Inspect and Adapt

Measurement is all about assigning a value or a symbol to an attribute of an entity. Doing it right can reduce project risk. Join Construx's Earl Beede, Steve Tockey and Mark Griffin as they Inspect & Adapt how measurement theory impacts your project, potentially increasing risk if you get it wrong.

Why do we keep working on something long past the point where we should have stopped? Join Construx’s Earl Beede, Steve Tockey and Mark Griffin as they Inspect & Adapt the various ways we trick ourselves into thinking, “Well, we already spent this much time or money; we can’t afford to lose that!” Find out how much the sunk cost fallacy is costing you.

"How do you estimate something you’ve never done before?" Construx gets that question a lot. This podcast identifies how to approach estimating when you have a lot of unknown items. Join Construx's Earl Beede and Steve Tockey as they look at techniques for making the unknown less unknown, bounding the uncertainty, and planning through the unknown. Hosted by Mark Griffin

Scaling software development is hard. Several patterns have emerged that moderately successful organizations use when scaling. The patterns focus on how to package the work, where and when to make decisions, and how to get teams to collaborate. Join Mark Griffin, Earl Beede, and Steve Tockey as they explore scaling patterns.

All development organizations use software's F word:  Feature. But what they actually mean by the word is often unclear, since the software industry has two—somewhat incompatible—definitions of feature. Join host Mark Griffin as he asks Construx's Steve Tockey and Earl Beede to explain those two different uses of the word feature on development projects.

We develop software primarily on teams, but how do you develop the teams? Construx's Mark Griffin and Earl Beede Inspect & Adapt the different ways you can organize your development team. They look at the pros and cons of different approaches and even offer some help for when you're stuck with a team organization that isn't the best.

How should you spend your always-limited testing resources? Is one part of the product more important to test than another? Construx's Steve Tockey and Earl Beede join host Mark Griffin in looking at one approach to answering those questions: risk-based testing. Steve and Earl look at how to do risk-based testing along with its pros and cons.

Construx welcomes Onorio Catenacci to the microphone to ask questions about software development that continue to puzzle him and perhaps to see whether Construx has the answers. Join Contrux's Mark Griffin and Steve Tockey to see if they can give sound, helpful, and actionable answers to Onorio's questions—and find out whether Onorio can stump Construx!

Construx's Jenny Stuart is retiring from the software industry, and we will miss her! In this podcast, Jenny Stuart looks back on her three decades in the software industry and shares stories and wins from her long career. Joining Jenny are three of her Construx work companions for the last 20 years, Mark Griffin, Steve Tockey, and Earl Beede.

Why do software gurus keep talking about the Cynefin Framework? What is it? How is it even pronounced? In this episode of Inspect & Adapt, Construx puts many brains on the topic with Mark Griffin, Jenny Stuart, Steve Tockey, and Earl Beede making the link between Cynefin and doing actual software development work. They cover where Cynefin is best applied and where this sense-making system just doesn't make sense.

To be a professional usually means a commitment to ongoing professional development. Doctors, engineers, nurses, accountants, and teachers all require periodic training to maintain their professional status, but what constitutes professional development in software? Can we consider ourselves professional without it? The Construx team will look into the state of professional development in software and give their assessment.