Podcasts about agile conference

Is Agile still relevant in today’s fast-paced world? Brian and Joshua Kerievsky reveal the four game-changing principles of Modern Agile that prioritize safety, empowerment, and continuous value delivery. Overview In this episode, Brian Milner sits down with Joshua Kerievsky, a pioneer in the Agile community and the creator of Modern Agile. They discuss how Agile practices have evolved, the critical role of safety and empowerment, and how to deliver value continuously in today’s fast-paced world. Don’t miss these insights into creating better teams, products, and results through simplicity and experimentation. References and resources mentioned in the show: Joshua Kerievsky Industrial Logic Joy of Agility by Joshua Kerievsky Modern Agile #33 Mob Programming with Woody Zuill #51: The Secrets of Team Safety with Julie Chickering Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg The Lean Startup by Eric Ries Experimentation Matter: Unlocking the Potential of New Technologies for Innovation by Stefan H. Thomke Agile For Leaders Mike Cohn’s Better User Stories Course Accurate Agile Planning Course Join the Agile Mentors Community Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Joshua Kerievsky is the founder and CEO of Industrial Logic and author of Joy of Agility. An early pioneer of Extreme Programming, Lean Software Development, and Lean Startup, Joshua is passionate about helping people achieve genuine agility through principle-based approaches like Modern Agile. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're back. And this is another episode of the Agile Mentors podcast. I'm here as I always am. I am Brian Milner and today I am joined by Joshua Kerievsky and really excited to have Joshua here with us. Welcome in Joshua. Joshua Kerievsky (00:16) Thank you so much, Brian. Happy to be here. Brian (00:19) Very excited for Joshua to be here. Joshua's been around for a while. He's been doing this for a long time. He said, you know, when we were talking before, and he's been involved with Agile before, it was called Agile. And, you know, that probably tells you all you need to know there. But a couple other things here about him, just so that you kind of can place him a little bit. His company is Industrial Logic, Inc. and he's the CEO and founder of that company. He has a book called Joy of Agility that's out there that I highly recommend. It's a really great book. And he's also closely associated with something that maybe you've been aware of, maybe you've heard of, maybe you haven't, but something called Modern Agile. And that's what I thought we'd focus on here for our discussion is really to try to understand a little bit about it. especially for those of you, maybe you haven't heard of it, haven't been around it before. So... Why don't we start there, Joshua? Tell us a little bit about what was the need that was trying to be filled with something like modern Agile. Joshua Kerievsky (01:19) Well, it goes back to a conference I attended in Prague back in around 2015. And I was giving a speech, a keynote speech there, and that ended. And then I went and said, well, I'm going to go join the OpenSpace. And I was just looking at what people were talking about at the OpenSpace. And at that point in time, I had already been experimenting with a ton of stuff that just kind of different from what we had been doing 10 years earlier or even later than that. I mean, just this was new things that we were doing, whether it was continuous deployment or ideas from lean startup or ideas from the pop and dykes and lean concepts applied to agility or just a lot of things that were just different. And none of the sessions I was seeing in the open space seemed to be talking about any of that stuff, like giving up story points or moving away from sprints until continuous flow. just nothing was being talked about. So I just said, well, I'm going to host a session, and I'll call it, I don't know, a modern Agile. And so that's as far as I got in terms of thinking about the name. I just wanted to run a session where we could talk about, there's a lot of new things we're doing that kind of display some of the older ideas. And they're very useful, I found. So the session ended up getting a lot of attention. 60, 70 people showed up there. So we had a big group. And it was well received. People were fascinated by the stuff that they weren't aware of. And so I then repeated this open space event in Berkeley. Like a month later, was Agile Open Door Cal in Berkeley was running and did it again. And again, there was tremendous interest. in this, so much so that I decided to write a blog and wrote the blog and started getting more conversations happening. And that sort of began the movement of describing this thing called Modern Agile. And it took a few twists and turns in the beginning, but it wasn't sort of, I guess, if anything, I felt like Agile needed to be a little more simple. in terms of what we were explaining, because it was starting to get very complex with frameworks, enterprise frameworks coming along like safe and just too many moving parts. And so what ended up happening is I wrote some things and people started to notice, there's kind of like four things there that are really valuable. One of them was The names changed a little bit over time. But anyway, what ended up was four principles emerged. And that really became modern Agile. Brian (03:58) That's awesome. just for listeners here, I've pitched attending conferences in the past. If you've listened to this podcast, you've heard me say that, and I'll create things come out of that. And here's an example, right? This is something that was open space discussion. Open space, if you're not familiar with that, at conferences, can, if there's an open space day or a couple of days, then anyone can present any topic they want. And whoever shows up is who shows up. And this one got a lot of attention. And a movement grew from this open space topic, which is awesome. So let's talk. You mentioned there's four principles here. And I like the distinction here we're making also between the frameworks and the practices versus the cultural aspects or the philosophy behind it. And returning to those roots a little bit more from what Agile originally was. So you mentioned there's kind of four areas of this. Let's walk our way through those. I know the first one, or one of the first ones here is make people awesome. So help us understand, what do you mean by make people awesome? Joshua Kerievsky (04:59) Probably the most controversial of principles, because you'll get people coming along saying, wait a minute, people are already awesome. What are you talking about? And it comes from my, I'm a big fan of Kathy Sierra. And her blog was incredible. And her book, she wrote a book called Badass, Making Users Awesome. And in her book, she was really wonderfully clear about Brian (05:07) You Joshua Kerievsky (05:24) that teams that build products ought to focus on the user of the products more than the product itself. In other words, she would say, don't try to create the world's best camera. Try to create the world's best photographers. Big subtle difference there. Like that is focusing so much on empowering the users, making them awesome at their work or whatever they're doing, whether it's art or accounting or whatever, whatever your product does, how can you give them something that elevates their skills, that gets them to a point of awesomeness faster? And that's what she was talking about. So I thought, what a wonderful message. And initially, I used language like make users awesome. you know, having been an entrepreneur myself and created products and sold them and You learn a heck of a lot when you make your own product. And we've made several products over the years at Industrial Logic, probably the most successful of which was our e-learning software. And that has taught me so many, so many lessons. One of them is you have to serve an ecosystem of people. You can't just make your main user awesome. What about the person who's buying the software? How do you make them awesome in terms of helping them buy something that's going to get used? If they buy your e-learning and they never use it, they've wasted a lot of money. So we've got to make sure that their reputation is intact because they made an excellent investment and it got used and it got into valuable, it created value in the company. So how do I make the buyer awesome? How do I make the person that like rolls out the licenses to people awesome? How do I make their experience awesome? How do I make my colleagues awesome so that we love what we're doing and really enjoy working together? So it kind of morphed from make users awesome to make people awesome. And it's so expanded. If anything, we set the bar higher. And all of the principles of modern agile are like unachievable. They're all kind of high bars, right? But they're the goal that we go towards. So that really is it. It's about creating Brian (07:23) Ha Joshua Kerievsky (07:35) you know, wonderful, you know, the in Great Britain, they use awesome kind of sarcastically sometimes, right? They'll say, well, that's awesome. You know, and so for them, it would be brilliant. You know, I thought of making an English version. We have many translations of modern agile, and I thought of making an English