Episodes
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The mere mention of SAFe® often results in groans among Agilists. It isn't hard to find skeptical views of SAFe® and similar large-scale Agile frameworks. Honestly, we're not a fan either.
We also believe we need to ground our beliefs in solid evidence as much as we can. So what is the actual evidence that SAFe® doesn't work or is outright harmful to organizations and teams?
In this episode, we explore the results of several scientific studies and reviews that have attempted to compare scaling approaches. We also report findings from our academic analyses based on data from ~2.000 Agile teams. And the results are ... not what you'd expect. We discuss the implications of the findings in detail and hope it lays the foundation for better conversations around scaling in and around organizations.
Read the full post here:
https://medium.com/the-liberators/in-depth-is-safe-really-that-bad-ed5c5c706e42
Our peer-reviewer paper on the comparison of scaling methods
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3571849Support the show
Support the show, our research, and community offerings via Patreon:
https://patreon.com/liberators
We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com
Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com
The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp. -
How can we make pair programming more effective? We know that some developers love it, and others hate it.
Pair programming is a common practice in Agile teams. As we reported in our previous episode, the scientific evidence from meta-analyses overwhelmingly shows that pair programming is beneficial for quality and learning, especially for junior and intermediate developers, and particularly for complex tasks.
Several academic investigations have attempted to shine a light on this from different angles. We discuss the impact of personality traits, task complexity, experience, and communication patterns. We also offer a lot of practical evidence-based recommendations.
Read the post here:
https://medium.com/the-liberators/in-depth-how-to-make-pair-programming-more-effective-a47e287cace7
Listen to the previous episode (#97):
https://www.buzzsprout.com/466339/14495424Support the show
Support the show, our research, and community offerings via Patreon:
https://patreon.com/liberators
We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com
Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com
The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp. -
Episodes manquant?
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We are fans of pair programming. There is something very satisfying about passing the keyboard back and forth and sharing the mind space for a problem with someone else. But other developers hate it for various reasons. Some find it wasteful. Others wonder if the quality isn't just the same, or even worse, than solo developers.
We believe we should ground our opinions in evidence as much as possible. So what does scientific research have to say about pair programming? In this episode, we explore the insights from over 25 academic studies that investigated pair programming. The insights may support your beliefs or challenge them - let's find out!
Read the post:
https://medium.com/the-liberators/in-depth-the-costs-and-benefits-of-pair-programming-b4b54b27c6ffSupport the show
Support the show, our research, and community offerings via Patreon:
https://patreon.com/liberators
We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com
Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com
The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp. -
Scrum is great. We love it. And it's also just a recipe. It needs a lot more to result in a flavorful, delicious, and nutritious meal.
Understanding Scrum as merely a recipe has worked well for us to understand both its strengths and limitations. Its a useful metaphor to help others understand what to expect from Scrum and what other ingredients are needed to make it all work.
Read the post:
https://medium.com/the-liberators/scrum-is-just-a-recipe-739665ae70dbSupport the show
Support the show, our research, and community offerings via Patreon:
https://patreon.com/liberators
We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com
Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com
The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp. -
How does working from home influence teamwork? This question came to the forefront during the COVID-19 pandemic. Most companies switched from fully co-located work to fully remote work for most of the pandemic. But since then, many of those policies have been reverted under the assumption that working from home negatively impacts performance, productivity, and teamwork.
In this episode, we bring a scientific perspective to this question. We review the current scientific evidence around how working from home affects employees and teams and offer practical recommendations. This episode is relevant to both Agile teams and other kinds of teams.
Read the transcript here:
https://medium.com/the-liberators/in-depth-how-does-working-from-home-influence-teamwork-6a14b4c804aSupport the show
Support the show, our research, and community offerings via Patreon:
https://patreon.com/liberators
We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com
Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com
The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp. -
Have you ever noticed the many parallels between organized religion and Scrum? Or with Agile methodologies more broadly? It's been a recurring joke between us as we attend conferences, interact with critics and advocates of Scrum, and follow the comings and goings in our profession. Some of these parallels are merely funny to point out, whereas others are a bit more concerning.
So for this episode, I invite you to imagine that you’re future archeologists who uncover the traces of our Agile community many thousands of years into the future. How would they understand it? What would it look like to them? And please allow me some exaggeration, as there is a purpose to it that you will discover at the end of the episode.
