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World-class software development requires far more than language/platform expertise and steady sprints. Join us as we describe time-tested, industry-proven software best practices at the team, organization, and leadership levels, sharing examples from recent engagements with software teams of all sizes. Construx is led by industry leader Steve McConnell, author of Code Complete and More Effective Agile. Software experts first and software trainers and consultants second, our team has seen what works and doesn’t work in hundreds of software organizations. Host Mark Griffin spent the first half of his career as an electrical engineer doing silicon hardware design and leading software automation teams. He moved into the sales side of software because he wanted to spread the value of what his company was building. It was supposed to be a one-year assignment that turned into the second half of his career. His balance of deeply technical skills and right-brain artistry also makes him a masterful home brewer!

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Check latest episodes from Inspect and Adapt podcast

#70 Setting a Context

2026/10/14

Does your project have a clear, referenceable definition of the scope of the product and the scope of the work? Do you have a non-ambiguous way of setting priority? Do you know how to initiate a product backlog? You can achieve all these things by properly setting a context. Join Contrux's Earl Beede and Steve Tockey as they Inspect & Adapt setting a context. Hosted by Mark Griffin.

#69 Intellectual Property

2026/09/15

Intellectual property (IP) is an important consideration in all software development, but what is it? Contrux's Steve Tockey has spent significant time looking into IP and how it impacts software development. Steve is joined by Construx's Earl Beede and Mark Griffin as they Inspect & Adapt the different categories of IP and their impact on software.

#68 Four Types of Scrum Work

2026/06/03

Everyone knows that a Scrum team should do the value-added work of the product backlog. But there are other types of work that may or may not make it into that backlog, yet these types of work are critical for a well-functioning Scrum team. Join Construx’s Earl Beede, Steve Tockey and Mark Griffin as they Inspect & Adapt four types of work that should be part of every sprint plan.

#67 Measurement Theory

2026/05/13

Measurement is all about assigning a value or a symbol to an attribute of an entity. Doing it right can reduce project risk. Join Construx's Earl Beede, Steve Tockey and Mark Griffin as they Inspect & Adapt how measurement theory impacts your project, potentially increasing risk if you get it wrong.

#66 The Sunk Cost Fallacy

2026/04/14

Why do we keep working on something long past the point where we should have stopped? Join Construx’s Earl Beede, Steve Tockey and Mark Griffin as they Inspect & Adapt the various ways we trick ourselves into thinking, “Well, we already spent this much time or money; we can’t afford to lose that!” Find out how much the sunk cost fallacy is costing you.

#65 Estimating the Unknown

2026/03/10

"How do you estimate something you’ve never done before?" Construx gets that question a lot. This podcast identifies how to approach estimating when you have a lot of unknown items. Join Construx's Earl Beede and Steve Tockey as they look at techniques for making the unknown less unknown, bounding the uncertainty, and planning through the unknown. Hosted by Mark Griffin

#64 Design by Contract

2026/02/10

Design by Contract is used by advanced developers to lower defects and reduce complexity, making development faster. Construx staff experience for over two decades in a variety of languages ranging from Assembler to Java is consistent with these benefits. Join Steve Tockey, Earl Beede, and Mark Griffin as they discuss why Design by Contract is so beneficial, with particular emphasis on how it reduces code defects, makes remaining defects easier to find and fix, and reduces complexity.

#63 Acceptance Criteria

2026/01/06

Acceptance criteria are the criteria for acceptance, or so the helpful online definitions say. But what does that really mean? And is the common—almost universal—advice to write little functional snippets correct? Join Steve Tockey and Earl Beede as they Inspect & Adapt Acceptance Criteria. They'll take a look from several angles and suggest ways to make acceptance criteria much more useful for your projects. Hosted by Mark Griffin.

#62 Risk Management

2025/12/02

Project risk management was a critical part of well-run software development projects late in the last century. With the coming of agile development practices, however, risk management disappeared. Or did it? Steve Tockey and Earl Beede Inspect & Adapt the role of project risk management on modern development projects. They identify when it is still needed, where it is still happening, and how it can improve your project outcomes. Hosted by Mark Griffin.

#61 Scaling Patterns

2025/10/15

Scaling software development is hard. Several patterns have emerged that moderately successful organizations use when scaling. The patterns focus on how to package the work, where and when to make decisions, and how to get teams to collaborate. Join Mark Griffin, Earl Beede, and Steve Tockey as they explore scaling patterns.

#60 The F Word in Software

2025/09/10

All development organizations use software's F word: Feature. But what they actually mean by the word is often unclear, since the software industry has two—somewhat incompatible—definitions of feature. Join host Mark Griffin as he asks Construx's Steve Tockey and Earl Beede to explain those two different uses of the word feature on development projects.

#59 Total Project Quality

2025/06/03

Total Project Quality, Construx's course on how to insert quality throughout a work effort, hasn't always gotten the traction it deserves. Why not? In this podcast, we examine the subject of quality and our (perhaps poorly-named) Total Project Quality seminar. Join Construx's Steve Tockey, Earl Beede, and Mark Griffin as they Inspect & Adapt the Total Project Quality course, the topic of quality in general, and the practical things you can do to improve quality and efficiency on your projects.

#58 Team Organization

2025/05/06

We develop software primarily on teams, but how do you develop the teams? Construx's Mark Griffin and Earl Beede Inspect & Adapt the different ways you can organize your development team. They look at the pros and cons of different approaches and even offer some help for when you're stuck with a team organization that isn't the best.

#57 Risk-Based Testing

2025/04/08

How should you spend your always-limited testing resources? Is one part of the product more important to test than another? Construx's Steve Tockey and Earl Beede join host Mark Griffin in looking at one approach to answering those questions: risk-based testing. Steve and Earl look at how to do risk-based testing along with its pros and cons.

#56 Product Visions to Product Roadmaps

2025/03/04

In an earlier webinar, Construx's Earl Beede took on many organizations that create product visions with phrases like, be the world's best ‘x’ or dazzle our customers. Not bad ideas but pretty much worthless in helping you make day-to-day decisions on what work is the most important for your business. This is a follow-up, with Earl and Mark Griffin delving a bit deeper into some of the questions that came up during the webinar. You can find the webinar here: https://youtu.be/yVA-k6aWE0k