version, which would be a proper British English version, make people brilliant. But it's meant to be to empower folks to give them something. And it's so it is. Brian (07:43) Ha You Joshua Kerievsky (08:04) It does have a product focus in the sense of we're typically building a system or a product that someone's going to use and it's going to give them skills they didn't have before or abilities they didn't have before that are going to be very valuable. Brian (08:18) Yeah, I love that. And there's a sort of a servant nature to that servant leaders, not servant leadership as much, but servant nature of I'm serving these people and how do I, how do I serve them in a way that really empowers them? Kind of reminds me of like, you know, the, the great principle with, with dev ops of just, know, if I can, if I can empower the developers to be able to do these things on their own. And so they don't need someone else to come and check the box and do everything for them. You're making them awesome. You're empowering them to be more than they were otherwise. Joshua Kerievsky (08:54) Yes, yes, absolutely. I I think we've seen a history in the software field of a lot of tools coming along and helping. It's not just tools, it's also methods as well. I mean, I'm entirely grateful to the Agile software development movement because it helped nudge everything towards a far better way of working and to make us more awesome at our craft. yeah, you have to have a North Star though. If you're going to build something, You have to know, what are we going for here? What are we shooting for? And with Cathy's influence, again, it's not so much make the greatest product in the world. It's, that focus on the users, the people who are going to be using the work, using the product. Brian (09:34) That's really good. Let's talk about the second one then on my list here, the make safety a prerequisite. What was the point here behind this principle? Joshua Kerievsky (09:40) Yes. So starting probably around 2011 or so, I could not stand going to the Agile Conference anymore. It had just become too commercial and too filled with just people hocking stuff. And it just was bothering me too much. I couldn't go. So I ended up going to South by Southwest, which is an Brian (09:54) You Joshua Kerievsky (10:09) Enormous conference tens of thousands of people show up So it'd be 20,000 30,000 40,000 people showing up for these for this event, which is musical film technology just it's just wild and I came across this book by Charles Duhigg called the power of habit. He was there that year and In that book. Well, first of all that particular year was 2012 that I went my first year there it poured The rain, it was every day, it was unusual for that time, but it was just like pouring rain. So what could you do? I bought some books and I was sitting there in my room reading them. And I'm reading this book, The Power of Habit, and I come across this chapter called The Ballad of Paul O'Neill. Now who the heck's Paul O'Neill? Well, it turns out Paul O'Neill is this incredible guy, a complete business maverick. He ended up becoming the treasury secretary under Bush and not. in 2000 for a short period of time, but that's another story. And he ran Alcoa for about 13 or 14 years. And so the Ballot of Paul O'Neill is very much about what he did at Alcoa to turn the company around. And in essence, you could say he made safety a prerequisite. That safety was his guiding light in turning that company around, which meant left people empowered to do all kinds of things. So it went way beyond safety, but started there. And it's an incredible story. I've written about it in Joy of Agility. I got so into Paul O'Neill that I ended up interviewing his main lieutenant. And then I got a chance to interview him a couple of times. the man's a genius. He passed away a few years back. Absolute genius. this concept of safety started to really pull at me in the sense that I felt, first of all, extreme programming, and I'm a big practitioner of extreme programming, brings a tremendous amount of safety to software development. It may not be as explicit in saying safety, safety, safety. When you look at extreme programming, doesn't really talk about safety, but it's implicit. And these days, Kent Beck's much more vocal about, you One of his missions is to make software development safer for geeks. But safety to me is almost like I found my home. Like safety was something that, what I learned through Paul O'Neill was that it's a doorway to excellence. And he transformed a hundred year old company with safety. I would complain about companies we were working with that were 25 years old and had an embedded culture. Like, how are we gonna change this company? But safety started to be this thing that I hadn't really thought enough about, and making it explicit opened up a lot of doors, right? And I became very interested in the work of Amy Edmondson, who's extremely famous today, but back then she was not so famous. And huge fan of hers. I, you know, I can email her and she'll email me back and she wrote a nice thing about my book. So. She has done some incredible work there. And so when we talk about safety in modern agile, it's psychological safety. It's financial safety. It's any of the safeties. There are many safeties that we could talk about. And it looks at all of them, right? It's brand safety, software safety in terms of security. you know, of the software and on and on and on. So make safety prerequisite is vast and big in terms of what we're trying to do there. Making it a prerequisite means it's not an afterthought and it's not a priority that shifts with the winds. It is permanent. It is something that we know we have to have in place. And it's very, very hard to achieve. Just like make people awesome is hard to achieve. Boy, is make safety a prerequisite difficult. Brian (13:43) Hmm. Yeah, I love Amy Edmondson's work as well. I'm just kind of curious. does the safety kind of inclusive of things like quality as well? Do you intend that to be part of what you mean by safety? Joshua Kerievsky (14:11) Well, mean, to the extent that it makes it safer to do good software development. So if bugs are happening all the time, you can't make people awesome, typically if you don't have quality. If you have really poor quality, nobody's being made awesome. They're experiencing all kinds of problems with your product. So make people awesome and make safety a prerequisite are very much tied together. That is, there is no real excellence without safety. You could think you're having an excellent experience, so that all of a sudden there's a major problem, and boy, are you unhappy. So they really go hand in hand. You could have the most incredible restaurant, and then one day you've got food poisoning happening. Great, no one's come to your restaurant. So you will not make anyone awesome if you don't make safety a prerequisite, and quality is part of that. Brian (14:57) Awesome. Well, let's move on to the next one then, because the next category is one that just resonates with me a lot. Experiment and learn rapidly. What was kind of the thought behind this one? Joshua Kerievsky (15:06) Yeah, and this is one where it that's shorthand, if you will, because you can only fit so many words on a wheel there. But it's important to know that that really means experiment rapidly and learn rapidly. And that comes a lot out of it in the influences of something like Lean Startup. I'm a huge fan of that book and of Eric's work, Eric Reese's work. Brian (15:13) Ha Joshua Kerievsky (15:29) And the fact that we can experiment rapidly and learn rapidly rather than just building everything and then learning slowly. Right? How can we do cheap experiments quickly to decide what's important to work on and what isn't? Let's not build stuff nobody wants. Let's find more time with our customers and understand their needs better so we can build the right things that make them awesome. In other words, and a lot of these are interconnected. In many respects, modern Agile is a Venn diagram. ideally want all four principles to be overlapping. And right there in that middle is where you really want to be. Not easy. But experimenting, learning rapidly, yeah. So challenge yourself to find ways to do quick, cheap, useful experiments. You can do lot of unuseful experiments. Amazon experienced that. There's a story in my book about how Amazon had to start just shepherding the experiments a little more and having some better criteria. Because you could do an endless array of experiments and not get anywhere. There's a wonderful book called Experimentation Matters by a Harvard business professor. Wonderful book as well. But I love experimentation and learning. And I see it as critical to building great products. So that's that principle there. Brian (16:46) Yeah, there's a real difference, I think, in organizations that put value on that learning process. if you see it as a valuable thing, that we invest time to gain knowledge, then that really can truly make an impact when you go forward. I know I've talked about this in classes sometimes where people will say, isn't it a little bit selfish from the organization to try to always just figure out what's going to sell the best? or what's going to work the best in advance of putting something out. My response is always, well, yes, there is a