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A podcast about neither tech nor people but both and how, if we want technology to move as fast as the consumers want it to then we must admit it's time we started to consistently do the Human Work. With a total of 50 years in tech between them, author, start-up founder, thought leader and influencer Duena Blomstrom and VP of Engineering for Evora Global, Dave Ballantyne, the hosts of this show come from the two opposite sides of the equation above and debate how we can best meet in the middle. The hosts are also neurospicy, Duena is diagnosed AuADHD and Dave isn't yet formally diagnosed, the couple are (still) newlyweds and they won't hold back from real talk, banter or the occasional swearword!
Hello everyone and welcome back, hopefully, to PEOPLE and TECH podcast. This is take two of what was an amazing episode and we have deprived you all of it by unfortunately us having had a glitch in our uploads, which means that you have missed on some of the brilliance of the things that Jason has said, but hopefully he's going to grace us with it again. We're hoping to chat about today is a combination between what is obviously human debt and tech debt in technology, our internal topic on the matter, but also where do we see this us versus them in technology versus product? A matter that Jason and I have discussed before, I have written about it extensively in both people before tech and in my latest book called Secular Culture. Yay, plug in the book at long last six months.
Duena:Let's get better than that. But before we give the floor to Jason to say a couple of words, I just want to say that from the outside looking into your career, I've always been impressed by one, the amount of work put into the topics and this would have went into the intro that we have lost by not recording properly the last time, because anyone who looks at the work that you've done out there digitally and our work as compared to other people is very visible these days, sees that you're at the heart of the matters. So when it comes to life in product, what do we do about working life? What do we do about humans? What do we do about making them make software?
Duena:I think you're at the cutting edge of it all and your podcast is keeping everyone honest. So welcome to the show, Jason. Thank you for gracing us and giving us another shot. And I'll give you the floor for a second and hopefully it all holds.
Jason:Well, thanks very much for having me. And obviously as a podcaster myself, I know how these things can happen. And, you know, it's just one of those things that we have to get over. I'm gonna go on record and say that there's been at least two or three episodes that I've done on my podcast over the 200 or so episodes I've done that I've, you know, surreptitiously had to either rerecord one side or even just redo the whole thing.
Duena:So it's all part of the show.
Jason:All is fair in love and war.
Dave:And podcasts.
Duena:And podcasts. Well,
Jason:you know, I'm not sure if that's a love or war scenario, but you know, yeah, podcasts could be a third category.
Duena:Well, it's a good one to start. So let's talk about podcasts for a second before we talk about your, the beginning of your journey. Now that we have all arrived at this conversation, are do we think podcasts the new arena for intellectual debate?
Jason:That's a very interesting question. And I think one thing that is fair to say is that, well, you look at it these days and you just sit there and say, when I started my podcast, which is like four years ago, and I know obviously you've been doing some of yours for a while as well, it wasn't an uncontested space, but it was definitely not as contested as it is now. So like you sit there and you think about podcasting and there are so many great podcasts out there as well. So I'm not gonna sit there and say that mine's better than anyone else's. Know, other people can decide that, but Many there are a lot of
Duena:other people, so I can
Jason:Why thank you. I'll put the check-in the post. But the other thing is that everyone can gravitate towards their own podcasts and their own people and the people that resonate with them and the experiences that resonate with them. And that's all great. And I think that on the one hand, having the variety of podcasts out there that people can do that is a good thing.
Jason:The kind of democratization of people being able to find a voice and go out there and find their people and talk about things that matter to them in ways that matter to them. I think all of that's fantastic. Whether it's like the new media, I mean, podcasts are pretty old right now. It's been going on for quite a while and there are some very well established podcasts and it's also very easy for people that are not very thoughtful at all to do podcasts as well. So I think podcasting in many ways, whilst it's a kind of a higher lift than maybe some types of media, like it's a lot more effort to do like a forty five minute, one hour podcast probably than a two minute TikTok clip or something like that.
Duena:I look maybe more than we are willing
Jason:to admit, yes. Well, but maybe that's a bit oversimplified as well because I know how much work it takes to do that kind of content too, but like it's a high lift kind of medium. It's not easy to do a podcast and you know, it's long form content that's kind of out of fashion these days. And it's also then kind of competing with things like Substack and those like obviously they're written, like, yeah, there are some pretty good Substacks out there now that are talking about deep and meaningful topics. So so I think the thing is, I think it's definitely part of it.
Jason:I definitely love the fact that people are able to go out there and find their people and find their voice like I did when I started it. But yeah, just think it's part of the mix. And I think the most interesting thing with all of this stuff, and we all hate thinking about zero sum games and one person wins and one person loses, but at the same time, certainly with a podcast, unless you're one of these kind of Twitter hustle bros that can kind of listen to two podcasts whilst reading a book at the same time, It's a definition of a zero sum game. You've only got a certain amount of time to actually listen to a podcast. I listen to podcasts, generally speaking, when I go out for a run because it's kind of the time that I'm not doing anything else that needs my ears or brain or hands or anything like that.
