02. Managers, Leaders, A/B Testers, and Bloodletters

Courtney Eckhardt on Greater Than Code, Teresa Torres on Product Love, Johanna Rothman on Developer On Fire, Jeff Patton on Scrum Master Toolbox, and Jeff Gothelf on Scrum Master Toolbox. I'd love for you to email me with any comments about the show or any suggestions for podcasts I might want to feature. Email [email protected]. This episode covers the five podcast episodes I found most interesting and wanted to share links to during the two weeks period starting January 7, 2019. These podcast episodes may have been released much earlier, but this was the week when I started sharing links to them to my social network followers. COURTNEY ECKHARDT ON GREATER THAN CODE The Greater Than Code podcast featured Courtney Eckhardt with hosts John K Sawers, Sam Livingston-Gray, Jamey Hampton and Coraline Ada Ehmke. It was great to hear another conversation that built upon the human factors conversations with Steven Shorrock and John Allspaw in previous episodes. I like how Courtney highlighted the importance of good communication in incident response by helping us picture what the lack of good communication looks like from the customer’s point of view. iTunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/110-human-incident-response-with-courtney-eckhardt/id1163023878?i=1000426093173&mt=2 Website link: http://www.greaterthancode.com/2018/12/19/110-human-incident-response-with-courtney-eckhardt/ TERESA TORRES ON PRODUCT LOVE The Product Love podcast featured Teresa Torres with host Eric Boduch. I felt that, while A/B testing is a powerful and useful technique, Teresa makes a great point that it is not appropriate in all circumstances and she lists several other techniques that teams should consider when doing product discovery. I also liked the bloodletting metaphor. iTunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/teresa-torres-joins-product-love-to-talk-about-product/id1343610309?i=1000425622664&mt=2 Website link: https://productcraft.com/podcast/product-love-podcast-teresa-torres-product-discovery-coach-and-writer-of-product-talk/ JOHANNA ROTHMAN ON DEVELOPER ON FIRE The Developer On Fire podcast featured Johanna Rothman with host Dave Rael. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard someone make a distinction between management and leadership. I always felt that it let managers off the hook. I feel that a manager needs to be a good leader to do his or her job well and vice versa. Johanna captured that sentiment. iTunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/episode-402-johanna-rothman-learning-and-delivering/id1006105326?i=1000426413335&mt=2 Website link: https://developeronfire.com/podcast/episode-402-johanna-rothman-learning-and-delivering JEFF PATTON ON SCRUM MASTER TOOLBOX The Scrum Master Toolbox podcast featured Jeff Patton with host Vasco Duarte. Jeff talked about how, when he got into software development, he quickly learned that building software was about making as many people as happy as you could while still making money. When he found himself on XP and Agile teams in the first decade of the 2000s, he felt something was missing. When he later fell in with product people, he realized that the missing piece was product thinking. They discussed how Jeff came up with user story mapping and Jeff cited three books that emphasize product thinking: Inspired, Escaping The Build Trap, and Inspired. iTunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/product-owner-role-what-scrum-masters-can-do-to-help/id963592988?i=1000426507266&mt=2 Website link: https://scrum-master-toolbox.org/2018/12/podcast/jeff-patton-shares-his-view-on-the-product-owner-role-and-what-scrum-masters-can-do-to-help/ JEFF GOTHELF ON SCRUM MASTER TOOLBOX The Scrum Master Toolbox podcast featured Jeff Gothelf with host Vasco Duarte. Vasco asked Jeff about the key ingredients in Agile transformations that get organizations to continuously think about how the product they’re creating relates to the business and the market. Jeff gave a great answer that finished with an example of how even a change in the name of the team changes the way that the team thinks of themselves and their mission. iTunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/how-to-redefine-measure-success-for-software-development/id963592988?i=1000426560415&mt=2 Website link: https://scrum-master-toolbox.org/2018/12/podcast/jeff-gothelf-on-how-to-redefine-the-measure-of-success-for-software-development/ Feedback Ask questions, make comments, and let your voice be heard by emailing [email protected]. Twitter: https://twitter.com/thekguy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithmmcdonald/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekguypage Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_k_guy/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCysPayr8nXwJJ8-hqnzMFjw Website: https://www.thekguy.com/ Intro/outro music: "waste time" by Vincent Augustus