benefit to the business, but there's a benefit to the customer as well because they would rather you work on things that they care more about. Joshua Kerievsky (17:24) That's right. Yeah. I mean, we once put out an experimental product to a large automotive company. And we were really excited about it. We had a whole list of features we wanted to add to it. But we were like, you know what? Let's just get this primitive version kind of in their hands just to see what happens. it turned out that we learned very rapidly that they couldn't run the software at all. There was some proxy. that was preventing communication with our servers from their environment. So it was like, excellent. We learned really quickly that instead of those fancy new features we want to add to this thing, we're going to fix the proxy problem. And to me, that's the nature of evolutionary design is that we create something, get it out there quickly, and learn from it rapidly and evolve it. So it goes hand in hand with that as well. Brian (18:11) That's awesome. Well, there's one category left then, and that is deliver value continuously. So what was the genesis of that? Thinking about delivering value continuously. Joshua Kerievsky (18:19) So that was heavily influenced by my own journey into continuous delivery and continuous deployment and that whole world. We got into that very early. I was lucky enough to catch a video by Timothy Fritz, who he worked with Eric at IMBU. And he coined the term continuous deployment. And that video is actually no longer on the Brian (18:43) Ha Joshua Kerievsky (18:44) But this was something that I became enamored of was doing continuous deployment. And we started doing it at Industrial Logic with our own e-learning software back in about 2010. And by the time you get to like 2015, it's like, hey folks, there's this thing where you can do a little bit of work and ship it immediately to production in a very safe way, a safe deployment pipeline. It's friggin' awesome. But the principle doesn't just apply to that because this modern agile is not just about software development. It's how can I work in a way that gets value in front of people as fast as possible? So for example, if I'm working on a proposal, great, I'm not going to work for two weeks and then show you something. I'm going to put something together, a skeleton, I'm going to show it to you and say, what do you think? Does this add value? Where would we improve this? Blah, blah, Again, going hand in hand with evolutionary design. continuous delivery of value is something that is a way of working. With artists that I work with, they'll do a quick sketch or two or three sketches of something first before we start settling in on which one do we like the best and how do we want to craft and refine that. So there's a way of working in which you're delivering value much more finely grained and approaching continuously instead of in bigger batches. Brian (20:05) Yeah. I love the connection there between artists as well, because I've got a background in music, and I'm thinking about how when you go to write a song or create a new work like that, you start off with the roughest of demo tapes, and you move from there to increasingly more sophisticated versions of it until you finally have the finished product. But no one thinks that's strange or thinks that's weird in any way. But you're right. Sometimes there's this attitude or kind of I think in some organizations of, we can't let anyone see that until it's absolutely finished, until it's done. Joshua Kerievsky (20:39) Yeah, yeah, and that maybe that's that there's some fear there, you know, because they don't want to be thought of as, you know, being lesser because they put something rough in front of someone. Whereas I view it as a, you know, to me, it's a sign of weakness when you when you only send something polished because you haven't had the courage or the sense of safety to put something rough where we can make better decisions together early on. So. There's a lot of learning, I think, around that. But it's a challenging principle of its own, deliver value continuously. And people would say, well, what does value mean? Value is one of those words where it's unclear, because you could improve the internal design of a software system. Is that value? It probably is. But you've got to be able to quantify it or prove that it's going to help make things more graceful in terms of flowing features out. yeah, quantifying, communicating what the value is. is important. I'm also a big fan of maximizing the amount of work not done, as it says in the manifesto. So how can we do less and deliver more sooner? Our motto in industrial logic now is better software sooner. And a lot of these principles go straight into that. that drives it. Brian (21:38) Yeah. That's really great. Yeah, I love these four principles and I think that they really represent a lot. There's a lot that's baked into each one of these things. And I'm sure as you kind of put this together with the community and started to talk more about it, I'm sure there were some challenges. I'm sure people came up to you and said, well, what about and how about this? Is there anything now looking back on this that you'd say, gosh, we really... really didn't quite cover this or, know, this is maybe I could fudge it and squeeze it in this area, but you know, there's this other thing that I really think would be important to kind of mention here as well. Joshua Kerievsky (22:28) Well, you know, it's funny, because I thought I was going to write a book. I started collecting stories. I love telling stories, and I find stories to be a great way to help educate people. Not the only way, right? But as part of some of the workshops I give, you tell a story. Hopefully it's a story that's sticky, that sticks in the person's brain. And over the years, I collected stories like that, stories of agility. I thought I'd be writing a book about modern agile when I started writing Joy of Agility. Gradually, as I wrote more and more stories, they didn't quite fit into all those four principles. And I think the lesson I learned there was that I was starting to talk about what pure Agile means, the word Agile. What does it really mean to be Agile? Whereas modern Agile is really almost in the context of product development, of building services or products for people. Whereas Agile itself is even more pure. And so the... the book itself got into the difference between quickness and hurrying, which you can relate to this. You could say experiment and learn rapidly. Well, OK, maybe we shouldn't rush it. Don't rush. Be quick, but don't hurry is one of the mantras in Joy of Agility. So adapting, right? Adapting, we talk about adapting all the time. So to be agile, you need to be able to adapt quickly. These four principles in modern agile don't say anything about adapting. Brian (23:46) Ha Joshua Kerievsky (23:48) So that's kind of implied, but it's not there. So it's a different lens on agility. If anything, I'd say the make people awesome principles are not meant to. It created some dislike, I'd say, from some people. It could have been called empower people, potentially, although a lot of people really love make people awesome. I don't know so much what I'd change there. I'd say we have a .org. So it's a modernagile.org is a website. There's a pretty large Slack community, which, know, four or 5,000 people on that. We don't certify anyone in modern agile, so there's no certifications, but it's something that is neutral in the sense that whether you practice Scrum or Kanban or Safe or whatever, these principles can influence you. And, you know, but again, this all came out of like, when I went to that open space conference in Prague, I had no idea I was going to talk about modern agile. You know, it was not like a predetermined thing. It was just like, my God, they're not talking about the modern ways we're doing stuff. So, and I always encourage people to, you know, keep pushing the limits and keep modernizing. I said to my own company the other day, our wonderful ways of working that we've been doing now for years that have evolved, they're probably antiquated as of today. You know, with generative AI, what would we do differently? Let's have a perspective on our own work as it needs to be modernized constantly. So the term modern in modern agile means always be modernizing, always be looking. Okay, I've had people say, well, Josh, some things don't need to be modernized. There's things that are just evergreen. They're classic. I'm like, absolutely. I'm not changing evolutionary design anytime soon. I find it to be quite useful in so many contexts. So yes, there's the evergreen stuff. And then there's the stuff where you can, indeed, discover a better way. The manifesto itself says, we are discovering better ways of working. Great. Keep that going. Keep modernizing and looking for easier, simpler, quick, easy grace. as the dictionary definition of Agile says, how can we work with quick, easy grace? That's always going to be improving, hopefully. Brian (26:12) Love that, yeah. And you're right, I mean, think there's some, to some people I think that there's, I guess at times an attitude of, you this is all new stuff or this is a brand new concept and something they don't really see the connection backwards in time to how these things are all built