Engineering Culture by InfoQ
InfoQ
Software engineers, architects and team leads have found inspiration to build better, high performing teams by listening to the weekly InfoQ Podcast. We have achieved that by interviewing some of the top CTOs, engineers and technology directors from companies like Uber, Netflix and more. Over 500,000 downloads in the last 3 years.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Jan 20, 2020 • 25min
David McAllister on Building Communities
In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to David McAllister about building technical communities.
Why listen to this podcast:
• A community comes together around a common shared interest of some sort
• Communities need to be actively nurtured in a similar way to open source projects
• Communities require constant tuning, and this means you need to figure out ways to measure them
• Different types of content work for different members of the community and in different contexts – ensure your content matches the intent
• “Collecting data is only the first step towards wisdom, sharing data is the first step towards community”
More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/3asqUtV
You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest topics from professional software development. bit.ly/24x3IVq
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Jan 13, 2020 • 26min
Kevin Callahan on Positive Organisational Design and Complex Systems
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 Kevin Callahan about positive organisational design and organisations as complex systems
Why listen to this podcast:
• Positive organisation development starts with areas where you are strong and builds on those, rather than focusing on weaknesses and negative areas
• Involving people to open up “what could be” which starts a change effort that makes it possible to achieve
• Start by trusting that people want to do amazing work
• Organisations are complex systems and need to be treated as such
• In complex systems the balance of pressures is necessary, and in many organisations one or other area becomes predominant (eg revenue or cost saving pressure) and this causes the system to become brittle
More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/36Qj5fk
You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest topics from professional software development. bit.ly/24x3IVq
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Check the landing page on InfoQ: https://bit.ly/36Qj5fk

Jan 6, 2020 • 32min
Arie van Bennekum on the Liquid Manifesto
In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Arie van Bennekum about Liquid Manifesto, a transformation framework to help organisations shift from old paradigms to new ones.
Why listen to this podcast:
• The Liquid Manifesto is a transformation framework to help organisations shift from old paradigms to new ones
• Changing paradigms is the most difficult thing to do because bringing in new paradigms takes time and old paradigms define reflexes under stress
• Your organisation has the have the capability to respond to change, if not you die
• A Liquid organisation has people and teams who can work independently while remaining coherent, flowing together towards a common goal
• A liquid organisation has a common cause, you know why you are there, you are connected while being very self-organising and you look for continuous improvement
More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2sIBCeV
You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest topics from professional software development. bit.ly/24x3IVq
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Follow on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/infoq
Check the landing page on InfoQ: https://bit.ly/2sIBCeV

Jan 1, 2020 • 33min
Scott Duncan on Examining the Agile Manifesto
In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Scott Duncan about his InfoQ book Understanding Agile Values & Principles. An Examination of the Agile Manifesto.
Why listen to this podcast:
• The Agile Manifesto was written as a set of values and principles for improving software development outcomes
• There are many brands, frameworks and methodologies which were represented at the Snowbird Lightweight Methods Conference where the manifesto was written
• The authors were looking for common ground and the four values of the manifesto represented their collective agreement on the mindset which should underly software development
• There is a difference between doing the practices of any agile method and being agile in mindset
• Approaches such as Modern Agile and Heart of Agile are focused on returning to the underlying philosophy with a humanistic focus and moving away from prescriptive practice adoption
More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/37qs9Yc
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
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Follow on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/infoq
Check the landing page on InfoQ: https://bit.ly/37qs9Yc

Dec 17, 2019 • 33min
The InfoQ Podcast Hosts Take a Look Back at 2019, Discussing Teal, Edge, Quantum Computing, and more
In this special year-end wrap-up podcast Wes Reisz, Shane Hastie, Daniel Bryant, and Charles Humble discuss what we’ve seen in 2019 and speculate a little on what we hope to see in 2020. Topics include business agility and Teal, what it means to be an ethical engineer, bringing your whole self to work, highlights from QCon and InfoQ during 2019, the rise of Python, and progress in quantum computing.
Why listen to this podcast:
* Business agility is one of the major themes that the InfoQ team has seen emerge this year, with stronger emphasis on outcomes over outputs. We’ve also seen a growing interest in ethics and the ethical implications of the work we all do.
* On the programming languages front the rise of Python continues, driven largely by its popularity in data science.
* As Kubernetes cements its dominant position we’re hoping to see a simplification of the workflows associated with it, as well as in areas like observability.
* There have been several big announcements in quantum computing in the past year, and this is an area we continue to watch with interest.
* Another key trend for next year is edge computing. The edge of the cloud infrastructure has an amazing amount of available compute resource, as does the device edge.
More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ bit.ly/2Z0Q9OI
You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest topics from professional software development. bit.ly/24x3IVq
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Dec 2, 2019 • 17min
Ivar Jacobson on Use Case 2.0
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
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Check the landing page on InfoQ: https://bit.ly/2DEPM2m

