Retro Time // A Software Podcast

Latest Episodes:

In the Dark: A Purgatory of Incompetence Oct 13, 2022

Show notes

Wilcox Mudhoney was a particular type of gentleman. In most areas of his life, he knew just enough to sound like he knew far more than he really did. His whole being existed in a purgatory of incompetence.

Wilcox wasn’t known for excellence. In fact, he wasn’t known for much other than making a mess of things.

Poor Wilcox was a walking disaster. The crazy thing was that he was never reprimanded for his incompetence. He was left to go on a perpetual unforced error.

But one day something happened that changed his life forever…

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Photo by Eugene Chystiakov on Unsplash

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66. Don’t Wait Until You Quit To Document Oct 07, 2022

Show notes

What do we do when someone on our team quits? Do we know exactly what they were doing? Do we know where they left off? How easy would it be for you to pick up where they left off and continue the work?

It’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day rhythm of whatever it is we do for a living. Inevitably though, someone on our team will leave for one reason or another. The chances of getting decent documentation or adequate knowledge transfer a week or two before your coworkers are gone forever is pretty unlikely.

Hopefully, you don’t want to put your co-workers in a position like this. So, do your future self, and your future coworkers, a favor. Document! Document! Document!

Don’t wait until the last minute to document and share the processes you follow and the work that you do. Normalize documenting and sharing, so everyone on your team has some idea of what everyone else is up to.

Topics:
• 8:24 – What do we do with the inevitability of attrition?
• 10:39 – We’re all fairly replaceable
• 13:05 – Lost tribal knowledge is very harmful
• 13:57 – Lean’s concept of Standard Work is helpful for documentation
• 17:53 – The today you will be more familiar with a problem than later you
• 18:52 – The pain of the KT is always the rush and urgency
• 19:34 – Derek’s tips for documenting
• 29:14 – How often do we analyze the work we do?

Helpful Links:
• Federation HQ
• Conan Gray
• Passion Pit

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Episode thumbnail by Callum Shaw on Unsplash

The post 66. Don’t Wait Until You Quit To Document appeared first on Retro Time.

In the Dark: A Cautionary Tale of UX Dark Patterns Sep 29, 2022

Show notes

Sit right back and you’ll hear a tale. A tale of a woman who isn’t quite careful about what she does with her personal information while browsing the internet.

Do you think you’re safe online? Do you pay close attention to the websites you visit?

Unscrupulous UX designers might use some dirty tactics to trick you into doing their evil bidding.

Don’t fall for these dirty tricks. Find out how to protect yourself by listening to this cautionary tale of UX dark patterns.

We want to give a huge shout-out to Kat Richards for writing an awesome article about UX dark patterns that inspired this story. Thanks Kat!

Helpful Links:
• A Very Scary UX Halloween Story: Dark Patterns and Bad UX

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Episode Thumbnail by Joshua Newton on Unsplash

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65. A Figma of Your Imagination Sep 22, 2022

Show notes

Lots of designers were shook this past week to hear Adobe acquired Figma for a whopping $20,000,000,000.

That’s $20 Billion. With a B.

Last week, Jeremy wrote a quick post on LinkedIn that got a decent amount of traction. The post was about how designers shouldn’t focus on the tools. A designer’s job should be tool agnostic in that UX designers should be able to solve a user’s problem with any tool in our UX toolkit.

Figma is just one of many options we have for designing and prototyping. And while it is a very nice tool, there are many others that do a fine job of designing and prototyping.

Ultimately many people are upset about the ideals we might be losing with the acquisition of Figma by Adobe. Figma was the scrappy upstart with a lot of great ideas and really well executed to boot. The young scrappy underdog was scooped up by the Big Evil Mega Corp.

Only time will tell what Adobe will do with Figma. But if push comes to shove, we’re sticking with Axure.

Helpful Links:
• Don’t base your career on a tool

Topics:
• 07:54 – Know what your tool is doing for you
• 08:30 – Why do we need a prototype?
• 10:24 – When your career revolves around a tool, the tool will always change
• 10:53 – You’re a good designer when you solve a problem for a user
• 12:10 – Should we talk tactics or concepts first?
• 14:37 – you can only learn so much in 6 months
• 15:22 – What comes first, hard or soft skills?
• 17:28 – Sometimes tools are applicable and sometimes they’re not.
• 23:43 – What if we taught boot camps around core concepts
• 27:33 – Lots of people are upset the philosophy of the Figma model is going away

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In the Dark: The Frightful Tale of Lost Lenny Sep 15, 2022

Show notes

Get hyped for Halloween with a special scary software story.

Ronald works the night shift at TurboTekSystems. Most nights are dull and boring, but one night something unexpected happens that will change Ronald’s life forever.

Tune in to this week’s episode to find out if Ronald can help find the lost Lenny.

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Episode thumbnail by Rei Yamazaki on Unsplash

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64. Formin’ Stormin’ Normin’ Performin’ Mournin’ Dawlin’ Sep 08, 2022

Show notes

Have you ever joined a new team and thought about how hard it was at first? No one seemed to know what they were doing and everything seemed like a mess.

Eventually, I bet your team started to get into a groove and start knocking out whatever it was they were working on.

Sadly, everything comes to an end and that amazing team you grew to love was broken up.

All of those phases are totally normal and pretty much every team goes through them. It turns out us humans are more alike than we care to think.

That last phase, mourning, can be an incredibly difficult one for people to go through, especially if you’ve worked together for a long period of time. There’s a good chance COVID may have caused your team to end abruptly, and there may have been a greater sense of loss due to a lack of closure.

This week Derek and Jeremy discuss these five phases and talk about some tips to help move your team along to the performing phase faster.

Topics:
• 04:27 – Forming
• 06:03 – Storming
• 07:15 – Norming
• 08:01 – Performing
• 09:08 – Mourning
• 14:01 – The way the team ends can change the length and how you mourn
• 18:12 – Forming can happen throughout a team’s life span as members join or leave
• 19:12 – Toxic team members can keep you stuck in storming
• 21:10 – Teams within larger teams can be in different phases at different times
• 22:49 – Your team’s maturity is tied to how closely your team is aligned to the goals.
• 27:30 – Be more prescriptive about behaviors and principles over actions

Helpful Links:
• Tuckman’s 5 Stages of Group Development and Tips To Use Them

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Photo by Andra C Taylor Jr on Unsplash

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63. How to Influence Change or The Three Joys of Work Sep 01, 2022

Show notes

Moving from one team to another can be hard. You and your team were in a groove and you liked the way you worked. You liked your process. You liked your standards. You liked your file structure.

You end up on a new team and everything they do is different. You think the way they do things could use some improvement. You decide to try to change something.

But change is hard.

Most people don’t like to be told their way of doing it is wrong. They really don’t like it when someone from outside their team points this out. For some, it can be especially troublesome when someone with less experience is the one who brings it up.

So changing the way you have always done something is hard. But what’s harder than change?

Influencing other people to change the way they’ve always done something. That’s really hard.

There are some techniques we can use to help us influence our teams and be the change we want to see.

Topics:
• 05:40 – How does one influence change on a team?
• 09:26 – There are different mental modes as we progress through our careers
• 15:36 – Think hard about what you’re trying to change
• 18:46 – Leaders should challenge team members to think critically about their idea
• 19:05 – What works for one team won’t work for every team
• 20:04 – Give the thing you think is wrong a chance
• 22:25 – If you want to build a boat…
• 23:18 – If you inspire your team the outcome might look completely different from your initial vision
• 24:03 – You may find that the thing you want to change isn’t even worth it
• 24:51 – Don’t shoot down ideas. People hate to be told no
• 27:11 – Being principled is more important than anything else
• 28:19 – Don’t be afraid to refine your principles
• 29:05 – Before you decide to change minds, ask tons of questions

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Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash

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After Hours: The Spotify Model Aug 26, 2022

Show notes

If you’ve been building software for a couple of years, the chances are good you’ve heard of “The Spotify Model” made up of Tribes, Squads, Chapters, and Guilds.

If you’ve been building software for a couple of years, the chances are good your organization leader read a blog post about it and decided to try it out for your team.

If that did happen to your team, well you know how it turned out…

This week, Derek breaks down the model and discusses what really happened at Spotify and why this idea never really worked there and ultimately abandoned the concept.

But why won’t this idea die? Is there any way to salvage the concept?

Helpful Links:
• Why Spotify Squads Are a Popular Failure for Product Teams

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Episode Thumbnail by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

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62. Indicator of Quality vs Measure of Quality Aug 19, 2022

Show notes

As a member of a software team, you’ve likely heard something like this before:

“Oh you don’t have X% code coverage?!” or “You don’t have an up-to-date persona?!” or “You haven’t done [INSERT INDUSTRY THING DU JOUR HERE]?!”

The trouble here isn’t the question. The trouble is the implied assumption that not having those things is a measure of the quality of your software, or worse the software team.

Recently our good buddy, Doc Norton had an intriguing post on Twitter (and also LinkedIn for all the #boomers).

Test coverage is not a measure of quality, but having test coverage is an indicator of quality.

So many people in the software industry today think that simply checking all the right boxes results in high-quality software.

If you’ve been doing this long enough, then you know that simply isn’t true.

If you’ve been doing this long enough, then you know that sometimes doing everything the way you were taught to do isn’t practical or simply isn’t necessary.

If you’ve been doing this long enough, then you have learned why these things are important, but you have also learned when it’s time to assume some risks and just move forward.

If you’ve been doing this long enough, then you’ve learned to be pragmatic and to not let perfect get in the way of the good enough.

Topics:
• 04:15 – Doc’s Quote
• 05:15 – Going through the process forces us to think about the whole
• 06:29 – How does this apply to UX?
• 09:04 – Simply ticking the boxes doesn’t make your software good
• 09:25 – The context and the situation are important
• 09:41 – The best code is not needing any code (or Double Dragon II)
• 10:49 – Beware the dark side of an indicator – the stereotype
• 12:22 – How do we avoid this pitfall?
• 14:24 – Don’t let perfect get in the way of the good enough
• 15:18 – It’s about knowing when to assume the risk
• 16:22 – If someone blanketly says something is good or bad, they probably don’t know
• 16:36 – Know when enough is enough
• 22:36 – Learn the rules before you break the rules

Helpful Links:
• Doc on LinkedIn if you’re not into Twitter
• Doc on Twitter if you’re not into LinkedIn
• 53. Great Scott!!! An interview with Doc Norton

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Episode thumbnail by Bekir Dönmez on Unsplash

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RetroByte: What Is UX Design? Why Does It Matter? Aug 04, 2022

Show notes

The UX profession has a problem. The state of UX maturity at a lot of companies is very very bad. In 2022, half of the UX professionals surveyed by Nielsen Norman Group said their company was at a three out of six on the NN/g’s Usability Maturity Model.

There are a lot of reasons for this, one of the driving factors, in our view, is a general lack of awareness of what “User Experience” is and what User Experience teams can help do for their respective companies.

Today, Jeremy attempts to set the record straight on what UX Design is and why it should matter to your entire team.

Topics:
• 01:30 – What is UX Designer?
• 02:35 – What UX Design is NOT
• 03:43 – Don Norman’s definition of UX
• 04:30 – The things we think of as “UX” are really processes that influence the users’ experiences
• 04:56 – Lots of things affect the users’ experiences
• 06:16 – Our job is to understand our users’ problems
• 08:03 – Let’s build a boat!
• 09:10 – We need to inspire our teams to build better software
• 09:37 – Ensuring great user experience is a team sport
• 10:56 – It’s not about shipping the bare minimum as fast as possible
• 11:20 – Calendly UX fails for some sets of users
• 14:40 – Yes, Visual Design is still very important but it won’t save bad UX

Helpful Links:
• What is UX design? 15 user experience design experts weigh in
• What is User Experience (UX) Design?
• Don Norman’s definition of User Experience (UX)

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Episode thumbnail by Karl Solano on Unsplash

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