The Leanpub Podcast 🎙️ Feat. Max Guernsey, III, Co-Author of Ready: Why Most Software Projects Fail

Episode Details

In this Leanpub Podcast episode, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp interviews Max Guernsey, III, co-author of Ready: Why Most Software Projects Fail and How to Fix It and co-founder of Producore.

With decades of experience in the software industry, Max shares insights from his diverse career across technologies and domains. He discusses why so many software projects fail - often due to the gap between strategy and execution - and how organizations can address these problems through better alignment and learning.

The conversation explores Max’s work in consulting, his perspective on Agile practices, and his emphasis on creating the conditions for teams to succeed. He highlights how focusing on readiness, rather than rushing to execution, can dramatically improve outcomes. Along the way, Max shares practical advice on building healthier organizations, fostering adaptive learning, and making Agile principles work in practice rather than in theory.

This episode is full of valuable insights for software developers, managers, and leaders who want to understand why failure is so common in projects and how to build the kind of environments where teams can thrive..

This interview was recorded on August 25, 2025.

About the Book

As you read this, some software development organization is setting itself up for failure.

Ready solves an invisible problem that is holding back most engineering groups: premature implementation. It does this by introducing the Requirements Maturation Flow (RMF), a structured gating mechanism that can be integrated into any SDLC to ensure that implementation work only starts when it should and ends when verifiably done.

For example, most teams bury fundamentally inestimable tasks like figuring out what a requirement actually means in the implementation phase of a work item. With RMF, this becomes first-class work that is tracked and must be completed before a requirement can be implemented.

Software teams that struggle with rework, delays, building the wrong thing, or otherwise failing to meet objectives can use RMF to go from endless cycles of waste, scope creep, and shifting requirements to smooth, consistent progress toward value.

RMF doesn't require you to sacrifice Agile values. Quite the opposite. We find that most teams don’t realize they’ve drifted from Agile values—until they apply these techniques. For many, RMF finally makes Agile work the way it was meant to.

About the Authors

Luniel de Beer

Luniel de Beer is a software product and delivery systems architect with over 15 years of experience helping teams work with clarity, confidence, and accountability. He is the creator of the Requirements Maturation Flow (RMF) and the originator of Producore’s Capability Management system, both designed to address the missing foundations beneath modern software product delivery. His work replaces vague requirements and broken handoffs with structured collaboration, traceability, and readiness gating.

Luniel also envisioned PKB-Driven Development (PKBDD), a system for managing persistent product knowledge, and has worked alongside his Producore co-founder, Max Guernsey, III, to advance a scalable, rigorous approach to Behavior-Driven Development (BDD). Their integrated system combines behavioral specification, capability modeling, and product traceability to support end-to-end delivery across teams and organizations.

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Max Guernsey, III

Max Guernsey, III is a software architect, educator, and co-founder of Producore, a consultancy dedicated to fixing delivery failures through structural and technical rigor. With over two decades of experience in object‑oriented design, refactoring, test‑driven development, and design patterns, he has both delivered mission‑critical systems and coached engineering teams at scale. His work blends deep technical practices with behavioral and process transformation to help organizations achieve sustainable delivery excellence.

Together, Max and Luniel have developed an integrated approach to software delivery that combines behavioral specification, capability modeling, and structured readiness gating to support end-to-end alignment—from product intent to engineering execution.

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Leanpub Book LAUNCH 🚀 Ready: Why Most Software Projects Fail and How to Fix It by Luniel de Beer and Max Guernsey, III

Clips From This Episode of the Leanpub Podcast