Podcasts about ivar jacobson

This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Ivar Jacobson about the evolution of use cases in modern software engineering. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4c36Yg7 Subscribe to the Software Architects' Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news and experience from industry peers on emerging patterns and technologies: www.infoq.com/software-architects-newsletter Upcoming Events: InfoQ Dev Summit Boston (June 24-25, 2024) Actionable insights on today's critical dev priorities. devsummit.infoq.com/conference/boston2024 InfoQ Dev Summit Munich (Sept 26-27, 2024) Practical learnings from senior software practitioners navigating Generative AI, security, modern web applications, and more. devsummit.infoq.com/conference/munich2024 QCon San Francisco (November 18-22, 2024) Get practical inspiration and best practices on emerging software trends directly from senior software developers at early adopter companies. qconsf.com/ QCon London (April 7-9, 2025) Discover new ideas and insights from senior practitioners driving change and innovation in software development. qconlondon.com/ The InfoQ Podcasts: Weekly inspiration to drive innovation and build great teams from senior software leaders. Listen to all our podcasts and read interview transcripts: - The InfoQ Podcast www.infoq.com/podcasts/ - Engineering Culture Podcast by InfoQ www.infoq.com/podcasts/#engineering_culture - Generally AI Follow InfoQ: - Mastodon: techhub.social/@infoq - Twitter: twitter.com/InfoQ - LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/infoq - Facebook: bit.ly/2jmlyG8 - Instagram: @infoqdotcom - Youtube: www.youtube.com/infoq Write for InfoQ: Learn and share the changes and innovations in professional software development. - Join a community of experts. - Increase your visibility. - Grow your career. www.infoq.com/write-for-infoqRead a transcript of this interview: bit.ly/3JWNJbT Subscribe to the Software Architects' Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news and experience from industry peers on emerging patterns and technologies: www.infoq.com/software-architects-newsletter Upcoming Events: InfoQ Dev Summit Boston (June 24-25, 2024) Actionable insights on today's critical dev priorities. devsummit.infoq.com/conference/boston2024 InfoQ Dev Summit Munich (Sept 26-27, 2024) Practical learnings from senior software practitioners navigating Generative AI, security, modern web applications, and more. devsummit.infoq.com/conference/munich2024 QCon San Francisco (November 18-22, 2024) Get practical inspiration and best practices on emerging software trends directly from senior software developers at early adopter companies. qconsf.com/ QCon London (April 7-9, 2025) Discover new ideas and insights from senior practitioners driving change and innovation in software development. qconlondon.com/ The InfoQ Podcasts: Weekly inspiration to drive innovation and build great teams from senior software leaders. Listen to all our podcasts and read interview transcripts: - The InfoQ Podcast www.infoq.com/podcasts/ - Engineering Culture Podcast by InfoQ www.infoq.com/podcasts/#engineering_culture - Generally AI Follow InfoQ: - Mastodon: techhub.social/@infoq - Twitter: twitter.com/InfoQ - LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/infoq - Facebook: bit.ly/2jmlyG8 - Instagram: @infoqdotcom - Youtube: www.youtube.com/infoq Write for InfoQ: Learn and share the changes and innovations in professional software development. - Join a community of experts. - Increase your visibility. - Grow your career. www.infoq.com/write-for-infoq

An airhacks.fm conversation with Ivar Jacobson (@ivarjacobson) about: Apple 2c at ericsson.com, building software with components, writing about science of component based development, devops in 1976, function and logic programming in 1983, imperative, logic and functional programming, leaving Ericsson, the Rational Objectory Process, Objectory stands for Software Factory, objectory and Rational unified process, intelligent agents supported RUP, intelligent agents are copilots, building an intelligent agent in .net, Boundary Control Entity or Entity Control Boundary, the Object Oriented Software Engineering: A Use Case Driven Approach book, Structured Method vs. Essence, the road to agile RUP, Ivar Jacobson on LinkedIn Ivar Jacobson on twitter: @ivarjacobson

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Ivar Jacobson about Essence; a standard to develop patterns and pattern libraries that is being used by Scrum, SAFE, Lean and Kanban organisations. We discuss object oriented software engineering, use cases, UML, RUP, Essence and AI assisted method coaching. Join us to hear from one of the founders of the software engineering industry. Listen to the podcast on your favourite podcast app: | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | iHeart Radio | PlayerFM | Amazon Music | Listen Notes | TuneIn | Audible | Podchaser |  Deezer | Podcast Addict | Connect with Ivar on LinkedIn or at https://www.ivarjacobson.com/ Contact Murray via email or Shane on LinkedIn shagility. You can read the podcast transcript at: https://agiledata.io/podcast/no-nonsense-agile-podcast/essence-with-ivar-jacobson/#read   The No Nonsense Agile Podcast is sponsored by: Simply Magical Data

Industrial Talk is speaking with Ivar Jacobson, Founder - Ivar Jacobson International about "Essence - The OMG Standard for Software Engineering and Development". Get the answers to your "Software Engineering and Development" questions along with Ivar's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview! Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Why You Need To Podcast” for Greater Success in 2023. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy! DR. IVAR JACOBSON'S CONTACT INFORMATION: Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivarjacobson/ Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ivar-jacobson-international/ Company Website: https://linktr.ee/IvarJacobsonInternational MORE RESOUCES FROM IVAR JACOBSON: A LinkedIn article on ‘Learn More about Essence' https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/learn-more-essence-ivar-jacobson-1f/ A meetup on ‘Essence for Agility' https://www.meetup.com/essence-for-agility/ with all previous recordings https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/essence-agility-ivar-jacobson-1e/?trackingId=5kyVtN35JtoQGhUzheqC%2BA%3D%3D Some of the Craziest Things…' a LinkedIn article https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/craziest-things-methods-frameworks-ivar-jacobson/ Scrum Essentials Cards – Experiences of Scrum Teams Improving with Essence', An ACM Queue paper, Jeff Sutherland, Ivar Jacobson and Brian Kerr, https://bit.ly/3hCrVCq ”The Uncomfortable Truth of Software Engineering and How to Cure It” https://youtu.be/8pcCkwI4TA4, PODCAST VIDEO: https://youtu.be/GZdJ5cO2zcw THE STRATEGIC REASON "WHY YOU NEED TO PODCAST": OTHER GREAT INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES: NEOM: https://www.neom.com/en-us AI Dash: https://www.aidash.com/ Hitachi Vantara: https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/home.html Industrial Marketing Solutions:  https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-marketing/ Industrial Academy: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-academy/ Industrial Dojo: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial_dojo/ We the 15: https://www.wethe15.org/ YOUR INDUSTRIAL DIGITAL TOOLBOX: LifterLMS: Get One...

