A bunch of (old) audio interviews on management and agile methodologies

September 29, 2009 Roy Osherove

Here are a bunch of audio interviews I did a loong while ago, but I feel that at least some of them still hold true today.

Johanna Rothman - Secrets of great management (01/12/05)

Johanna Rothman keeps coming back to Israel to teach management courses and consult and, well , I just love talking to her so much I keep asking her to do more and more interviews with me. Amazingly, she agrees every time. This time Johanna talks about topics from her new book out with Esther Derby - "Behind Closed Doors : Secrets of Great Management": Learning to delegate, coaching effectively, giving effective feedback, what makes for effective meetings, Solving problems and some planning tips.

If you've listened to any of the other interviews with Johanna (listed lower on this page) this is a nice take off from some of the topics Johanna has talked about in the past. This time we are concentrating more on the managerial side of things - things any new team lead or project lead needs to hear and read about.

Language - English.

Part I Download - 49 min., MP3 (23 MB)

Part II Download - 48 min., MP3 (22 MB)

Johanna has written over 100 articles and papers and is now a columnist for Fast Company’s online career center, Software Development, Computerworld.com, and StickyMinds.com. Johanna is the author of the highly acclaimed Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds, and is the coauthor of Corrective Action for the Software Industry. Johanna is also a host and session leader at the Amplifying Your Effectiveness (AYE) conference.

Kent Beck - An Agile conversation (01/02/06)

After almost 8 months of scheduling nightmare, I've finally had the pleasure of having a great conversation with noted author and speaker, Kent Beck. This is more of a conversation rather than an interview. The conversation revolves around (but not limited to) the following subjects: Kent's upcoming book, "Implementation Patterns", Is Agile just another fad? What is Appreciative Inquiry? Why is the 1st edition of "XP Explained" totally wrong and misleading in its attitude, and what makes the 2nd Edition better? When does Pair Programming break and how does Kent feel about the book "XP Refactored"? All these and more topics in this intriguing conversation.

There is much more we wanted to talk about, but Kent felt this would make for a nice "first iteration". Post your comments on this interview in this blog post and let us know what you'd like to hear about, or whether you agree or disagree with the topics in this conversation. We'll take all these into account during a future conversation we will record.

Language - English.

Download - 76 min., MP3 (35 MB)

Extreme Programming Explained : Embrace Change (2nd Edition)

KENT BECK
Kent is the founder and director of Three Rivers Institute. He has pioneered patterns for software development, the xUnit family of testing frameworks, the HotDraw drawing editor framework, CRC cards, refactoring, and most recently Extreme Programming. He is the author of Extreme Programming Explained, Planning Extreme Programming, and The Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns. He lives on 20 acres in rural southern Oregon with his wife, five children (one sadly now gone to college), four dogs, two sheeps, and a variable number of domestic fowl.

David Platt and Juval Lowy - Why Software Sucks And Other Architectural Insights

What do you ask when you get two software legends in one place? High level, world shattering questions, of course. Listen to this semi-serious chat mostly between Juval and David as they discuss matters such as Why software today sucks, Rich Client Vs. the browser, ClickOnce and unprotected sex (you heard correctly), the anthology of TLAs, how to know you're a geek, their upcoming books, top things to watch out for in .NET 2.0, where is software architecture heading, top 3 things every .NET developer should have done by now, Platt's laws of the universe and much more discussion, jokes and good ol' geeky fun. Truly a one of kind human experiment, is all I can say about this one.

Language - English.

Download - 61 minutes, MP3 (28 MB)

David S. Platt teaches Programming .NET at Harvard University and at companies all over the world. He was selected by Microsoft as one of their Software Legends, which you can read about at www.softwarelegends.com. He has taught classes on ACORD insurance standards since the very first OLifE class in 1995. He is the author of eight programming books, most recently Introducing Microsoft .NET, 3rd Edition from Microsoft Press, with three more on the way. It is currently outselling Tom Clancy's Every Man a Tiger on Amazon.com, which tells you what kind of geeks buy their books there. "He's the only guy I know that can actually make an article on COM's apartment threading model funny," said Tana Sabatino.

