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**Inbal Cohen:** Absolutely. And it's not just the developer, it's the entire team. Because just imagine - in waterfall, we have people that are sitting in these very, very tight compartments, that have to do with the steps of development that they're in. So there is a planner, he's sitting alone in a room with a group... |
And then agile, by doing things in an iterative way - that's one thing - and two, by taking advantage of cross-platform teams, having everybody sit together through, which again, I think is an extremely important point... The table is flat when we're looking at a team; the table is flat. No one has the higher chair. De... |
**Break:** \[25:05\] |
**Angelica Hill:** When we're thinking about like the day-to-day practices of agile, working in a team, pushing projects forward, I'd love to hear a little bit of how you've seen the culture change as we've become a more remote-first industry. How has remote working, especially during COVID, and now with kind of -- I t... |
**Inbal Cohen:** It changed a lot. It shook me, absolutely... Because one of the things that I really insisted on is seeing people face to face. Even when I had remote teams in different countries. So one, I always had an office for my remote team. They would sit together in the same room. And the second thing was, I w... |
I think the teams that I visited the least was four times a year; once in a quarter, I would go and sit in those offices for a week or two weeks together with the team. |
For my teams that are local, next to me, for example in Berlin, we would sit in one room, and I would be the person with the smallest room for my team, because I wanted everybody to sit close together as well, and not just in a big, open space. Because there's a very special moment, especially as a product person - you... |
And now, when remote, all of that is as if gone. I've tried to weirdest things. I can talk about it now... I had sessions, I had days with my teams, camera open, everybody's just sitting at home - and this is way before we had like a proper setup; this is like super-uncomfortable... Just to try to create this type of e... |
So what I would say, biggest change - people that are in charge of the agile within the team, whoever they are, really have to step up their game with everything that has to do with social interactions between the different team members. You have to be present, you need to find a way to actively communicate with everyb... |
And then a second thing that I would give a piece of advice would be have an extra meeting that doesn't have to be part of your agile framework, whatever it is that you're doing. Maybe it's a coffee hour, maybe it's an afternoon drinks. Something. Give your team the opportunity to show up as they would want to, without... |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** \[30:17\] And then what would be your advice for reaching high-performance from the office? Not remotes. Or advices. |
**Inbal Cohen:** I was so tempted to say, "Have plenty of coffee breaks", but that's not very inspirational... |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** It will make you code faster. |
**Inbal Cohen:** For sure. And that is the most important thing about developers, as you know - how fast do you code. |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** You convert the coffee into tests. |
**Inbal Cohen:** \[laughs\] Exactly. I think in the workspace -- there's a whole thing, you can read about it. There's even a book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. One of the most common things that I see in teams - and that's the one thing that breaks teams, and that's the one thing to work on first... If there's one... |
So I'd say even if you're working in a remote or a hybrid setting, when you come to the office, don't come to the office when no one's there. Especially if you're making a special effort. Maybe if it's only once a month or once a week, try to make sure that there are other people there, one. Two, don't set up any meeti... |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** Yeah, it's true, it is a harder thing to do these days, in this post-pandemic setup that many companies are, indeed, like you say, hybrid. And there's an office, you can show up, you can not show up, or maybe some companies have some days in the week where you can come, or maybe it's just like ... |
And so would you recommend kind of getting to know and making friends mostly with your teammates, or just with random people you meet in the office and you're not sure who they are or what they do? How to go about that, other than making everybody put their picture on Slack and saying "I'm gonna find you"? |
**Inbal Cohen:** Well, I can tell you that it's a very difficult question for me to answer. And the reason is that I'm thinking about the people that are listening to this podcast, right? I am pretty high in any test that I took on the scale of being an extrovert. My friends have this joke that I can't even go to the s... |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** \[34:13\] That is interesting. Visiting at their coffee machines. That is a strategy. |
**Inbal Cohen:** You know that you find out that not all floors were made the same...? |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** \[laughs\] So do the coffee machines get better as you go higher up? |
**Inbal Cohen:** That's a tricky question. I actually found that the one that is on the ground floor is the fanciest one. But more of the point is - with your team, super-important. Go together on lunch; have a lunch date. That's something that's relatively easy for you to organize. But then meeting people from other t... |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** Mm-hm. I guess that's why some people at work join interest groups. Like, we are people who like Asian food on Tuesdays, or sports clubs, or whatnot. Yeah, that makes sense. |
**Angelica Hill:** So I'm gonna jump in and ask a question that's been on my mind, that has not to do with this, it has to do with agile again. But I think we've talked a lot about like the benefits of agile, but I'd love to hear a little bit about the cons. Like, why is agile not always the best choice? When is agile ... |
**Inbal Cohen:** I love that. And I love also the way that you lead into that question, because it points back full-circle to the beginning of our conversation... And the reason being is, if you strip all the frameworks away, strip it all off, go back to your principles, go back to the values, then you will see that if... |
So you're doing agile, right? You're doing the very basics of it. You might not be following your framework perfectly. Okay, you broke your sprints, you did whatever; you did a little bit of waterfall in the middle; you're actually a Scrum person and you did a bit of Kanban - okay, but there is no agile police. It's no... |
