← Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Xmas Special: Software Industry Transformation - Why Software Development Must Mature With Vasco Duarte
00:17:14
Loading summary
Transcript10 lines
- [00:04]
A
Hey there, Agile adventurer, just a quick question. What if, for the price of a fancy coffee or half a pizza, you could unlock over 700 hours of the best agile content on the planet? That's audio, video, E courses, books, presentations, all that you can think of. But you can also join live calls with world class practitioners and hang out in a flame war free and AI slop clean slack with the sharpest minds in the game. Oh, and yes, you get direct access to me, Vasko, your Scrum Master Toolbox podcast. No, this is not a drill. It's this Scrum Master Toolbox membership. And it's your unfair advantage in the Agile world. So if you want to know more, go check out scrummastertoolbox.org membership. That's scrummastertoolbox.org Membership. And check out all the goodies we have for you. Do it now. But if you're not doing it now, let's listen to the podcast.
- [01:12]
B
Hi everyone. Welcome to the 2025 Christmas Special, a five episode series where we do a deep dive into how software as an industry needs to transform. We will cover what's wrong, what we've already learned and and what we need to try next. There's a lot to cover this week and I hope you have a nice warm beverage with you in this cold 2025 Christmas. So let's get started. And let me get started with an example that hits close to home. I run a small consulting and media business. You know about the podcast as you are listening to this, but what you might not know is that even if this is a small business, there's a huge dependency on software. Let me give you a couple of examples. I run my websites on WordPress, but not all, just most of them. There's some other software involved. Then I have Kajabi, which is the membership service that I use that delivers the courses, the books, the videos that some of you are consuming every single day. We have plenty of hours of content there. I don't know exactly, but many, many hours of content there, including all of our online conferences and also now our in person conference, the Global Agile Summit videos. We use Stripe, which is a payment service. We use Kaderno for accounting. And of course we use something you're all very familiar with, email, calendar, also CRM and even AI Assist to help with content and other tasks like developing our own private tools and software. Without any single piece of this big stack of software, I couldn't operate. And my business is a tiny business. When you scale this up to reality, software isn't just a tech thing anymore. It's something that runs our societies. And here's the problem. We're managing this critical infrastructure with tools designed for building ships and railways in the 1800s. And that has to change. We're going to discuss the oscillation pattern in the evolution of the software industry. The key idea is that software improves in waves. There's a technology leap, then there's a process adaptation, then there's another technology leap, then process needs to adapt to that technology leap, and so on. For example, COBOL moved us towards high level languages in the 60s and 70s. We went from machine code to COBOL and Fortran, just to give another example, which at the time was revolutionary. But then we hit the wall. We could write much more code, but we couldn't manage its complexity. And that led to yet another software crisis and eventually structured programming, then object oriented programming, and then processes. A lot of the Agile pioneers came from the object oriented programming community, specifically the Smalltalk community. So as you can see, even though there are some technology changes and process changes that kind of feed on each other, now, AI makes writing code absurdly easy. We write code without even looking at the code. The famous vibe coding. And we have a whole series of episodes on the podcast about that, so be sure to check it out. But here's the catch. Writing code was never the biggest challenge for us. Here's the facts and fallacies of software engineering realization. This is a book published or written by Robert Glass, where he talks about maintenance typically consuming 40 to 80% of software costs. The link to the book is in the show notes, if you want to learn more about it. So maintenance consuming 40 to 80% of software costs. If you think about it, you start to realize that there's something fundamentally different from software when compared to building airline airplanes or bridges or factories or highways, whatever that might be. For example, AI amplifies our ability to create software, but it doesn't solve the fundamental process of maintaining, involving and enhancing that software over its lifetime. And if you ask me, I think we're close to another big process evolution, just because AI came and changed the equation of what it is to write software. So here's why software is different from the previous industries that we've talked about, like shipbuilding, airline, airplane building, buildings, bridges, highways, whatever that might be. Most of those industries use the technology we today call project management, which assumes largely fixed scope, known solutions up front, and definable, quote, unquote. Done. We'll explore that in a minute. For example, the Sydney Opera House, which is Perhaps very close to software in that it had immense complexity and lot of iterations during it is its construction phase. It was designed in 57, it was quote unquote completed in 73. It was indeed 10 times over budget. And the architect resigned and was severely affected in their reputation. But once built, it stands. It's a beautiful building that everyone should visit if they have a chance. Maintenance is there. There's a lot of maintenance in any building, but it's minimal compared to the original costs. The design is not changing all the time. And the audiences can continue to enjoy beautiful opera music at the Sydney Opera House. Now contrast that with software. Think of Slack. Slack is a communications tool, and it started as an internal tool for a gaming company. The company was called glitch. In 2013, the game failed, but they noticed that their internal communication tool was special. They pivoted entirely. In 2014, they launched. But they didn't stop there. They continuously evolved what many of us know as Slack today. Each addition to the functionality set changed what was possible in terms of organizational communication. And in 2021, Salesforce acquired Slack for US$27.7 billion billion US dollars, one of the largest software acquisitions at the time. Slack became