Agile Otter on why most devs work in the worst ways possible

How does the future hold for software development with remote collaboration?

In this episode of the Distributed podcast, host Jack Hannah chats with Tim Ottinger, aka the Agile Otter, about how to manage and organize the work. Among other things, Tim is a Senior Consultant at Industrial Logic, contributor to the book Clean Code, and active presence online. Jack and Tim explore various ways to work in teams instead of solo and the various benefits they offer.

Highlights:

• Rethinking solo work to boost first-time through rates and productivity
• Tim’s experiences with Extreme Programming and Agile
• Introducing swarm boards for better remote teamwork

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) – Introduction to Tim Ottinger, Agile Otter

(01:11) – Tim’s background and contributions to clean code and agile

(01:46) – Early remote work and why covid changed remote training

(04:03) – Benefits of spreading training over weeks vs. intense sessions

(06:18) – What’s wrong with how most software teams manage work today

(10:42) – The problems with solo work, parallelism, and utilization myths

(14:14) – How AI can help coding but still has limitations

(18:07) – Why increasing first time through rate is the key metric

(24:18) – How to structure teams to avoid queues and handoffs with swarm boards

(30:50) – Starting with small experiments to work together and improve flow

(33:12) – Don’t lower the standards of the pipeline, raise the abilities of the team

(40:07) – When it comes to remote work, longitude kills and latitude hurts

(41:38) – Tim’s advice for making the most out of remote work

(44:05) – The law of the 2nd floor

(44:51) – Things can be better, don’t lose hope

References

Swarm Programming with the Swarm Board

Clean Code by Robert C. Martin

Where to connect further:

Connect with Tim Ottinger on LinkedIn and on his website

Connect with Industrial Logic

Follow Tuple

Want to hear more? Check out distributed.fm

Connect with Jack Hannah