\[37:59\] So I think that the biggest disadvantages of agile is pretty -- and this is too, again, culty, but it's more about the misrepresentation of agile; it's more about the things that we put on top of an agile thinking. Just have an agile thinking. If you start from that and you're doing that, you're already good.... |
**Angelica Hill:** And who in your opinion is the driver of the methodologies, the frameworks that a team should use? This is just my personal question and something I've been kind of thinking through... Like, a lot of teams have project managers, product managers, engineering managers... Who is the driver of the pract... |
**Inbal Cohen:** Absolutely. And one of the things that we have -- we can call people that way; I have been called that way for a while... It's called an agile evangelist. Going back to like, religious, "This is not a cult." What is it being an agile evangelist, and why do I think that each and every person that is wor... |
As a team, as each and every developer sitting in that team, you need to be able to say "I accept this, I understand it. And actually, this is helping my work. And I'm going to stick to it. I want to make sure that everybody sticks to it." And I think it's a lot like -- if you've ever been in a good meeting, with reall... |
So you as the product leader can provide the information to the audience, to the team, to the company, but it's each and every person's role to be a small evangelist of themselves. Each and every person within that team needs to be able to say "That sounds waterfallish." Or "What about the deadline?" "I don't understan... |
Each and every person within the team should be accountable, where we have a shared responsibility and accountability, and an individual one. And in that shared one, we're all maintaining that agile atmosphere thinking, because it benefits us, and we want to. |
**Angelica Hill:** \[42:03\] So is there a world in which we would maybe have almost like a agile interview stage? Like, it feels to me, as we talk more, that everyone on the team, regardless of discipline, engineer, designer, product, project, should know - not in great detail; they don't have to read every single doc... |
**Inbal Cohen:** Yes. And I actually do that. |
**Angelica Hill:** Oh, awesome. Tell us more. |
**Inbal Cohen:** I love it that you're mentioning that. There was one piece of an interview - and this is me giving away a bit of my secrets, but there's one piece of an interview that I do for any person that I interview, for any job. It doesn't even matter. It could be sales, it could be any job. And there's one thin... |
And it's super-insightful. Super-insightful to see what do you choose, why did you choose that one? Where are you coming from? What's the job, what's the role that you're aiming for? And then involving that into an entire conversation about how much prior knowledge they had. |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** That is a really interesting way of going about that. I do see in a lot of job descriptions for developers that in addition to mentioning the technology, they also mention the methodology that you're using. So yeah, it makes sense. But I can't say I was ever asked about that. But I guess if I d... |
**Break:** \[45:05\] |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** Last question for today would be, as a Go developer that is working as part of a cross-platform team, what advice, or what exactly would I be doing? |
**Inbal Cohen:** I think that that's great. It's a great summary. I would say, take this entire conversation, and if I had to crunch it up into a few sentences, right? So one, get to know your team. Who's on your team? What did they do? Why are they doing that? Why do they think that it's cool? What's their favorite fo... |
Then another thing would be think, try to have a thought with yourself, "What motivates me? What do I don't like so much about my job right now, and what do I really enjoy?" And then try to initiate a conversation at the end of whatever cycle that you have - if it's a sprint, if it's a week, if it's two weeks... Usuall... |
And then the last one would be think about trust. Do you trust your teammates? Do they trust you? Is there something that you would be able to do to up-one the trust in your team? |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** That's a great checklist, and definitely something to bookmark. |
**Angelica Hill:** Yeah. And I would double-click just quickly, and have a comment, slash also request, which I'm going to regret saying, but I'm gonna say it anyway... Please, software engineers, ask your product manager what that incremental improvement you are providing is. Like, if we're following agile, we should ... |
So I think it's about building that trust both ways, but also holding both the engineers and the product managers accountable to truly be agile. And if I'm like, "Oh, we have to work on this thing for six months", I would like my engineers (this is the bit I'm gonna regret) to be like "Angelica, why are we working in w... |
**Inbal Cohen:** Amen to that. |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** Definitely, yeah. Having a why is something I can absolutely stand behind. And I think everybody will agree with you, Angelica, that this is a popular opinion. But now it's time for the unpopular opinions. |
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