all communication is not collaboration. Like all trendy words, we are confusing the meaning and in the process losing the value of the act. One final thought before next week, just because you allow time for Q&A, a talk at an All Hands Meeting is not collaboration even if you say it is.  We will also have a visit from Jon M Quigley and his Alpha and Omega of Product Development column. A little foreshadowing… SPaMCAST 800 will feature Johanna Rothman, Jeremy Willets, and me.

In the Software Process and Measurement Cast 797 we ponder a statement from Roger Turnau in SPaMCAST 796, “You can’t expect the process to save you from yourself in every circumstance.” The statement poses a leadership quandary leading to questions every leader must ask. When does process guidance make sense? When do processes infantilize teams and leaders? These are not the basis for an after-work philosophical discussion. Vast movements within the software industry have been spawned as cultures have swayed between directive and laissez-faire poles.  We also have a visit from Jeremy Berriault who brings his Evolutionary Agilst™ Column to the podcast. We discussed whether testers are part of the team and if they own quality. Re-read Saturday News This week we finish our re-read of with two chapters. Chapter 13 is titled Scaling Monte Carlo. In a perfect world, one team could do all of the work needed for a product or feature a manageable piece at a time. Unfortunately, this is the real world. In Chapter 14, titled A Parting Thought, Vacanti states, “We take action because of our relentless pursuit of improvement. That is what professionalism is all about.” Buy a copy and get reading – .   Week 1: – Week 2: – Week 3:   –   Week 4: – Week 5: –   Week 6: –   Week 7: –   Week 8: –   Week 9: –   Week 10: -    Week 11: -   Week 12: -     Next SPaMCAST  The SPaMCAST 798 will feature our interview with Steve Taplin. Steve and I discussed sourcing nearshore and creating a culture inside and around an organization.

The Software Process and Measurement Cast 796 features a conversation with Roger Turnau. Roger and I talk about prioritization using the cost of delay. Every organization and team I have ever worked with has a backlog of work and lots of people screaming that their piece of the backlog is the most important. The cost of delay is an important tool to filter out the noise and it can be as nuanced as you need it to be. Roger Turnau is an Agile Coach at Accenture. His mission is to empower and inspire leaders and organizations to create an environment where high performance feels effortless. His approach to achieving this combines an emphasis on psychological safety, building trust throughout the organization, and close attention to KPIs, OKRs and flow metrics to ensure durable results. For the past five years, Roger has specialized in enterprise and DevOps coaching, product development, and Agile transformations. Contact Information LinkedIn:  Website: (Blog) Last Call for Cohort 1! Slay Work Intake Chaos: Become a Master in 5 Weeks!   Based on Tom Cagley and Jeremy WIllet’s new book , learn to diagnose and solve work intake anti-patterns to stop drowning in work. Work intake is the biggest challenge facing organizations today. If you don’t get work intake right, you won’t be in business for very long. A 5-week cohort-based course, meeting weekly for an hour, includes teaching, peer feedback & discussion, feedback from the authors, time for Q&A, templates, and an electronic copy of our book, Mastering Work Intake: From Chaos to Predictable Delivery. Are you ready to commit?  Join our cohort-based workshop. The first cohort is starting on March 1st, 2024. Details at   Re-read Saturday News This week we tackle two chapters of . Chapter 11, “Different Sampling Methods”. The chapter points out that random sampling techniques are just the tip of the iceberg in approaches. Chapter 12, ”What Percentile Do I Choose?”, discusses whether you always need to quote the 85th percentile range. The short answer is no but like most things, there is more to it than that.  Buy a copy and get reading – .   Week 1: – Week 2: – Week 3:   –   Week 4: – Week 5: –   Week 6: –   Week 7: –   Week 8: –   Week 9: –   Week 10: -    Week 11: - Next SPaMCAST  In the Software Process and Measurement Cast 797 we ponder the question, should the process save us from ourselves in every circumstance?  We will also have a visit from Jeremy Berriault who brings his Evolutionary Agilst™ Column to the podcast