Bio Dave West is the Product Owner and CEO at Scrum.org. In this capacity, he engages with partners, and the community to drive Scrum.org's strategy and the overall market position of Scrum. Prior to joining Ken Schwaber and the team at Scrum.org he was Chief Product Officer at Tasktop where he was responsible for product management, engineering and architecture. As a member of the company's executive management team was also instrumental in growing Tasktop from a services business into a VC backed product business with a team of almost 100. As one of the foremost industry experts on software development and deployment, West has helped advance many modern software development processes, including the Unified process and Agile methods. He is a frequent keynote at major industry conferences and is a widely published author of articles and research reports. He also is the co-author of two books, The Nexus Framework For Scaling Scrum and Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design. He led the development of the Rational Unified Process (RUP) for IBM/Rational. After IBM/Rational, West returned to consulting and managed Ivar Jacobson Consulting for North America. Then he served as vice president, research director at Forrester Research, where he worked with leading IT organisations and solutions providers to define, drive and advance Agile-based methodology and tool breakthroughs in the enterprise. Email –  Dave.west@scrum.org Twitter - @davidjwest LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidjustinwest   Interview Highlights Growing up with dyslexia 03:10 & 10:20 Water-Scrum-Fall 07:40 Psychological safety 15:40 Lilian the rockstar - 'who have you helped today?' 18:55 Is 'project' a taboo word? 21:53 'Humble and Kind' - not just for country music 44:30 Books ·         Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design by Dave West, Brett McLaughlin and Gary Pollice https://www.amazon.co.uk/Head-First-Object-Oriented-Analysis-Design/dp/0596008678/ ·         The Nexus Framework for Scaling Scrum by Dave West, Kurt Bittner and Patricia Kong https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nexus-Framework-Scaling-Scrum-Continuously/dp/0134682661 ·         ARTICLE: Why Kindness Matters by Dave West https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/why-kindness-matters ·         Thank You for Being Late by Thomas L Friedman https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thank-You-Being-Late-Accelerations/dp/0141985755 ·         Scrum: A Pocket Guide by Gunther Verheyen https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scrum-Pocket-Companion-Practice-Publishing/dp/9087537204 ·         The Professional Scrum Series by various authors https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=the+professional+scrum+series&crid=1WVNY1VHR0QAQ&sprefix=professional+scrum+series ·         Zombie Scrum by Christiaan Verijs, Johannes Schartau and Barry Overeem https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zombie-Scrum-Survival-Guide-Professional/dp/0136523269 ·         The Professional Agile Leader: The Leader's Journey Toward Growing Mature Agile Teams and Organizations (The Professional Scrum Series) by Ron Eringa, Kurt Bittner, Laurens Bonnema, foreword by Dave West https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Agile-Leader-Growing-Organizations-dp-0137591519/dp/0137591519/ Episode Transcript Ula Ojiaku (Guest Intro): Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I'm Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. It's my honour to introduce my guest for this episode. He is Dave West. Dave is the CEO of Scrum.org and prior to joining Scrum.org as CEO, he led the development of the Rational Unified Process, also known as RUP with IBM. He was also Chief Product Officer for Tasktop Technologies and Managing Director of the Americas at Ivar Jacobson Consulting. He is a widely published author of several articles and research reports, as well as the books The Nexus Framework for Scaling Scrum and Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design. In this conversation, Dave talked about growing up in the council estates, being raised by his grandparents who were of great positive influence in his life, especially his grandmother. He also talked about navigating the challenges of being dyslexic, especially as a student in secondary school with the silver lining being that he got introduced to computers. Dave also gave his perspective on one of the ongoing “agile wars” quote unquote, on the concept of projects and whether they still have a place in agile or not. Without further ado ladies and gentlemen, my conversation with Dave, I am sure you would find it very, very interesting, relevant and insightful. Thanks again for listening. Ula Ojiaku So we have on this episode of the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast, Dave West, who is the CEO of Scrum.org. Dave, it's a pleasure to have you on this show, thank you for making the time. Dave West Oh, well, thank you for inviting me. I'm glad we've finally managed to make the time to do this. It's great to talk to you. Ula Ojiaku Yes, well, the honour is mine. Let's start by talking about, you know, getting to know about the man, Dave. Can you, you know, tell us a bit about that? Dave West Yeah, I'll try not to bore your audience. So I was brought up on a council estate in a little town called Market Harborough, just outside Leicester. I lived with my grandparents, and which has definitely, my grandmother's definitely shaped who I am, I think, which is fantastic. So I got into computers, sort of a little bit by accident. I'm dyslexic and I found school, particularly secondary school, very challenging. I don't know if any of your audiences had a similar experience, but, you know, I went from a very protected environment and secondary school is a, oh my gosh, it's like an experience that could scare any human being. And so my dyslexia really was a challenge there and there was a teacher at secondary school called Phil Smith. He drove a sports car, he was sort of like that young, you know those teachers that you remember from school that are the good looking young ones. And he ran a computer lab and it had, you know, RS236, it had these really old computers, well, now we would look at them, they were brand new at the time, computers and some BBC model As and some other things. And I helped him and he gave me a lot of time in the lab and it was my sort of like escape. So I got very into computing and helped him and helped other teachers who were rubbish, I'm not going to lie, with computing. So that allowed me then, you know, I went through, managed to survive school, went to a further education college called Charles Keene where I studied, well I did a computing course, so not traditional A'levels and all of that. And then got into Huddersfield that was a poly at the time, became a University whilst I was there. And I think that that gave me a great opportunity, it was a fantastic university, it was a very practical course. My dyslexia became less of an issue because of, you know, word processing and I'd be honest and, you know, the ability for it to read back, even though it was an awful read back, it was like listening to say, you know, to like an old fashioned Stephen Hawking, you know, sort of, and then got me a job at Commercial Union, which then led to me doing a Masters, which then led me to move to London, all this sort of stuff. The adventure was great. The thing about, I guess, my journey is that it, I was driven at a certain point, I became very driven by the need to improve the way in which we delivered software development at that time, and that led me through my Masters and, you know, Object-Oriented and then to a company called Rational Software where I became the Product Manager for RUP, the Rational Unified Process. Now for the agilists listening, they're probably like, oh, boo hiss, and that's totally legit. It was in fact, that's when I first met Ken Schwaber and he told me I was an idiot, which turns out he was right. Ken Schwaber the creator (of Scrum), who I work for now. Anyways. Ula Ojiaku I mean, who wouldn't know Ken Schwaber if you're a self-respecting agilist.  Sorry, go on please. Dave West Yeah, he's an interesting character for sure. Anyway, so I was the RUP Product Manager and I realised I went to this large insurance company in the Midwest and it's a huge organisation and I met this lady and she said, I'm a use case. I said, what do you do? She said, I'm a use case specifier, and meet my friend, she's a use case realiser and I'm like, oh, no, that's not the intent. And so I realised that there was this process that I loved, and I still definitely love elements of it, but was fundamentally flawed in terms of helping actually people to work together to work on complex problems and solve them. So that, you know, and I'd written a book and I'd done some other things on the way to this point, but this point really did make me realise that I was going wrong, which was a little scary because RUP was incredibly popular at that time, and so then that led me to work with Ivar Jacobson, tried to bring in Scrum to the unified process, spent more time with Ken Schwaber who'd finally realised I may still be an idiot, but I was an idiot that was willing to listen to him. Then I ended up at Forrester Research, running the application development practice, I became a research director there, which was super interesting, because I spent a lot of time looking at organisations, and I realised a really fundamental problem that I think probably will resonate with many that are listening to this podcast, that people were doing Scrum yeah, Scrum was incredibly popular and people were doing Scrum, but they were doing it in an industrial context. It was more like Water-Scrum-Fall. And I coined that term in a research document, which got picked up by the, InfoQ and all these magazines, it became this sort of ‘thing' – Water-Scrum-Fall. You know, they were doing Scrum, but they only liked to plan once a year, and there's a huge planning sort of routine that they did. They were doing Scrum, but they rarely released because the customers really don't want it - it's incredibly hard and dangerous and things can go horribly wrong. And so they were doing Scrum, but they weren't really doing Scrum, you know. And so that was super interesting. And I got an opportunity to do a number of workshops and presentations on the, sort of like the solution to this Water-Scrum-Fall problem with Ken, I invited him and we did this very entertaining roadshow, which I'm surprised we weren't arrested during it, but we were, it was a really interesting experience. I then decided like any good practitioner, I had to do a Startup. So I went to Tasktop working with Mik Kersten and the gang at Tasktop, and the great thing about Tasktop was it was a massive fire hose of doing Scrum, trying to make payroll, learning about everything around delivering a product in a market that wasn't really there and that we had to build. And it was just fantastic working with a lot of OEMs, a lot of partners and looking at, and then we got funding. We grew to five teams. I was running product and engineering. And Ken was continually talking to me through this time, and mentoring me, coaching me, but I realised he was also interviewing me. So he then said to me, one day, Dave, I don't want to be the CEO of Scrum.org anymore. I'd like you to be, when can you start? Ken doesn't take no for an answer, and I think that's part of the success of Scrum. I think that his persistence, his tenacity, his, you know, sort of energy around this, was the reason why Scrum, part of the reason him and Jeff, you know, had different skills, but definitely both had that in common, was successful. So I then came and joined about seven years ago Scrum.org, to run Scrum.org and it's an amazing organisation Ula Ojiaku And if I may just go back a bit to what you said about your time in secondary school, you said you were dyslexic and apart from the fact that you discovered computers, you had a horrible experience. What made it horrible for you? Dave West I think it was, you know, there's no support network, there's nobody checking in on you, particularly at secondary school. At primary school, you have a teacher that you're in the same room, you've sort of got that, you're with the same kids, but you go, you know, you, you go from one lesson to another lesson, to another lesson and if you're a little bit, well for me, you know, reading and writing was incredibly difficult. I could read and write at that point. I was about nine and a half, 10 when I finally broke through, thanks to an amazing teacher that worked with my primary school. And, but I was way, way behind. I was slower. I, you know, and teachers didn't really, it was almost as though, and I'm sure education's very different now, and both my children are dyslexic and they go to a special school that's designed around this, so I know that it's different for them, but the teaching was very much delivery without inspection and adaption of the outcome, you know, just to make it a bit agile for a second. So you go through all this stuff and I wasn't able to write all the stuff down fast enough. I certainly wasn't able to process it, so because of that, it was pretty awful. I always felt that I was stupid, I was, you know, and obviously I relied on humour and I was a big lad, so I didn't have any bullying issues, but it was very, very challenging. And I found that I could be good at something with computers. And I sort of got it, I understood how to write, you know, BASIC very quickly and maybe even a little Assembly. I knew how to configure machines, it just seemed natural, it certainly helped my confidence, which, you know, maybe I'm a little too confident now, but definitely had an impact on my future life. Ula Ojiaku That's awesome, and I'm sure there are people who would be encouraged by what you've just said, so I wanted to begin there. Thanks for sharing. Now, what about, what do you do when you're not working? Dave West What do I do when I'm not working? Well, I'm a, that's a hard question. Gosh. So I have a nine year old and a six year old, and two boys, so, you know, sometimes I'm refereeing wrestling matches, you know, I'm definitely dealing with having children, I was late to life having children. I'm 52 and I have a nine year old and a six year old. I thought that, you know, a single lifestyle, a bachelor lifestyle in Boston and, you know, loving my work, writing books, you know, doing this traveling the world was going to be survive, and then I met the most amazing girl and, who persuaded me that I needed to have children, and I thought, well, I really like you, so I'd better. And it's been an incredible adventure with these children. They've taught me so much, the most important thing I think they've taught me is patience. And it's making me a better human being, and many of those traits, just to bring it back to Agile for a second, are things that we need to build better into the way that we turn up at work because you know, the project, I think it was called Aristotle, the Google big project where they looked at the successful teams, they found a number of traits, but one of those traits that was so important was psychological safety, right? And that requires you to attend every interaction with a mindfulness, not of doing things that you want to do to yourself, which is that sort of golden rule, but that platinum rule, do unto others as they want be done unto. And, and I think that is so, so important and crucial, and it's something that I aspire to, I don't always succeed every day as a human being, you know, whether it's at the checkout at the supermarket or whether it's waiting in line, particularly at the moment in an airport, and it's just, you know, something that I think in an agile team is so important because that safety is so, so required to create that environment where transparency happens, to create that environment where you can have those honest conversations about what's happening next, or what's happened previously where you're running those retrospectives, where you're trying to really plan when there is not enough knowledge to plan. You know, those sort of things require that kind of environment to be successful. So, you know, though, yes, I spend my life either working or really spending it with my children at the moment because of the age they're at, I think it's helping me, the time I'm spending with my children is helping me be a better human being and be a better Agilist.  Ula Ojiaku There's something you said, you know, about psychological safety and being kind, it just reminded me that, you know, of that, the need for also to be respectful of people, because when you are kind and you're showing people respect, they would, that brings down the barriers and makes them, you know, more inclined to be open and to participate. What do you think about that? Would you say there's a link between respect and kindness, I know we're being philosophical right now… Dave West Well actually, yes, but no, it's incredibly practical as well. I think that kindness, so I've written quite a lot about kindness, because it's a trait that we, as a community, our professional Scrum trainer community, manifests and lives. It's something that we actually interview for when you join our community, and the reason why we do that, isn't because we're a bunch of hippies that just like kumbaya, want everybody to hold hands and be nice to each other, I mean, that would be great as well and who doesn't like a good rendition of kumbaya, it's a great song, but it's because we believe that kindness, ultimately, is beneficial to both parties, particularly the person that's being kind, because it creates, not only does it create levels of karma, but it creates that transparency, it creates that opportunity to learn that you may not get, if you go in in a very confrontational way and people don't intentionally be confrontational, but it's so easy for it to happen. You know, it's so easy for you to question, because, you know, somebody says something you're like, well, I don't agree with that, and that instantly creates an environment or a connection that is, you know, confrontational, you're in this position, it spirals, blah, blah, blah. So, but you can, instead of saying, I don't agree with that say, hey, well, that's interesting, let me have a look into that, and you're inquisitive. And if you try to approach everything with that sort of like kindness model, and I don't mean always being nice. Nice is different to kind, nice is like faking, I think, sometimes, you know, it's funny, you don't have to be kind to be nice, but you have to be nice to be kind if you understand what I mean. So you can fake niceness, niceness is part of being kind. So, you know, if you approach it in the right way, where you care about people and you care about what they're bringing to the table and you care about the environment that they're in, whether it's just simple things like checking in more frequently, you know, whether it's actually making time in this very scheduled life that we live now with zoom call after zoom call, to check in with the team, or the person that you're talking to, to see how are they turning up today? How has their day been? And I think that's, you know, super, super important. The other important element of kindness that comes out is this helping others element, you know, my gran, God rest her soul, Lilian, she was a rockstar on so many levels. And she used to say to me, when I came home from school, particularly from elementary school or primary school, I think we call it in England, right? She'd say things like, not what have you done today, I mean, sometimes she said that, but she'd say, who have you helped? Who have you helped? I'd be like uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, and she said it enough that I realised it's important, you know, it's important that you spend time with others, help them in their tasks, you know, because I think you can learn so much and build those relationships, build that safety that is so, so important to really develop. We work in complex environments, right, that's the whole point of agility. Complex environments require people to collaborate, they require people to look at things in different ways. They really benefit from diversity, diversity of mind, diversity of experience, diversity of skill. And you bring that together, but you can only bring all these different parts together when you have an environment that allows for it, and traditional project management techniques, fabulous as they were for building bridges and tunnels and everything like that, didn't allow that, they don't encourage that. They encourage people to be focused, to be efficient, to be managing to that model. And I think we have to step away from that and work in a slightly different way where kindness, psychological safety, trust, respect, use the word respect. And I think it's, you know, obviously it's a Scrum value, but it's crucial to effectively allowing independent people with diverse perspectives to work together in an effective way. And to be honest society doesn't have enough of that in general. I think we've definitely moved away from respect and trust. We don't trust in our governments, we don't trust in our institutions, we don't trust in our fellow human beings and we've become very much focused on ourselves and our individual needs. And the reality is there's no such thing as a self-made person, you're only there because of the success of previous generations. As you drive to work on a car, on a road that has been built by others, that's been funded by others, you know, so this idea that you are in it alone, you know, is completely wrong, and I think sometimes we bring that to the work and it creates an environment that is not as successful. Ula Ojiaku True, true. No, thanks for that, Dave. I completely agree. Now there are people back to this project program that feel like, you know, the word project in agile is a taboo, almost a swear word. What's your perspective on this? Dave West I don't think it's a swear word, I don't think it's taboo. I think, you know, Mik's book is a fabulous book and he's a fabulous person, but he was using it to emphasise the fact that, you know, that