It’s very rare that I get asked to appear on a podcast – until recently, it had happened just once, about 5 years ago. Then, 2 came along at once! Both of these episodes got released in June 2024.
I’ll tell you the same thing I tell my parents about anything I write / appear on: “don’t feel obliged to finish it! I’m always wittering on about some nonsense”
The Product Experience podcast
I’ve known Randy Silver for a few years, after meeting through Emily Webber’s Agile in the Ether community. Randy took part in a workshop I ran at one of the meetups, and thought the ideas from that would make an interesting podcast discussion topic.
I’m a big fan of the podcast, so was delighted to appear – here’s the episode.
I’ve thought a lot about estimation over the years (everyone’s favourite headache), and wrote a multi-part blog series on Minimum Viable Estimation. Those posts have lots of examples of things I’ve tried and what’s made them useful, and guides to getting started with some of the techniques.
An interesting connection: In the podcast discussion, we mentioned Liz Keogh’s guide for estimating complexity from her “Cynefin for everyone” post. Liz has talked about that in another episode of this same podcast, and I talked about it in my QCon London talk that lead to my other podcast appearance.
The InfoQ podcast
I gave a talk at QCon London a few months ago on making change stick, and the organisers asked if I’d take part in an interview to talk a bit more about that topic. This was quite handy, as I’ve written notes from other sessions but haven’t managed to write anything about my own talk yet. Here, you can listen instead.
A few things that came up in this discussion:
- The contrast between Lean from the Trenches (a team and company that thoroughly works out how to do things well) and the “train wreck in slow motion of their very next project, as all the lessons got ignored (slides on Henrik Kniberg’s blog)
- Negotiation skills, and why they’re helpful even in situations you might not think of as negotiations – I also described several topics and books in a blog series on How to disappoint people.
- Excellent advice from Camille Fournier (in blog posts like “Other People’s Problems”, and in her book The manager’s path.
One more thing….
That’s the end of my podcasting career for the moment. If you’re interested in the complete set of things I’ve appeared on, here’s that 2019 appearance: Managing Teams, on the Time Limit podcast.