Part of every profession is the jargon practitioners adopt. Having a language links people together and creates a sense of community. It also creates private gardens: a profession set off from those around it. Jargon is a form of secret handshake. Jargon is a two-edged sword, both gathering and excluding people. Be wary! We also have a visit from Susan Parente and her Not A Scrumdamentalist column. We discussed her recent mini-sabbatical. Stepping back has the power to clear your mind.  Slay Work Intake Chaos: Become a Master in 5 Weeks! Based on Tom Cagley and Jeremy WIllet’s new book , learn to diagnose and solve work intake anti-patterns to stop drowning in work. Work intake is the biggest challenge facing organizations today. If you don’t get work intake right, you won’t be in business for very long. A 5-week cohort-based course, meeting weekly for an hour, includes teaching, peer feedback & discussion, feedback from the authors, time for Q&A, templates, and an electronic copy of our book, Mastering Work Intake: From Chaos to Predictable Delivery. Are you ready to commit?  Join our cohort-based workshop. The first cohort is starting on March 1st, 2024. Details at Re-read Saturday News This week we tackle two chapters of . We begin with Chapter 9 - VoP, VoC, and Predictability which sums up Section I, Variability and Predictability. Chapter 10, titled Monte Carlo Simulation, Revisited begins Section II, Advanced Monte Carlo Simulation and Predictability. Buy a copy and get reading – .   Week 1: – Week 2: – Week 3:   –   Week 4: – Week 5: –   Week 6: –   Week 7: –   Week 8: –   Week 9: –   Week 10: -    Next SPaMCAST  The Software Process and Measurement Cast 796 our conversation with Roger Turnau. Roger and I will delve deeply into prioritization using the cost of delay. Every organization and team I have ever worked with has a backlog of work and lots of people screaming that their piece of the backlog is the most important. Cost of delay is an important tool to filter out the noise.

The Software Process and Measurement Cast 794 features our conversation with Nick Schrock. Nick and I discussed data engineering, AI, and entrepreneurship. As the Founder at Dagster Labs, Nick has the perfect standing to talk about three of the hottest topics of 2024. Nick’s Bio: Nick is the Founder and CTO of Dagster Labs, the company behind Dagster, a popular open-source data orchestration platform. Before Dagster Labs, he was a Principal Engineer and Director at Facebook from 2009 to 2017, where he founded the Product Infrastructure team and co-created GraphQL. After cutting his teeth at Facebook, he pursued his passion for working on engineers’ pain points after hearing that data infrastructure was a big issue. He founded Dagster to address this issue, highlighting how quickly open-source projects were able to make an impact at legacy companies.  Dagster couldn’t come at a more critical time as data and ML engineering are beginning to drive both human and business decision-making.   Contact Information: Linkedin: Website:   Stop Project Chaos: The Ultimate Guide to Predictable Work Intake   Feeling overwhelmed by endless tasks and unpredictable deadlines? You’re not alone. But what if you could transform your project into a well-oiled machine, delivering consistent value on time? Introducing Mastering Work Intake: From Chaos to Predictable Delivery. Ditch the black hole of endless requests. Discover practical strategies for capturing, filtering, and prioritizing work effectively. Gain control of your work pipeline. Learn how to navigate different types of work at different stages, ensuring smooth flow and efficient delivery. Become a master of saying “no”. This book equips you with the tools and techniques to confidently decline unproductive work and protect your team’s focus. Stop the chaos and start delivering! Grab your copy of Mastering Work Intake today and unleash your project’s full potential. JRoss:   or  Amazon (US): Are you ready to commit to not letting bad work drag you down? Invest in your success and learn how to master work intake for a smoother, more rewarding project experience. Join our cohort-based workshop. The first cohort is starting on March 1st, 2024. Details at Re-read Saturday News Chapter 8 shatters myths!  Once upon a time in a land far, far away, I believed a few of these myths. Ok, it was just about five years ago that I was dissuaded from the last of my misbeliefs. I believe that many of my misconceptions are founded in the collision of words between classical statistics and words Shewhart used for Process Behavior Charts (PBC). Buy a copy and get reading – .     Week 1: – Week 2: – Week 3:   –   Week 4: – Week 5: -   Week 6: -   Week 7: -   Week 8: XmR Charts and the Four Basic Metrics of Flow -   Week 9: -     Next SPaMCAST  In the Software Process and Measurement Cast 795, why do teams, products, projects, and companies exist? Why do we care? (We really should!)   We will also have a visit from Susan Parente who brings her Not A Scrumdamentalist column to the podcast!