we have become too focused on this, you know, investment paradigm, this organisation paradigm, this structural paradigm of the project and that, ultimately, the idea of a product, this idea of a cohesive set of capabilities that's packaged in some way that has a clear boundary, that has a clear set of customers, that has some clear value, is a much better way of aligning your people and your investments. And so he was emphasising that, and obviously he emphasised the idea of value streams being the mechanism that we deliver value in this construct to these people in this packaging of products, and it's a great book and I recommend everybody should read it. Ula Ojiaku I have mine here. Dave West No, that's good. Yeah. I was fortunate enough to be involved in the development of the book a little, working with Mik, providing a lot of feedback and I think it's a great book. However, the idea of a project doesn't go away and all of that work that we did, that organisations that I respect deeply like the PMI and, you know, that even, dare I say, things like Prince2, all of that work, isn't wrong. It's just, we need to look at it from a different lens. The idea that complex work is there changes certain things, the fact that requirements and understandings and appreciation of what we're doing emerges over time, that is just a truth, and that was true of projects as well. We just need to build in the mechanisms to be better able to deal with that. The fact that we would invest hundreds, if not thousands of hours planning things that ultimately fell apart when some underlying assumption changed and then we'd create a change order to deal with the chaos that that created need to be, we need to step away from those ideas. Do we still have projects? I think yes, sometimes you will have something that has a, you know, put a man on, or hopefully it's not a man, hopefully it's a woman, but a woman on Mars. I don't trust men on, I think it'd be much more successful if it was a woman, but, anyway, or person. Men get old, they don't grow up, right? Isn't that the saying, but anyway, so putting that person on Mars is a project, right? It has a definitive, you know, plan, it has an end goal that's very clearly underside. It's very likely that we're going to build a series of products to support that, you know, there is, I don't think we need to get tied up so much on the words, project and product. However, we really need to step back a little bit and look at, okay, you know, like treating people as resources, breaking up teams and reforming teams continuously, treating people as fungible or whatever that is, they're just unrealistic. It's not nothing to do with project or product, they're just silly, you just can't deal with this. The fact that teams take time to form, you know, the fact that, you know, the most successful agile teams I've ever seen are teams that have a clear line of sight to the customer, clear understanding of what they're trying to do for that customer, have guardrails, have an enabling management structure that provides support to deliver that value to that customer. As long as you think about those things and you don't get so tied up with the dance or the routine of project management that you forget that, then I'm not concerned. You know, there's this big thing about, oh, should project managers be Scrum masters? I don't know, it depends on the project manager. Sometimes project managers make very good product owners because they take real clear ownership of the outcomes and the value that's trying to be delivered. Sometimes, you know, they make great Scrum masters because they care very much about the flow of work, the team dynamics, the service to the organisation, the service to the business, and they want to act in that way. And sometimes you just want to get stuff done and work in a team, as a developer on that increment. You know, I don't know, you know, people are like, oh, because, and I think this is the fundamental problem, and you've got me onto my soapbox here and I apologise, but the thing that I see over and over again is the use of agile in an industrial, mass production oil and mass production way of thinking about the world. So what they do is that it isn't agile or project management that's at fault. It's the paradigm that's driving the use of agile or the use of project management. You can do agile in a very waterfall way, don't get me wrong or a very industrial way, I almost don't want to use the word waterfall, but this idea of, you know, maximizing efficiency. I mean, gosh, the word velocity has been as synonymous of agile forever when ultimately it's got nothing to do with agility, you know, it's a useful mechanism for a team to help them run a retrospective sometimes. But it isn't a mechanism that you use to plan, you know, the capacity of your organisation and all this sort of idea,  what they're trying to do always is use an industrial, you know, sort of mindset in an agile context, in a context that doesn't support an industrial mindset or a traditional mindset. And that drives me mad because I see agility being used to deliver work rather than value, I see agility basically being missed, sort of like, almost jimmied in with a crowbar into these massive projects and programs where you've got fixed scope, fixed budgets at the start. They don't actually know what they're trying to achieve, but you've got all these contracts in place that describe all this stuff, very detailed up front. And then they say, we're going to use agile to do it, and you're like, okay, what are we, you know, what happens if the first sprint uncovers the fact that the product goal was fundamentally flawed? Oh well, we can't change that because the contract says, well, hang on a minute, what are we in this business for? Are we actually trying to deliver value to customers and help them solve a particular problem to deliver? Or are we trying to do something else? And they're like, no, we're trying to deliver on the contract. Oh, but isn't the contract a mechanism that describes that? Maybe, but that's not why we're here. And that's when it starts getting, going wrong, I think,  that industrial mindset that I just want, tell me what to do, give me a job, let me sit down, just give me that change order and I will start work. It's just wrong. And for certain types of project, and certain types of product and certain types of problem, you know, it probably works really well if we're building the 17th bridge or we're, you know, doing those sort of things. But the reality is in the digital age, that most knowledge workers, who are the people that really benefit from agile the most, that aren't working in that way, they're working with very changeable environments, very changeable customer understanding very, you know, it's a little bit more complex. Ula Ojiaku True, true. And what you're saying reminds me of my conversation with Dave Snowden, he's known for his work on complexity theory, Cynefin, and if it's in a complex adaptive environment, you know, you need to be agile, but if it's a complicated problem or a simple problem, so complicated is really about, you know, breaking it down into a series of simple problems but it's still sequential and predictable, you could use, you know, the traditional waterfall method, because nothing is going to change, it's really putting all those pieces together to get to a known end state, and so I am of the same mindset as you, in terms of it's all about the context and understanding what exactly are you trying to achieve, what's of value to the customer and how much of it do we know and how much learning do we have to do as we get there. Dave West Exactly. I'm obviously not anywhere near as smart as somebody like a Dave Snowden who just, I think he has forgotten more things than I've ever understood, but yeah, I mean he's an amazing thought leader in this space, but the challenge and he talks a little bit about this sometimes, or I think he does, is that we don't always know what's complicated or complex or the amount of unknown. And this is, you know, this is the classic sort of entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs aren't necessarily working in complexity, they're working in unknown. But the nature of complex unknown is really tricky because you may discover that something that you thought was known is not known, and then you then have to change how you approach it. So the reason in Scrum, what we do is we deliver frequently and that, ultimately, and we deliver the most valuable things or the things that will give us the most value, thus that uncovers those misunderstandings early in the process. Ula Ojiaku Yeah, completely true. And just to build on what you said in terms of understanding or realising that your product goal was wrong, you're working on the wrong thing. Sometimes you might have to also kind of say goodbye to the project or pull the plug. It depends. Dave West Yeah. And that's incredibly hard, sorry, just to lean into that. It's very hard because you've got people that are there and you've invested time, you know, there's the sort of classic fallacy of sunk costs, all that stuff, but the reality is it's not a fallacy of psychological sort of like sunk energy. You've invested all this time and money and effort and motion to get where you're at and then you're realising it's wrong. It's incredibly hard to step away from that. And so what you do, and you see this with startups all the time is, you know, you pivot, you pivot, you pivot, you pivot, you pivot, but you don't really pivot, what you're doing actually is trying to find a way to get all that investment that you've spent to be useful to deliver some value, you know, and whether it's repackaging or whatever, so that you can say, oh, that's okay when actually, and you can spend as much time doing that as you did the original thing, and now you are even worse, in a worse situation and it's hard. Ula Ojiaku Yes. Completely agree. So there's something you said about, you know, you gave an example of people doing, if I will use your term, Water-Scrum-Fall, in their delivery. And sometimes, you know, they go into detailed requirements, you know, specification, and this is, and they write an iron-clad contract that would, you know, kind of specify all these requirements have to be met, and whilst from the delivery perspective, in terms of the teams who actually do the work, it's they are, they get it, they want to be agile, but it's always these constraints. And whenever we, as an agile coach, you know, you go into the root of the matter. It's the typical root causes of why there is this inflexibility it's either, you know, the leadership and/or, you know, the business or their clients not wanting, you know, having that traditional expectations, any advice on how to effectively deal with this sort of blocker? Dave West I think it's very difficult, particularly when it's like outsourced or you've got, you know, that sort of it's contract-based as opposed to internal in terms of commitments. So it's not budgeted it's actually contracted. And when, when that happens it's very difficult, because you know, you've got the deal because you know how to do stuff and you've done it before, and you've got all that experience with the customer of course, so it's well, because you've done it before and you've invested all this experience, you must tell us exactly what it is that we are going to do. And the reality is the customer themselves doesn't know what they want, really. And until you actually get into the process, it's very difficult. I think one of the big things that's going to happen over the next few years, and we're starting to see some of this with things like Beyond Budgeting, the new procurement contract models that the US is, is perpetuating with 18F and the work of the central government. It would sort of stop during the previous administration, but it's now back, you know, how do you do agile contract management, what does it mean? Speaking from personal use, you know, of external companies to do work for Scrum.org, we pay for sprints. We define a clear product goal that we evaluate continuously, that's measurable. We, you know, we have a product owner from Scrum.org embedded in the Scrum team, even if the Scrum team or in the Scrum team, so of course, if the product owner, they are part of the Scrum team, but even if the Scrum team is predominantly a third party. So we do things like that to, and because you can't just fund one sprint at a time. It's very, you know, these people have got to pay mortgages and you know, they've got payroll to hit, so you have to negotiate a number of sprints that you would do it that allows them the flexibility to manage those constraints whilst being realistic, that at the end of a sprint review, you may discover so much stuff, or even during a sprint, that questions everything, and requires a fundamentally, you know, shifting of the backlog, maybe a change to the backlog, assuming that the objective and the product goal is still valid. You know, so putting those things in place, having those honest conversations and partnership conversations with the client is crucial. And the, you know, service companies that serve Scrum.org are a little bit luckier because we actually come at that from a, we know that we don't know what we want, whereas most clients, it's a lot harder to get them to say that. We know what we'd like to achieve, so the other thing that's important and I think that OKRs are maybe part of this, we have a thing called EBM, Evidence Based Management, which is a sort of like an agile version of OKRs. The OKRs and if defining the outcomes that you're trying to achieve and how you're going to measure them up front, validating them continuously, because it's possible you're wrong, but it's a much less of a scary prospect than not describing anything at all, or just having some very highfaluting goal. So getting very clear and precise in what you're trying to achieve and actually investing the time up front to work out what that means, and getting everybody on the same page around that can really help solve those problems long term, because you build to that, and that ultimately becomes the true north that everybody's working to. So when you have those moments of oh, that's not what we thought then, you know, that's okay, because you are validating against at least something, you have some level of structure in all of this. Ula Ojiaku So let's get to some other questions. What books have you, you know, read that you would say have kind of impacted the way your outlook on, or view on the subject of agile agility or anything else, what would you recommend to the audience? Dave West So the books that really changed my life around thinking about this in a different way, there was a few. The one that actually has nothing to do with agile that made me step back from the way I was looking at the world was Thank You for Being Late by Thomas Friedman. That book really sort of like reinforced the fact that the world is incredibly complex and is, you know, he's famous for The World is Flat, you know, the sort of like global supply chain thing, which we are all very aware of and it's fundamentally having a huge impact now on prices and inflation and the like because of, you know, it's been such a mess over the last two and a half years. So that changed my outlook with respect to the world that I'm living in, which I thought was quite interesting. In terms of straight agility, you know, I'll be honest, there's Scrum – A Pocket Guide that taught me professional Scrum, that's Gunther Verheyen's book that I'd never really thought about Scrum in that way. And then I have to plug the series, The Professional Scrum Series from Addison, well, it's Pearson now, sorry. There are some great books in there, Zombie Scrum is absolutely fabulous. And actually, coming out on the 17th of June is a new book about leadership, The Professional Agile Leader: The Leader's Journey Toward Growing Mature Agile Teams and Organizations. I just read that, so I did not remember it, but it's by three people I adore, Ron Eringa, Kurt Bittner and Laurens Bonnema. They're awesome, you know, had lots of leadership positions, written a great book. I wrote an inspired forward just in case anybody's checking that, you know, that confidence thing certainly came back after middle school, right. But that's a really interesting book that talks about the issue that you highlighted earlier, that leadership needs, we've spent a lot, we've spent 25 years teaching Scrum to teams. We need to spend the next, probably 60 years, teaching Scrum to leaders and trying to help, and it's not just Scrum, it's agile, hence the reason why this isn't just about Scrum, you know, whether it's Kanban, whether it's Flow, whether it's Spotify Model, whether it's whatever, but the essence of that, you know, empiricism, self-management, you know, the continuous improvement, the importance of discipline, the importance of being customer centric, the value of outcomes and measures against outcomes, the value of community and support networks, you know, all of this stuff is crucial and we need to start putting that thing, you know, whether it's business agility, whether you call it business agility, you know, all organisations, I think the pandemic proved this, need to be more agile in responding to their market, to their customers, to their employers and to the society that they contribute to. We get that. Leadership needs to change, and that's not a, you're wrong and awful, now sort of old leadership bad. No, it's just the reality is the world has changed and the more mindful leaders step back and say, oh, what do I have to do differently? Now, my entire team is remote, my, you know, my work is hard to plan, the fact that we, you know, our funding cycles have changed, our investment models have changed, you know, stepping back a little bit. So this professional, agile leader book I do recommend. Obviously I had the benefit of reading it before it became a book and it's very, very good and fun to read. Ula Ojiaku Awesome, we will put the list of books and links to them in the show notes, so thank you for that. Now, is there anything you'd like to ask you know, of the audience? Dave West Oh gosh, I don't know. I mean, my only sort of like, if it's sort of closing, if we've unfortunately come to the end of our time together and I, you know, I did waffle on, so I apologise for using far too much of it. But I guess the question I, and we talked a little bit about this, but you know, this sort of, there is a propensity in our industry, like every industry, and every moment, and every movement to become very inward looking, to become very like my way is better than every other way, you know. And obviously I'm very into Scrum and I apologise, I accept that I am. But I'm not arrogant enough to believe that it is the only way of solving complex problems. I'm also not arrogant to believe that it is sufficient. You know, I love the work of the Lean UX, Agile UX, we loved it so much we worked with Jeff and Josh to build a class together. I love the work of Daniel Vacanti and in professional Kanban and the Kanban community in general, I love, you know, I love the work of the professional coaching organisations and what they're really doing to help me be a better human being dare I say. You know, the point is, as you sit at this moment in time, you as an agile practitioner, have the opportunity to draw on many different disciplines and many different experts to really help to create that environment. That can allow agility to thrive and value to be delivered. And I think the only thing that's getting in the way of you doing that, or the only thing that was getting in the way of me doing that, and it still does sometimes is uberous arrogance and just a lack of, I don't know, not willing, not being willing to step out of my comfort zone and accept that my predefined ideas and my experience, my diversity that I bring isn't necessarily always right and to be more humble and to be more kind. I know it's a country song, you know, humble and kind, right, which I'm, you know, obviously I live in America, so I have to like country music, it's mandatory, but if you can be a little bit kinder and to do what my gran asks, right? Not what did you do today, but who did you help? What did you learn? How are you going to be better tomorrow? If we can do all of those things, then not only are our projects and teams and products better, but our lives better, and maybe society could be a little bit better. Ula Ojiaku Those are great words, Dave, thank you so much for those. One last thing, are you on social media? How can people get in touch with you? Dave West Well you could always dave.west@scrum.org if you want to ping me on this thing called email. If you are under 30, it's this thing that old people like, it's called email. If you're younger and cooler, I do not have a TikTok account, I don't totally know what it is. My son says we need it. I'm not a totally sure that we do, but it's not about clocks as well, who knew that, what was all that about? Ula Ojiaku Well, just like Apple isn't the fruit… Dave West Isn't about fruit, how annoying is that as well? Anyway, and so many misconceptions in the world, right. Anyway, but, and M&Ms aren't Smarties, I know I get it. But anyway, sorry, David J. West is my Twitter handle, you know, but, you know, whatever, LinkedIn, you can always find me on LinkedIn, just do Dave West Scrum.org and you will find me on LinkedIn. Love connecting, love talking about this stuff, maybe a little too much. You know another saying that my gran used to say, “you've got two ears and one mouth, shame you never used it like that, David”. I was like, yes, gran, I know, yeah. She also didn't by the way, just for the record anyway. Ula Ojiaku Oh gosh, your grandma Lilian sounds like she was one awesome woman. Dave West Rockstar, rockstar. Ula Ojiaku Well, thank you so much, Dave. It's been a pleasure and I thoroughly enjoyed having this conversation with you, actually more learning from you and I hope sometime you'll be back again for another conversation. Dave West I would love that. Thank you for your audience. Thank you for taking the time today. I appreciate it. Let's stay in touch and I hope that we'll see maybe in person again soon. Ula Ojiaku Yeah, that will be wonderful.