on other ideas that have been progressive over the years. So the idea of, yeah, this is, you know, we're, we're not saying that certain ideas are bad because now we're trying to modernize them. We're just saying we're trying to apply that same principle forward into kind of the context of today, which I don't see anyone should have a problem with that. Joshua Kerievsky (26:48) That's right. That's right. Well, and if you are experimenting and learning rapidly with your own process, which I highly encourage, chances are the way you work today will be different than it was yesterday. You will be exploring, like we use discovery trees today. We didn't use them before. Years ago, no one knew what a story map was. There wasn't such a thing as a story map. Now we have story maps. There's constant improvement happening. And you've got to be open-minded and willing to try new things and drop old stuff. We thought sprints and iterations and extreme programming was absolutely fundamentally part of the way to work. Then we started experimenting with dropping them and turned out, wow, this is pretty cool. We like this. It works pretty darn well for our purposes. That came through experimentation. some of our experiments were terrible, just terrible. It's not an experiment if you already know the outcome. keep pushing the limits of what can make you happier and more joyful at work in terms of producing great stuff. Brian (27:46) Awesome. That's great stuff. Well, I can't thank you enough for coming on, Joshua. This is great stuff. just, you know, we'll put all the links to the books mentioned and everything else in our show notes for everybody. But as Joshua said, you can go to modernagile.org and find out more about this if you'd like to. You'll find information there about Joshua himself or his company again is Industrial Logic, Inc. And, you know, his book again, just to mention that, Joy of Agility. We were talking how some people get that title a little mixed up or whatever, but it's just the three words, joy of agility. So just look out for that book. I think you'll find it a rich resource for you. Joshua, thanks so much for coming on. Joshua Kerievsky (28:25) Thank you, Brian. Thanks to you. Thanks to Mountain Goat and the folks there. And I really appreciate chatting with you. It was really wonderful.

In this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, Brian Milner chats with Murman about the value of attending Agile conferences, the importance of networking, and the impact of volunteering in the Agile community. They share personal stories, advice on making the most of conference experiences, and insights into how volunteering can open up new opportunities for personal and professional growth. Overview Brian Milner and Chris Murman dive into the world of Agile conferences, focusing on the upcoming Agile 2025 event and the benefits of attending. They discuss the evolving purpose of conferences, why networking and volunteering are crucial, and how approaching conferences with an open mind can lead to unexpected learning and connections. Chris also shares his journey from attendee to conference chair, providing a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into creating a memorable conference experience. Whether you're a conference regular or considering attending your first one, this episode offers valuable perspectives on getting the most out of these unique events. References and resources mentioned in the show: Agile 2025 Chris Murman Connect with Chris on LinkedIn Agile Alliance Speaker Submission Tips Webinar #105: Scrum Conferences & Neurodiversity with Brian Milner Special Episode Scrum Gathering Denver 2022 Mountain Goat Software’s Accurate Agile Planning Course Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Join the Agile Mentors Community Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Chris Murman is the Agile 2025 Conference Chair with over 15 years of experience in product management and leadership, He has directed successful launches for top brands like Verizon, NBC Universal, and Chick-fil-A. As the Executive Director of Product at JP Morgan Chase, and leads 20 cross-functional teams, driving innovative financial solutions and spearheading AI/ML initiatives that save over 6,000 man-hours per quarter. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're back for another episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast. I'm with you as always, Brian Milner. And today, a very special friend is here with us, Mr. Chris Murman. Welcome in, Chris. Chris (00:11) What's up, Brian? I don't know that I'm a mentor, but I'm here anyways. Brian (00:12) You're definitely a mentor. In fact, we're going to explain to people why you are here in just a moment. Chris is an Agile coach extraordinaire. He has been in the community for quite a while. And he is a fellow Dallas native here with me. And we connect a little bit at the last year's Dallas conference here for Agile. Chris (00:19) Okay, okay, sure. Sure, sure. Brian (00:40) And one of the things that I noted in that conference was they announced the next one, which is coming up in Denver, end of July, beginning of August -ish, we'll put it that way. And he was announced as the chair of that conference. So Chris is actually going to be in charge or leading or behind the scenes for just about everything that's going to take place at that Agile 2025 conference in Denver. So I wanted to have Chris on to talk about that a little bit. Don't think of this as an ad. It's not an ad for it because what I wanted to kind of help people understand was kind of the why behind it. When I normally talk about the conference, it's maybe a month or two before. Well, now it's next summer. So you have some time to plan. And now is the right time to kind of put that kind of stuff in your calendar if it's something that you're thinking about doing. or even maybe thinking about maybe should you volunteer or something like that for it. So Chris, how did you get involved with this kind of thing? How did you get involved with helping out with the conferences? What made you decide to help out in any way, shape or form? Chris (01:54) Well, like many, when I first started the work, I I fell into Agile backwards just like everybody else did. None of us did this on purpose. It just came along and we just started doing it and then it became something to do. in the 2010s when Agile was riding high and I... I saw these conferences as really cool learning opportunities and connection opportunities. People that I knew from the, that you and I both know from the local area, from meetups, would tell me about these conferences. I was attending DFW Scrum the last time that Agile 20XX was in Dallas. I did not go, but. cause I, was too late for me to find out and it was kind of pricey. And so I was like, so like conferences are where you just go and meet people and then they're like, yeah, you should just kind of go. So as, as with many of us who are like, well, how do I pay for these conferences to go? just said, well, I'll submit to speak. And, I don't know about you, but my first few submissions were not great. I, I, I. People always laugh when I say this, but I would literally copy and paste the headline and the entire copy of blog posts that I thought would be really cool to talk about. Because I started my blog, that was kind of how Chris Murman .com is kind of how people first started meeting me because I would promote it on platforms and stuff. Agile Twitter used to be really fun back in those days too. So I would just copy and paste the entire blog post as my abstract. And of course, now knowing what I know, like that was, that's just the worst thing to do in the world. but I didn't know what else to do. So I fell flat on my face the first few years and started getting some advice and feedback and such, and started getting accepted to speak around 2016. Spoke at. Spoke at several conferences that year, spoke at several conferences in 2017. 2018 comes along and they're like, and I'm like, hey, how do I help out? Like this is really cool. I connected with the Agile Alliance community, that specific conference community very, very well. And I'm like, well, how can I help? And they're like, here's three or four people, email them until they say yes. And I'm not. Brian (04:18) Yeah. Hahaha. Chris (04:34) I just was annoying and said, no, I'm not kidding. I want to help. And I got to chair a track. You know, I chaired all kinds of tracks for the next few years. coming out of COVID, I got asked to be on the program team. which is just when people are like, what's the difference between leading a track and leading like the entire program? Think of it as like, The track is like one tiny, tiny sliver in the program team has to go really very narrow across everything to know where everything is. Not that I know every set. I still, I'm like, that was that session was the conference that year. But, so we just have to be more broad in what are the themes that we want to talk about? What are the things that we want to do? and, and, you know, when you join the program team, you know, one of these years it's going to be your year. And then when you. when you're a conference chair, that's your final year on the program team. And then you just go back to civilian life, I guess. I don't know, which is, don't, I don't ask Dana. I don't know what civilian life is on the side of the conference just yet, but I will very soon. So I don't know. It's a, that's a rambling answer, but it's for the most part, that's really how I got going was just, I just wanted to go. You know what I mean? I just wanted to be there. And the only way I could do it was to get a free ticket. Brian (05:34) Ha ha ha. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's a, well, that's a great answer. I mean, I, I think I'm kind of, I mean, I probably have a little bit, there was probably a few more years I submitted before I got accepted to speak at the Agile Conference, but I probably submitted three or four years before I got something accepted. And that's even after reviewing a few years and seeing what good and bad submissions were like, you know, and trying to understand that. Chris (06:22) Thank Brian (06:25) But we were talking a little bit beforehand about just the concept of a conference in today's world. I know that we've seen sort of a decline in people who are attending conferences a little bit. And I'm not really sure whether this is a momentary thing or an economy -based thing or what. But when people ask you why attend a conference, what What do you tell people? Chris (06:55) Well, there's many things that you can get out of a conference. That's the cool part about it is that you can attend the conference for many reasons. And I would say now in 2024, coming into next year, 25, I don't know that the reasons for attending the conference are the same as they used to be, right? Because when we first started coming, there's this like, I don't mean to sound pedantic or like over inflate myself, but there's a level of like fame in our community. We have a tiny, tiny community. So you can get agile famous a lot of different ways. Like now you can just be an influencer and write like Chris Stone is a perfect example of someone who just cranks out a ton of content that it's for the most part pretty good and get the following that way. And then people meet you that way. Brian (07:27) You Yeah, yeah. Chris (07:53) there were a lot of ways that you could meet people back then. you could really meet a ton of people there. You could make a ton of connections. So ultimately, I just really wanted to learn. I love learning and I love being connecting with other people. I did theater as a kid, was performing at church as a kid. I was just that person that was always on a stage. so speaking is just another extension of that. You being in a training room all the time, again, it's just a performance. You're just giving a performance where there's hopefully... a few nuggets of wisdom. When I realized that that's all that it was, well then I wanted to do it. You know, I don't think that, but I don't know that that's the same anymore. I don't, you know, I don't hear people say, I learned a ton at this conference every year, right? Because a lot of work, we're, Brian (08:39) Right. Yeah. Hmm. Chris (08:59) we're rehashing the ideas in a new way. We're trying to explore things in a new way, but we're really kind of taking many people feel like that we're just taking the same rock and turning it over and just getting seeing if we'll be surprised the next time we flip the rock over, right? Like there's only so many times you can flip that rock over before you don't find anything new anymore. So, I, it is interesting to think about why do we What is the purpose of a conference? You know, because do you want to be known so you can get paid, right? Or get a job? You know, there's a lot of people that want a job. So can you get a job by going to a conference? I don't know. I don't, there weren't a lot of jobs in 2023 to hand out. There were some to be had this year. If you attended the conference and were looking like there were several people that had things to talk about and interviews to be had. Brian (09:28) Yeah. Chris (09:55) some of the jobs are starting to come back. like, okay, well, do you go because you want a job or if you're learning, like, well, what do you want to learn that you can't just learn from watching YouTube or TikTok or, you know, attend like, as you know, training classes are also struggling in the community. like, what is what what is learning in 2024 2025 in the agile community? I think it's worth thinking about, you know what I mean? Brian (10:23) Yeah, no, I agree. And I think, from my perspective, I think it's changed a little bit. It's shifted a little bit over time. I think when I first started to go, there was an idea of, yes, I wanted to network and I wanted to understand and meet other people in the community. But as an introvert, I, you know, that kind of scares the crap out of me. And, you know, I can only do a little bit of that before I just feel like my battery is completely depleted. But, you know, when I think when I first went, I did have the idea that I wanted to learn. wanted to kind of be on the cutting edge. I wanted to hear the cutting edge thoughts of people who were out there. And, you know, now I think I still have that mentality when I go, I still want to hear, you know, I want someone to challenge me, you know, like that's, what I really want to hear from, from a speaker is tell me something about this. don't know, or tell me something that, you know, would challenge my, my existing way of thinking about this. so that I can go back and examine it and think, huh, I never really thought of it that way, but maybe that's true and maybe I need to re -examine that. But you know, that's kind of rare. That's not something that you get from just a lot of talks. I know one of the things I try to do when I give a talk is I wanna end with something that I would say, hey, what's the one thing you commit to changing as a result of this? Like what's the one big idea? What's the one... If you left this room and don't remember anything else, what's the one thing that you wanna just star or circle in your notebook and say, I'm gonna go find out more about that or I'm gonna do something about that. And that's where I try to kind of drive toward the whole talk. But I've been in others that, like you said, maybe a little bit more of a rehash of something I've heard before. But I've never left a conference without feeling challenged in some way, even if it's not, even if it's just from a one -on -one conversation that I've had with people, you know, I've been challenged about ideas and had to go back and re -examine and think through things. I'd say it's more, you know, now my balance has shifted. It is more networking now for me than it is that challenging thought, but I still want to find that nugget somewhere in there in the conference time. Chris (12:41) So what you said is really interesting and I want to hone in on the specific words you mentioned about challenged, right? the, I do want to, you know, before it sounds like I'm not poo -pooing the idea of conferences in any way, shape or form, but what Brian just mentioned is something that I tell the people all the time. I said it from the stage this year in Dallas, which is like, you get out of it, what you put into it. If you come in with a beginner's mind intending to be challenged, intending to have your assumptions questioned and said, maybe I didn't think about this the way that... I would say that that's probably the thing that I learned every time is that something that I thought was true or wasn't true may not, right? Brian (13:11) Yeah, yeah. Chris (13:35) You know that half of the conferences are new people every year, right? There's someone new to agile every every year there are there. Thousands of people new to it every year. That's the cool thing about it is that every year there are people that like I just got my CSM like holy cow. That's so like can you imagine showing up to a conference and everybody's like this sucks. I don't want to be here like you're not going to learn anything. I don't get anything out of it like what an awful experience for. Brian (13:35) Yeah. You Chris (14:03) someone that's new and excited and just wants to, like, there will be something you haven't heard before. But for the most part, the reason why I always get something is because I show up expecting to hear something I haven't heard before. The story won't come out exactly the way you think, right? Or, Brian (14:09) Yeah. Chris (14:22) the story that they tell, because a good conference is always a great idea plus you, right? It's your stories, your experiences, how this affected you that matters. So sharing your soul, bearing your soul requires the audience to kind of be like, want to be, I want to have someone, you know, kind of bear themselves to me. I want to hear someone be vulnerable. Brian (14:45) Yeah. Chris (14:48) And those are always the best sessions that you and I always have, is when someone is super vulnerable, super vulnerable with where they are. I thought this was the only way to do this. That's my favorite is when I hear a speaker say, I thought this was the only way to do this. There are so many roads up the mountain that we have for our work. There is not one way to do it. So find a new, come to find a new one. There's a technique that you've probably not tried before or done, or if you have, you didn't do it the way that they did before, that'll seem easier. that's the whole purpose of listening to these things, but it, it, it requires you to show