Jason:So it's a good excuse for me to catch up I with tend not to listen to product or particularly tech podcasts partly because, you know, that's a little bit close
Duena:to what I
Jason:do with myself, but also because I want to also experience other things as well. So other thoughts and other people and other perspectives. So a lot of the times I'll listen sometimes to a business thing or to a news thing or a history thing, and just try to understand other things. So I think that's another great thing about podcasts is just there's so many different types of them. It's not just that there's like a narrow niche that you might find in certain circles.
Jason:There's podcasts about everything, I think that's fantastic.
Duena:I like that answer. Would you agree that it's democratized now,
Dave:Absolutely, absolutely, yes. As you say, there's a niche for everything out there. It does seem in podcasting month these days. Obviously we can't be able to make a successful podcasters out there. I think we're filling the intellectual knowledge gap when and where we can, even if it is just with our opinions and trying to get challenged on those even sometimes Exactly,
Duena:lot of challenges, why don't we challenge exactly what we've all said? Because I'm even talking about the bigger digitalization layer where people use this as their space for deep intellectual debate and thinking and other people do and do not join in. I like this new phase, this hopeful new phase of podcasting where maybe everyone will have a podcast and maybe sometimes you'll drop in or you won't. But that is that person's channel of expression. Let me, I know, I can see Jason jumping at the bit and I wish you guys could watch this.
Duena:If anyone's listening only and not watching, you're missing But Jason's face about this reality where we would all speak to each other through that channel, at least allows you a very concentrated moment of connection, I would say, and of deep conversation. And then if you manage to widen that to a comment section or to people coming in with comments, then you have, I think, a lot more of a two way street than we used to have back in podcasting two or three years ago, if that makes sense. So I'm excited about that part, we bring in the few listeners we have and we make those more stable tribes. So I'm not deciding the body being wide, but narrow and deeper, if that makes sense.
Jason:Yeah. What's body There's a few things. I mean, first of all, like part of what you just described is almost like Clubhouse, right? When we all know what happened with Clubhouse and this idea that bringing people back to what matters and having good conversations and building communities around audio and that obviously didn't work that well. And I think there is a kind of a problem with audio thing is that not everyone likes doing it.
Jason:So like, yeah, this is why you then have the text type platforms and you have other mediums for people to have these discussions and form these communities around. And I think that they're all fantastic too. I think the biggest problem with podcasts, to kind of take your line of thinking through, of course, is that either you have to have everyone on the same podcast, like all talking at the same time, or you just naturally have like one or two people talking. Now, obviously you can have loads of episodes, so you can talk to loads of different people about loads of things. But unless you're doing like a round table thing, and there are some pretty good round table podcasts too, It's very much like, hey, this is Jason speaking to whoever about whatever, and then that's me for forty five minutes, and you've had to listen to that and engage with it or not.
Jason:But you're not getting true diversity of thinking within that episode. But obviously, there's lots of them that you can go find instead if you don't like me or you don't like whoever. I think, though, another interesting point is that the democratization of anything, podcasts or otherwise, definitely has lots of benefits, but it also kind of unlocks the seedy side of the internet as well, right? Because of course, people are people. There are lots of them.
Jason:They don't all believe the same things. Great diversity of thought, fantastic. But that also then gives you space for maybe less attractive thoughts
Duena:and ideas,
Jason:which is what you see on things like Twitter or X these days. It's like, yeah, sure. Free speech and democratization and giving everyone a voice, 100. But then you're gonna have to put out with some voices that you don't like the look of. And there's a big difference between, I don't like the look of that because it's a slightly different opinion to me, or the alternative, which is like someone who's racially abusing people or ethnically abusing people or
Duena:Or inciting crime, of course.
Jason:Inciting crimes against LGBTQ people like You're gonna see those people too. And that's part of democratization there. I don't, you know, I like to not see those types. I have a sort of a spectrum of things that I like to look at and I don't just try and stay in my bubble. That's one thing I don't try and do.
Jason:And we'll probably talk about bubbles in the product sense as well. I don't believe in staying in bubbles, but there are some things that for me at least are so far outside the bubble that I just don't will engage those things. But that's just, you know, some people will sit there and say, well, that's okay because you've got the ultimate choice yourself.
Duena:It's a thing. Yes.