In this week's episode we sit down with Ivar Jacobson to discuss the "crazy things" he's seen as a result of the agile explosion, as well as going into detail about his new practice called Essence.  Enjoy! Essence Website Part one of the Crazy Things series   If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a review, a rating, or leave comments on iTunes, Stitcher or your podcasting platform of choice. It really helps others find us.  Much thanks to the artist Krebs from Machine Man Records who provided us our outro music free-of-charge!  If you like what you heard, check out these links to find more music you might enjoy! If you'd like to join the discussion and share your stories,  please jump into the fray at our Discord Server! We at the Agile Uprising are committed to being totally free.  However, if you'd like to contribute and help us defray hosting and production costs we do have a Patreon.  Who knows, you might even get some surprises in the mail!

Bio Ian Spence is the Chief Scientist at Ivar Jacobson International. He spends his time coaching the teams working on some of the world's largest and most technically challenging endeavours - such as the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project, building the world's largest radio telescope to explore the Universe - and working with industry thought leaders such as Dean Leffingwell, Dr Jeff Sutherland and Dr Ivar Jacobson to improve the art of software development. He led the creation of the OMG's Essence Kernel and many of the most popular Essence Practices. He has many certifications the most prestigious of which is SAFe Fellow.   Social Media/ Website: LinkedIn https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ian-spence-agile1 IJI website: ivarjacobson.com   Resources/ Books Learn more about Essence https://essence.ivarjacobson.com/ Location to get the Essence game cards (and others) – pdf: http://www.ivarjacobson.com/cards To browse the cards electronically https://pex.ivarjacobson.com/sites/default/files/practice/scrum_at_scale_2020_11.html Link for ‘Better Scrum Through Essence' Nov 2021 course: https://www.ivarjacobson.com/training-courses/better-scrum-through-essence-remote-nov-2021/tue-2021-11-23-0900 Book: Training from the Back of the Room by Sharon Bowman https://www.amazon.co.uk/Training-Back-Room-Aside-Learn/dp/0787996629/ Book: Turn the Ship Around! by David Marquet https://www.amazon.co.uk/Turn-Ship-Around-Building-Breaking/dp/0241250943 Video: David Marquet on Leadership in a Submarine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYXH2XUfhfo Article: Google's 10 Traits of the Best Managers https://www.businessinsider.com/google-discovered-traits-of-the-very-best-managers-2019-6?r=US&IR=T#6-have-a-clear-vision-for-the-team-6   Interview Transcript Ula Ojiaku:  My guest today is Ian Spence. He is the Chief Scientist at Ivar Jacobson International and amongst his impressive string of achievements and accomplishments, he is a SAFe Fellow and an SPCT. Ian in this episode talks about Essence in more detail. And before we move on to the conversation, Ian will be running a Better Scrum through Essence course this November, 2021. And for you, our Agile Innovation Leaders podcast listeners, they are offering a 5% discount if you use the code AILP5OFF. Just go to ivarjacobson.com and search for the training. On to my conversation with Ian Thank you so much, Ian, for joining us on the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast.   Ian Spence: Thank you for having me.   Ula Ojiaku: I've been looking forward to having this conversation with you. I've been to a couple of your courses, you know, the Agile Contracting course, as well as the alpha version of the Better Scrum through Essence. And each instance I had lots of aha moments and lots of learnings. But before we get to that, could you tell us a bit about yourself Ian?  Ian Spence: I'm Ian Spence. (I'm an) Agile coach and consultant, I've written some books, I've done various things. I'm a SAFe Fellow. I've worked with quite a few of the main figures. Jeff Sutherland, Dean Leffingwell. And I was with David Anderson, (Kanban man) last week. And of course Ivar. Over the years, I've spent as a coach trying to help people - sharing knowledge and getting good practice into people's hands so that they can master the basics of the agile practices and then use that as a foundation to then innovate and develop, themselves and their workforce. My job is to make others successful. That's what I like to do,     Ula Ojiaku: And how did you get onto this path?    Ian Spence: When I got around to the age of sort of going to university, at one point I was going to be a Civil Engineer, but then I discovered that very few of them actually get to build bridges. So that took the fun out of that. So I thought I'd like to know how to build robots. And this is a long time ago and there was one course on robotics in the UK. But robots are computers and control systems. So I did a degree in Computer Science and Control Systems Engineering thinking this would be computer controlled, but they're actually two discrete subjects in different buildings. I ended up with a degree in Computer Science and Control Engineering and I got a job as a COBOL programmer in Sheffield. My job existed to fund my musical endeavors at that time. And then I got too old for musical endeavors. So I wondered what would happen if I actually paid some attention to my career. And since then I've had some books published, become a conference speaker, worked on some of the largest, most complex projects in the world. I mean the Square Kilometer Array. I like to talk about them because one I'm allowed to. Most of the exciting things I work on - some of them nano medical technology I was involved in. I can't even talk up. I don't understand what it did and I'm not allowed to tell you, but the Square Kilometer Array is the world's biggest science facility ever built. It's a big radio telescope. It's in Wikipedia. They have a lovely public website and I'd been coaching them probably for three years now.   So they're developing the software for that using the Scaled Agile Framework and agile techniques. And that's the kind of software you build super computers for.    Ula Ojiaku: I wouldn't have guessed you had, any musical endeavors. And I'd love to know more about it. If that's something you're comfortable with sharing. Ian Spence: Oh! That's all in the shady past now. The keyboard player in my band has gone on to be quite a successful electronic musician and producer, but it's all very niche market stuff.  So, it was fun for a bit, but that's oh, years ago now.   Ula Ojiaku: So, am I right in the understanding you were part of a band and did it involve, lots of tours and did you release any records?    Ian Spence: If anyone wants to do some archeology on the internet, you may possibly be able to find out the name of the band, but there's no music available. We were okay , we were pretty good, but we didn't have that magic ingredient you need to be successful.  Ula Ojiaku: And what sort of instrument did you play Ian or were you the lead vocalist?   Ian Spence: Oh no. I was the guitarist - that's what I played   Ula Ojiaku: So how did you, arrive at IJI (Ivar Jacobson International) as the Chief Scientist?     Ian Spence: Well, I was a software engineer for many years, and I was one of the first people in the UK to learn Java. I wrote the first commercially available Java course in the UK. I was doing small talk programming. Got a job with a, consultancy, started doing a little bit of consulting and then unfortunately that company – the owner decided to shut it down. So we went and had some interviews and I had job offers to go and be a serious Java programmer, or to join Rational as a consultant.  So I started doing a lot of work or consulting around the Rational Unified Process. Met people like Dean Leffingwell when I was working at, Rational Software. Rational was a good place, but that got purchased by IBM. So, me and some of my colleagues decided this was an opportunity to leave. And then we sort of merged. Ivar was also leaving Rational and setting up a consultancy at the same time.  So we came together then. So I ended up as Chief Scientist at IJI.  Ula Ojiaku:  So let's go on to, Better Scrum with Essence.  Could you tell us about the course and your involvement with the Essence standard?     Ian Spence: So a long, long time ago in a land far, far away, a group of people had started a new company and they had been doing a lot of work with the rational unified process.  Not surprising as Ivar was one of them. And we were looking at how can we, what can we do to make this more agile?   So we started looking at, is there any way we can have the practice be the first class citizen? So if you look at, Practices say like use cases as a practice, Ivar came up with that. It was the foundation for the Objectory process. It was in the Rational Unified Process. It was in lots of other processes.  Most of those have gone, but use cases is still one of the most popular ways for people to capture requirements. I mean, the term use cases actually entered the English language. So practices last a lot longer. Many of the agile practices, people think they're discovering as shiny new things have been around 50 years or more.   What we wanted to do was free the practices. So we did, something we called the essential unified process, which actually was made out of practices. And he thought this is a good idea, how can we make this more popular? So Ivar founded this organization CEMA, other luminaries, Tom Gilb, Hollister Coburn was there.  They had set some introductory meetings. They were quite successful and, donated the underlying language. Right? So maybe more people could do practices. Ivar loves to talk about the method, prisons and method wars, but (Essence is a way to) basically free the practices.  So the owners, the people who come up with a practice don't have to see their work rewritten, rebranded, recast every time someone built a method. So that teams can put together and plug their own way of working. And we've just been working on that ever since, so we've been trying to get a healthy, vibrant practice community.  And one of the biggest things that's happened for Essence in the last few years is Jeff Sutherland's involvement. So scrum is described in the scrum guide as you know, 19 pages or something, maybe a few (pages) less in the last version, very succinct, very accessible, very good. Lots of good scrum training.  And Scrum is in SAFe. Scrum is in LeSS, Scrum is in Scrum at Scale. People use Scrum in software, they use it everywhere. But if you look at the numbers over 50% of the people who say they're doing scrum are failing or doing it badly. So Jeff is very keen to find any way that can help people do better Scrum. Ivar and I went out to Amsterdam, met Jeff introduced him to the idea of Essence and he got the idea very quickly.  He liked the idea. And I worked with him to create the first set of scrum essential cards. And these have been around; they've escaped into the ether. Lots of people have them and use them.    But Jeff really liked the cards. He started using them in his training courses and he found that just as a simple, an active glossary, you can engage with, you can do lots of exercises. He likes to play a game he calls build your own Scrum.  So he gives people the cards, but no context, and they have to assemble Scrum and a lot of the time, somebody on one of Jeff's course that he learned more in the hour, they spent doing that than he had in the last three years doing scrum. The idea is to bring practices to life  and make them more accessible and actionable to people. You know, having things on cards, isn't a new idea. People have done that for years, but there's a language and semantics behind these cards that allow you to compose practices together. You can actually execute the language so you can generate the task.  It's possible to generate the tasks from the Essence definition. If you want it to go down that route, there are checklists to help with quality. There's also the other thing we have, which we call the kernel, which is… ( holding a little card up to the camera). This defines what it entails to do software engineering, not how to do it, just the what, and that defines the methods space for software engineering.  So when you load up practices into the kernel, you can see where you haven't got anything where there's things missing. You can use it to try and get balanced between the seven key aspects identified in the kernel. So, you know, as you're building your solution, are you keeping your stakeholders on board?  Do you know what the requirements are? Have you got a healthy team? So much can be done with it. The Scrum Essentials are literally a hundred percent aligned with the Scrum guide, but they bring it to life. You can interact, you can play games and you can say which bits you like, and you don't like. You can look at the connection.    So a really good aid for teams starting out, or just to refresh the Scrum - revisit what you're doing. A lot of people are using them and coming up with new games and ways to play them.  And the, the goal is there to be a viable set of practices. And then, you can pull them together. You know, a lot of teams mix Scrum and Kanban together. Wouldn't it be great if you could take David Anderson's Kanban practice and Jeff's scum practice and have the pieces there. so you could, you could see how they fit together, where they reflect, you could merge items together.    You know, I don't really care what you call the person who facilitates the agile team. You call it a scrum master. Do you call it a flow master? Do you call it a team coach, an agile coach? I don't care. What's important is that someone is playing that- has those accountabilities. Agile teams really benefit from someone who's looking, being the conscience of the team, helping them to improve.  Recently I ran some workshops at the SKA. Like I say, they're very nice, cause I'm allowed to talk about them. We used Scrum Essentials - one of the scrum practices we've developed with Jeff called the scrum accelerator to help their scrum teams within a safe environment, get better at Scrum.  Right? So you can take things from different places and mix them together and benefit from that knowledge. And that's, that's really what it's all about. It's a kind of Ivar's 'change the world' mission. We don't make a lot of money from the cards - we give them away for free, but hopefully it's helping people get better.  And that the idea of Essence will spread and every team will be able to pick up and play with the right practices and organizations will be able to establish the kind of common operating model they need. So they have a local vocabulary within their organization, but the teams can then pick up whatever practices are going to help them the most. And even organizations, if they want to, they could mandate some practices. Most companies mandate some financial and accounting practices, because if you don't, you might well not be a legal entity and things like that. Safety critical you have standards. So we can do all kinds of great stuff.  Quality checks, checklists, build life cycles. But the idea is to stop having these big descriptions of everything, which will never last because you know, which practices are improving change in new ideas all the time and have something where the way of working for the organization is as agile and as flexible and learning as much as the people in the organization as a whole.  And that's the end game. It fits very well with scrum, because to use a scrum practice, you've got to pick a load of other practices. You don't have to do user stories, you could do use cases or other stuff. And it works really well with Kanban because it's all based on the idea of evolution.  Ula Ojiaku: I'd have to say, having used the scrum cards that you've talked about, they are really very helpful and it does, I can testify in the sessions I've run, you know, with the teams, I support.  It kind of brings things to life and it just helps. They're not wondering, 'oh, what's a daily stand up. Oh, what's a retrospective', because the definition is there you know, it's clear for them to just read and do the exercises. And one of the things I'm also in the process of trying out is designing an exercise for a team that wants to maybe start adopting some scrum practices, but they are Kanban. kind of build your own scrum, you know, pull what practices you want and don't take anything else -  no more, no unnecessary overheads.  I know that you have a (Better Scrum with Essence) course coming up. Do you want to tell us about this and what the, audience might expect to experience on your course?    Ian Spence: Well, as you mentioned, you went on the alpha course.    Ula Ojiaku: I was and I thoroughly enjoyed it     Ian Spence: So it's covers quite a lot, but I did one with Jeff Sutherland on Better Scrum with Essence. You (Ula) are one of the very select few who got to go on the course and the course is, basically it doesn't teach you Scrum and it's not an alternative scrum master course.  It teaches you how to use the scrum practices to play games. It covers sort of learning games, things you could use just to learn about Scrum. It covers, uh, how you can use the kernel to understand where you are. It covers the scrum accelerator and other games you can play to improve Scrum and it does cover some scaling stuff, how you can use some of Jeff's Scrum at Scale ideas, just to assess and play around with things. , you can use Scrum Essentials, you can use this with teams using SAFe -anyone, any scrum team, whether they're doing software can benefit. One of my colleagues is working at the Royal Navy, 30,000 people learning about Scrum  and he's been using the cards an awful lot too. And they're not doing software development. And a lot of it is hands-on because you start playing the games. Actually, the one we're going to deliver in November is going to be a bit longer so it's very much playing games, exploring things in your groups rather than being lectured. And a lot of the games are transferable to any practice, but it's particularly useful, given that we have the access to the Scrum practices that Jeff helped us develop.  So a great course for any coach, any scrum master, or any, we used to call people, call them process freaks. So if you're really interested in the ideas of Essence, this is a great way to, to learn the practicalities and how Essence would help you before you start going into the language and how to write things in Essence, but you know, people can produce their own practices.  There are companies out there who are using these ideas to document their own ways of working.     And it's interesting because the course would have been so much better if we'd been able to be face-to-face we'd have had so much fun playing the game. There would have been things stuck on the walls everywhere.  It would have been great, but it works well online. We use Mural boards and stuff. So when people leave the course, they've got the cards, they've got the templates. You can literally, the next day I've known people go and start using the stuff that they've learned so that that's great, but you can sit down and very simple in an unobtrusive way with a team, find out which bits of scrum they like which bits they don't like, which bits they're doing, which bits they're not doing and get those conversations started.   