up with more than just here's my tray, man. I have some agile, please. Right. Like that's, this is not a buffet, right? Like you have to like, go find it, right. Seeking positive intent means I have to go seek it. Right. I have to go seek information that I want to have. Brian (15:21) Yeah. Hahaha. Chris (15:41) and then go get it. Because if I don't, I'm just going to go, yeah, it's cool. I mean, I met some cool people, but I didn't really. OK, well, then you didn't show up with the mentality of being challenged. I challenge our friends, people that have been coming for years, I challenge them every year. You will get something if you want to. Right? If you don't get something, it's because you didn't want to get anything out of it. Brian (16:01) Right. I mean, I think we're all kind of guilty sometimes of setting our conference path, choosing the sessions and things that we go to based on things that maybe we already have some familiarity with. And that sounds interesting. yeah, I researched that a little bit. Let me see what they have to say about that. I've tried to intentionally now try to find things that I have no background in. I have no experience in because those are the things that are really going to push me. Those are the things that I don't really have. any knowledge of or forethought on and I'm gonna be taken to a different place. I remember I used to be, I used to get this like really anxious, nervous feeling when I would find out I was wrong about something. You know, I'd be in a conversation at a dinner table with someone and they'd say, well, actually, you know, that's not the way to do it. They'd start to do something else and I'd start to feel kind of anxious about that. But now, now I've like, that's swapped for me. Now when I hear that, when someone says, no, actually there's another way to think about that. Chris (16:41) you Brian (16:57) I start to get excited. Like it's actually excitement in me because I start to feel like, great, wow, I didn't, this is something new. This is something I had never heard before. And now this is the point where I can grow and break through, you know. Chris (17:11) Well, there's, I mean, and there's people that we all, if we've been in these communities before, we can all think of someone that always challenges us, right? Like I can't have a conversation with Michael Sahota without him challenging something that I thought, I just thought was true. And I'm like, no, it's not like, or it might be, but not always. So there's always someone that's just like, Brian (17:20) Yeah. Yeah. Chris (17:37) sit down so that I can break your mind real quick. And that's always fun. You know, another thing to think about is like, what we get out of the conference also dictates who's going to pay the bill, right? Because we hear in the community a lot, well, companies aren't paying for conferences anymore. Brian (17:41) Yeah Mm, yeah, yeah. Chris (17:59) That's not true for some aspects of IT. Like all the developer conferences, companies love footing the bill for that. The Microsoft conference, they love footing the bill for that because they send technologists there that come back smarter and can code better and more efficiently and whatever, right? Like better, faster, cheaper, all those things, right? Like they will get something out of it. So the... think the reason why we have to say what do you want at the conference is like, it's gonna kind of dictate who pays the bill. If the purpose of Brian and I who have been to this conference many times and have met so many of the cool people, that's the best part of me going every year is I get to see Matt Barkholm again. Like one of my favorite people in the world that I do not see other than over Zoom, right? Or any number of people, right? Any number of people. Brian (18:47) Hahaha. Chris (18:56) There's always someone new that I had spoken to online but never met in person. Someone that just, again, someone that just started the work and someone that's like, hey, I read something that you wrote about this years ago and it was really cool. That's cool, right? You won't get that if you don't go out and network and stuff. But here's the thing, if you're there for connections, companies aren't interested in footing the bill for connections. They're interested in footing the bill for... Brian (19:23) Right. Chris (19:26) learn something, improve something, come away with something. And if Agilent are going to the conferences and just like, I met some really cool people, what else? I met some cool people. All right, cool. I'm not paying next year for you to go to that, right? That's what a lot of companies are trying to do. So we have to sort of imagine like, if the goal is to get companies to pay for people to go again, well, then we need to... That's something that we've asked ourselves in the program team. Like what would get, like what is a program that companies will reimburse for? I think it's, and I don't know that we've got a strong answer either. Everybody's got, I think, there's a lot of I thinks and not a lot of I knows, right? I guess is a good way to think of it. Brian (20:00) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the other thing I wanted to kind of, because you are, you know, kind of the ultimate volunteer for this upcoming conferences as the chair, you know, I've tried to tell the audience here from time to time about the kind of the benefits of volunteering and why I do it as a speaker, why I've done it in the past as a reviewer. It seems like there's just so many different ways to get involved for something like this so that you don't have to just sit on the sidelines. You can actually be a part of this. And that's a, for me, that's an easy way to have a quick in with the community because you're interacting with people prior to it. So when you show up, it's like, hey, I know you and I know you, because we've been talking and working together on this stuff for a while. So. What kind of case do you make to people for volunteering for a conference like this, like a big conference? Chris (21:12) It's so again, going back to like, what do want to get out of it? I think the purpose of volunteering is to kind of learn how the sausage is made to a degree. if someone's like, I'm not really interested in seeing how my sausage is made, then you don't belong in the agile community. Like this is the community of people that want to see Brian (21:22) Yeah. Chris (21:32) Sausage being stuffed into its casing and just cranked out right like this is this is the community for that like I won't use any more sausage metaphors that although I The the The funny thing about how Volunteering works is that? Brian (21:41) Hahaha Chris (21:50) You can volunteer in the slightest of ways, just a few hours a week reviewing. When you're like, well, I want to review, that's fine, but I want to be a track chair. Because people always want to be a part of deciding the content. This is what I've always wanted to hear about. This is what I've always wanted to hear about. And of course, then I always ask the question of, OK, well, then someone has to submit that idea. all right, it's one thing to say, want to hear about this. It's another thing to say, how do I get that content out of a group of submissions every year, which we get thousands every year at the conference. And we got thousands, right? Like, you know, for all of the online hubbub over the conference every year over who gets accepted and who doesn't, like thousands of people submit wanting to speak every year. regardless of how they feel about whether they, when they get the rejection letter or the acceptance letter, like thousands of people want to speak at this conference. It's cool. Like it's a cool thing to do, but not everybody is a speaker, right? You can be a purple shirt and volunteer. In fact, some of my favorite people in the community are lifelong purple shirters that have done it multiple years. There are people that do it for a couple of years and meet people and then and they move on to another role. mean, there's just a bunch of different ways that you could be involved in doing something that doesn't involve speaking or deciding who speaks. And also, I will say, it's also really hard to cull thousands of submissions. into something that makes sense for everybody else. Because then you have to go find keynote speakers. There are people that are invited to speak who are luminaries in the industry. And how do you meet those people? So all of that is really like the fact that I can say I can email. any number of people, I won't use the name so I don't offend the people that I don't use, but like I can email any number of them and they're like, yeah, Chris, Agile, Agile 20XX guy. I, it would be cool if they're like, I just like Chris and I want to be friends with them, but you know, that's not the way the world works. so I, you know, networking in ways that don't always show up in a job or whatever is just, I'm, I'm just here to. Brian (24:00) Hahaha Right. Right. Chris (24:25) find good content and show the community that and the rest kind of takes care of itself, you know? Brian (24:32) Yeah. I mean, I'll say to, you know, just to give people kind of an idea of my path with the agile conference, you know, I probably submitted four or five years before I got accepted. And a couple of those years spent as just a reviewer