This week we’re talking about product development structures as systems with Lucas da Costa. The last time we had Lucas on the show he was living the text-mode only life, and now we’re more than 3 years later, Lucas has doubled down on all things text mode. Today’s conversation with Lucas maps several ideas he’s shared recently on his blog. We talk about deadlines being pointless, trajectory vs roadmap and the downfall of long-term planning, the practices of daily stand-ups and what to do instead, measuring queues not cycle time, and probably the most controversial of them all — actually talking to your customers. Have you heard? It’s this newly disruptive Agile framework that seems to be working well.

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Sponsors:

• DEX: Sort the Madness – Join our friends at Sentry for their upcoming developer experience conference called DEX: Sort the Madness. This event will be in-person in San Francisco AND virtual on September 28. This is a free conference by developers for developers where you’ll sort through the madness and look at ways to improve workflow productivity. Learn more and register
• FireHydrant – The reliability platform for every developer. Incidents impact everyone, not just SREs. FireHydrant gives teams the tools to maintain service catalogs, respond to incidents, communicate through status pages, and learn with retrospectives. Small teams up to 10 people can get started for free with all FireHydrant features included. No credit card required to sign up. Learn more at firehydrant.com/
• Sourcegraph – Transform your code into a queryable database to create customizable visual dashboards in seconds. Sourcegraph recently launched Code Insights — now you can track what really matters to you and your team in your codebase. See how other teams are using this awesome feature at about.sourcegraph.com/code-insights

Featuring:

• Lucas Fernandes da Costa – Twitter, GitHub, Website
• Adam Stacoviak – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn, Website
• Jerod Santo – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn

Show Notes:

• metrics.html">Useful engineering metrics and why velocity is not one of them
• what-you-start.html">How finishing what you start makes teams more productive and predictable
• queues-not-cycle-time.html">How high capacity utilisation hurts a team’s performance
• uncertainty.html">How and why exploiting uncertainty makes products more profitable
• making-hierarchies.html">Why tall hierarchies slow organizations down and how to fix them
• to-your-customers.html">Talking to your customers: a disruptive Agile framework
• to-improve-daily-standups.html">Why your daily stand-ups don’t work and how to fix them
• term-plans-dont-work.html">Why long-term plans don’t work and how to fix them
• “Planning Is Guessing” at Startup School by David Heinemeier Hansson
• Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability
• The Changelog #488: Mob programming deep dive (with Woody Zuill)
• The Changelog #340: All things text mode (with Lucas da Costa)

Something missing or broken? interviews-507.md">PRs welcome!

Timestamps:

(00:00) - This week on The Changelog(01:17) - Sponsor: Sentry(03:28) - Welcome Lucas, what's the story of your glasses?(05:11) - It's been awhile, let's catch up(06:18) - Lucas goes deep on his blog(08:52) - Useful engineering metrics(13:44) - The complexity of tasks and interdependencies(19:45) - One layer deeper on interdependencies(22:40) - Trajectory vs roadmap(26:00) - Lucas, we're not moving fast enough(34:25) - Sponsor: FireHydrant(35:43) - Plan more carefully or more margin for error?(38:33) - If they're not sprints what do we call them?(41:07) - Using TDD as an analogy(45:08) - Deeper on more margin for error(48:42) - We argue that deadlines are useful(55:16) - When do we talk to our users?(59:46) - Velocity is not a good metric(1:04:39) - Sponsor: Sourcegraph(1:06:21) - The cumulative flow diagram(1:11:09) - Avoiding estimates(1:12:42) - Collaboration as a system(1:14:34) - Lucas on standups(1:17:59) - Are you blocked? Yes or No?(1:21:58) - The newlyweds and the chuck roast(1:23:21) - Question your queues!!(1:24:11) - Closing out the show(1:24:25) - Outro + clip from episode #340