Um, I did it with a team recently. They didn't have any Sprint goals. And they didn't know anything about product goal, which was introduced in the latest scrum guide. So that uncovered that in a way that was sort of non-judgmental. And then we could talk about, well, you know, how do you think it would be useful?  Well, why don't you try having some things like that? You know? And if, if we say daily, stand up, we hate it. Well, there you go. There's a, there's a, that's straight away. You've got something to think about how to improve and it gets you away from all of the ‘mad, sad, glad' and all of that. And you could be proactive. One of my favorite things is just, uh, in a retro pick a card and say, ‘well, how's this one going?'  So you don't have to look at everything just randomly pick one and have a discussion about it and see if we're doing it well, if we could improve.    If you were a new team, and you're coming together for the first time, Scrum is a great way to start building that team working.  Right. But scrum does not give you all the processes and practices you need, but some of them you'll have in your heads. Some of them, you can pull it and as you go forward, you might move away from Scrum that's fine. But if you start, if you don't do all of the essential things, then you're not doing Scrum - we're doing something else, but that's fine. It's Scrum-like as opposed to Scrum but at least everyone will know you've got this different. We can start to share those values and we can start to have stuff to build, to build out on that. And it's the same with, with other practices.   Essence is quite big in the academic community. There's a whole community of university lecturers, building courses, based on essence to teach software engineering and to be able to teach software engineering in a way that's independent of the practices, some of the management practices.  So they can teach software engineering and they can use scrum as a tool, but they get that nice separation so that people know what's going on.  Ula Ojiaku: There's something you said earlier on about, teams being able to choose their practices and evolve. And you said something that some people might find heretic, which is that, you know, as they evolve they might move away from scrum practices. Could you expand on that?     Ian Spence: Uh, well, there's two sides to this. If you, if you're doing scrum, you should be doing scrum.  Well, there's a lot of people out there blaming scrum and saying it's not working and they're not, they've never done it properly. They've always done some spray, you know… water, scrum, fall, or whatever. so it's nice if we can actually have meaning behind the words we use and the practices.   A lot of the time people say they're doing one thing as an excuse not to do another, right? But software development should be a profession. People should be professional. We should maintain certain standards. And if we say we're doing X, we should be doing X. But a lot of agile coaches are familiar with Shu Ha Ri. . This comes from martial arts and in martial arts Shu - you are studying the standard forms and you're doing them by the letter. And that's how you build your muscle memory. That's how you build your basics. And then when you get to Ri - you start to be able to mix and match the forms and adapt them a bit.  When you get to Ri - you have transcended. If you're starting out as agile, basic forms, you need to learn as a team, Scrum and Kanban. I think every Agile coach should have their Scrum and Kanban experience. They should have the experience of doing it. Right?  And, um, the cards are to help the teams get that, get that muscle memory. And then when you go up the levels, at some point, you might get to the Ri level and transcend that's when you, uh, that's when you can really invent new forms, that's when you can pick up the existing forms and put a twist on them, but it takes many years to get there.    And seriously, I don't believe there are any, any shortcuts. Right. And a lot of people seem to forget how they got where they are. Practices and frameworks are where you start even things like the Scaled Agile Framework. But for me, that's not an end point it's a starting point because if you're Agile, you're inspecting and adapting. So you have to inspect and adapt your way of working, right?   Now, the problem is with anything that's popular, many people have inspected and adapted it and broken it. One of my SAFe training courses, I did, someone came along from this major company and they said, well, the team have told me they're doing SAFe and she listened and she enjoyed the course and she went back and said, ‘you're not doing SAFe but you ought to be doing SAFe. So we're going to get these people to come in and help us.' So I went in to do some coaching. Now, let's say I was told that there were eight agile teams . Now, the person who was like the lead agile person in the technical side of the organization.  ‘What teams have you got?' By the time they've got to team number 15, which is two testers working alone. They, they were so agile. They had self organized themselves out of agility. to get them go back again, they got put back into scrum teams and then we did the PI planning and they went and they actually delivered the MVP that they'd missed a date for three times before.  So it was a very successful adoption.   But what the practices do is they keep you on the straight and narrow. So master the form and then as you go up from Shu to Ha to Ri, you will be able to start adapting and inventing new practices. But you don't get to that state without going through the hard work of learning, the basic forms and the basics.   I have delivered, SAFe training with Dean Leffingwell. And I delivered Scrum at Scale training with Jeff Sutherland. And I've had some very, uh, interesting experiences where people on Scrum at Scale are trying to bash SAFe; they're more similar than they are different.   Your job, as a coach, isn't to rip the foundation out and say to people ‘you're not agile, you're doing SAFe. You're not Agile, you're doing that.'  What your job is, is to say, ‘Ah, you're doing great. What could we do better?' And if we bring some ideas, what are the other frameworks in… Lots of great ideas in SAFe, lots of great ideas in Scrum at Scale, lots of great ideas in LeSS - you're looking to improve.   And, you know, if you are still doing those essential things from that framework from that practice at least you've got the commonality that people need to work as a large organization.   You can start to evolve and play around and then practices can move about . I see all the frameworks as a starting point. SAFe is brilliant for lifting and shifting large numbers of traditional people and making them all agile.    Ula Ojiaku: This brings me to a question really. You mentioned earlier on, , that organizations, potentially can build their own Agile framework from the ground.     Ian Spence: Um, well we have to be careful when we say Agile framework. An agile framework is a pre-constructed set of practices and a reference model to help organizations create their own operating model. So every organization needs, their own operating model and that could include mandating frameworks and practices, but everyone, you know, you get your competitive advantage by having your own way of working. All right. So as organizations evolve from that standard model, that's useful in many contexts and create the one that's working specifically, uh, you know, optimized for ourselves. And reflects our learning and our skills and our recruitment policies and all those things that are part of a healthy organization.    Ula Ojiaku: Thank you for clarifying Ian, however, would I be right in the understanding that what you're saying is for it to work, that has to be a shared language across the board as a fundamental…   Ian Spence: I'm going to do a conference talk in Russia called, um, Agile Horror Stories.  About how things go wrong. And one of the ways things go wrong is people take a challenge and blow it up and they start blaming other parts of the organizational structure. They'd start blaming all kinds of things for their inability to achieve the goals and outcomes that they had, you know. You don't have to change HR to go agile, but if you go agile, you can change HR to benefit things.  So you've got to look across what, you know, what's the scope, what, what's the challenge, what commonality you need. No organization needs to have everything defined in the same way, but there are, if you want to do, you know, effectively portfolio management across the piece, you need some things that roll up and down across the backlogs and stuff like that.  Then if you're going to go and talk to people, you need some consistent positions in the organization. So you know who you should be talking to, right? You shouldn't have to redefine the positions every time you changed the practice right. I did a talk at the SAFe summit a few weeks ago on the idea of the dual operating system.  Now, a lot of agile people  - I've seen a lot of articles - they said, ‘oh, we don't need any dual operating systems.' And what their people are showing is they haven't understood what it is. We want the agile, the value streams, which flow across our organization to work like a dynamic network. Self-organizing, self-determining we want that right now. Every organization, every human social structure will have a hierarchy in it. If you don't have a dual operating system where you separate the functional hierarchy or position in the organization, from the value streams on the network, the value is never going to have that beautiful unimpeded flow.  Ula Ojiaku: Yes Ian Spence: What people are doing is they are not creating a network. They're creating a new hierarchy, right? And again, all these opposition are in pointless fights about stuff right. Now in the latest scrum guide they deliberately said, Scrum Master is not a role. It's a set of accountabilities. Basically, it's a card that someone picks up and goes, oh, I'm going to be the scrum master.  I know people who act as scrum masters, who are, very senior in an organization because they run their leadership team. They run their lean portfolio management group as a Scrum. I worked at the, Gibraltar financial services commission where they did scrum all across. This is the business of regulations. They're not software.   The first scrum team was the leadership team. And they were great. Every day, you'd see the CEO running to the daily stand up. It was brilliant. All right. And they were leading from the front, but you know, the person who was the, Product Owner for that group was the CEO and that's their position and that's their title.  And they took on the accountability of Product Owner for the leadership team. And they had someone who was a senior coach who took on the role of the scrum master for that. But she was mainly coaching all the other people in Scrum. She was a scrum master for that particular group.  So, you know, no, no changes of job titles. No, disenfranchising of people to start with, but yes, as you become more agile, you will improve everything, including the hierarchy. So yes, a lean hierarchy is better, but the big mistake too many people make is they create these sort of agile hierarchies and they do it and they haven't even dislodged the old one.  So now they've got two hierarchies. So it's like, we don't need a dual operating system. We've got four hierarchies already. It's just crazy stuff.      Ula Ojiaku: Some of the pitfalls you've mentioned, most recently being the one about agile hierarchy and multiple hierarchies instead of adopting the concept of dual operating systems in the spirit that it's meant to be, how can leaders in organizations, that have gone through transformations, recognize this sort of pitfalls and avoid them or remedy them if they've already kind of fallen into a rut.  Ian Spence: I mean, the whole leadership question is an interesting one, particularly with some of the political leadership we're seeing in the world today. Um, but the, the idea of the leader that serves , of, uh, leaders who are empowering and delegating and stuff like that, um, is incredibly, incredibly powerful. So what leaders need is the agile mindset.  Now, when you're looking at practices, right, there are millions of scrum teams in the world. So the higher up as a leader, the more it's about your mindset, your personal skill, you're not following practices. You're not doing routine type work in the same way. So what you've got to do is have that lean and agile mindset. Now, if you are leading a change, symbolic leadership is incredibly important.  So you've got to lead by example. Um, you've got to understand the, the mindset and the principles. You've got to focus on outcomes, the real business outcomes, not output.  You've got to learn how to use metrics and stuff like that, but you've got to go on a journey with your teams. You've got to do that kind of stuff. Um, And, you know, I've coached quite a lot of that. The biggest challenge I find when teaching, you know, leadership is something that you see at all levels of an organization as well.  So every agile team will benefit from some agile leadership. Coaching is not something that's only done by coaches. Every good leader will… certainly a good agile leader will have coaching capabilities… will be developing their people. So you've got to learn about, about that kind of stuff.   But the biggest problem I found when teaching, when coaching senior people say portfolio managers and stuff was basically just never turn up.  they're too busy and that's not good. Don't be so busy that you haven't got time to get better. So take time to learn, take time to do experiments, do new practices.  You've got to get into that. I mean, delegating authority is doing that. Doesn't mean I'm neglecting your own accountability and responsibility. So transparency and empowerment. Agility is there to empower leaders as much as the people being, led. And that's important. So all of these things can help you as an agile leader in agile, organization, you can be a better leader because you can really decrease the decision latency.  You can spend much more of your time. Um, looking forwards, planning, forecasting, steering, creating the buzz, the vision and less time looking backwards. If you're learning to be an agile leader, don't get caught up in all the framework wars and all of that. It's about the mindset and about empowerment, autonomy, purpose, and all those, all those good things. I highly recommend... there's a video they use in the Scaled Agile course. David Marquee, a model of leadership, the nuclear submarine. Yeah. Yeah. So if you don't mind, um, all male or military type examples. It's a great about that leadership by intent and serves the those things. So as a leader, let's become about leading rather than chastising and administering.  And management is incredibly important. Um, Google did some experiments where they tried to take a, we don't need no managers. They tried to get rid of the managers. Nobody was happy. So they bought them back. What they discovered was people like good managers.   And I would assert, and I'm probably not the first person to assert this, but I can't attribute other assert anyway. Um, it's better to work for a good manager in a bad organization than a bad manager in a good one. And if you've ever worked there, I know people who have their whole career has just been moving, following a good manager anywhere.  They went, wherever I go and stuff like that. And often they've gone to a bad company, but you know, you will be looked after because they have a good manager. So good managers develop the people and skills for sustainable organizations. They set the vision, they make the decisions quickly.  Um, they involve more people in that decision making, but they keep their accountability, they keep their responsibilities. They don't pass the buck… Ula Ojiaku: If it goes well, it's the team. If it goes badly, the manager takes the bullets.   Ian Spence: Yeah. The best managers to work for barely take that much credit. they get the credit because they've created that environment for everyone else to thrive. And, and, you know, the agile mindset, if you look at the qualities that Google said, a good manager needs, and if you compare it to the, you know, agile mindset, agile values, stuff like that, very closely aligned, they haven't normalized the vocabulary.   People use the sport analogy and I'm a big arsenal fan.   And I'm a big Arsene Venga fan. He would empower his players and send them out to play. He didn't have rigid systems. Jose Marino was the opposite kind of manager, right. The opposite kind of coach. But they were both fairly successful. Agile leadership is not the only style of leadership.  Right? Many, many big things have been achieved by bad leaders, doing things I personally would consider unethical and stuff like that.  Ula Ojiaku: But the question is how sustainable is it? People don't remember what you do per se, but they will always remember how you made them feel when they worked with you.     Ian Spence: Yeah. There's stuff like that. But, um, I talked to David last week and he said that the, um, the longest living successful organization is the Roman Catholic church. Right. They go back thousands of years, and this is still the same organization and they have changed, changed considerably. But I wouldn't say necessarily of a particularly agile organization, they have quite rigid rules, but their leadership has, has, has learned and developed and listened to people and changed markets and all kinds of stuff over the years.  So lean and agile leadership… it's what a lot of our organizations benefit from and need. So in basic learn about it and hopefully you're going to very successful.  Ula Ojiaku: Where can the audience reach you if they want to get in touch with you? Ian Spence: well, I'm on LinkedIn. And that's the best way to contact me personally. If you want to investigate the Essence stuff, or get a hold of the scrum cards or the other cards.  Then the Ivar Jacobson website. is the place to go. You can freely download that stuff and has articles about that, um, as well…  Ula Ojiaku: Okay. All right, many thanks. And could you remind us the date of your Better Scrum through Essence course? Ian Spence: Possibly it's, uh, the 23rd of November. And it's a online course and it will start at nine o'clock each day, UK time.  Ula Ojiaku: Okay. We'll have the Beatles and the show notes. So thank you so much again, Ian, for this. Do you have any final words of advice for the audience before we close this out?   Ian Spence: The only final word of advice is stay be a lifelong learner, relentless improvement. That's something you should be looking at.  So be, be curious, explore new things. Don't get you to let yourself get trapped in any of these, any of these boxes. And, uh, my other bit for the agile leaders is. If you are investigating agile, don't just allow it to clutter up what you say with more meaningless management speak.  Okay. Keep it, think about it's about getting good outcomes, creating healthy, sustainable team environments, getting the flow of value, watch out for the buzzword bingo.     Ula Ojiaku: Thank you so much, Ian. I've really enjoyed this conversation and I hope we'll get, to have you back on this, show some other time.  That's all we have for now. Thanks for listening. I'd love to hear from you so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com. Take care and God bless!