Feeling overwhelmed by endless tasks and unpredictable deadlines? You're not alone. But what if you could transform your project into a well-oiled machine, delivering consistent value on time? Introducing Mastering Work Intake: From Chaos to Predictable Delivery.   Ditch the black hole of endless requests. Discover practical strategies for capturing, filtering, and prioritizing work effectively. Gain control of your work pipeline. Learn how to navigate different types of work at different stages, ensuring smooth flow and efficient delivery. Become a master of saying "no". This book equips you with the tools and techniques to confidently decline unproductive work and protect your team's focus.   Stop the chaos and start delivering! Grab your copy of Mastering Work Intake today and unleash your project's full potential.   JRoss:   or  Amazon (US): Ready to commit to not letting bad work drag you down? Invest in your success and learn how to master work intake for a smoother, more rewarding project experience. Join our cohort-based workshop. The first cohort is starting on March 1st, 2024. Details at

As you would suspect, I have recently been talking up Mastering Work Intake which Jeremy Willets and I co-authored. One conversation turned to the topic of whether value stream analysis was useful in controlling work intake. The simple answer is YES across the whole value stream and up and down the hierarchy. We will also have a visit from Kies Kostaqi who brings her “You Are Not Alone” column to the podcast. In this installment, we discuss whether anyone (within reason) can play the Scrum Master role.  Mastering Work Intake  by Tom Cagley and Jeremy Willets    Have you purchased your copy of  ?  Doing the right work at the right time can make or break your project, and there are surprisingly few resources to show you how to manage this process effectively - no longer. focuses on the full pipeline that work follows as it enters and exits your organization, including the different types of work that enter at different levels and times. It is a must-read for agile coaches, Scrum Masters, product owners, project and portfolio managers, team members, and anyone who touches the software development process. Mastering work intake involves recognizing that it’s easy to say “ yes” and much harder to say “ no.” Buy a copy today!   J Ross: Amazon (US):   For physical copies outside of the US and Canada: UK and EU:   For international orders outside of Europe: (or the Amazon store for your country)   Re-read Saturday News Chapter Seven, of  , dives into the nuances of using XmR charts for the basic flow metrics including:  Cycle Time Throughput WIP WIP Age   This is a hugely useful chapter. There are three points that I draw out this week.  They are the difference between XmR and Cycle Time (scatter plot) Charts, chunky data, and Total WIP Age charting.   Buy a copy and get reading – .     Week 1: – Week 2: – Week 3:   –   Week 4: – Week 5: -   Week 6: -   Week 7: -     Next SPaMCAST  The Software Process and Measurement Cast 794 will feature our conversation with Nick Schrock. We discussed data engineering, AI, and entrepreneurship. As the Founder at Dagster Labs, Nick had the perfect standing to talk about three of the hottest topics of 2024.

by Thomas M Cagley Jr and Jeremy Willets, gives you the tools to prioritize and deliver the right work at the right time. The book is on the shelves today! One of the topics covered in the book 9 Core Principles of Work Intake. Today’s audio promo describes the 9 principles to promote both the book and our cohort-based workshop.  To whet your whistle, when you join the cohort waitlist (near the bottom of the Maven landing page) you will receive a copy of the 9 Core Work Intake Principles Worksheet. This is one of the handouts from the class that you can use to determine how your team or organization is doing with them. Purchase a copy of Mastering Work Intake at: J Ross:   or  Amazon (US): Sign up or join the waiting list for the workshop at   If you have any questions email me at tcagley@tomcagley.com

