Michael Callaghan

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[Michael Callaghan @walkingriver]

My latest book is live and available now. This one is all about navigating the harsh realities of enterprise software projects, which claim to be "agile," but not really.

[Michael Callaghan @walkingriver]

Sprints, standups, fixed fall scope, sprint-end QA batches, velocity on a leaderboard. If most match, you have a map of pressure, not a verdict on the team.

[Michael Callaghan @walkingriver]

This is Gemma 4:12B running on a 16 GB MacBook Air M1. It sat for two hours before outputting anything but Working. Now it’s generating about 1 word every 30-40 seconds. Memory use on the MacBook is over 21GB.

[Michael Callaghan @walkingriver]

I built a @cursor_ai automation that reviews all my Jira and GitHub contributions over the past week and updates a `brag` file for my manager.

[Michael Callaghan @walkingriver]

I think I have something configured wrong. Supposedly, Gemma4:12B fits comfortably inside of 16GB.

[Michael Callaghan @walkingriver]

@twwilliams I was running it inside of Codex against Ollama + Gemma 4:12B. I asked it to refactor a web page by editing a button. Two hours later it was still thinking, so I killed it. I'm now trying something a little simpler in VS Code against the same Ollama + Gemma.

[Michael Callaghan @walkingriver]

Hopping on this bandwagon. I'm actually installing this on my 6-year-old MacBook Air M1. I'll report back soon with how well (or not it's working).

[ollama @ollama]

.@GoogleDeepMind's Gemma 4 - 12B is available on Ollama!

Chat:
ollama run gemma4:12b-mlx

Hermes Agent:
ollama launch hermes --model gemma4:12b-mlx

Claude Code:
ollama launch claude --model gemma4:12b-mlx

and more 👇👇👇

(Note, this currently works via MLX)

[Michael Callaghan @walkingriver]

Velocity is a planning input, not a productivity score. Document what happened in review before the chart has to speak for itself.

[Michael Callaghan @walkingriver]

@KyleHebertMusic @intheworldofai Running it now on a 16GB M1 MacBook Air. "Working" is a bit optimistic. I asked it to replace a button in an HTML file. An hour in, it's still "thinking" and the Mac is warmer than it's ever been. Maybe I should have started with something simpler. 🙃

[Michael Callaghan @walkingriver]

I gave it a single prompt to update a button on a static webpage. It's been 30 minutes and it's still thinking. But it IS still thinking.

[Michael Callaghan @walkingriver]

@m_wacker Hahaha! I hadn't considered that!

[Michael Callaghan @walkingriver]

What do you think is worse? Comparing two teams' sprint velocity or comparing their number of git commits per sprint? 😬

[Chris B. Behrens @chrisbbehrens]

@walkingriver Goodhart's Law strikes again

[Michael Callaghan @walkingriver]

@krishravela In some ways, I miss working for startups. I was with a company called eTelemetry back in 2008. I could draw a very solid line between my code and our sales.

I added a new feature based on sales feedback. They sent me to trade shows to demo it. I did it all. 😃

[Michael Callaghan @walkingriver]

When asked to add new work mid-sprint, try this: "We can take it. What should we drop?" Prioritization when nobody else is doing it in the moment.

[Michael Callaghan @walkingriver]

I asked it to keep the change small. It refactored half the repo and apologized for any inconvenience.

[Michael Callaghan @walkingriver]

@chrisbbehrens But not between two different teams. From sprint to sprint within a single team, sure.

[Michael Callaghan @walkingriver]

@chrisbbehrens Had another project once where the manager proposed comparing developers by the number of their commits per week. That one blew up fast, as I'm sure you can imagine. 🤣

[Michael Callaghan @walkingriver]

A stakeholder asked us to raise velocity twenty percent. I said we could add twenty percent to all estimates. Joke. Not entirely a joke. The number is not the work. Not sure many people get that.

[Michael Callaghan @walkingriver]

Mid-sprint request from a manager: "Reprioritize everything" and "keep the same deadline." What has worked for you, even a little?

[Michael Callaghan @walkingriver]

If your AI setup has twelve config files and the team cannot explain it in one standup you have a hobby not a workflow. What is the smallest setup that stuck?

[Michael Callaghan @walkingriver]

Story estimation often goes like this: team says eight, management writes five, delivery is thirteen, everyone acts surprised. The number was always a guess, not a promise.

[Michael Callaghan @walkingriver]

@BYUFlorida We went about a month after it opened. We had a blast.