Inspect and Adapt
World-class software development requires far more than language/platform expertise and steady sprints. Join us as we describe time-tested, industry-proven software best practices at the team, organization, and leadership levels, sharing examples from recent engagements with software teams of all sizes.
Construx is led by industry leader Steve McConnell, author of Code Complete and More Effective Agile. Software experts first and software trainers and consultants second, our team has seen what works and doesn’t work in hundreds of software organizations.
Host Mark Griffin spent the first half of his career as an electrical engineer doing silicon hardware design and leading software automation teams. He moved into the sales side of software because he wanted to spread the value of what his company was building. It was supposed to be a one-year assignment that turned into the second half of his career. His balance of deeply technical skills and right-brain artistry also makes him a masterful home brewer!
Episodes
66 episodes
#66 The Sunk Cost Fallacy
Why do we keep working on something long past the point where we should have stopped? Join Construx’s Earl Beede,
#65 Estimating the Unknown
"How do you estimate something you’ve never done before?" Construx gets that question a lot. This podcast identifies how to approach estimating when you have a lot of unknown items. Join Construx's Earl Beede and Steve Tockey as they look at te...
#64 Design by Contract
Design by Contract is used by advanced developers to lower defects and reduce complexity, making development faster. Construx staff experience for over two decades in a variety of languages ranging from Assembler to Java is consistent with thes...
#63 Acceptance Criteria
Acceptance criteria are the criteria for acceptance, or so the helpful online definitions say. But what does that really mean? And is the common—almost universal—advice to write little functional snippets correct? Join Steve Tockey and Earl Bee...
#62 Risk Management
Project risk management was a critical part of well-run software development projects late in the last century. With the coming of agile development practices, however, risk management disappeared. Or did it?
#61 Scaling Patterns
Scaling software development is hard. Several patterns have emerged that moderately successful organizations use when scaling. The patterns focus on how to package the work, where and when to make decisions, and how to get teams to collaborate....
#60 The F Word in Software
All development organizations use software's F word: Feature. But what they actually mean by the word is often unclear, since the software industry has two—somewhat incompatible—definitions of feature. Join host
#59 Total Project Quality
Total Project Quality, Construx's course on how to insert quality throughout a work effort, hasn't always gotten the traction it deserves. Why not? In this podcast, we examin...
#58 Team Organization
We develop software primarily on teams, but how do you develop the teams? Construx's Mark Griffin and Earl Beede Inspect & Adapt the different ways you can organize your development team. They look at the pros and cons of different approach...
#57 Risk-Based Testing
How should you spend your always-limited testing resources? Is one part of the product more important to test than another? Construx's Steve Tockey and
#56 Product Visions to Product Roadmaps
In an earlier webinar, Construx's Earl Beede took on many organizations that create product visions with phrases like, be the world's best ‘x’ or dazzle...
#55 Practitioner Quizzes Construx - Session 1
Construx welcomes Onorio Catenacci to the microphone to ask questions about software development that continue to puzzle him and perhaps to see whether Construx has the answers. Join Con...
#54 Stories from a Long Career
Construx's Jenny Stuart is retiring from the software industry, and we will miss her! In this podcast, Jenny Stuart looks back on her three decades in the software industry and shares stories and wins from her long career. Joining Jenny are thr...
#53 Cynefin Framework
Why do software gurus keep talking about the Cynefin Framework? What is it? How is it even pronounced? In this episode of Inspect & Adapt, Construx puts many brains on the topic with
#52 The Triad
Most folks know that the product owner, scrum master, and developers make up the Scrum team, but did you know that these roles are also an accountability triad critical to scaling? In episode #52 of our
#51 Professional Development 2024
To be a professional usually means a commitment to ongoing professional development. Doctors, engineers, nurses, accountants, and teachers all require periodic training to maintain their professional status, but what constitutes professional de...
#50 Staffing the Product Owner
The product owner is often considered the most critical accountability in the triad of <product owner, scrum master, developers>. Why? Because garbage in from the product owner gets garbage out of the developers, so it's crucial to give s...
#49 The New
What do we do when we are faced with "The New"? When something is new to us, it's harder to estimate, harder to plan, and harder to execute. Some development projects involve much more that is new than others. How do we identify the new a...
#48 Cone of Uncertainty
Why can't I know—with high precision—the final cost, scope, and time frame of my work effort? One of the biggest reasons you can't know all three at once is illustrated by Steve McConnell's Cone of Uncertainty. In this episode of
#47 Retrospectives
If hindsight is 20/20—and it's good practice to look back to find ways you could do better—then why do retrospectives seem like such a waste of time? Shouldn't they be a goldmine that we're excited about rather than just another obligatory meet...
#46 Reverse Agile Scaling
There is a lot of talk and ideas about how to scale agile up from the one-team, one-product base so that multiple teams can support a product (I am looking at you SAFe). But what about the case where one team must support multiple products? Tha...
#45 Value Identification
What does "value" mean on your product? How do you know you are working on the most valuable thing? Construx's Earl Beede, Jenny Stuart, and Mark Griffin discuss how to clearly identify and articulate value on development projects. Knowin...
#44 Bringing it All Together – the Successful Leadership of Hardware/Software Teams
How do you lead product development teams when a company that has always been hardware focused now owes its success to both hardware and software? Construx's Mark Griffin and...
#43 Project Managers 2023
Listen to Construx's Earl Beede, Jenny Stuart, and Mark Griffin as they assess the role and duties of project managers on software intensive projects. A special focus will be on groups using agile development processes. Earl and Jenny will shar...
#42 Splitting User Stories
Construx's Earl Beede, Jenny Stuart, and Mark Griffin investigate ways to split user stories so they fit in a sprint. Some methods are far preferable—and even easier—than others. Sometimes it just means setting yourself up to make your user sto...