#65 Estimating the Unknown

Does your project have a clear, referenceable definition of the scope of the product and the scope of the work? Do you have a non-ambiguous way of setting priority? Do you know how to initiate a product backlog? You can achieve all these things by properly setting a context. Join Contrux's Earl Beede and Steve Tockey as they Inspect & Adapt setting a context. Hosted by Mark Griffin.

Intellectual property (IP) is an important consideration in all software development, but what is it? Contrux's Steve Tockey has spent significant time looking into IP and how it impacts software development. Steve is joined by Construx's Earl Beede and Mark Griffin as they Inspect & Adapt the different categories of IP and their impact on software.

Everyone knows that a Scrum team should do the value-added work of the product backlog. But there are other types of work that may or may not make it into that backlog, yet these types of work are critical for a well-functioning Scrum team. Join Construx’s Earl Beede, Steve Tockey and Mark Griffin as they Inspect & Adapt four types of work that should be part of every sprint plan.

Measurement is all about assigning a value or a symbol to an attribute of an entity. Doing it right can reduce project risk. Join Construx's Earl Beede, Steve Tockey and Mark Griffin as they Inspect & Adapt how measurement theory impacts your project, potentially increasing risk if you get it wrong.

Why do we keep working on something long past the point where we should have stopped? Join Construx’s Earl Beede, Steve Tockey and Mark Griffin as they Inspect & Adapt the various ways we trick ourselves into thinking, “Well, we already spent this much time or money; we can’t afford to lose that!” Find out how much the sunk cost fallacy is costing you.

"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 techniques for making the unknown less unknown, bounding the uncertainty, and planning through the unknown. Hosted by Mark Griffin

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 these benefits. Join Steve Tockey, Earl Beede, and Mark Griffin as they discuss why Design by Contract is so beneficial, with particular emphasis on how it reduces code defects, makes remaining defects easier to find and fix, and reduces complexity.

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 Beede as they Inspect & Adapt Acceptance Criteria. They'll take a look from several angles and suggest ways to make acceptance criteria much more useful for your projects. Hosted by Mark Griffin.

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? Steve Tockey and Earl Beede Inspect & Adapt the role of project risk management on modern development projects. They identify when it is still needed, where it is still happening, and how it can improve your project outcomes. Hosted by Mark Griffin. 

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. Join Mark Griffin, Earl Beede, and Steve Tockey as they explore scaling patterns.