Interview video available on the Agile Innovation Leaders Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/FYFKaJoagTc Guest Bio: Dr. Ivar Jacobson is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Ivar Jacobson International. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, was awarded the Gustaf Dalén medal from Chalmers in 2003, and made an honorary doctor at San Martin de Porres University, Peru, in 2009. Ivar has a flourishing career in both academia and business. He has authored ten books, published more than a hundred papers and is a frequent keynote speaker at conferences around the world. Ivar is a father of components and component architecture - work that was adopted by Ericsson and resulted in the greatest commercial success story ever in the history of Sweden, and it still is. He is the father of use cases and Objectory, which, after the acquisition of Rational Software in 1995, resulted in the Rational Unified Process, a widely adopted method. He is also one of the three original developers of the Unified Modelling Language. But all this is history. Ivar founded his current company, Ivar Jacobson International, which since 2004 has been focused on using methods and tools in a smart, super light and agile way. This work resulted in Ivar becoming a founder and a leader of a worldwide network, SEMAT, which has the mission to revolutionize software development based on a kernel of software engineering. The kernel has been realized as a formal OMG standard called Essence.   Contact/ Social Media Email: ivar@ivarjacobson.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivarjacobson Twitter: @ivarjacobson Books The Essentials of Modern Software Engineering by Ivar Jacobson et al https://www.amazon.co.uk/Essence-Software-Engineering-Applying-Kernel/dp/0321885953 Denotational Semantics by Joseph E Stoy https://www.amazon.co.uk/Denotational-Semantics-Computer-Science-Scott-Strachey/dp/0262690764 Resources/ Websites Essence for Agility Meetup https://meetup.com/essence-for-agility Essence Education Forum https://forum.essenceineducation.org    Ivar Jacobson International https://ivarjacobson.com   Interview Highlights: Timestamp 02:59 – Growing up in Sweden 07:05 – Coming up with concept for component-based software development and architecture 15:14 – On Essence OMG Standard as a unifying platform for methods 24:22 – Special offer announcement (Better Scrum Through Essence course) 29:41 – “Shy Boys Don't Kiss Beautiful Girls” – Swedish proverb 32:34 – “Doing it smarter…”   Interview Transcript Ula Ojiaku: 0:04 Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I'm Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Hello everyone! Welcome to Season 2 of the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast! I'm honoured to have Dr Ivar Jacobson – Founder, Chairman and CEO of Ivar Jacobson International (IJI - a global consulting and training organisation) as my guest on this episode. Known as one of the fathers of modern software engineering, he has many accomplishments under his belt including developing the concept of Use Cases and Use Case modelling. In this episode, Dr Jacobson shares his experience growing up in Sweden; how he came up with the concept for components and component architecture whist at Ericsson (which helped Ericsson with its remarkable commercial success) and his current focus on Essence, an Object Management Group (OMG) standard revolutionising the world of Software Development. Quick sidebar: Ivar Jacobson International Chief Scientist, Ian Spence will be delivering a training on ‘Better Scrum Through Essence' this November, 2021. Make sure you listen to the very end for details on offers available to AILP listeners. You won't want to miss this! Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, my conversation with Dr Ivar Jacobson – enjoy! Ula Ojiaku: 02:28 Thank you so much Ivar for joining us on the Agile Innovation Leaders' podcast. It's a great pleasure to have you. Ivar Jacobson: 02:35 Thank you. Thank you. I'm looking forward to it. Ula Ojiaku: 02:40 Well, I've been very excited right from when I got your response saying “yes”, the honor is definitely mine. Now, with I know that our audience would be, you know, keen to know, who is Ivar, you know, can you tell us about yourself? Ivar Jacobson: 02:59 Yes, I can. I was born in a very nice family in a small city, in Sweden, in the very south of Sweden, very close to Denmark. And, I was an ordinary kid. Nobody in my family had ever studied, so to speak. My father had six years in school, and my mother, maybe one year more. And he was an entrepreneur, quite successful. And, I hated by the way when I was older, the idea that I would be an entrepreneur, but it always a seed in the blood. So, I was not very good at school, clear. And I remember my mother, when I had passed Junior High School. And I suggested, maybe I should go to high school, I have very low grades. And so, but I can work hard, I said. And my mother said, it's good if you can just pass junior high school. You know, you don't have a head for studies. So, I don't know what happened. But I really got the interest and succeeded to get up to high school. But in high school, I was not very good either. I was more interested in sports, I played handball, handball is similar to soccer, but you play with the hands instead of the feet and it's very popular in Europe, probably gets popular in US too, but it takes time. And I was passionate about it. But even if I worked harder than anyone else, I never really became the star. I was okay. But instead, I became a coach and now I found passion. I really worked hard as a coach, my team became the best team in the city, we had many handball teams, and not only in the city - in the province. And then what I started to know I loved to coach, I loved to feel that I could help people to become better and they became much better. I was a coach both for boys and ladies. So that made me popular. And so, I was very well treated and had a very hard time to imagine moving away from my small city. I went out High School and then I wanted to stay in the city, to be electrician. But my aunt decided differently - she applied to Chalmers which is an Institute of Technology. And, I actually was accepted as the last student, had so low grades, so last student (to be accepted to study) to Electric engineering. Ula Ojiaku: 06:28 Wow! Ivar Jacobson: 06:29 And yeah, I did quite well. I found it so fascinating - engineering, mathematics and so on, but became very different. So, I was the first one in my whole big family that ever passed junior high school, high school, and becoming a bachelor of electrical engineering or almost the master. It was unthinkable in my family. Ula : 07:04 Wow! Ivar Jacobson: 07:05 And then I was absolutely sure I should continue to do research. But I was smart enough, to say you need to know what it means to work in the industry. So, I took the most boring work I could imagine at Ericsson, working with old fashioned systems, not digital, it was a electromechanical. And I was sure after one year, I will go back to Chalmers to get the doctor (my doctorate degree). But after one year, I felt, “this is life!” Projects, people, collaborating, is very different from doing a research at Chalmers. So, it was not in my mind to go back. Instead I learned something absolutely fundamental, that impacted me for the rest of my life, namely, how to build systems. And in hardware, you build with components. So, after a couple of years, I was actually working with hardware system. And they had, the managers had seen something in Ivar. And so, they actually offered him to become project manager for the most mission critical system, which was based on computing. And that was absolutely unbelievable - I knew nothing at that time about computing. And I didn't, I've never written a code. (At the time) I never really understood how a computer works. But I was now Project Manager, and the reason was, they probably felt like I could manage a project and you don't need so deep knowledge, you're probably more difficult if you know too much. But to me, it was unthinkable to be a project manager without knowing how we work and what it was. So, I studied very hard every night. And at that time, there were no books, really, But after three months, I felt well, this was not so hard and now I became difficult. Because I couldn't see that the product we're building would ever be successful. Because Ericsson was selling to the whole world. But every country wanted their own market adaptation. And the way we built software - the standard way of building the software at that time, was not easy to change. Modularity was only in the code-oriented data structures. So, you separate the code and data and this separation meant, if you made a change, it could result in changes anywhere. Anyway, so that's how I came up with component-based development, which was the biggest fight I've ever had in my life. It was when I was 28 plus, and, no one did component-based development at that time, as we heard about Bell Labs, the other competitors did it the same way as Ericsson did. But for some reason, there was one guy ‘up there' who said, “Ivar is right. Let's do it”. And that resulted after some years in the greatest commercial success story in the history of Sweden. And it still is, it's even more successful than ABBA and Spotify – so you can imagine. I was rewarded, I got after 10 years people said, “oh, God that was so good”. And so, I could study, get the PhD during work hours. Ula Ojiaku: 11:34 Wow. Ivar Jacobson: 11:35 So, I think I leave it a little for you now. Ula Ojiaku: 11:40 Know this yours is a very fascinating story. So, there were lots I could pick on (to ask more questions) but the first one you said about, you know, playing handball, and despite how hard you worked, you didn't quite make it as a superstar you wanted to be in handball, but you found out that you did great at coaching. I think there's a parallel to that and coaching in real life as well. A coach doesn't necessarily have to be the expert in the area, but it's really about being able to draw out the best in people. Would you say… Ivar Jacobson: 12:18 And show a path forward… Actually, girls at that time were playing handball in a way that was very girlish, you know, balls like this and not like shooting it . I mean, very softballs. Whereas my girls were trained with my boys. So, I put together guys and girls in the same team and made two teams. And the girls started to play like boys, and that made them superior other teams because they didn't do it. So, I mean, I invented a new method, let's say that. Ula Ojiaku: 13:00 You definitely are an innovative inspiration. It seemed like everyone in your family knew you were barely getting by in Junior High school, High school. I'm wondering, what was it that your aunt saw that made her despite all the indications she went and registered you at Chalmers? Did you ask her? Ivar Jacobson: 13:25 No, I felt, I really didn't think about it. I felt I understood her. I mean, I had showed her that I was not very good at school. So… But then what really happened was that I was fed up by school in the last semester (of) Junior High and wanted to leave. Then she said to me, “No, no, you should at least go get the junior high school graduation”. Because we celebrated it in Sweden at that time, not anymore but at that time. But now when I relaxed and didn't study, didn't prepare for mathematics or anything like that. Really, I tried. I had private lessons in mathematics. I mean, it's hard to believe I had it. And the reason was that the way I had learned was by learning rules. I mean, not thinking. “This is the rule you use when you see this problem” and that limits you. So now for the first time, I had no rules to apply. I start to think, and I remember very well, after one exam that the teacher came in with a book and he had all the books in a package and then he put it on the desk and he says, one of you have (has) decided to change his life; Ivar Jacobson - best in class. And you know, I was flabbergasted and not only me, the whole class. So, and then I understood that was something I could do. So, everything all my grades went up. Ula Ojiaku: 15:14 That's just amazing. So, you are currently, you are credited with you know, developing the used cases, components, the RUP rather the Rapid Unified Process, which is, you know, one of the ‘fore bringers' of Agile Methodologies. And currently you are working or you've been working most recently on Essence, can you tell us a bit more about Essence, what it is and you know, what's the story behind it? Ivar Jacobson: 15:52 Now we were around year 2000. And then, I was a rock star traveling around the world, talking about the UML and Rational Unified Process. And everyone wanted to have… use these things. They misused both UML and they misused RUP (Rational Unified Process), but they were wanted to have it. It's very similar situation with SAFe today. So anyway, at that time, it was very popular. But I… now Agile came. And I remember very well when I was at the OOPSLA (Object-oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications) conference, the biggest conference at that time. And I was on a panel of 2000 people in the audience, and I was there with agilisters really great guys - people I'm very good friends with today. And the audience basically booed every time I was about to talk. Ula Ojiaku: 16:49 Why? Ivar Jacobson: 16:50 Because we're talking about the we enemy, the Empire, the old Empire, that the audience wanted to kill. And I listened very carefully, and then I went home and studied more about XP, it was about XP. And I said, “Okay, this will dramatically change the future”. I tried to convince my company at that time Rational, with the top stars in the company, many famous people. But it took a while; there was nothing new in XP is what I heard. But it was a lot of new (it had lots that were new) particularly about social engineering. So, and then a couple of years later Rational was acquired by IBM and I had a chance to be with IBM in a very interesting position. But I decided no, IBM is too big for me, I want to do my own business. So, but I also was thinking this is not sustainable. The world is ridiculous. Here you have gurus like me, and we play such an important role. And still, the guru is just a methodology salesperson. You can be an expert on a few things, but you're never an expert on all things you need to do when you develop software, or develop anything for that matter. Hardware systems… and anything. So I wanted to get rid of (this attitude). I felt this is stupid. And I use the word foolish because it's a little nicer. But having gurus that develop methods and ideas in the methods cannot be used in another method without rewriting it. So, for instance, Scrum has been used in SAFe, but it doesn't fit into SAFe without rewriting it. And that means with the original authors of Scrum are diminished, instead it moves into something else. So, we get no collaboration between these top guys. They don't like one another. And I'm not talking about any particular person, but that's the general problem. Instead, we want the top guys to collaborate and help to work. So, I came to the conclusion we need to do something dramatically different. Instead of having all these different methods and with nothing in common, nothing in common and that is visible and still a lot is common. It's just hidden, because everyone hides it without the purpose to hide, but it becomes hidden in a particular method. So, what I said is that every method has a number of ideas - you can call them practices or method precepts. They are in a precept guarded by a guru. Isn't this foolish? At least I think so. So, in 2005 we decided in my company to do something different and we started to identify a common ground between all methods. What is it that is essential… that we always do always produce, always have in terms of competences, for instance, and so on. And it created, let me call it the kernel. It's very small, it's very powerful. And it works as a platform to describe methods. So, instead of it (being that) every methodology has its own way of describing everything: its own language, its own terminology, its own isolated island, we created a common ground which has actually become a standard and on top of this standard, people now can describe their own method. So, Scrum, for instance, has become Scrum Essentials. (It) is described on top of this kernel, which is called Essence. A standard is very important, because… first of all, nothing should be standard without being such that everybody can accept it. If there is any, really controversial stuff, throw it out and keep it at such a small level. So, but big enough to be useful, and as useful for everybody. So, now many companies are using Essence to describe their own methods. We are working with Jeff Sutherland (co-creator of Scrum) - he has  ‘Essentialised' as we call it, both Scrum, and his Scrum at Scale. We're also working with Scott Ambler (co-creator of Disciplined Agile Delivery, DAD) who has essentialised some of his practice. He has so many practices. So, he has to wait till we build a bigger library of practice. So, we have it today in my company, we have 100 practices, this guide; 50 of them are published and available. But there are many other people around the world, that develop practices. And we can put them in an ecosystem, which we are trying to do. So, people can go there and select the practices. And they (could) say, ‘I want user stories, I want to Scrum, I want test driven development..', compose, these three practices, and I have my method. And then you can add more and more as you become more and more competent, you scale up, you don't scale down, but you have to do with big frameworks, like RUP and SAFe. So, the idea is that we in this way by collecting knowledge and making it available at one place or many places - similar places can grow competency instead of having (this) so fragmented. You know, in one single company today, you may have 10 different ways of using use cases for instance. Ula Ojiaku: 24:07 True, true… Ivar Jacobson: 24:08 If they don't learn for one. Okay? Ula Ojiaku: 24:13 Because they work in silos, so everyone is just doing their own thing. Ivar Jacobson: 24:18 Yeah, they have their own methodology and everything you know. So… Interlude/ Announcement (Ula Ojiaku) 24:22 Hi again listeners. Quick message before we continue with Ivar Jacobson's interview. Did you know, according to Scrum Inc., 58% of Scrum implementations fail. Dr Jeff Sutherland, co-creator of Scrum says their investigation revealed that, of the 21 components of Scrum, an average Scrum team implements one-third well, one-third poorly and the last one-third not at all! Dr Sutherland also acknowledged that Essence ‘is the key to success…' As mentioned earlier, Ian Spence, Chief Scientist at IJI will be running a 3-day, live virtual training on ‘Better Scrum Through Essence with Essence Games Master certification' this November 2021. If you want proven ideas on how to address failed Scrum implementations, this course is for you! I know - because I'd attended the alpha version of the course earlier on in the year. Register on the website www.ivarjacobson.com  at least 2 weeks before the training to take advantage of the early bird pricing. As a valued Agile Innovation Leaders podcast listener, you can also get an exclusive 5% off when you use the code AILP5OFF. That's AILP5OFF. Back to my conversation with Ivar Jacobson… Ula Ojiaku: 26:32 Wow, well, it does sound like Essence is going to be a game changer. Where do you see it? What's your ideal state for Essence, in terms of adoption? Ivar Jacobson: 26:44 Okay. So, the roadmap is we now have developed tools that we are using with clients and they're tools we never had before - the kind of tools we never had in the software engineering discipline before. And we are using web client learning, and we take, we work with one client after the other. We expect to, at the end of the year, have verified and vetted the work. Then the approach is that we make it more widely available. Okay, and we are looking more for volume than for big accounts. Ula Ojiaku: 27:34 Right, right. Ivar Jacobson: 27:35 So now we are extremely optimistic. There are as, you know, we have a forum … two forums…. One is a meetup called Essence for Agility, which has now in just a couple of months got 2000 members. And next time, we will get my good friend Grady Booch to speak together with (a) couple of other people about Architecture and Agile Methods. We also have created a forum in the academic world called Essence Education Forum; where more than 50 university professors are collaborating to create a material for training and so on, and also do projects and basically anything on top of Essence. So, it's… no I'm very bullish. I've never seen so much progress as now You know, if I look back on the things I have contributed to, and I can say basically all of them have been by first identifying a problem but no one else has identified. And then sell that problem, so other people think it is a problem. And that's not trivial, that's absolutely the hardest thing and once I have succeeded to sell it, then of course the solution is not so far away. Ula Ojiaku: 29:14 Wow. Now that is just fascinating. So, it seemed like in selling your idea, it wasn't really about the technical skill, it was more about what's … quote, unquote, you'd call the you know, “soft skills” of selling, marketing. That you had to…” Ivar Jacobson: 29:27 Yeah, that's it was the most important I mean, you can be the best technical guy had best ideas, but if you cannot sell them, you won't have them. Ula Ojiaku: 29:41 Okay, now it is kind of ties in with, you know one of your favourite (Swedish) quotes that you shared with me that “Shy boys don't kiss beautiful girls”, do you want to expand on that? Ivar Jacobson: 29:59 This is a Swedish expression. There is nothing similar that I know in English that you can say that is strong enough, probably similar but not strong enough. It means basically, that even if you have an idea that is controversial, you have to express it, because it will never … otherwise it will never happen. I remember a situation when I was in South (of) France and at the conference, for it was a conference for executives. And they I had a company with 10 employees and I was CEO. So, I was an executive. It happened that Bill Gates was also there. And he had a company with 10,000 employees. So, we were colleagues. And I was out jogging and came back after half an hour sweating and maybe smelling too. And I saw crowd standing beside the pool. And in the middle of that crowd was Bill Gates. Now is the chance. So, I ran up and I don't know, for what reason… if I was… I was not really rude in any way, but they moved around, they opened - the crowd… and I stood face to face with Bill Gates and I did my elevator pitch. And then we talked a little and when he said he welcomed me to Microsoft, he gave me his business card and said you have to come and talk about the engineering in software. So that's an example of that, shy boys may not kiss beautiful girls. So don't be shy. Ula Ojiaku: 32:09 It reminds me of the saying in English that Fortune favours the brave. So maybe that's the closest saying to that, but it's really about being bold and seizing the moment. Ivar Jacobson: 32:24 Yeah. That is exactly what it is. And by way it's valid in the other direction too. It's not the only boys you're talking about. It can be anything. Ula Ojiaku: 32:34 Well said Ivar. Well said. You also have another quote that you like… or that you use a lot in your organization, “Can we do it smarter?” What do you mean by that? Ivar Jacobson: 32:49 Basically in every situation where you meet difficulties, and you may come up with a solution, that is very straightforward. Most uncontroversial story, solution, but it's really not fantastic. It just is a solution. In this situation, I ask all.. almost always, “can we do it smarter?” And the interesting thing is but if people start to think like that, can we do it smarter? They often come up with smarter solutions. And I have my own experience has been exactly that. Ula Ojiaku: 33:43 Would you tell us about the book you're writing for your son? You said you have a five-year-old son, and you're writing a book for him that's titled “What They Don't Teach You in School?” Ivar Jacobson: 33:58 Yes, I am a very lucky man. I have a five-year-old son. My name is Ivar in Swedish. And his name is Ivar Theodor, which becomes IT. And the thing was not on purpose. It just happened. We like to name; my wife liked the name Ivar Theodor. Ivar is a Viking name. Theodor means God's gift. And then you know, I am not 20 years old. So, (to) get the son is really God's gift if I may use these words. So I want to write the book for him that he can read when, when I don't know where I will be. I'm certain if I will be somewhere else, than on this planet, it will be in heaven, that's for sure. So, he will get the book. And this book is about smart cases. So, I describe situations in life, when you can do something smart or not so smart. I mean, first of all, there is a huge difference between being intelligent and being smart. I have a lot of friends that are extremely intelligent, analytical, and so on, but I wouldn't say they are smart. I have written about the 100 pages, it takes quite a lot of time. And it must be funny or entertaining, otherwise, he will not read it. Ula Ojiaku: 35:44 Now, what books have you found yourself recommending to people, or giving as a gift to people the most and why? Ivar Jacobson: 35:59 Yes, I think two books I would mention and this is also where I could recommend others. One of the most influential books on my career was about the denotation semantics as it's called. It's a way to mathematically describe, for instance, a language. And, I have used it to describe several languages. Ula Ojiaku: 36:35 Denotational Semantics. Okay. Do you know … what was the name of the author, please? I can always (look this up) ... Ivar Jacobson: 36:43 First book I learned was pure mathematics. It was Discrete Mathematics in computer science. And when it comes to Denotational Semantics, I read a book about the Vienna Development Method. The Vienna Development Methods, it was developed by a Dines Bjorner, and Chris, Chris Jones, I think, and a couple of our people at IBM. But then there are later versions on Denotational Semantics that may be that I don't know that. But this is a book I read. Ula Ojiaku: 37:21 It's been a fascinating conversation Ivar, and I really appreciate your time, where can the audience find you, if they you know, want to learn more, or if they want to contact you? Ivar Jacobson: 37:34 They can always contact me via email. And they are welcome to do that. And also, I get a lot of emails, so it may take a couple of days. But I always respond, even if I had to work many hours to do it. But I think attending this Essence for Agility meet up a there will be a lot related to what we have been talking about. And if you're an academic, I would recommend (you) join Essence Education Forum. Ula Ojiaku: 38:20 Okay. And we will put all the links and you know, the resources you mentioned in this, in the show notes. So just to wrap up, then do you have any final word of advice for the audience? What would you like to leave us with, as we end this conversation? Ivar Jacobson: 38:42 Yeah, in some way, the books I mentioned, and the quotes about, the shy boys becoming smarter. But I think what really has helped me has been that if I have an idea, and I believe in it, I don't give up. So, perseverance is probably a very important property. And some people when things were not so good, after introduce components, people will replace perseverance with stubbornness. So, the difference is: if it's good, it's perseverance; if it's bad, it's stubbornness. So, I may be a little stubborn, but I think it's more being persevere. Ula Ojiaku: 39:48 Depends on who you ask. Ivar Jacobson: 39:52 Yeah. So don't give up. Push your ideas. And also, I'm very lucky, I think what I'm doing is fun. I don't do anything for money. I do it for fun. But of course, it's very important to have money. So, I do my best to help my company to make a profit so we can invest in doing these things. It's not money for me, it's money for the company. Ula Ojiaku: 40:29 Thank you for sharing those wise words. Ivar, thank you so much for your time. Ivar Jacobson: 40:35 Thank you. It was a pleasure. Ula Ojiaku: 40:38 The pleasure is mine. Thanks again. That's all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com.  I'd also love to hear from you, so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Ivar Jacobson, originaror of Use Cases and pioneer of component based development about the craziness of methods and frameworks, and what we can do instead. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/2UiwrzQ Subscribe to our newsletters: - The InfoQ weekly newsletter: https://www.infoq.com/news/InfoQ-Newsletter/ - The Software Architects' Newsletter [monthly]: https://www.infoq.com/software-architects-newsletter/ Upcoming Virtual Events - https://events.infoq.com/ InfoQ Live: https://live.infoq.com/ - August 17, 2021 - September 21, 2021 - October 19, 2021 QCon Plus: https://plus.qconferences.com/ - November 1-5, 2021 Follow InfoQ: - Twitter: https://twitter.com/infoq - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/infoq/ - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InfoQdotcom/ - Instagram: @infoqdotcom - Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/infoq

