The Chicken Story with Brian Guthrie

Does process change need to be super complicated? Does change work best when it comes from within a team rather than an external influence? And how can we improve conversations around process change from being less inference-based to more data-driven?

All these questions are raised as we hear 'the chicken story' from Brian Guthrie in today's episode of Scaling Tech, which explores how a synchronistic process can lead to more staff synchronicity, and even engineer empathy!

Brian Guthrie is the CTO and Founder at Orgspace – a people platform for software teams. He's learned to look to improve process through internal change. 

And so while Brian doesn't come in and wave a magic wand and tell teams what to do, he has previously bought a rubber chicken and a bell, and waited while engineers sit on their hands until the next step in the process is ready to be implemented and evaluated. 

'The chicken story' is a neat lesson in being explicit about your goals during process change. Is it okay for staff to wring a rubber chicken's neck while also ringing a bell to say their job is done? Find out in today's insightful episode! Please join us.

"Asynchronicity has a way of hiding slow processes." ~ Brian Guthrie

In This Episode:

- Understanding the goal of engineers being responsible for developing and performing their own merges

- Brian buys his own rubber chicken – and bell!

- How to improve process through internal change

- The need to change the conversation from inference to data-driven

- How to create empathy among your engineers

- What would Brian do differently now? 

- Why process change needn't always be super complex 

And more!

Resources:

- The Chicken Story - https://www.jamesshore.com/v2/blog/2006/continuous-integration-on-a-dollar-a-day

Connect with Brian Guthrie:

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bguthrie/

- Twitter - Brian Guthrie (@bguthrie) / X

Connect with Debbie Madden:

- Website - https://www.stride.build/

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/debbiemadden1/

- LinkedIn Page - https://www.linkedin.com/company/stride-build/