Finding Flow in Software Development with Mik Kersten

Innovation and the Digital Enterprise

Burnout can cripple any organization and for many technology firms, it’s the standard by which business is conducted. Dr. Mik Kersten believes that the key to happy software engineers (and the executives that manage them) is to create flow using a framework.

Mik joins Patrick and Shelli for a discussion on flow diagnostics, how teams respond to being measured, and why it’s important to understand people’s energies. Listen for his thoughts on flow framework and pick up his book Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework, to learn more.

• (01:47) - Tasktop in a nutshell
• (04:00) - Measuring the flow of value
• (09:10) - Team measurement
• (16:29) - Elastic capacity of human ability
• (22:59) - Happiness and trust metrics
• (25:32) - Hand-offs and dependencies
• (28:10) - Making the case with data
• (31:40) - Heightened uncertainty
• (35:51) - Project to Product

Dr. Mik Kersten is the CEO of Tasktop Technologies, creator and leader of the Eclipse Mylyn open source project, and inventor of the task-focused interface. As a research scientist at Xerox PARC, Mik implemented the first aspect-oriented programming tools for AspectJ. In 2018, Mik launched his book, Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework, with concepts to help drive software at the pace of an organization's business.

Mik has been an Eclipse committer since 2002, is an elected member of the Eclipse Board of Directors and serves on the Eclipse Architecture and Planning councils. Mik's thought leadership on task-focused collaboration makes him a popular speaker at software conferences, and he was voted a JavaOne Rock Star speaker in 2008 and 2009. Mik enjoys building tools that offload our brains and make it easier to get creative work done.

If you'd like to receive new episodes as they're published, please subscribe to Innovation and the Digital Enterprise in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review in Apple Podcasts. It really helps others find the show.

Podcast episode production by Dante32.