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke Ivar Jacobson about his work on the latest approach to use cases – Use Case 2.0. This is the second of two podcasts with Ivar – the first one exploring the Essence of Software can be found here: http://bit.ly/2OQEi2s Why listen to this podcast: • Use Case 2.0 expand on the ideas embodied in user stories • Some up-front design is needed in all software development projects • For any product you need the skeleton system that has the key requirements embodied in it early on • Any system should be able to be represented by between 10 and 20 key use cases More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2DEPM2m You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest topics from professional software development. bit.ly/24x3IVq Subscribe: www.youtube.com/infoq Like InfoQ on Facebook: bit.ly/2jmlyG8 Follow on Twitter: twitter.com/InfoQ Follow on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/infoq Check the landing page on InfoQ: https://bit.ly/2DEPM2m

This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke Ivar Jacobson about his work defining the essence of software engineering. Why listen to this podcast: • Method prisons capture mean that the practices of different methods are not seen as complimentary and mixing approaches is very hard • Most large organisations have adopted many methods created by many different gurus which often results in chaos and misunderstanding across groups are trying to achieve the same outcomes with different approaches • Software development is the largest expense in today’s economy – globally organisations spend more money on software than any other aspect of their business • Using the Essence language methods can be described using a common taxonomy and this enables bringing ideas from multiple approaches together in a way that enables them to be adapted to a specific context • The kernel of software engineering is true irrespective of which languages or tools you use More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2OQEi2s You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest topics from professional software development. bit.ly/24x3IVq Subscribe: www.youtube.com/infoq Like InfoQ on Facebook: bit.ly/2jmlyG8 Follow on Twitter: twitter.com/InfoQ Follow on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/infoq Check the landing page on InfoQ: https://bit.ly/2OQEi2s

Do you ever have trouble with user stories?  Not enough detail?  Hard to write?  What about non-functional requirements?  Join Jay as he sits down with the father of use cases, Ivar Jacobson, to discuss his newest project:  Use Cases 2.0.  Ivar proposes that use cases are actually highly relevant in the agile world...listen with Jay as they explore this topic as well as touch on Essence and the methods prison! Ivar's Twitter Use Case 2.0 - eBook

In Today's episode, Mats is sitting down (via Skype) with Bruce Eckfeldt. Bruce always wanted to become an architect and received two architect degrees at McGill university in Montreal. During his education, he was one of the first classes who had computers on hand and he quickly found himself interested in computer modelling and animation. Not long after, Bruce got into the field of product design and how to develop strategies around products. He was an early adopter of Agile and founded a company in 2002 around lean Agile software development.Today, Bruce's focus is executive coaching and he works with CEOs and leadership teams. Bruce talks about how he is coaching the leadership teams and how hard it is to sometimes stay in the coaching role rather than being more directive. He also explains why a CEO would need a coach and we talk about the importance of middle management, in companies, the people who make it happen and often are stuck between a rock and a hard place. You will also find out what "Minnesota nice" means and what connecion it has to Sweden. Find out more at TCC Website : www.thecorporatecorner.netSupport the show

Dave West (@davidjwest) joined Ryan Ripley (@ryanripley) to discuss scrum.org’s new offering:  PSM-II – An Advanced Scrum Master Course. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Dave West CEO of Scrum.org[/featured-image] Dave is the CEO/product owner at Scrum.org. He is a frequent speaker and widely published author of articles and his acclaimed book, Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design. He led the development of the Rational Unified Process (RUP) and worked with Ivar Jacobson to run the North American business for IJI. Dave managed the software delivery practice at Forrester research where he was VP and research director. Prior to joining Scrum.org, Dave was chief product officer at Tasktop, where he was responsible for product management, engineering, and architecture. Professional Scrum Master II (PSM II) is an advanced course helping students to understand the stances that characterize an effective Scrum Master and servant-leader while diving deep into how they serve the Scrum Team, Product Owner, and organization. The class then teaches students about related practices and skills to enable them to have the right types of conversations and how to apply them to become better Scrum Masters. I’m personally excited about this course. PSM-II is a mind changer and is what's needed for the world to get to the next level. I am excited for how much I will learn by teaching this course and for the immense impact it will have on improving the profession of software delivery. I (Ryan Ripley) am teaming up with fellow Professional Scrum Trainer, Todd Miller to teach the PSM-II this year: Indianapolis, IN on October 3-4 Denver, CO on October 17-18 Johannesburg, South Africa on November 15-16 Washington D.C. on December 6-7 Tampa, Fl on December 11-12 Find a location near you and join us. Whether you are a CSM or a PSM-I, this Advanced Scrum Master Course is the next step on the Scrum master journey, created and present by trainers from scrum.org – The Home of Scrum. In this episode you'll discover: How scrum.org’s Advanced Scrum Master Course was created Why scrum.org is focusing on ScrumAnd Insights into the scrum.org trainer community Links from the show: PSM II – An Advanced Scrum Master Course How to Support the Show: Thank you for your support. Here are some of the ways to contribute that were discussed during this episode: Share the show with friends, family, colleagues, and co-workers. Sharing helps get the word out about Agile for Humans Rate us on iTunes and leave an honest review Join the mailing list – Check out the form on the right side of the page Take the survey – totally anonymous and helps us get a better idea of who is listening and what they are interested in Techwell events – use the code AGILEDEV when you sign up for Agile Dev East in Orlando, FL November 5th – 10th. Leadership Gift Program Make a donation via Patreon [callout]This pocket guide is the one book to read for everyone who wants to learn about Scrum. The book covers all roles, rules and the main principles underpinning Scrum, and is based on the Scrum Guide Edition 2013. A broader context to this fundamental description of Scrum is given by describing the past and the future of Scrum. The author, Gunther Verheyen, has created a concise, yet complete and passionate reference about Scrum. The book demonstrates his core view that Scrum is about a journey, a journey of discovery and fun. He designed the book to be a helpful guide on that journey. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]Which topic resonated with you? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section below.[/reminder] Want to hear another podcast about the life of an agile coach? — Listen to my conversation with Zach Bonaker, Diane Zajac-Woodie, and Amitai Schlair on episode 39. We discuss growing an agile practice and how coaches help create the environments where agile ideas can flourish. One tiny favor.  — Please take 30 seconds now and leave a review on iTunes. This helps others learn about the show and grows our audience. It will help the show tremendously, including my ability to bring on more great guests for all of us to learn from. Thanks! The post AFH 097: PSM II An Advanced Scrum Master Course appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dave West (@davidjwest) joined Ryan Ripley (@ryanripley) to discuss the latest updates to the Scrum Guide. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Dave West hosting the Scrum Guild Update with Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland[/featured-image] Dave is the CEO/product owner at Scrum.org. He is a frequent speaker and widely published author of articles and his acclaimed book, Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design. He led the development of the Rational Unified Process (RUP) and worked with Ivar Jacobson to run the North American business for IJI. Dave managed the software delivery practice at Forrester research where he was VP and research director. Prior to joining Scrum.org, Dave was chief product officer at Tasktop, where he was responsible for product management, engineering, and architecture. In this episode you'll discover: Insights into the recent updates to the Scrum Guide How the Scrum Guide is updated by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland All the many ways Scrum is used around the world. Links from the show: Scrum.org Scrumguides.org The Scrum Guide Update Webinar from Scrum.org The Scrum Guide Uservoice Site The Scrum Guide Revision History How to Support the Show: Thank you for your support. Here are some of the ways to contribute that were discussed during this episode: Share the show with friends, family, colleagues, and co-workers. Sharing helps get the word out about Agile for Humans Rate us on iTunes and leave an honest review Join the mailing list – Check out the form on the right side of the page Take the survey – totally anonymous and helps us get a better idea of who is listening and what they are interested in Techwell events – use the code AGILEDEV when you sign up for Agile Dev East in Orlando, FL November 5th – 10th. Leadership Gift Program Make a donation via Patreon [callout]Tired of reading Object Oriented Analysis and Design books that only makes sense after you’re an expert? You’ve heard OOA&D can help you write great software every time-software that makes your boss happy, your customers satisfied and gives you more time to do what makes you happy. But how? Head First Object-Oriented Analysis & Design shows you how to analyze, design, and write serious object-oriented software: software that’s easy to reuse, maintain, and extend; software that doesn’t hurt your head; software that lets you add new features without breaking the old ones. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]Which topic resonated with you? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section below.[/reminder] Want to hear another podcast about the life of an agile coach? — Listen to my conversation with Zach Bonaker, Diane Zajac-Woodie, and Amitai Schlair on episode 39. We discuss growing an agile practice and how coaches help create the environments where agile ideas can flourish. One tiny favor.  — Please take 30 seconds now and leave a review on iTunes. This helps others learn about the show and grows our audience. It will help the show tremendously, including my ability to bring on more great guests for all of us to learn from. Thanks! Have you ever been stuck on a project with questions or concerns on how best to move forward? Most of us have had a question or need some tips at some point in your career. Agile software development professionals have a free place to go for answers to their questions. Check out AgileConnection, the free, online community for all things agile. There are tons of free articles to search, interviews with software industry experts, a Q&A forum where you can ask your question and get peer responses, as well as experts, checking in to help you out. Create a profile and network with other professionals, leave comments on articles, get the weekly newsletter for the latest articles released, access the searchable archive of hundreds of issues of Better Software magazine, and so much more. AgileConnection is a robust directory of information for anyone using, implementing up, or growing their agile practices. Discover more at https://well.tc/agilecommunity The post AFH 081: The Scrum Guide Gets an Update with Dave West appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One last week in mixtape format! I am completing a trip that is a mixture of vacation and a board meeting but that does not mean you have to forego your weekly SPaMCAST.  In place of our normal format, I am posting a mix tape of the answers to the “If you could change two things” question I have been asking interviewees for nearly ten years.  This week on SPaMCAST 393 we feature our top downloaded podcasts from the year 2010: SPaMCAST 85 – Cory Foy on Agile Coaching   http://bit.ly/1Qmmx0g Cory used his wishes to discuss the obsession with certification rather than performance and bring user into making critical business decisions so that usability is maximized. SPaMCAST 92 – Don Reinertsen on Product Development Flow  http://bit.ly/1WERCDZ Don used his wishes to ask that people understand the economics of product development and then to use that understanding to measure and reduce WIP queues. SPaMCAST 94 - Ivar Jacobson on SEMAT http://bit.ly/1SYSmhA Ivar discussed the SEMAT core defining software engineering and how SPaMCAST listeners can support the development of SEMAT. If these excerpts tickled your fancy listen to the whole interview by clicking on the links shown above. Next week we will return to regular programming with a thought provoking interview.

The father of Use Cases, Dr. Ivar Jacobson, joins us to discuss how he came up with the idea for Use Cases, how to use them in an agile environment, and what lies beyond Use Cases. The post MBA053: Use Cases and Beyond – with Ivar Jacobson appeared first on Mastering Business Analysis.

Welecome to the Software Process and Measurement Cast 235 Over the past seven years at the end of every interview I have asked "what two issues would you fix and why" or some close variant of that question.  In that question each of my interviewees has left thier own mark on how I think about software process and measurement.  This week I am continuing with a walk down memory lane with three of the most popular segments from 2010. In SPaMCASTSPaMCAST 85 - Cory Foy, Agile Coaching, Collaboration Part 1SPaMCAST 92 - Reinertsen, Product Development FlowSPaMCAST 94 - Ivar Jacobson, SEMAT Part 1 I have also included an entry from the Daily Process Thoughts titled "Grief?"   Daily Process Thoughts: Grief? , February 7, 2013 In the States it has become fairly common to find an impromptu memorial where a major traffic accident has occurred. I recently on a hike ran across a memorial to someone’s favorite dog. It has become easy and acceptable to memorialize loss. Kubler-Ross in her book “On Death and Dying” identified five stages of grief which include denial, arguing  bargaining, depression and acceptance  I would suggest that memorialization reflects acceptance. Change and loss tend to follow similar paths. Memorializing how we worked in the past may well be a reflection of acceptance of what is being done now. As a change agent you do not need to react to every memorialization as a sign of push back.  Reflect carefully what is being really said and try to help your organization through acceptance. The Daily Process Thoughts is my project designed to deliver a quick daily idea, thought or simple smile to help you become a better change agent. Each day you will get piece of thought provoking text and a picture or hand drawn chart to illustrate the idea being presented. The goal is to deliver every day; rain or shine, in sickness or in health or for better or worse! Check it out at www.tcagley.wordpress.com.  Shameless Ad for my book!  Mastering Software Project Management: Best Practices, Tools and Techniques co-authored by Murali Chematuri and myself and published by J. Ross Publishing. We have received unsolicited reviews like the following: "This book will prove that software projects should not be a tedious process, neither for you or your team." NOW AVAILABLE IN CHINESE!  Have you bought your copy? Contact information for the Software Process and Measurement Cast Email:  spamcastinfo@gmail.comVoicemail:  +1-206-888-6111Website: www.spamcast.netTwitter: www.twitter.com/tcagleyFacebook:  http://bit.ly/16fBWV One more thing!  Help support the SPaMCAST by reviewing and rating the Software Process and Measurement Cast on ITunes!  It helps people find the cast.  Next: In the next SPaMCAST I will shift back to standard programming with an interview with Peter Talor, Ron Rosenhead and Vicki James in which we discussed thier new book, Strategies for Project Sponsorship.  Sponsors are not neccesarily born to the role and unless we want to take pot luck we better understand what makes a good sponsor.