for, you know, a track or, you know, with a certain team, not as a chair, but just as a reviewer. there's a, there's a, if you want to do that, you can do that. Right? mean, it's pretty much, it's easy to get into that kind of a mode if that's something that you're interested in. And I tell people who want to speak like that to me was one of the biggest and best educations I could have had on learning about speaking was reviewing what other people wanted to speak about. Cause you know, there's kind of two parts to speaking. There's the... the marketing side of getting your thing selected, and then there's the actual talk. But the part of trying to come up with your idea of the talk and frame it and put it in an interesting way and learning how to structure your talk in a way that would be interesting for people to listen to, that's a skill in itself. And the best way I learned about that was just reading others, reading what other people were submitting to do and... Chris is right. mean, there's so many submissions that, you know, even as just a reviewer for one track, I was sad for all the ones that I knew would not get to be heard because there's so many good ideas. it's, know, Sophie's choice about how you try to decide which one of these two things or which one of these 10 things, you know, you've got one slot and 10 of them that are 10 or 20 that are just amazing. and you can only take one, you know? So it's difficult, but reading those submissions to me was a really great education. Chris (26:33) Yeah, if you think about it this way, we always enter the room to build the schedule with, there's X amount of slots that we have plus X number of alternates and such. we always, you try to look at it like, like you look at the whole schedule and say, okay, is there an aspect of our work that we missed? Well, we didn't really get a, we haven't gotten a retro talk yet. okay, well there was one over here. So, cause you know, you're trying to balance it for like there's meat and potatoes kinds of sessions and then there's like the big idea sort of sessions. Then there's the workshops that are very engaging and meant to create something. Brian (27:16) Yeah. Chris (27:26) you know, there's a lot of, again, there's a lot of roads up that mountain. I would say that the joy of speaking now, if I could, anybody that wants to do it, the best advice I would say is like, you need to want to speak so that you can be a better presenter and organizer of your thoughts. Because, Brian (27:46) Yeah. Chris (27:49) Really, the abstract and the basic, there is essentially a formula to filling out a submission to a conference. I, with CP Richardson, who's now on the board, I did a webinar last November on what makes a good submission. It's something that I've gotten super passionate about. Again, it's recorded, it's on the Agile Alliance site if you wanna find it. There is a formula that anybody can follow and get selected, right? I had some, I had several people reach out and say, I watched your video and I follow what you said. And then I got accepted to speak, which for the record, watching what I say will not get you accepted to speak. You can follow the formula. You can, you can follow the formula exactly and still not get it because there's only so many slots and it's really hard to get in. but. Brian (28:26) Ha Chris (28:41) Once you follow the formula, then it's just down to like, does the idea resonate with the community? And I can't, I can't give you a formula for that because I'm not in anybody's brain, but, you know, I, again, it's always a great top, a great idea. Plus your stories and experiences is what really defines what a good submission is. And so you have to get that straight before you type a single word out. But then once you go through the submission process and there's edits, feedback, all that kind of stuff. Then you got to get accepted. Once you get accepted, then you got to build the session. And we find that a lot of times it's a rare breed of someone that knows how to write a good submission and can put on a good show. Not everybody can do that. And of course, a good show is a relative term, right? You don't got to be big and bombastic and loud to be good, right? Brian's not that and Brian's great in a room, right? So you can... Brian (29:16) Yeah. Chris (29:35) you have to kind of construct it in a way that makes sense. So, but again, the cool part is, that because I had people help me, mostly because I just annoyed the hell out of them and saying, please, please give me, please give me some help. I just want to keep passing it along. So I mean, I still get people at 12 months a year, I get people saying, I have an idea and I'd love to run it by you that they hit me up on LinkedIn or whatnot. So. Brian (30:04) Yeah. Chris (30:05) It's just something that I care about now. I got so much better with organizing my ideas and writing them and presenting them that it's a gift that I want to just keep passing on to people. I guess this is because I didn't intend this to be the cross that I bared, it is regardless. Brian (30:21) Yeah Well, the only other advice I'd throw out to people, there was a shift that happened with me too, where I went from, I want to be a speaker, let me find a topic. There's a very big difference from having that attitude to living your life and saying, wow, I'm really passionate about this. I'd love to talk about this. If you find the topic first that you resonate with and connect with, then it's, you you're a little more personally connected when you submit. So it can be more painful if you don't get picked, you know, when that happens. But on the other hand, when you do get picked, man, you're so excited about giving that talk. It's not just that you got picked, but it's like, I can't wait to tell people about this, this thing. And to me, that's, that's the magic. Like when that happens, you, you, yeah, you can't, you're, you're, it's not even nervous. You're, just so excited to tell people what you've learned about. Chris (31:21) Yeah, another piece of advice I tell people is as you're reading things, it doesn't have to be a book. It could just be an article or a video that you watch. As I always say, when I'm reading a book on something that has nothing to do, like I don't really buy a ton of agile books anymore. I buy a lot of social psychology, social economics, behavioral economics is a lot of my favorites. like Daniel Pink books is a tried and true. I met Daniel Pink once and he's like, what is it with you agile people that just love what I do? And I'm like, I don't know. I just, I don't know. I'm like, we just read it. So, but I read these books with looking for a lens into my world, right? I always read stuff that has nothing to do with IT. Brian (32:02) Yeah Yeah. Chris (32:16) that or leading teams or whatever it is your world, whatever you think it is. Find something that has nothing to do with your world and then say, how does that identify or how does that relate to my work? That's my favorite thing. I read a book on many years ago on, it was called The Control Heuristic. It was like where control comes from as an idea and psychology and why. We struggle with it. And I immediately turned that into a leadership talk on why we're all control freaks and here's, know, and what, what do we, what do we do about the fact that we're all control freaks? Like, again, I didn't read a book and say, I'm going to do a topic on a book. It's like, no, how does that tie into dealing with executives when I'm trying to get them to release the purse strings or release some of the control of their work, right? comes in handy, right? So you have to be looking for how does that idea sit in our world and then sort of play with that idea a little. Brian (33:22) Yeah. Yeah, this has been awesome. I really appreciate you making the time for this, Chris. And for those people listening, just a quick little shout out again. Agile 2025 is happening in Denver. It is the week of July 28 through August 1. So mark your calendars. And if you're interested in volunteering, if you're interested in being a reviewer or one of the Purple Shirt people who help out, Purple Shirt people help out at the actual conference making it kind of flow, right? They make sure it actually works. Yeah, yeah, the talks would not happen without them. Actually, nothing would happen without them. Yeah. Chris (33:54) They're the lifeblood of the conference. Yes. Nothing would happen without them. Nothing would happen without them. Yeah, if you hit me up on LinkedIn, my name is just how it appears here on LinkedIn. Toss me your idea. Yes, will, and I said, I shot my mouth off about mentoring people through their talks. That means you too. I... hit me up. Like there's no excuse for you to not because the worst thing that happens is you get to come to the conference. So, yeah. Brian (34:29) There we go. So mark your calendars, make sure that you reserve those dates, like I said, just block it off. Even if you don't know whether you can get the money to do it right now, block the dates off, and you're gonna be much more likely to actually attend if you do that, because then you'll see it coming up, and they go, yeah, that's coming up, I should do that. So Chris, thanks again for coming on, I appreciate you making the time, and thanks for joining us. Chris (34:56) Yeah, thanks for having me, Brian.