Read the post here:
https://medium.com/the-liberators/the-church-of-scrum-16e14244b6bcSupport the show
Support the show, our research, and community offerings via Patreon:
https://patreon.com/liberators
We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com
Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com
The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp. -
"Agile is dead" is a contrarian opinion that gets thrown around a lot on social media. While it's a nice way to get attention, what does the evidence say? Agile can only be dead if it doesn't work, if it doesn't result in more effective teams and more satisfied customers.
In this episode, we take an evidence-based perspective. We explore the business case for Agile from three perspectives: stakeholder satisfaction, team morale and overall business outcomes. We report results from our own analyses as well as several scientific studies. We'll let the evidence speak for itself.
Read the post here:
https://medium.com/the-liberators/in-depth-the-evidence-based-business-case-for-agile-60f38de3a6d2Support the show
Support the show, our research, and community offerings via Patreon:
https://patreon.com/liberators
We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com
Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com
The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp. -
“How do I prevent my high-performing team from burning out?” is a question that recently came up in a community meetup. It's an intriguing question because it starts from a positive situation. If you’ve ever been part of a high-performing team, you know how exhilarating it can be. But paradoxically, it's also a place where people for people to lose themselves in their work together and collapse under the strain — as I did.
In this episode, we apply an evidence-based perspective to this question. What do we know from scientific research about high-performing teams and how they can burn people out? What can do to prevent that, or at least diminish the chance of it happening?
Read the post here:
https://medium.com/the-liberators/in-depth-how-to-prevent-high-performing-teams-from-burning-out-409aa9896caaSupport the show
Support the show, our research, and community offerings via Patreon:
https://patreon.com/liberators
We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com
Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com
The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp. -
We're back!
How diverse is your team? Do you have members from different age groups, different genders, different roles, and different cultural backgrounds? Is that diversity beneficial to team performance, or is it challenging, or both?
This was the research question of an academic study we performed with Prof. Daniel Russo. This study has been peer-reviewed and published in the journal "Transactions on Software Engineering". This episode provides a non-technical overview of our investigation, core findings, and practical implications.Read the post:
https://medium.com/the-liberators/in-depth-the-double-edged-sword-of-diversity-in-teams-765ff72a55da
Read the peer-reviewed scientific publication:
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TSE.2023.3339881Support the show
Support the show, our research, and community offerings via Patreon:
https://patreon.com/liberators
We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com
Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com
The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp. -
The first thing people tend to see when they look at the Scrum framework are the roles, the artifacts, and the events. But that is only structure. There is much more going on in Scrum teams that we can understand better from other perspectives.
One such perspective is motivation. Scrum is deeply rooted in insights from academic research into what motivates people and teams to become high-performing. And while those roots are strong, they are also mostly invisible and unknown to practitioners.
In this podcast, we take a scientific perspective on how Scrum can create motivating environments for teams and individuals. We also translate these insights into practical tips that you can use to make the work for your team more motivating.
Read the full post behind this episode, including all the links, here
https://bit.ly/3HKZRuESupport the show
Support the show, our research, and community offerings via Patreon:
https://patreon.com/liberators
We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com
Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com
The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp. -
“We consistently observe that teams struggle with continuous improvement. Instead of keeping it small, simple, and practical, teams go for ambitious — but vague and unclear — improvements.”
The improvement actions that come out of Sprint Retrospectives and other reflective practices are weak when there is no sense of scope, no sense of timeline, and no sense of who is involved. Interestingly, this creates a clear connection with something else that good Agile teams spend a lot of time on: refinement.
In this episode, we explore how to refine your improvement actions to make them more actionable and thus easier to accomplish. We also offer a lot of practical tips for how to create better improvement actions.
Read the transcript here:
https://bit.ly/3KqtfGA
Or get our "Unleash Scrum In Your Organization"-kit which contains - among many other cool things - a deck with 100 Improvement Actions categorized into different areas. These are a good source of inspiration for your own improvements. Or you can use them verbatim:
https://shop.theliberators.com/collections/frontpage/products/scrum-teams-superpower-kit-also-for-virtual-teamsSupport the show
Support the show, our research, and community offerings via Patreon:
https://patreon.com/liberators
We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com
Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com
The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp. -
What makes a good Product Owner? How much time should they spend with their team or with stakeholders? Or writing items for the Product Backlog? Do Product Owners require a full mandate in order to be effective? What strategies make them more - or less - effective?