institutionalized in many organizations. I know some of them that I work with use Slack for almost everything, almost entirely replacing email, for example. And it's become embedded into how millions of organizations and people operate daily. It's a massive revenue driver for its parent company, Salesforce, precisely because it kept evolving with business needs. And as they were being discovered, if they treated it like a construction project, it would never have reached that value. Here's the key difference. Software creates a possibility space that didn't exist before and that keeps on expanding. I mean, we all know that when we add yet more features to an already very large software system, the key thing is that for software, the value compounds. It grows through continuous evolution. And that is, I think we could agree, massively different from how buildings, whether they are living buildings, office buildings, entertainment buildings, or even transportation buildings like highways or or railways evolve. And this leads us to a critical insight. Software is now infrastructure for our society. It's not optional. It's not just for tech companies or gigs. For example, in 2024, CrowdStrike had a major incident. In July of that year, a faulty software update from that company crashed what is expected or estimated to be around 8.5 million Windows computers globally. But that wasn't its major impact. If you think about it, Airlines grounded flights, hospitals canceled surgeries, banks couldn't process transactions. Some 911 services went down. The global cost is estimated at more than 10 billion. It lasted hours, but could it had effects that rippled for days? And in fact, some of us in the industry know they rippled for months and are still creating ripples in the industry. And this wasn't a cyber attack of any sort. It was purely a software update gone wrong. And it's not isolated. AWS had major outages in 2021, 2023 and just recently in 2025 that took down major portions of the Internet. Cloudflare had another similar outage in 2025, which similarly cascaded across services we use daily all over the Internet. We have to accept that we're as a society completely dependent on software for many of the things that we take for granted. Entertainment, communication, financial transactions, emergency services, you name it. The stakes are extremely high. We are realizing that when software fails, our society fails as well. And we cannot keep managing this critical infrastructure with tools that were designed for building physical things with fixed requirements. Project management was brilliant for its era, but that era isn't this one. So how do we mature as an industry? Well, here's what I'm proposing. This week we need to face up to four critical challenges. In episode two, we'll explore the project management trap, why we keep thinking in terms of projects when software is in reality, never done like a project should be. We'll also talk about how this mindset, the project mindset, actively prevents us from treating software as a living capability. And we'll explore what some software native management tools look like instead. In episode three, we'll take a look at what's already working that we need to amplify. We've already discovered better approaches, now we need to make sure they stick and they get used in practice. Episode four, we'll talk about the organizational immune system. If better approaches exist, why aren't they universal? And we'll talk about some of the reasons why the agile movement needs to step up and take responsibility for the necessary change in our industry. And in episode five, we'll take a deep dive into software native organizations. It's not just about using agile on teams. It's about transforming how software powered businesses function. And that's why software is far too important for our society to keep getting it wrong. Getting it we have too much knowledge that we need to explain to make digestible and of course, to help its adoption. This is not about selling certificates or frameworks, it's about understanding how we support our industry's growth. So over the next four episodes, we'll build this case together. Because the software industry doesn't just need better tools, it needs to become a much more mature industry. And that starts with understanding why we keep falling into the same trap. Just next Tomorrow, if you're listening this On Monday in episode two, we'll explore the Project Management Trap, which why the tools that worked brilliantly for building bridges actively sabotage us when building software. We'll look at why project thinking feels so right while it's actually wrong for software, and what happens when we treat living capabilities like construction projects. Because until we understand why we keep reaching out for the wrong tools, we will not be able to stop doing that. So join me next time for episode two, the Project Management Trap. Oh oh, and Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.
- [14:58]
A
All right, I hope you liked this episode. But before you hit next episode, here's the deal. This podcast is powered by people like you, the members who wanted more than just inspiration. They wanted real tools and real connection to people who are practicing Agile. Every day we're talking access to over 700 hours of agile Gold, CTO level strategy talks, Summit keynotes, live workshops, E courses, Deep Dive interviews, books, and if you're into no Estimates, we got the pioneers of no Estimates in those Deep Dive interviews as well. Agile Business Intelligence, Creating Product Visions, coaching your product owner courses, you name it. You'll get invites to monthly live Q&As with agile pioneers and practitioners, plus a private Slack community which is free of.
- [15:58]
B
All of that AI slop you see.
- [16:00]
A
Everywhere and course without the flame wars. It's a community of practitioners that want to learn and thrive together. It's the best place to connect with community and learn together.
- [16:14]
B
So if this podcast has helped you.
- [16:16]
A
Before, imagine what you will get from this podcast membership. So head on over to scrummastertoolbox.org members membership and join the community that's shaping the future of Agile. We have so much for you, so check out all the details@scrummastertoolbox.org membership because listening is great.
- [16:42]
B
It's important.
- [16:43]
A
But doing it together, that's next level.
- [16:47]
B
I'll see you in the community. Slack we really hope you liked our show. And if you did, why not rate this podcast on Stitcher or itunes. Share this podcast and let other Scrum masters know about this valuable resource for their work. Remember that sharing is caring.