Dave holds the Master of Engineering degree from Dartmouth College. He did his undergraduate work at Colgate University. When he finishes working, he spends his free time working some more. He wonders whether he should tape down two of his daughter's fingers so she learns how to count in octal. (Check them, has he done it yet?) He lives in Ipswich, MA.

Juval Lowy - Project Planning and Tracking (24/8/05)

Juval was invited to speak to the Israeli .NET Fight Club, a special group of .NET Insiders in Israel, many of them MVPs and community leaders. Juval's visit was sponsored by Gadi Meir, of Idag Israel. Juval spent 2 hours talking about something he usually does not address in public conferences and such, not even in his books - the issues of software development process and project management. In these two hours he presents his vision and way of work in projects he managed (when he had both an architect and a project lead role) and the things he believes bring on the best result. The outcome is "Staged Delivery" which he outlines in broad strokes, yet specific enough to gain some good understanding of the concepts behind it.

Some of the issues addressed include: Staffing, the product life cycle, component integration plan and the component life cycle, component testing, Estimation and estimation tools, Earned Value tracking and more. The talk ends 5 minutes prematurely due to technical difficulties, but let me assure you that you don't miss anything terribly important (no "surprise ending" :) )

Language - English.

Part I Download - 60 minutes, MP3 (28 MB)

Part II Download - 59 minutes, MP3 (27 MB)

Juval Löwy is the founder of IDesign and its Chief Architect. Juval is a seasoned software architect specializing in system architecture and large applications design. Juval helps IDesign customers design scaleable, robust, reusable, and extensible Enterprise applications, verifying that the customer has the design it takes to achieve the required quality, scalability, security, availability and throughput goals. Juval is Microsoft’s Regional Director for the Silicon Valley, working with Microsoft on on helping the industry adopt .NET. Juval also participates in the Microsoft internal design reviews for future versions of .NET. Juval is a frequent speaker at the major international software development conferences, where he talks about .NET, component-oriented design and development process. Click here for complete list of conference talks by Juval. Juval authored Programming .NET Components by O’Reilly. The book is dedicated to component-oriented programming and design using .NET, as well as the related system issues, such as remoting, threading and security. Juval also authored COM and .NET Component Services: Mastering COM+ a book which talks at length about the challenging topic of .NET Enterprise Services. Juval published numerous articles, regarding almost every aspect of developing with .NET. Click here for complete article list by Juval, as well as links to the articles. Microsoft recognized Juval as a Software Legend as one of the world top .NET experts and industry leaders.

Randy Miller -MSF Agile and modeling techniques in software(TechEd Europe - July 2005)

I chatted with Randy Miller, the guy who practically wrote MSF, for a very interesting half hour (due to technical difficulties we had to stop early). The interview revolves around MSF- the Microsoft Solution Framework for creating software processes, its origins, its main goals and benefits and how it fits in with Microsoft Team System. We also talk a little about how it compares to other processes such as the Rational Unified Process. The conversation also turns into the fascinating topic of software modeling today and the use of "Personas" to capture design requirements. more stuff: MSF vs. CMMI, empowering developers in the development process, and the future of MSF.

Language - English.

Download - 36 minutes, MP3 (16 MB)

Randy Miller (also known as Granville Miller) is author of Advanced Use Case Modeling and A Practical Guide to Extreme Programming. He has spoken at many national events including OOPSLA, Web Services Edge, Software Development West, Microsoft TechEd and others. He has also spoken for SPIN in the past (http://www.rtpspin.org). You can find out more about Randy's work from his blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/randymiller. You can learn more about Visual Studio 2005 Team System at: http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/teamsystem. And specifically about its plans to support the Agile methodology at: http://blogs.msdn.com/team_foundation/archive/2005/02/07/368599.aspx .

Kieran Mockford- Program manager for MSBuild, Microsoft -

Building MSBuild, Test Driven Development style (February 28, 2005)

Length: 67 minutes.

Language: English.