In this episode, we explore scientific research that investigated Product Owners. We also share some of our own research.
Read the transcript here:
https://bit.ly/2XXBaZ7
Or download do-it-yourself workshops to encourage shared product ownership:
https://shop.theliberators.com/collections/do-it-yourself-workshops-meetups-and-strings/build-what-stakeholders-needSupport the show
Support the show, our research, and community offerings via Patreon:
https://patreon.com/liberators
We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com
Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com
The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp. -
"SAFe destroys autonomy", "estimation is a waste of time" and "Scrum Masters can't also be Product Owners" are just a few of the strong claims that are often made in our professional community.
But where is the evidence to support these bold claims? We sampled 50 posts with similar bold claims and found that only 3 offered *any* kind of evidence. Two of those were purely personal experiences. We also explored some actual research into these questions and found more nuanced results.
We wonder: why doesn't our community - that is all about empiricism - apply empiricism to itself and its claims? Why don't we gather actual objective evidence? Why do we allow each other to make bold claims that either lack evidence or aren't proportional to that evidence? Are we not harming our profession with this low bar?
In this episode, we discuss a professional crisis in our field. We also offer five things we can do to improve our profession. Ultimately, if we rely more on objective evidence we make a much stronger case for what we believe to be true. Or we may discover that our beliefs aren't actually true - which is a good thing too.
Read the transcript here:
https://medium.com/the-liberators/why-doesnt-the-agile-community-practice-empiricism-12082e48ffbaSupport the show
Support the show, our research, and community offerings via Patreon:
https://patreon.com/liberators
We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com
Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com
The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp. -
"It slowly started to dawn on me that something else was happening during these gatherings. Something I hadn’t seen before so clearly in my previous work with groups. I saw so many happy faces around me. I saw so many people intently listening to each other as each shared a personal story. And I saw so many people touched by the awareness that others were really listening to them as they shared those stories."
This episode is about the psychological power of Liberating Structures. They are like a language for how people interact. Once you learn to speak and recognize its symbols and its grammar, you see its potential everywhere people interact. I know how weird that sounds — especially when you’ve never experienced them before. This potential affirms my belief that we should use Liberating Structures everywhere people interact.
Unfortunately, even experienced practitioners tended to limit their use to the more obvious settings, like workshops, classes, and training, but not to other settings, like recurring meetings, social settings, and other informal settings. And that includes us too. And that's a waste, as we explore in this post.
Read the transcript for this episode here (along with pictures)
https://bit.ly/2Z8uk3M
Join an upcoming Immersion Workshop via:
https://liberatingstructures.nlSupport the show
Support the show, our research, and community offerings via Patreon:
https://patreon.com/liberators
We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com
Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com
The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp. -
A common belief among Agile practitioners is that Scrum works best in smaller organizations. Things are simpler there, and you don't have all those impediments of your typical corporate. Since much of our day-to-day experience is also with smaller to medium-sized businesses, we are also included to believe this.
But is it consistent with the facts? We believe that you should always ground your beliefs in evidence as much as possible. So we explored scientific studies and performed our analyses on data from ~2.000 teams to find out. The results may surprise you, and we take time to try to understand why it's so different than we expected.
Read the post:
https://medium.com/the-liberators/in-depth-does-scrum-only-work-in-small-organizations-2f2d7cd9079dSupport the show
Support the show, our research, and community offerings via Patreon:
https://patreon.com/liberators
We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com
Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com
The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp. -
Are Scrum Masters perhaps too focused on the process, and too little on whether or not that process actually delivers valuable outcomes? How is that for you, as a Scrum Master?
This is a hunch based on countless conversations we've had with Scrum Masters, including our own practice as a Scrum Master. But what do the facts say? So we read relevant scientific studies and collected data through a large poll (500+ participants) and data from almost 2.000 Scrum teams. We were also fortunate to use data from a research study by McKinsey and Scrum.org.
