Alexandre Freire Kawakami on Enabling Engineering Culture

01/16/17 • 19 min

In this podcast Shane Hastie, InfoQ Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Alexandre Freire Kawakami, a Director at Industrial Logic about his talk Enabling Awesome Engineering Teams, the ideas behind Modern Agile and the importance of feedback loops and real usage data for product development. Why listen to this podcast: - Overview of his talk on enabling awesome engineering teamsThe contradiction between values-driven and process-driven change - Modern Agile is designed to help people and organisations get over the process obsession - Working software is not enough – achieving better outcomes for customers is what’s important - By having analytics and usage data available we can learn what works and what doesn’t and make better decisions Notes and links can be found on InfoQ: http://bit.ly/2j2usrx 6m:15s - Modern agile is about a community sharing ideas and stories about working towards four principles: Deliver value continuously Make people awesome Experiment and learn rapidly Make safety a prerequisite 6m:40s - Some techniques which can help achieve these values, depending on the culture fit 7m:25s - The benefits of single piece flow 8m:10s - The importance of safety to make experimentation and learning possible 9m:40s - It’s about building a community- not selling ideas 9m:55s - Some practices which can be taught 10m:22s - Not all organisations want to change at the same rate and to the same extent, and that’s OK Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ: http://bit.ly/2j2usrx You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest topics from professional software development. bit.ly/2cMnjfW

Previous Episode

Mitch Shepard on Managing for Diversity

In this podcast recorded at QCon San Francisco 2016, Shane Hastie, InfoQ Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Mitch Shepard founder of WiRL about her talk at QCon and the challenges around gender diversity in the tech workforce. Why listen to this podcast: - Gender diversity and women leaving tech roles is a real and serious problem - There are compelling reasons to have a more diverse workplace – both ethical and bottom line results - “It’s nobody’s fault, but it is everybody’s problem” - There are physiological differences between the male and female brains - Don’t assume anything about anyone because of who they are or any characteristic they may have – we are all different Notes and links can be found on InfoQ: http://bit.ly/2jodKmn 4m:34s - “It’s nobody’s fault, but it is everybody’s problem” 4m:49s - There is strong, systematic bias which gives men an advantage which goes long and deep 5m:09s - Things driving the recognition of the issue at a personal level are often related to leaders who see the issue and are driven by an extreme sense of fairness, and seeing the women they care about impeded in their career growth 6m:14s - The business case for diversity is compelling – businesses who have a higher percentage of women leaders than the average consistently achieve better financial performance Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ: http://bit.ly/2jodKmn You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest topics from professional software development. bit.ly/2cMnjfW

Next Episode

Sara Bayless Da Costa on the Skills Designers Need to Be Effective with New Technologies

Shane Hastie, InfoQ Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Sara Bayless Da Costa, visual storyteller and design thinking evangelist at Fjord. Bayless Da Costa gave a talk at QCon San Francisco on Rapid Prototyping Methods. They spoke about prototyping, collaborative design, designing for new interfaces and new skills that designers need in order to be successful with new technologies. Why listen to this podcast: - The importance of taking a collaborative design approach with multiple roles involved – design is not just done by designers - Design and development work well together to deliver an exceptional customer experience - The importance of empathy when understanding people’s needsVisual storytelling is a powerful way to convey messages and inform good decision making - Evergreen needs – human needs have not fundamentally changed, but the way we solve them is constantly evolving - Designers need new and different skills to be effective in this new world Notes and links can be found on: http://bit.ly/2kkWzT1 6m:40s - The value and importance of visual story-telling 7m:55s - The “hero’s journey” story of product creation to solve real problems for real users 8m:28s - Story telling is important across the entire design and development process 9m:17s - Contrasting the current story with the future story of the customer experience 9m:40s - Storyboarding as a technique for sketching the end-to-end customer experience 9m:53s - Creating a video from customer interviews to understand and communicate their story More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ. http://bit.ly/2kkWzT1 You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest topics from professional software development. bit.ly/24x3IVq