Download (48 MB, zipped Mp3)

Summary

Roy Talks with Kieran Mockford, the program manager for MSBuild, Microsoft's brand new build tool offering. Kieran spills the beans that MSBuild was developed using Test Driven Development methodologies with tools such as NUnit. Kieran tells about the various problems and solutions they encountered trying to learn TDD, then the talk moves to MSBuild and the need for "real" incremental build abilities and the Microsoft internal build process. It's a Fascinating look behind the scenes of Microsoft's internal tools for source control and continuous integration automation tools.

Johanna Rothman at Agile Israel user group

9 Steps to becoming Agile(March 23, 2005)

Length: 1 hour 26 minutes.

Language: English.

Download

Part 1 (50 minutes, 32 MB zipped MP3)

Part 2 (36 minutes, 23 MB zipped MP3)

Summary

Johanna Discusses the 9 steps each organization might want to consider as they start to move toward a more Agile development process.

An interesting and funny speaker, Johanna discusses Daily builds, Automated smoke tests, Implementing by slice, Testing early and often, Timeboxing requirements work, ranking the requirements, Rolling wave planning, defining milestones based on deliverables - not functions,and creating cross-functional project teams.

Charlie Poole, Lead Developer, NUnit

Test Driven Development, XP, NUnit and more (March 14, 2005)

Length: 1 hour 45 minutes.

Language: English.

Download

Part 1 (1 hour 11 minutes, 49 MB zipped MP3)

Part 2 (34 minutes, 22 MB zipped MP3)

Summary

Roy Talks with Charlie Poole, the lead developer of NUnit on various Agile topics. These include Upcoming NUnit features, Test Driven Development best practices, implementing XP in an organization, testing GUIs, threads, mock objects and much much more. Charlie also spills the beans about the upcoming NUnit blogs.

Charlie has spent more than 30 years as a software developer, designer, project manager, trainer and coach. He works through his own company, Poole Consulting, in the US and recently joined Dublin-based Exoftware to provide mentoring and training to clients in Europe.

Juval Lowy - Great architects and management, January 18, 2005

Length: 73 minutes.

Language: English.

Download (58 MB, zipped Mp3)

Summary

Roy Talks with Juval Lowy, the principal of IDesign and one of the industry's leading software architects. The topics include: Project management and the IDesign process, staged delivery and what's missing in today's Agile methdologies, the makings of a good software architect, details about his upcoming book and on the one to follow after that, the future of modeling tools, Longhorn, Indigo, SOA and interoperability and more. The interview also takes a more personal tone when Juval talks about his strategy for managing his busy schedule, how IDesign came to be and the people working there, the biggest mistake he's done and more tidbits. A feature packed 73 minute interview, is all I can say.

Natty Gur - Organizational Enterprise Architecture. January 16, 2005

Length: 72 minutes.

Language: Hebrew.

Download (55 MB, zipped Mp3)

Summary

Roy Talks with Natty Gur - An independent software consultant specializing in Enterprise architecture - in the organizational level. In this interview we'll explore what organizational architecture really means and why its needed. More topics in the interview include Natty's open source project, NWAF, Service oriented architecture, organizational patterns such as TOGAF and DODAF, the problems with layered architecture (N-Tier), Agile development, learning from past mistakes and Naked objects. Good stuff.

Johanna Rothman - Hiring Techies and Nerds December 10, 2004

Length: 60 minutes.

Language: English.

[Listen on ITConversations.com]

Summary

Roy Osherove speaks with Johanna Rothman about everyday problems in project management, software delivery and the hiring of technical people. They discuss interviewing strategies, and some bad examples of interviewing technique. Also: How do I improve myself as a project manager?. How do I deal with unrealistic project deadlines? What's wrong with running multiple projects at the same time? What is the most common management mistake?

Then, the topic shifts to the problems of project management as Johanna tries to answer a tough question such as, "What is the greatest mistake you see project managers do most often?" which leads into an interesting discussion about multi-projecting and why it can pose a problem for your projects. Also, more interesting advice from Johanna emerges when asked to give advice for new team-leaders/managers. Johanna also talks about her new book: Hiring The Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds. And why she wrote it in the first place. To finish it all off Johanna answers one of the questions each project manager should ask themselves every once in a while: "What is the worst mistake you’ve done as a manager?"