Reframing Technical Debt as Technical Health - with Declan Whelan

In this interview Agile Alliance Board Member Declan Whelan makes the case for reframing Technical Debt and having organizations develop practices and programs supporting Technical Health. During the interview we discuss what technical debt it, how our perception of it has evolved and why taking a more positive and proactive stance for it can be so beneficial for organizations that are trying to improve flow and remain competitive in the marketplace.

Declan also shares details on the Agile Alliance’s OnAgile 2017 virtual conference which is taking place on October 25, 2017.

SHOW NOTES

00:09 Interview Begins

00:36 Background on Declan

02:35 What is Technical Debt?

03:55 How the definition of Technical Debt has evolved

05:11 Impediments to flow

06:15 Why it makes sense to think of Technical Debt as Technical Health

09:42 How does technical debt happen?

11:15 The environment (or system) may be set up to support increased technical debt

13:12 Explaining to management why technical wellness is so important

14:26 Measuring technical health (and debt)

15:58 Explaining the debt in dollars and showing the value of investing in technical health

16:22 How much faster could you go?

17:25 Why Declan enjoys legacy code and why some folks get frustrated with it

19:00 Finding the right people to work on it

20:16 Should technical debt go in the Product Backlog?

20:55 Employing the Boy Scout rule

24:25 Does Leadership and the PMO understand the importance of dealing with technical debt?

26:00 How the PMO can have a positive impact on technical wellness

30:55 OnAgile 2017 - the Online Conference (10/25)

30:04 What is Psychlomatic Complexity?

34:16 The things in Agile that Declan is focusing on learning about 

36:00 Contacting Declan

OnAgile 2017

http://bit.ly/2i3G0f6

CONTACTING DECLAN

Leanintuit http://leanintuit.com

Twitter https://twitter.com/dwhelan

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/declanwhelan/

Agile Alliance https://www.agilealliance.org/

Hacking Agile for Digital Agencies - DPM Summit 2017

My slides and the new canvas tool I used in my session today.

Thanks to everyone who attended.

http://bit.ly/2igwXLq

Bob Tarne - Agile and Design Thinking

Bob Tarne provides an overview of his upcoming PMI Global Congress presentation "Agile and Design Thinking, the Perfect Pairing for a Successful Project". Bob is a seasoned Project Management Professional whose work focuses primarily on helping organizations refine their approach to Agile. In this interview Bob explain what Design Thinking is and how it fits with Agile. He also talks about the book "How Successful Organizations Implement Change" which he contributed a chapter to. And the book "Project Managers at Work" by Bruce Harpham, which features a chapter all about Bob. During the interview Bob also shares details on the upcoming P2P Conference which will be taking place in Egypt on December 9-10.

If you are attending the PMI Global Congress and would like to check out Bob's session:
Agile and Design Thinking, the Perfect Pairing for a Successful Project
Monday, October 30 8:30 AM to 10 AM
http://sched.co/BKKk


The book “How Successful Organizations Implement Change” which was put together by Emad Aziz, is available here: http://amzn.to/2ym38ia


The book "Project Managers at Work" by Bruce Harpham can be found here: http://amzn.to/2ygxaVq

The P2P Conference is being held on December 9-10 in Cairo, Egypt
(link will be posted soon)

If you'd like to contact Bob directly, here is how to reach him:
http://twitter.com/‪btarne‬
http://zen-pm.blogspot.com

Tips to Prepare for TAC Panel Interview

The 2017 Scrum Gathering in Dublin is almost upon us and that means that a number of folks, who are working towards becoming Certified Scrum Trainers (CST) will be going through TAC Panels while they are in Ireland.

If you aren't familiar with it, a TAC Panel is one of the final steps to becoming a CST. A candidate will meet with a panel of members of the Scrum Aliance's Trainer Approval Committee and SA Staff. They will have an interview and then teach,  as they would in class.  For many, this panel is very challenging. Many candidates have to go through the panel multiple times before they get the certification.

So, in order to try and help with that, Anu Smalley and I put together a short video offering some tips for those who are getting ready for a TAC.