Nov 25, 2019 • 24min
Michael & Audree Sahota on Being Better Leaders
This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences.
In this podcast, recorded at the Agile on the Beach New Zealand conference, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Michael & Audree Sahota about their work on helping leaders change to enable high performance
Why listen to this podcast
• Organisational transformation is about a deep shift from our current way of working and being into a completely different way of working and being which requires of us to grow and develop as human beings
• In high-performance organisations people are willing to examine their egos, their leadership styles, their practices in order to learn and grow as a human being
• As leaders we need to become aware of how we are showing up to others and then apply our problem-solving skills to deliberately choosing to adopt new ways of thinking and behaving
• We’ve known from solid research over the last 20+ years that the only factor that matters about having an engaged team is the boss - the world’s greatest managers treat their people well
• Culture, leadership and organisational change are not three separate things – they are one deeply interwoven thing and we need to have a deeply integrated understanding on how they are related to and dependent on each other
More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/37yTnwN
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
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Follow on Twitter: twitter.com/InfoQ
Follow on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/infoq
Check the landing page on InfoQ: https://bit.ly/37yTnwN

Nov 20, 2019 • 20min
Maartje & Fennande of Happy Office on Creating a Culture of Happiness at Work
In this podcast, recorded at the Agile India 2019 conference, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Maartje Wolff and Fennande van der Meulen.
Why listen to this podcast:
• If you want to transform organisations and make them future-proof, then happiness is crucial to success because happy people get better outcomes
• When people feel they have a meaningful job that contributes to meaningful results, feel connected to their colleagues and are able to have fun at work they are more engaged which gives better results for the individuals and for the company
• The drivers for happiness are different for each person – there is no single recipe that can be applied to every organisation
• Happy companies have formulated their purpose very clearly and have translated that purpose to values and linked those values to behaviours
• The four pillars of a happy workplace are:
o Purpose – having a meaningful job
o People – feeling connected, belonging to the group
o Progress – making progress towards meaningful goals is the best motivator at work
o Play – being able to have fun at work
More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2QBD6Ru
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
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Follow on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/infoq
Check the landing page on InfoQ: https://bit.ly/2QBD6Ru

Nov 11, 2019 • 22min
Dave Farley on Taking Back Software Engineering
In this podcast, recorded at the Agile India 2019 conference, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Dave Farley about what it means to build a real profession of software engineering.
Why listen to this podcast:
• At the very hard end of computing you need genuine engineering disciplines to be successful
• Most of the previous definitions of software engineering have got it wrong because they tried to be too prescriptive
• In many ways software development is a fashion industry – we chose technologies, languages and approaches based on who if the most persuasive orator rather than empirical evidence
• Extreme Programming and continuous delivery have the characteristics of genuine engineering disciplines because they are focused on the engineering practices that enable you to build high-quality products fast
• Pair programming unlocks the capability of individuals and teams to learn
More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/33B2YAz
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
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Check the landing page on InfoQ: https://bit.ly/33B2YAz

Nov 4, 2019 • 31min
Travis Kimmel on What Makes a Good Engineering Manager
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 Travis Kimmel of Gitprime about the challenges of being an engineering manager, the value of metrics and how to use them wisely
Why listen to this podcast:
• There is lots of information about the “stuff” of engineering, but very little on the human processes of engineering
• Without a data layer that gives insight into the process the manager needs to interrupt the flow of work to understand what’s happening
• The difficulty in running an engineering team is ensuring that the impulse to build is aligned with the overall business goals
• The state of nature for engineering is a group of people building interesting things that make sense from a business value perspective – if any of these point stops being true then dysfunction creeps in
• The data generated by a team should be consumed by the manager of that team and they use it to tell the story of how the team is doing to others
More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2JNqpil
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/2JNqpil