The data suggest that Scrum Masters are more effective when they balance a process-based perspective with a value-based perspective. This means that Scrum Masters lead in designing effective Sprint Reviews, drawing in stakeholders, and emphasizing the need for this. I expect that Scrum Masters that stake a strong stance here are more likely to see effective Scrum teams over time. I offer tips on how to do this.Read the transcript here:
https://medium.com/the-liberators/are-scrum-masters-sufficiently-focused-on-valuable-outcomes-7b51c4403869Support the show
Support the show, our research, and community offerings via Patreon:
https://patreon.com/liberators
We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com
Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com
The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp. -
We are creating the Scrum Team Survey to help Scrum teams and Agile teams to diagnose their process. We also give tons of evidence-based feedback. One of the cool things about developing a product ourselves, and with our own money, is that we get to learn (or reaffirm) a lot of valuable lessons about Agile software development.
In this episode, we share our 10 biggest lessons. Be prepared for some technical stuff though, as several of these lessons involve architecture, design, and code quality.
Read the blog post for this episode here:
https://medium.com/the-liberators/how-work-on-the-scrum-team-survey-taught-us-10-lessons-about-agile-95314ee2fdc1Support the show
Support the show, our research, and community offerings via Patreon:
https://patreon.com/liberators
We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com
Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com
The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp. -
Do your Daily Scrums feel like a pointless ritual where everyone just lists what they’ve done yesterday, and what they do will do today? Does Sprint Planning feel like a waste of time because everyone only wants to know what they have to do? And does your Sprint Review consist of team members listing their individual accomplishments? If so, you are probably dealing with a complete lack of coherence and cohesion.
This episode is an exploration of scientific insights that help us understand what coherence and cohesion are, and why they are so important. We also explore how these insights create a strong foundation for the Scrum framework. We also translate scientific insights into practical applications, ready for use with your team.
Read the transcript here:
https://medium.com/the-liberators/in-depth-how-coherence-and-cohesion-are-critical-to-scrum-f5ae1f3a1aef
Find many do-it-yourself workshops to help your team:
https://shop.theliberators.com/collections/do-it-yourself-workshops-meetups-and-strings/ScrumSupport the show
Support the show, our research, and community offerings via Patreon:
https://patreon.com/liberators
We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com
Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com
The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp. -
Do you start a new Scrum team by explaining the roles, artifacts, and events? Do you rarely consider how to build coalitions and persuade people in power to support your work with Scrum? Are you thinking about the psychological needs of people and how to motivate them to work with Scrum? You may be engaging in a bit too much blueprint thinking.
In this episode, we explore how blue-print thinking is too dominant in our profession. There are exceptions. But much of the professional discourse is focused on frameworks, processes, and structure — independent of the messy sociological, political, and psychological realities of organizations. We explore how this bias leads to blind spots. It also explains why so many framework implementations fail. This episode is based on the “Color Theory of Change”, and we think its quite eye-opening if you've never reflected on this before.
Find the transcript here:
https://medium.com/the-liberators/is-blue-print-thinking-limiting-the-potential-of-the-agile-community-a2ee716b6888Support the show
Support the show, our research, and community offerings via Patreon:
https://patreon.com/liberators
We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com
Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com
The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp. -
Recently, the concept of “fluid teams”, “dynamic reteaming” or “ad-hoc teaming” has gained traction in the Agile community. Although the concept has many different definitions, a characteristic they share is that members move in and out of a team during its lifetime.
However, decades of academic research into teams and workgroups have underscored the importance of team stability as a requirement for high performance. Although these studies did not compare stable teams versus fluid teams specifically, the most reliable theories we currently have to understand team development also seem to favor stability over fluidity.
In this episode, I explore the research in this area. Considering just how popular the notion of fluid teams has become, I think it is important to weigh the evidence that supports it or contradicts it.
Read the transcript of the episode here (including all references):
https://medium.com/the-liberators/in-depth-stable-or-fluid-teams-what-does-the-science-say-95833b0b91a2
Read an in-depth post about team cognition:
https://medium.com/the-liberators/why-great-scrum-teams-have-a-mind-of-their-own-2ba4d9d17918
Read an in-depth post about social cohesion:
https://medium.com/the-liberators/in-depth-how-coherence-and-cohesion-are-critical-to-scrum-f5ae1f3a1aefSupport the show
Support the show, our research, and community offerings via Patreon:
https://patreon.com/liberators
We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com
Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com
The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp. - Montre plus
