James Grenning talks with Dave Rael about getting to the heart of the problem, forging important relationships, humility, and providing training
James Grenning is an engineer. He likes solving problems: in code, in design, in meetings, in organizations, in his business. His mission is to bring modern technical and management practices to embedded systems development. That mission takes him all over the world training and coaching. He is the author of Test-Driven Development for Embedded C (http://wingman-sw.com/tddec). He invented Planning Poker, and participated in the creation of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. His website is http://wingman-sw.com.
Chapters:
- - Dave introduces the show and James Grenning
- - The reasons for the name of James's business - Wingman Software
- - James's early career and becoming a leader and trainer, becoming associated with Uncle Bob Martin
- - James's definition of value
- - Getting answers to questions to guide how a training should go - applying the idea of understanding the problem to training
- - The things that "light James up"
- - The things James doesn't like about the things he does
- - Being able to formulate a question well enough to get an answer
- - How James got started in software
- - Historical culture in software and incidental diversity
- - James story of failure - Banished from a team he established, training that wasn't wanted
- - Enlightenment from watching Kent Beck practice Test-Driven Development, James's involvement in the summit at Snowbird that resulted in the Agile Manifesto
- - The story of Planning Poker and "You guys are making this stuff up"
- - James's success story - family, beneficial career turns
- - How James stays current with what he needs to know
- - James's book recommendation
- - James's top 3 tips for delivering more value
- - Feedback cycles and dependencies
- - Keeping up with James
Resources:
- James's Blog
- Wingman Software on Facebook
- James on Quora
- James on Untappd
- Uncle Bob Martin on Developer On Fire
- Cory House on Developer On Fire
- Newton's method
- Intel 8251
- Twelve-step program
- Manifesto for Agile Software Development
- W. Edwards Deming
- Total Quality Management
- Mike Cohn
- Mike Cohn on Planning Poker
- The Fibonacci Sequence
- Planning Poker Party on James's Blog
- Woody Zuill on Developer On Fire
- cyber-dojo
- Python Koans
James's book recommendation:
James's top 3 tips for delivering more value:
- Get good at identifying problems
- Look for waste in your work
- Automate repetitive tasks