Jason:Well, I mean, like you can be like, I don't have to go and listen to whoever's podcast about whatever, but some people will listen to that. And if they were kind of on the fence, maybe that drags them. Yes, the whole kind of Cambridge Analytica scandal from back in the day. Like, you you keep showing people things that weaponizes their preexisting biases, then they go further down that path Or people that weren't going to go down that path, go further down that path. Now to be clear, this isn't just a podcasting.
Jason:This is an all media thing. But like the more podcasting gets diverse and has all these different opinions, the more that you then have this kind of chance of less satisfactory experiences depending on your own personal preferences, I guess.
Duena:Exactly that, depending on your own personal preference. We don't disagree. I think if our definition of podcasting is that, I think that you got super engrossed in the story of saving code that this one deal had on your morning commute, that might be harder to find. Although I'll plug your podcast Hopefully, in some stories of how one was a developer exists out there, I know there are many other podcasts about developer insights like yours. So I think what's really interesting is to look at, do people that are coming to talk about deep things are doing so because they wanna further what's in our community.
Duena:And this is where, let's bring it back to our communities, right? We know that we stick to potentially different communities. Even that salt gives me the rashes, right? And so how is that possible? We are all technologists of the same age living within, we used to live within a few miles of each other and working in the exact same structure of technology, but we end up speaking to almost all different audiences.
Duena:So for instance, in my career, I have spoken to the FinTech community and then I have spoken to the Agile community. I have spoken to the product community and I cannot comprehend how there can be a tech community and then there's a data community and everyone hears me rant about these things continuously. That's my autistic mind in. This should not be that, right? What we should be is one technical community attempting to do different jobs.
Duena:Let me leave it there. Like literally the only thing that should be. And the fact that we have this fragmentation now, I fear drives down our performance. How do you guys feel about it?
Dave:Well, I think the technical communities, by almost by their definition, are going now R and D. And I think that's the issue. I get what you mean that we're all technologists and we get the same sort of themes which are tying together. When you look at it there's not much difference from a data developer to a C developer to a C plus plus developer in the human sense. Just developing stuff in different languages, different codes, with slightly different viewpoints.
Dave:I get your point that there is a technical community, but that's not why technical communities are formed. They're formed around a technical solution generally, and how do you get the best from that technical solution, not how do we get the best from all technologists.
Duena:Right, different community, is that it?
Jason:Well, people find their people. I mean, just goes back to what we were saying just now about like, the democratization of knowledge and the ability to form communities around things naturally means that people are gonna form communities around the things that they care about. Whilst I will agree that, of course, as a former developer myself, and I was a C sharp boy for a while, and an Angular boy and all those things. Like, I have my own opinions, even though I'm a product guy these days, I've thrown myself all into that, but I have my own opinions about frameworks
Duena:and An Angular body is, someone would have to tell me Jason. Is
Jason:an Angular Well, mean, a boy or a younger man, I mean, there was still a man really, but like someone, Angular was great when it came out. Angular was a wonderful language and it's still way better than React. Don't me, but Angular is way better than React. But I have learned React as well because why not?
Duena:It's just an edit point. Do you need me to take this out?
Jason:No, not at all. Think I will stand by that till my dying breath. But anyway, the point is that I understand where these communities come from. I actually, to be fair, as a former developer myself, I enjoy talking about this stuff to these people as well, because I do have opinions and maybe not insights, but definitely opinions and thoughts and enjoy discussing and hearing other people's opinions and thoughts about, for example, JavaScript frameworks or the best way to do CICD. Did that for years, so I can have good discussions about it, but not everyone can because not all product people lived that.
Jason:Now many did, but certainly historically there's cliches like the product managers were the developers who kind of decided to go and talk to people instead or take their headphones off or they were the developers that couldn't code and
Duena:say That's an absolute goddoggess troop.
Jason:Well, I mean, I'm not gonna start that holy war, but it's definitely been a case. A developer starts a business and they have to start, know, Mark Zuckerberg back in the day, he had to start thinking about more than just code because he had to build a business. So you look at the kind of the tech archetype of a product manager, it's like, well, yeah, it's someone who is really deep into the tech, but they also wanna go out and talk to people and talk to users and care a lot more about what they're building than how they're building it, which that's not to say that no developers care about those things, but it's about the kind of the waiting, right? Like how should you be spending your time? And then you start to develop a craft around it as well.
Jason:So you sit there and you say, okay, fine. Well, there's a craft of software development. And no matter what some of the more skeptical developers might say, there's a craft of product management as well. There are good ways and bad ways to do things. There's not a right way and a wrong way, but there's kind of more statistically probably successful ways to do certain things and other things.
Jason:And for example, just machine gunning into the air and just building random stuff and selling stuff to whoever you managed to hit with your rubber bullets or whatever, that's definitely an approach you could take and some people do, but it's not necessarily gonna be the one that works repeatably and guaranteed. If it does work, it's probably by accident. So like you sit there and say, okay, fine, there's a craft. So people start to gravitate around the craft. Now I've been speaking to a few people recently in the product scene because product management is going for a bit of a moment at the moment just simply because there's all these books that are saying, do it like this, if you don't do it like this, then you're not going to succeed or you're not a proper product manager.
Jason:AI is going to come in and take all your jobs anyway. Oh, now product managers shouldn't be doing this or they should be doing that or blah, blah, blah, blah. And like anyone's got like a exclusive right to tell people what is or isn't good. But like, at the same time, it does then provoke introspection within these communities because we're sitting there saying, oh, well, are we doing a good job? Are we not doing a good job?
Jason:Are we really product managers? And is this really the thing we should be doing? Is this really where we should be spending our time? Should we be technical? Should we not be technical?
Jason:Should we be closer to business? What should we do about sales? But there's all these kind of introspection points within the product community about like, well, are we doing our work properly? And it's easy to get sort of caught in this because you sit there and you say, well, as a developer, even if I'm working for a kind of crappy company, I can sit there and say, well, I can still basically stand behind doing some work because we built some things. Whether they were the right things or whether they got used or whether they could have been better, whether we built them quickly enough, whatever.
Jason:Like there's all those debates. But like ultimately, we built some things and those things got out into the hands of people. Obviously that was for me as a developer, one of the best things about it, just getting to do that stuff. You sit there and say, well, hey, I've made that cool button on that page now. And they never had that before.
Jason:And they click and it does some cool things. Fantastic. Love it. There's a hard output of being a developer. Whereas as a product person, all of the hard outputs are basically done by other people.
Jason:They're done by developers or they're done by designers or they're done by marketers or they're taken out and sold by salespeople. So the product manager is sitting there or the product managers are sitting there kind of in the center of everything being given credit for nothing. And that doesn't mean that they're not doing anything. It just means that what they're doing doesn't have that kind of hard output. So it makes people doubt themselves.
Jason:So I think that's why people gravitate towards communities because they want to find people like them.
Duena:Congratulations. You're in this amazing ability of rounding it up. I was one worried about the community topic, but I also wanted to ask you why we ended up in this situation. I don't think you've answered me. I think you've very skillfully not answered me.
Duena:Why do we have a product community instead of having and the developer community and this us versus them instead of having a we all make product in a technology fashion ability. And let me tag one on the end of that for the both of you. We talked about this in the last one, which was the distinction between management and ownership when it comes to product, right? I postulated that product owners and product managers are kind of the same thing because anyone doing product is an adult and anyone not doing product just doesn't want to be an adult and good for them for being able to choose that life. Very contentious point of view.
Duena:You've both jumped at that. You're more relaxed today about it. But what I want to hear is, is it not possible that we have maybe over engineered in the technical sphere, these job titles and these carved lanes, instead of unifying people and saying, I don't care as a business, I'm throwing this down to you. You have a camp on board and whether you're a product person or a developer person, I want this thing to come out of it.
Jason:But I think that's what business people are saying. I don't think anyone, I mean, obviously they're hiring these different people, but I don't think like your CEO is sitting there worrying about whether someone's a front end developer or backend developer or product manager or product owner or a designer or a content writer. They know that these things exist, but they're not sitting there worrying about the handoffs and nor should they. And I think that you're right, that there is kind of internal division in a sense of, well, different people are gonna be working on different stuff, right? Now, we can argue about full stack versus front and back end developers all day long.
Jason:But like ultimately if you have front end and back end developers, then they're naturally gonna be working on different things because that's their specialty. Designers are the ones that are going be doing the design and not just visual design, but service design and interaction design and information architecture and all of that stuff. So there's going to be people working on different things. Now, in some companies, and I'm sure that you see this just as well as I do, those are very specific divisions where you just sit there and you've got people throwing work at each other backwards and forwards over a wall, almost barely communicating with each other. I'll go out on a limb and say that they're not the best companies to do that work in.
Jason:Maybe they get to do some good work still somehow because they're working for a company that does some things that they like. But like, I don't imagine it's that fun to work in that. And I've worked in that sort of situation before. It's not fun. No, not fun for me.
Duena:No psychological safety, no genuine feeling of magic. That's not fun.
Jason:Well, or they have local psychological safety within the silos, potentially. I mean, probably not, but maybe. Psychological safety, there's this kind of idea of psychological safety that the whole company has to be able to challenge each other and feel safe. I agree with that, it should be. However, even if you have psychological safety in a bubble within your little bit, then that's still better than no psychological safety at all, but it's still not as good as having it properly.
Jason:But I think it's natural for people to gravitate towards their people from a kind of a functional and a skills level. Like, sure, we're all working on the same things. We should collaborate and we should respect each other. We should invite debate. We should treat people and their skills respectfully.
Jason:We should care about not overloading certain people and we all rise or fail or we succeed or fail together. That's the dream Well, yeah, but the point is that people still do have competencies that they kind of gravitate around and things that they need to know that maybe not everyone needs to know. Not in a kind of of Not
Duena:like that.
Jason:Not in a protective way, but simply this idea that there are things that different capabilities need to discuss amongst themselves within an organization.
Dave:All the intricacies of the 2FA technical handoff between seven Yeah, different
Jason:and it's natural. So I don't think it's a bad thing for people to, like you have these communities of practice that people can set up in their companies where they all get together to talk about the craft. Now, I'm sure in the very best companies, it's perfectly for a developer or designer to come to a product community of practice and kind of be a fly on the wall if they were even interested in that thing and vice versa. But like ultimately, this is that kind of whole idea around, and I can't remember where it came from, but this idea of like the walls are see through, but you can't come in sort of thing. Whether that works in those companies, but I think people should be able to form communities around their craft, but they shouldn't do that at the expense of collaboration and working with each other and being kind of kind and fair and proactive and good with each other.
Duena:I think we're arriving at a stable understanding of the fact that, yes, in a sense, way that the, in my view, that the technology sphere has fragmented is unfortunate. It would have served us a lot better if we somehow managed to magically keep ourselves to that mythical pizza size team where all 12 of us knew all the tickets and we came out with something that was POC level directly to consumer, right? We are far from that and that means that none of us has ownership as much as we'd like. And I know that I'm privileged as a product owner of a software company where I see my exact effect of the thing I'm making and not everyone, I say this every episode I can. I know I have privilege with that in technology.
Duena:Not everyone has the same closeness directly to consumer, But even if you don't, right? And that's the bulk of the rest of the job is removing the unclarity towards what the work is, and removing the unclarity towards all of the human debt and the crap we have built around it, that this allows us from collaborating. That brings us back to what Jason said, which is communities of practice or not, crafts because we like talking about our own stuff or not. I think it's time we all take our heads out and go, how do we do this together? Which is what I was, I think postulating in my last talk, which was, I do believe that technology has had the moment in time where they could have grabbed the flag of I'll sort communication in the workplace by showing that nothing moves fast enough in creating software unless we are intelligent in our community of practice and intelligent in our ways of work.
Duena:And I don't know if we missed that moment or not as humans, I'm afraid we may have done, but hopefully not because in the grand scheme of things, and this is something that's arrived to us over the last few episodes, it's not right, a big time that we have left to show as humans our hand at making technology before it made itself. It's not a long time. So, I wish we got our shit in order, if you wish, in different communities and went, right, now we're working together to make this work better. So let's say there is the mini uncomfortabilities and all of these barriers we put in our own way and making our own blockers in communication by having these and instead go, right, how close can we get to that? Where's the ticket?
Duena:And how do we all care about it as much as each other? I would say.
Jason:It's not
Duena:a question. It's just a rally for let's get somewhere, right? I have nothing.
Jason:One of I think that you kind of, you touched on an important point, which is that it should be a collaboration. We shouldn't be sitting there going back to that kind of made up example of people passing stuff back and forth. But guess what? It's not made up. It happens in companies all over the place.
Jason:There's nothing about forming communities and kind of finding your people and trying to advance your craft within whatever craft it is, whatever skills that you use. There's nothing in there that kind of almost rejects the idea of people communicating with people openly and honestly and collaborating on stuff. And the thing I often say is it should be fine for a developer to ask a question about prioritization or challenge product or say they disagree with the prioritization decision because of something that they've heard or what it now might not be right, but they should be able to challenge you on that. But in the same way that if a developer comes to me and says, well, that's gonna take six years to build or something like that, then I should be able to question that. Not because I think that they're stupid, but because I think, well, how could we make that not so?
Jason:Now, obviously, as a former developer myself, I have a natural idea in my head about how long I think something should take, but I always defer to them because they're the ones that actually have to build the software these days. It's not me. I'm not building the software. I'm not going to make an estimate for them, but I should be absolutely okay. And they should accept the fact that maybe I could question that.
Jason:But that goes in all directions. This idea that, you know, community that we're kind of almost splitting off into different directions and not talking. Mean, one wants well, I'm sure some people want that, but like, I don't want that. That's not a thing that I believe works. The best companies that I've worked with or in, they've always been very open and collaborative, and they've not been just throwing stuff back or, you know, we're still shouting each other about whose fault it was that something didn't happen.
Jason:I mean, look, is it important to understand why something went wrong? Sure. Is it important to find someone to hang for that? In some companies, yes. But I'm going to again go out on a limb and say that's not for me.
Dave:I mean, we've been discussing about it and I'm surprised we haven't actually said agile.
Duena:We haven't said it was agile. If this were a drinking game, we would be losing.
Dave:Absolutely. Yeah, everything we say in there around squads and tribes and what's the difference between competency and people working in teams, to a lesser or greater degree, it's all agile.
Jason:And I
Dave:think that was when we were talking about one of the questions I had. What does agile mean to the average product person? Because a lot of the things we've been talking about now breaking things down to the smallest amount of work, taking on board teams, suggestions, psychological safety, blah blah blah blah, etc, is all just agile. So what does agile really mean to the product community?
Duena:You are the product community right now Jason, what does agile mean to you? This is an added point if I ever heard that.
Jason:Well, I don't know. I think if you think about it, what does, I mean, anyone that's read the Agile Manifesto knows what Agile, you know, quote unquote means. Whether that is something that permeates every single product person is up for debate. Like there are a lot of product people out there at the moment working on big releases that take forever and passing stuff back and forth and doing all of the things that probably the Agile Manifesto doesn't do. Now, I don't necessarily believe that they're doing that by choice.
Jason:I believe some of them are forced into these positions by the vast uncaring machine of the company that they work in. And that's a more important question. It's not even what does agile mean to product managers? What does agile mean to companies? Now, if I'm expecting my CFO or my CEO or my chief revenue officer to know too much about the principles behind the agile manifesto, I'm going be disappointed.
Jason:So what do I need to do? I need to go and explain to them the benefits of doing some of these or trying some of these approaches. And of course, when you start talking about agile, then everyone's basically then starts talking about scrum because that's what most people are using or they say that they're using, but they're probably not really using. And then people start to make all their own changes to scrum and they start then complaining Well, about start completely, some like scrum jazz, as I've heard it referred to before, like just sort of free form scrum. And that's cool.
Duena:I
Jason:should one of definitely the
Duena:interrupt trying to get Jeff Sutherland himself to tell us all the horrible stories of what he's heard that they've done to scrum in life.
Jason:They do to my boy. It's like the godfather. To do to winters. I'm looking forward
Duena:to having him on the show and asking him.
Jason:No. You should you should do it. But I think one thing that I would also, and maybe I'll try and get him on mine one day as well, but one thing I think is also worth asking of Jeff or the scrum industrial complex and certification complex that exists these days is like, do you or does he feel any responsibility? Because it's all well and good sitting there saying, made scrum, and this is all the things that you should do. And if you do these things, then you're gonna have the greatest chance of success and so forth, blah blah blah.
Jason:All the things that I'd expect the person to create, to create Scrum would say. And like, looking at Scrum, I don't even have any strong objections to it. It's fine. There's nothing wrong with it.
Duena:I love it. I'm a big fan.
Jason:I mean, look, whether or not it's you know, some people will argue that it's no better than safe and it's not agile at all, but, like, I'm not I'm not with them. But at the same time, it is easily misused. And anyone then like from the sort of the scrum side of the house would be like, oh, well, you're not doing it properly. So, okay, that's probably true. But what are we gonna do about that?
Jason:Are we gonna do anything about that? Or are we just gonna sit there and accept the fact that the vast majority of people out there that say that they're doing scrum or say that they're being agile aren't doing any of those things? Is that a problem for Jeff and scrum and everyone to solve? Or is it just collateral damage and it's natural and that's just what happens with anything?
Duena:Right.
Jason:Sure that-
Duena:Or should I just ask if he is, why did Jeff not keep the religion even harder if he believed that this is the only way to do Agile is what you want me to ask? Going back to what you're saying, Jason, we learned about Scrum fifteen years ago when it showed up, right? All of us. We were not new to this. This is not news to either of us.
Duena:We have kids we've made go through Trello boards. I've made the kids through a Trello board. Mine is IVF. But I get how it works. We all get how it works.
Duena:We get the point of, I think what is not said in our communities is that instead of villainizing the vehicle, I would really like us to think of scum is a way to be disciplined. I don't care which way you choose to be disciplined, but choose a way to be disciplined and then choose a way to put your heart into it. And then choose a way to define how your pipeline is agile and how you're all into it. And then, hey, presto, you have a more agile organization than any other one. So I don't really care about Scrum in itself.
Duena:Just like whether you choose to do Scrum or Kanban or Save or whatever shit, just show me that you're doing it with all your heart, with a clear understanding of what you're talking about and all your execs have read the manifesto. Show me that you know what you're trying to get to and that everyone's involved in it and that everyone has their heart in it. That to me is more of a agile operation in my last thirty years, I've seen people who are doing it by the book.
Dave:Even if people aren't doing agile, but are treating their people well, increasing performance, getting quality products through, tell us how you're doing it. You can give Bob agile, Rosie's way, as long as it's a short enough feedback cycle to be able Bob's continuous your uncle.
Duena:I lost him.
Jason:Yeah, the most interesting thing with Scrum, if we take that thing that you just said about we don't care as long as you're doing the things, as long as you're making progress, doing the right things, treating people well, it's like that, I'll buy that. But if I, you know, I've just pulled up the scrum guide and it says itself, scrum framework as outlined herein is immutable. Whilst implementing only parts of scrum is possible, the result is not scrum. Scrum exists only in its entirety and functions, pardon?
Duena:I'm sorry to interrupt you for the content, but as someone who makes software and is attempting to tell the world, all you need to do is not be a shithead to each other and breathe more, be more grateful, talk about what the hell you're making, have a space where you're doing it with your team and forget about this combination of people, product or text. Someone who's doing that. I get the word immutable. I would be that person who puts immutable in the copy. I am that to my team once a week, right?
Duena:It's because it is so easy for all of us to take something and then put our own wording on it and present it And we just advocated for that. I'm contradicting myself. I said that two minutes ago, take it, make it your own. So make it your own once you've comprehended where poor Jeff and the team I think are coming from to say immutable.
Jason:No, I get it. And I think that, again, I don't have a problem with scrum and like I've worked in many scrum organizations of different levels of actual scrum. Like of course, one seem like anyone's really doing it properly. There are lots of people who criticize scrum on its face, and and I'm definitely not one of those people. I personally, to your point, believe that, you know, scrum is based on a set of principles that for me, and I think even, I think I've read or listened to the audiobook of Jeff's book, know, Scrum, the art of doing half the work and twice the work and half time, the other way around wouldn't make sense.
Jason:And I'm pretty sure that in that book, and again, I think it was an audio book when listened to it, he kind of talks about this theory, it's almost like from Aikido of like, yeah, you learn the system, you master the system, and you become the system. And it's like, I'll buy that. That doesn't sound like someone is gonna sell a lot of certificates and courses in that system because it's kind of almost making itself redundant by the time you get to the end of it. But I think that is really where the magic lies. It's like following all these processes and procedures and rituals and whatever, yeah, sure.
Jason:Like do what they all will, right? But at the same time, just doing them isn't enough. You have to understand why you're doing them and you have to basically embrace some of the principles behind them. You talked about releasing small things, getting constant customer feedback, adapting as you go. I'm all for that.
Jason:I don't know if all product managers are for that, and I certainly don't know if all business stakeholders around the business, I hate using the term the business, but all of the commercial stakeholders around the organization think that. You said earlier about like, did all of our leadership team read the Agile Manifesto? Absolutely not, and I wouldn't expect them to. The Agile Manifesto-
Duena:would expect them to, it takes twenty seconds. Literally go
Jason:twenty seconds. But what are they going to do with that information? They're going to sit there and start to either
Duena:Why it exists? And they will ask their kids, why the hell would you be doing this thing so much faster than my waterfall? Let them read it.
Dave:Well if they're curious, I know a lady not too far from me has done a really good series of articles over the phone.
Jason:There you go, I should You read
Dave:know, can't, you know, let's start, you can't have the well without
Duena:the what? Look, I said this in Forbes five years ago and people didn't like it then, they don't like it today. You cannot have the well without the word. Thank you for that. You cannot have the way before you've changed your mind and you changed your heart and you comprehend why we're comfortable with uncomfortability.
Duena:Why we have to change things fast. Why would you need this for everyday life and not just for product management in a corner that doesn't matter. Don't think anyone and we can sit here and have this debate all your life. But realistically, agile and an agile way of thinking is the only way that our kids are going to get through life. Look around us.
Duena:Look at the ever changing nature of the insane society we live in. If they are not able to be comfortable with the instability, if they are expecting this world where they go to work from eight to six, they are F'ed for, sorry, for the French is my trademark phrase, they say. So we can't leave them with that idea from the technology side. I feel like that's where we need to push that agile as a way of thinking. Yes, we haven't cleaned our house about what methodologies are best.
Duena:Yes, we haven't cleaned our house, whether you should read the manifesto or you should read something else that Alistair has put out five minutes ago. Since then, no one looked his direction. Bless him. I absolutely love everyone who signed it first. And some of them made some certificates and worked really hard to keep the law of that.
Duena:And we all know this and some of them maybe didn't, but everyone had their heart in the right place. And if you have executive teams that have half the heart in the right place, like these people that signed it then, you have companies that are agile. I'm not worried for those companies, but where are they? And are they everywhere? And is there anything that people that are listening to this who are scrum masters, who are HR coaches, who are developers, who are product people, like us, who went through even then, even the leaders listening to this, even them, hostess of ours listening to this.
Duena:Is there anything we can kind of do to mitigate this parts of bits and pieces and this coming to it with the fear mentality and coming to it with the blame mentality and coming There's so much bigger things we have to work on. How do we get comfortable with things being in flex all the time? How do we lean on being empathic to each other? How do we lean on what the hell the purpose is every second? Like we have to end up in an almost regimented propaganda machine to get product happening with so much burnout from our people.
Duena:All of those things are like such big topics that the fact that we even wonder about our communities to me seems almost small and petty and exec level, I'd rather they read the manifesto than understood this pull and push between product and developers.
Jason:I think to play devil's advocate on that for a second. And again, I agree that we should all like do those things in principle. And I also think that it's much easier for even like the least tech savvy exec to apply these principles to their daily life than it is to work. Because work, we're kind of still living in this tailorist bubble, the kind of the factory manufacturing mindset that was bought however many years ago. And that still permeates so much of business thinking.
Jason:And there's so much a financial layer on it as well. That's the thing that these people really care about more than anything else. And rightly so, they have a fiduciary responsibility. Understand why people aren't immediately gravitating towards the eleventh principle of the agile manifesto whenever they're making a decision if they're not a tech person. And we also have to call out that it's the manifesto for agile software development.
Jason:If you're a tech person, these things make sense to you. If you're a commercial sales background CEO or an industry expert, strategy CEO or someone like, none of these things make any sense to you. And like, you could read it, but like you'd either read it and ignore it, read it and without wishing to sound dismissive, not understand it or not understand some of the words or come away from it thinking, what was the point of that? I think that the biggest factor here isn't so much whether they should read it or not. Like go and read it.
Jason:Like you should, why not? But at the same time, I think there's an incredible amount of responsibility on technical and product leadership within these organisations, not just to get them to read it. Sure. Get them to read it, but also to advocate for the principles behind it, but also show the business and, you know, by extension people benefits and, obviously, by extension also money benefits for doing these things. I posted on LinkedIn the other day, yesterday, I think, about this concept which I read in a book of inch was it inch how do say it?
Jason:Inchstones, not a milestone, but an inch stone. This idea that everyone just has this thing in their head of milestones. And this, I think, was from a book that was talking about big infrastructure projects like bridges and stuff like that. So it's definitely a different world to kind of fast cycle software development. This idea that you have to get people used to working and celebrating in small batches so that they can see the results of the batches and course correct and all of those things.
Jason:I'm not even sure if inch stone is the word because I can barely say it. But, you know, like trying to say these things in ways that resonate with people that aren't from that world, I think is essential. We talk a lot about getting people to collaborate with us and empathize with us and empathize with our colleagues, but we need to kind of empathize with our quote unquote leaders as well. Because if they don't know, we need to find a way to tell them that actually sticks rather than just keep reading the same manifesto at them all the time, I would say. I
Duena:never did for the record and anyone listening to this ad hoc that anyone just listens and then forgets about it. That's not at all what I'm saying they should be doing. But I do feel like anyone who has believed in their job and wanted to do a great job at an exec level these days in a company that deals with technology will absolutely understand it. I will disagree with you. They will completely understand it.
Duena:I feel like they resonate with them. I have to believe in the goodness of humankind.
Jason:Think some and Summon some. Some. I can definitely think of some people that wouldn't, but maybe I'm just talking to the wrong people.
Dave:So that's where we get the language of, say, safe, and then people have put the frameworks on top of Agile, and you lose the spirit of Agile in particular.
Duena:I'm going to go into the lengthy one and minute number 45. I won't go into that big debate, but I will say that to me, it's all in the heart. I think if we reach deeper, we can erase the community's layers, and we can erase the discussion on what is or isn't Agile, and just make things faster together as humans, I think we'll be at a better place. Well, let's leave it there because I do want to hook into your conversation one day when you guys are going to discuss what is it like having to think of all these deep topics of both the business topic and the people topic and the human topic as practically the keys at heart, which you both are. So, I'll leave you with that as a hope for developer insights.
Duena:Please go listen to Jason and he's a lot more well put together podcast than our half hazardous podcast. And please buy Tech Lead Culture. I still think that if we just did the things that God intended Agile to be together, we'd be happier and we'd have a better society. And we'll catch everyone on the channels where we engage with people. Because what we're trying to do over here is a bit bust this conversation open, like we were saying at the beginning and have people write back comments, but even ring in for the next episode.
Duena:So if anyone wants to ever comment on what Jason said, just drop us those comments in an audio form in the channels that are hopefully listed somewhere if we did our job right, and then we should talk to you next week. Thank you so much again, Jason, putting up with our-
Dave:As ever, Jason. Been absolutely-
Jason:Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure.
Duena:Thank you so much. Have a lovely day, everybody, and listen to us next time.