Assumptions Mapping with David Bland

Assumptions are often the Achilles heel of any development effort. These are the things we’ve unintentionally decided are true and unfortunately, far too often, our assumptions are wrong. If you’ve based the success of the work you are doing on incorrect assumptions… VERYBADTHINGS.

In this episode Founder David Bland has joined me to talk about why we need to pay attention to assumptions and how to use Assumptions Mapping to determine which of our assumptions present the biggest threat and need to be addressed first. During the interview, we review how to use the Assumptions Mapping approach that is included in Testing Business Ideas, the book David co-wrote with Alexander Osterwalder.

You can find the interview here: https://bit.ly/3DhlVcR

When Your Team Members Also Report to Other Teams w Dan Eberle

In this episode of the podcast, Agile Coach Dan Eberle is back to help me respond to a student question that is complicated, confusing, and more common than it should be…

Ivan (not the person’s real name) explained the situation like this… 

Six Product Owners/Developers oversee 20 reports within the org. Each of the reports has a specialized role. They are broken up into teams that range in size from 1-5 people, and the team size tends to fluctuate. Some of the Product Owners/Developers oversee teams and are also the people managers of the individuals on the team. Some of the team members report to people managers who are Product Owner/Developers of other teams, team members of other teams, or people completely outside the grouping of 6 + 20. There is competition for the attention/efforts of team members who are allocated to more than one project and/or reporting to a people manager who has different priorities than the PO/Dev they are assigned to work with. 

You can find the interview here.