Please distribute the PDF version!  For Immediate Release January 23, 2012 Avon Lake, OH – The Software Process and Measurement Podcast (SPaMCAST) is celebrating its 170th episode after five years of interviewing many of the leaders in the software development world. The anniversary edition of SPaMCAST features an interview with Hillel Glazer, speaker, process guru and author of High Performance Operations. SPaMCAST feature interviews have included: ·         Chris Hefley, Chief Executive Officer, Leankit Kanban, Bandit Software, LLC ·         Dean Leffingwell author of Scaling Software Agility and others ·         Peter Taylor  author of many books including The Lazy Project Manager ·         Elizabeth Harrin author, award winning blog, The Girl’s Guide to Project Management ·         Tim Lister, co-author of  Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies ·         David Anderson the author of  Agile Management for Software Engineering ·         Kent Beck, pioneer in Agile Methods ·         Scott Ambler, though leader in Test Driven Development ·         Ivar Jacobson, developer of Use Cases ·         Grady Booch, discussing Life, the Universe and Development The Cast covers topics that deal with the challenges of how work is done in information technology organizations as they grow and evolve.  The show combines commentaries, interviews and feedback to serve up ideas, opinions, advice and facts.  In a nutshell, the Cast has provided and will continue to provide advice for and from practitioners, methodologists, pundits and consultants. The editor, Tom Cagley, is a leading consultant in software development process improvement, the Vice President of Consulting for the David Consulting Group, Past President of the International Function Point Users Group and co-author of Mastering Software Project Management. The Software Process and Measurement Cast can be found at www.spamcast.net. It is also available on all major podcast services including iTunes and the Zune Marketplace. All previous episodes are available download.  The Cast currently enjoys 10,000 downloads a month, up 20% in the past year It is delivered as a free public service to the information technology community and has listeners across the globe.  Contact: Thomas M. Cagley Jr. Editor

Welcome to the Software Process and Measurement Cast 94!The interview in the SPaMCAST 94 features my interview with Ivar Jacobson covering the Software Engineering Method and Theory or SEMAT initiative.  The interview is part of a set of three interviews that I had with Ivar, Bertand Meyer and Richard Soley.  The three luminaries are leading an effort to pull together a common core for software engineering and then to provide a framework for integrating new ideas.  A very ambitious and somewhat controversial task.  All three interviews were incredible and together provide a broad foundation to understand and interact with SEMAT. Dr. Ivar Jacobson is a father of components and component architecture, use cases, the Unified Modeling Language and the Rational Unified Process. He has contributed to modern business modeling and aspect-oriented software development. However, all this is history. Lately he has been working on how to deal with methods and tools in a super-light and agile way. He has developed a practice concept that is now being adopted by both developers and tool vendors. Now he is one of the leaders of a worldwide network Semat, which has agreed to revolutionize software development. He is also the principal author of six influential and best-selling books. Ivar Jacobson is the chairman of Ivar Jacobson International which has subsidiaries in the US, UK, China, Singapore, Australia, Sweden and Canada. SEMAT's website:  www.semat.orgIvar's blog:  http://blog.ivarjacobson.com/ Citrix GoToAssist Express is sponsoring SPaMCAST Solve technical issues faster with GoToAssist Express. Try it FREE for 30 days. Mastering Software Project Management: Best Practices, Tools and Techniques co-authored by Murali Chematuri and myself and published by J. Ross Publishing has hit the bookshelves!  According to Robert C. Anderson, Director, Process Development and Quality Assurance, Computer Aid, Inc, "Mastering Software Project Management is a masterpiece of clarity, organization and depth of practical knowledge." If you a project manager or know project managers buy yourself a copy and a second to lend co-workers! Contact information for the Software Process and Measurement CastEmail:  spamcastinfo@gmail.comVoicemail:  +1-206-888-6111Website: www.spamcast.netTwitter: www.twitter.com/tcagleyFacebook:  http://bit.ly/16fBWVConferences and Speaking Engagements in 2010 (To Date)ISMA Cinco in Sao Paulo September 13-15.  I will be one of the featured speakers.  THe title of the presentation is Function Points:  Past, Present and Future.  The website to get more information is http://www.ifpug.org/conferences/  I hope to see you there!Next!The next Software Process and Measurement will feature an essay.  In SPaMCAST 96 will return to the SEMAT Troika with my interview with  Bertran Meyer on his perspective of the Software Engineering Method and Theory (SEMAT).

Welcome to the Software Process and Measurement Cast 93! The essay in the SPaMCAST 93 features the conclusion of my essay on ethics and call to action. The conclusion beging with the following paragraph. Codes of ethics are a compilation of individual statements of ethical principals into a framework to guide behavior.  Most every human being embraces a code of ethics by default whether it is provided by religion, society, their work or organizations and associations.  I recently asked friends I work with how many codes of ethics they are bound with and after a bit of discussion the average was four.  Examples included IFPUG, PMI, IEEE, SEI, society and religions.  Kevin Brennan, Vice President for Professional Development of IIBA, twittered me that codes of ethics are expected for a group to define itself as a profession and required for certification bodies under ISO 17024.  Citrix GoToAssist Express is sponsoring SPaMCAST Solve technical issues faster with GoToAssist Express. Try it FREE for 30 days. On July 21st Mastering Software Project Management: Best Practices, Tools and Techniques co-authored by Murali Chematuri and myself was published by J. Ross Publishing.  Murali and I wrote this book from the standpoint of a project manager working in a software development organization.  We think this makes Mastering a unique guide that explains software project management in its entirety, including project acquisition and execution with backward linkages to concepts that play a facilitation role in successful project management. If you a project manager or know project managers buy yourself a copy and a second to lend co-workers! Contact information for the Software Process and Measurement CastEmail:  spamcastinfo@gmail.comVoicemail:  +1-206-888-6111Website: www.spamcast.netTwitter: www.twitter.com/tcagleyFacebook:  http://bit.ly/16fBWV Conferences and Speaking Engagements in 2010 (To Date) ISMA Cinco in São Paulo September 13-15.  I will be one of the featured speakers.  The title of the presentation is Function Points:  Past, Present and Future.  The website to get more information is http://www.ifpug.org/conferences/  I hope to see you there! Next!Will begin my interviews with Ivar Jacobson, Richard Soley and Bertran Meyer on the Software Engineering Method and Theory (SEMAT) is bold initiative.  

To compete in today's economic environment and deliver superior products to your customers, software organizations have to define and manage requirements in a way that delights customers with high quality and innovation. In order to do that, companies must build the right solution -- the first time. In this podcast, Kurt Bittner, CTO for Ivar Jacobson Consulting, Inc. and author of Use Case Modeling, will talk about how to do that -- how to work with stakeholders to ensure your solution focuses on desired outcomes, rather than the customer's idea of what the solution should be, and how to document the solution as agreements are reached.

This week is an interview with Matt Terski, the President and co-founder of Serlio Software, a company that creates Case Complete.   Matt and Larry talk about Use Cases and how they fit into the software development life cycle. You can follow Matt at the Use Case blog. Show Notes Ivar Jacobson Eric Sink's article on Platforms that Larry Mentioned Download a free 30 day trial of Case Complete (full featured) Download / Listen to the Show http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/shows.thirstydeveloper.com/TD046.mp3

Show 28 features Part Two of an interview with Ivar Jacobson, author, pundit and one of the creators of UML.  The discussion covered topics ranging from methodologies to his new concept, practices.   If process improvement and methodology are important to you, this is an important interview full of new concepts. An abridged version of Mr. Jacobson’s Wikipedia biography notes that he is a Swedish computer scientist he holds a Masters of Electrical Engineering at Chalmers Institute of Technology in Gothenburg and a Ph.D. from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. In 1967 he proposed the use of software components in the development of the new generation of software controlled telephone switches Ericsson was developing. In doing this he invented sequence diagrams, and developed collaboration diagrams. He also applied state transition diagrams to describe the message flow between the components. At Ericsson he also invented use cases as a way to specify functional software requirements. In April 1987 he quit Ericsson and started Objective Systems. A majority stake of the company was acquired by Ericsson in 1991 (you can run but  . . .), and the company was renamed to Objectory AB. In October 1995 Ericsson divested Objectory to Rational Software [1] and Ivar started working with Grady Booch and James Rumbaugh to first create the UML, and later develop the Rational Unified Process. In mid 2003 Ivar formed Ivar Jacobson International (IJI) which is an umbrella company for Ivar Jacobson Consulting (IJC) which operates across 4 continents with offices in the UK, US (West and East Coast), Scandinavia, China, Korea, Singapore and Australia. In November 2005, Jacobson announced the Essential Unified Process or “EssUP" for short. EssUP is a new “Practice" centric software development process that stands on the shoulders of modern but established software development best practice. It is a fresh new start integrating successful practices sourced from the three leading process camps: the unified process camp, the agile methods camp and the process maturity camp. Each one of them contributes different capabilities: structure, agility and process improvement. Ivar has described EssUP as a "super light and agile" RUP and IJC have integrated EssUP into Microsoft Visual Studio Team System and Eclipse. Check out http://www.ivarjacobson.com   and http://www.ivarblog.com/  The essay for this cast is titled “Social Media and Process Improvement."  The essay discusses the impact of social media on the practice of process improvement.  The text of the essay can be found at www.tcagley.wordpress.com.  Comments and corrections are welcome. There are a number of ways to share your thoughts . . Email SPaMCAST at spamcastinfo@gmail.com Voice messages can be left at 1-206-888-6111 Twitter – www.twitter.com/tcagley BLOG – www.tcagley.wordpress.com   Future Events and the next . . . I have a couple of free webinars coming up in early 2008.  The first is “Getting Performance Improvement Out of Your Software Process Improvement" on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT And the second is titled “A Cost Effective Approach to Enterprise Wide Software Process Improvement" May 22nd, 2008 at 10:00 am - 11:30 am Eastern Time More information and registration information can be found at http://www.itmpi.org/webinars/ Next Software Process and Measurement Cast: The Software Process and Measurement Cast 29 will feature an interview with Murali Chemuturi on estimation.  Murali’s take on estimation is razor sharp and will be a valuable addition to your knowledge base.  Your thoughts and comments would be a welcome addition . . .

Show 27 features part one of an interview with Ivar Jacobson, author, pundit and one of the creators of UML.  The discussion covered topics ranging from methodologies to his new concept, practices.   If process improvement and methodology are important to you, this is an important interview full of new concepts. An abridged version of Mr. Jacobson’s Wikipedia biography notes that he is a Swedish computer scientist he holds a Masters of Electrical Engineering at Chalmers Institute of Technology in Gothenburg and a Ph.D. from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. In 1967 he proposed the use of software components in the development of the new generation of software controlled telephone switches Ericsson was developing. In doing this he invented sequence diagrams, and developed collaboration diagrams. He also applied state transition diagrams to describe the message flow between the components. At Ericsson he also invented use cases as a way to specify functional software requirements. In April 1987 he quit Ericsson and started Objective Systems. A majority stake of the company was acquired by Ericsson in 1991 (you can run but  . . .) , and the company was renamed to Objectory AB. In October 1995 Ericsson divested Objectory to Rational Software [1] and Ivar started working with Grady Booch and James Rumbaugh to first create the UML, and later develop the Rational Unified Process. In mid 2003 Ivar formed Ivar Jacobson International (IJI) which is an umbrella company for Ivar Jacobson Consulting (IJC) which operates across 4 continents with offices in the UK, US (West and East Coast), Scandinavia, China, Korea, Singapore and Australia. In November 2005, Jacobson announced the Essential Unified Process or “EssUP" for short. EssUP is a new “Practice" centric software development process that stands on the shoulders of modern but established software development best practice. It is a fresh new start integrating successful practices sourced from the three leading process camps: the unified process camp, the agile methods camp and the process maturity camp. Each one of them contributes different capabilities: structure, agility and process improvement. Ivar has described EssUP as a "super light and agile" RUP and IJC have integrated EssUP into Microsoft Visual Studio Team System and Eclipse. Check out http://www.ivarjacobson.com   and http://www.ivarblog.com/   The essay for this cast is titled “We Are All Futurists."  The essay discusses the basis for predicting the future (can you say estimation) and why some people shy away from being a futurist.  The text of the essay can be found at www.tcagley.wordpress.com.  Comments and corrections are welcome. There are a number of ways to share your thoughts . . Email SPaMCAST at spamcastinfo@gmail.com Voice messages can be left at 1-206-888-6111 Twitter – www.twitter.com/tcagley BLOG – www.tcagley.wordpress.com   Future Events and the next . . . I have a couple of free webinars coming up in early 2008.  The first is “Getting Performance Improvement Out of Your Software Process Improvement" on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT And the second is titled “A Cost Effective Approach to Enterprise Wide Software Process Improvement" May 22nd, 2008 at 10:00 am - 11:30 am Eastern Time More information and registration information can be found at http://www.itmpi.org/webinars/ Next Software Process and Measurement Cast: The next Software Process and Measurement Cast will be a special show.  Cast 28 will feature part two of the interview with Ivar Jacobson.  Your thoughts and comments would be a welcome addition . . .   Technorati Profile

SPaMCAST 26 - Carr, The Big Switch, Center   Show 26 features an interview with Nicolas Carr, author of “The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google" and “Does IT Matter".  The discussion ranged from computing as a utility to the impact of ubiquitous computing on business and society.    Mr. Carr is a former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review. He writes and speaks on technology, business, and culture. His 2004 book Does IT Matter? Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage, published by Harvard Business School Press, set off a worldwide debate about the role of computers in business. His new book, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, examines the future of computing and its implications for business and society. He also edited and wrote the introduction for The Digital Enterprise, a book of HBR writings on the Internet, and contributed to World View, Organizing Business Knowledge, and When Good People Behave Badly. Check out www.roughtype.com/    and www.bigswitchbook.com   The essay for this cast is titled “The Center Will Not Hold."  The essay discusses change and the life cycle of how extreme changes evolve the mainstream over time.  The text of the essay can be found at www.tcagley.wordpress.com.  Comments and corrections are welcome. There are a number of ways to share your thoughts . . Email SPaMCAST at spamcastinfo@gmail.com Voice messages can be left at 1-206-888-6111 Twitter – www.twitter.com/tcagley BLOG – www.tcagley.wordpress.com   Future Events and the next . . . I have a couple of free webinars coming up in early 2008.  The first is “Getting Performance Improvement Out of Your Software Process Improvement" on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT And the second is titled “A Cost Effective Approach to Enterprise Wide Software Process Improvement" May 22nd, 2008 at 10:00 am - 11:30 am Eastern Time More information and registration information can be found at http://www.itmpi.org/webinars/   Next Software Process and Measurement Cast: The next Software Process and Measurement Cast will be a special show.  Cast 27 will feature a interview with Ivar Jacobson.  Your thoughts and comments would be a welcome addition . . .    

Carl and Richard talk to the father of UML and the Unified Process, Ivar Jacobson. He recently put forth the Essential Unified Process (EssUp). Not to be missed.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Ivar Jacobson comes back to .NET Rocks, this time as a special guest on the Road Trip. He talks about Microsoft's re-embrace of UML, his work on Software Engineering Method And Theory (SEMAT), and tells a few Bill Gates stories as well.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations