Troubleshooting Agile
Troubleshooting Agile is a problem-solving session for agile teams. Jeffrey Fredrick and Douglas Squirrel look at common problems agile teams face and provide practical, immediately useful advice for getting back on track.
10
Speeding Up Agile Hardware Projects with Krunal Patel
Are you committing massive resources before testing reality? In this episode, Squirrel is joined by guest, technical program manager, Krunal Patel, who explains how he developed an exciting new car feature in less than a third of the time of a typical waterfall cycle, using cheap prototyping and rapid feedback loops. Join us to learn how you can use “soft-tooling” for your software. Links: Krunal Patel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krunalpatel1860/ -------------------------------------------------- You'll find free videos and practice material, plus our book Agile Conversations, at agileconversations.com And we'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you...
Your Demo Needs a Stakeholder
Are your daily software demos an absolute snore-fest? Good. That’s exactly why you should be holding them! In this week's episode, Squirrel and Jeffrey react to listener feedback on the fear of daily demos. We explore how exposing raw back-end outputs can act as an "unfreezing event" that forces middle management to get out of the way and lets you build true team cohesion. Links: - Our slack channel: https://agile-conversations.slack.com/archives/C012TKN2X42 - Previous episode on The Fear of Daily Demos: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/the-fear-of-daily-demos - Action Learning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ac...
Misha and his WorryBot
Are you using AI to avoid difficult conversations, or to prompt better ones? In this episode, Squirrel and Jeffrey are joined by Misha Globerman, who tells us about the WorryBot he built to spot and prevent weaknesses in his systems, track missed accountability and guide real conversation with his team. Links: - Previous episode on LLMs: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/llms-writing-for-llms-have-you - Misha Glouberman’s website: https://www.mishaglouberman.com/ - Misha Glouberman’s Substack: https://mishaglouberman.substack.com/ - Misha Glouberman’s X: https://x.com/mishaglouberman -------------------------------------------------- You'll find free videos and practice material, plus our book Agile Conver...
LLMs writing for LLMs: have you tried talking?
Are you token maxing or actually learning? Squirrel and Jeffrey have observed a wild new trend where AIs write specs, AIs summarize them for engineers, and AIs write the code. Nobody is actually talking to each other! Join us as we make the case for human-to-human collaboration, not just bots collating text for other bots, on this week’s episode of Troubleshooting Agile. Links - Our book, Agile Conversations: https://agileconversations.com/ - The Tenerife Airport Disaster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster - Crew Resource Management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management -------------------------------------------------- You'll find fr...
The Fear of Daily Demos
Is your tech team reluctant to show you daily progress? It’s because they’re scared of failure! Listen to this episode of Troubleshooting Agile to learn how leaders can use emotional intelligence and universal demoing to break down the "status report" paranoia and unlock rapid delivery, with your hosts Squirrel and Jeffrey. -------------------------------------------------- You'll find free videos and practice material, plus our book Agile Conversations, at agileconversations.com And we'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show: email us at info@agileconversations.com -------------------------------------------------- About Your Hosts Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick joined forc...
Why You Should Shift-Right Your Testing
Are your software tests a beautiful work of fiction? In this episode of Troubleshooting Agile, Squirrel and Jeffrey question the obsession with "shift left" and instead make the case for shifting right i.e. testing right in production where the real world happens. Join us for a discussion on AI logging, Etsy's continuous real-world tests, and why keeping your code in a sterile sandbox is costing you money. Links: CITCON 2026 Discussion “Why shift-right is a great approach for testing” https://citconf.com/wiki/index.php?title=Why_shift-right_is_a_great_approach_for_testing - CITCON: https://citconf.com/ -------------------------------------------------- You...
When shouldn’t you use AI?
Are you treating your AI like an expert consultant or an overly enthusiastic intern? In this week’s episode of Troubleshooting Agile, we’re Live from CITCON:AI in Helsinki, Finland, unpacking the critical boundaries of AI ownership and risk. Join us to learn why AI doesn't create new problems, it just accelerates our old ones, and why you need human "centaurs" to maintain accountability when real money is on the line. Links - CITCON:AI 2026 sessions: https://citconf.com/wiki/index.php?title=CITCONEurope2026Sessions - System 1 vs System 2: https://fs.blog/daniel-kahneman-the-two-systems/ - KYC: Know Your Client: https://www...
Learning From The Lizardmen Questions
Are you answering questions instead of questioning assumptions? Because you might be missing your biggest product wins! In this episode, Squirrel and Jefrey discuss why the best response to a client or user question is sometimes mu - unasking the question entirely. Join us to hear about Gojko Adzic's "lizard optimization" (and what 4% of the population believing in lizardmen has to do with your software), how the photo-sharing site Flickr was created entirely by mistake, and our own recent user-interface nightmare trying to record this very podcast. Links - “Don’t Answer The Question First:” https://lalitm.com/post/dont-answer-the-first-question/ - Liza...
Greatest Hits: Teaching Agile Again and Again and Again
Do you find yourself covering the same agile lessons over and over again? Back in CITCON 2021, a special guest brought up how he’s been talking about the same problems for 20 years. And five years later, we imagine not much has changed! Listen to this re-run episode for our thoughts on this topic with Squirrel’s analogy on how teaching long division turns out to be surprisingly helpful. LINKS: - CITCON:AI Helsinki: https://citconf.com/helsinki2026/ - Moore, Crossing the Chasm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm - Chris Matts, community of needs: https://snowbirdcollaboratory.org/community-of-needs/ - Al...
Against Product Chatbots
Is your chatbot helping your customers or putting them off? In this episode, Squirrel is wound up about the chat-first interface trend in software, which hinders more than it helps. Tune in to get Squirrel and Jeffrey’s thoughts on how you can use “book smarts” vs “street smarts” to determine whether you need a chatbot, and what you should be offering instead. LINKS: - The Dimensionality Problem: https://deadneurons.substack.com/p/why-the-most-valuable-things-you - CITCON:AI in Helsinki: https://citconf.com/helsinki2026/ -------------------------------------------------- You'll find free videos and practice material, plus our book Agile Conversations, at agileconversations.com And we'd love...