Happy Birthday to the Software Process and Measurement Cast.  Today we begin year 18 with our interview with Gil Broza. Gill and I discussed his new book, Deliver Better Results: How to Unlock Your Organization’s Potential. The book is available NOW! I am excited by the ideas in the book and I think you will be also.  If you are involved in improving value delivery this is a must-have-book. Why? Because it identifies what organizations that successfully improve value delivery have in common and provides those ideas to you. Gill specializes in helping leaders deliver far better results by upgrading their organizations’ Agile ways of working. He is the author of , , , and Listen to the podcast and then download Chapter 1 from:   Other Contact Links:  The book: Gill’s  My website: LinkedIn:   Mastering Work Intake  by Tom Cagley and Jeremy Willets  Have you purchased your copy of  ?  Doing the right work at the right time can make or break your project, and there are surprisingly few resources to show you how to manage this process effectively - no longer. focuses on the full pipeline that work follows as it enters and exits your organization, including the different types of work that enter at different levels and times. It is a must-read for agile coaches, Scrum Masters, product owners, project and portfolio managers, team members, and anyone who touches the software development process. Mastering work intake involves recognizing that it’s easy to say “ yes” and much harder to say “ no.” Buy a copy today!   J Ross: Amazon (US):   For physical copies outside of the US and Canada: UK and EU:   For international orders outside of Europe: (or the Amazon store for your country)   Re-read Saturday News Chapter Six, of  , is titled Detecting Signals on PBCs. Finding a signal in the noise is like separating the wheat from the chaff. Adding to the pile of quotes, one of the most enduring is “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” A more appropriate version in the context of this chapter might be “Give a person some data and they will see a trend. Teach a person to detect a signal and they won’t be as silly” – doesn’t have the same punch, but the new version encapsulates Chapter 6. Buy a copy and get reading – .   Week 1: – Week 2: – Week 3:   –   Week 4: – Week 5: -   Week 6: -   Week 7: -   Next SPaMCAST  SPaMCAST 793 explores the relationship between value stream mapping and work intake. The whole value chain needs to understand why mastering work intake delivers more value for everyone! We will also have a visit from Kies Kostaqi who brings her “You Are Not Alone” column to the podcast.

With SPaMCAST 791 we complete Year 17 with our interview with Vinnie GIl. Vinnie and I talked about conferences and staying connected with the Agile Community. One of the topics we covered was the value of conferences and meetups to the community and individuals—a great way to complete year 17.   Vinnie puts people and culture first. She enjoys connecting with people and companies to find their purpose, walking alongside them in their organisational growth journey. Her passion is influencing change at the Enterprise level to help bring about wide-ranging agile organisational transformation. Vinnie has vast industry and has deep business experience mining, engineering, retail, financial services, public sector, education, travel, automotive to name a few.  She has over 20 years in the project space and previously held roles in Project Management, Contracts, IT, HR, Strategy as well as experience working in and with start-up companies.  She is a Chartered Fellow of the MCIPD. She is deeply involved in the Agile community and volunteers her time with the Business Agility Institute, in addition to being a member of the International Consortium for Agile.  She is an IC Agile Authorised Instructor and teaches ICP Leading With Agility and Agility in Human Resources. Vinnie has a special interest in educating and education being the tool that empowers people. As an international conference speaker, she enjoys sharing real life agile learnings with a hint of banter. Mastering Work Intake by Tom Cagley and Jeremy Willets  Have you purchased your copy of  .  Doing the right work at the right time can make or break your project, and there are surprisingly few resources to show you how to manage this process effectively - no longer. focuses on the full pipeline that work follows as it enters and exits your organization, including the different types of work that enter at different levels and times. It is a must-read for agile coaches, Scrum Masters, product owners, project and portfolio managers, team members, and anyone who touches the software development process. Mastering work intake involves recognizing that it’s easy to say “ yes” and much harder to say “ no.”   Buy a copy today!   J Ross: Amazon (US):   For physical copies outside of the US and Canada: UK and EU:   For international orders outside of Europe: (or the Amazon store for your country) Note: The Publisher indicates that it takes a while for the physical copies to get to the distributors outside of the USA and Canada.   Re-read Saturday News This week, Chapter 5 of  . The question of how much data is required to determine what is happening in a system is a perennial bugaboo. Those predisposed to acting tend to think less is more, while those with more reticence sometimes wait forever to make a decision.  The question of how much data is needed is more than just a footnote in flow. Buy a copy and get reading – .   Week 1: – Week 2: – Week 3:   –   Week 4: – Week 5: -     Next SPaMCAST  SPaMCAST 792 begins Year 18 with our interview with Gil Broza. Gill and I talked about his new book, Deliver Better Results: How to Unlock Your Organization’s Potential.  The book explores what all successful improvements to value delivery have in common.