SummaryThe conversation revolves around the Agile24 conference and the feelings associated with its end. The Sander and his guests talk about the biggest concerns in the run-up to the conference and the importance of risk management and preparation. They reflect on improvements for next year, particularly in terms of party and networking. They discuss the smooth organization process and the real costs of volunteering. The conversation also touches on the approach to in-person conferences after COVID and the global attendance and success of the event. The engaging and impactful speakers are discussed, as well as the experience of imposter syndrome and public speaking. The hosts emphasize the importance of conferences for networking and finding happiness in small moments. TakeawaysRisk management and preparation are crucial for a smooth conference experience.Volunteering for conferences is a non-profit effort that requires time and dedication.Conferences provide valuable networking opportunities and the chance to find happiness in small moments.Check out our sponsor:www.xebia.comwww.wiserbees.comwww.masteringagility.orgHosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Rich has been doing enterprise/B2B product management since 1988, worked at 6 Silicon Valley startups, and has been an interim CPO or leadership coach for more than 200 large and small tech companies. He wrote "The Art of Product Management" and was the Founder of Product Camp. Rich has taught at top business schools worldwide, at conferences, and chaired the first product manager/product owner tracks at the annual Agile Conference. This episode dives into key topics: **Early days of the Internet **Life-Changing Moment **Explaining the Role of the PM **Addressing Roadmpa Amnesia **Prioritizing on Business Objectives **Dealing with Sales Requests **Product Led Organizations **Building Products that Generate Revenue **Driving Business Strategy **The Iterative Process of Strategy Development **Understanding the Company Business Strategy **Making Hard Decisions Recommended Resources: **What Do Product Leaders Do?** https://www.mironov.com/whatleadersdo/ **Business Cases Are Stories About Money** https://www.mironov.com/moneystories/ **Four Laws Of Software Economics** https://www.mironov.com/4laws1/ **Building and Scaling a Product Team (video)** https://www.mironov.com/prodanon/ Highlighted books: Continuous Discover, Teresa Torres, Outcomes vs Output, Josh Seiden, Managing the Unmanageable, Ron Lichty Anything from Jared Spool or Steve Blank or Holly Hester-Reilly Where to find Rich Mironov: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richmironov/ Dragonboat Website: https://www.mironov.com/ Where to find us: Website: https://productized.co/ Newsletter: http://bit.ly/3aMvWn2 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/school/produ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/productized.co/ Where to find Margarida: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/margarida-cosme-pereira/

EP98— Conferencia Agile en Chile 2023 de Agile Alliance (con ojos de Hormigas Agilistas)Estamos muy contentos en el Hormiguero, desde que hace meses nuestro amigo Juan Banda nos comentó que Agile Alliance haría en 2023 la primera Agile Conference en Latinoamérica en Chile (Agile en Chile 2023), y como hormigas hiperactivas nos propusimos participar de alguna forma. Colaboramos como media sponsor del evento, y por lo tanto hemos venido incluyendo en nuestros episodios referencias y avisos del evento. Además la hormiga Antonio Gallardo Burgos formó parte del comité organizador, la hormiga Heileen Goodson nos deleitó con su charla “De Idea a Producto”, y por último, las hormigas Yohan Páez Maldonado, Rodrigo Burgos Noceti y la misma Heileen Goodson, estuvieron reporteando en el lugar de los hechos y lograron varias interesantes entrevistas a expositores y participantes.En este episodio podremos escuchar la opinión del evento de Antonio Gallardo Burgos, en su mirada personal desde el equipo organizador, y también recopilamos las mini entrevistas en formato de cápsula que hemos preparado con 9 participantes del evento (8 de ellas, charlistas del mismo).Damos muchas gracias a todos los organizadores, en especial a Agile Alliance y Project Management Institute (PMI) y los demás sponsors del evento, incluyendo a nuestros colegas de medios.También agradecemos a las keynotes Ana Morcillo y Heidi Musser por su tremenda inspiración.Y por supuesto agradecemos muy sinceramente a las personas que amablemente nos brindaron unos minutos de su tiempo para participar de las entrevista:Carolina Pino — “Transformación desde las trincheras (experiencias de gestión de cambio en la vida real)”Tide Cardoso — “Antifragil — Florecer en Escenarios Desfavorables”Laura Ramos — “Detox de Agilidad ¿la solución a la transformación digital?”Catalina Matta — “¿Cómo la agilidad evoluciona y se adapta para responder a las necesidades de las organizaciones?”Claudia Vasquez — “Evolución a la carta”Erik Masgo — “¿Cómo medir y aplicar la Agilidad de Aprendizaje en las Organizaciones?”Paz Mardones & Dieter Varas — “Entre luces y sombras: vivencias de una transformación organizacional en retrospectiva”Jonathan Polgatiz —  “La revolución de la Híper Agilidad con Citizen Development”Jimena Rosselló, participante del evento.Si deseas conocer más sobre este episodio y todos los demás, visita el sitio: HormigasAgilistas.CL¡Gracias por ser parte de la comunidad de Hormigas Agilistas y comencemos!#HormigasAgilistas #QueVivaLaAgilidad #AgileEnChile2023 #AgileAlliance #Podcast #Conferencia

En este episodio, escuchará los momentos finales y concluyentes del evento Agile Conference 2021. Victor León, Director Responsable del Centro de Excelencia Ágil de NTT DATA Latam, continúa haciendo preguntas a los tres invitados a la conferencia: Irán Vargas, Corporate Agility Leader en Credicorp, Héctor Saira, Head of Agile CoE en BBVA Perú, y Paola Telaya, VP Transformación Ágil en Rimac Seguros y Reaseguros.

La adopción de metodologías ágiles se ha convertido en una necesidad para toda organización que quiera transformarse. Este es el tema que guía toda la conversación presentada durante la realización del Agile Conference 2021. El evento fue presentado por Victor León, Director Responsable del Centro de Excelencia Ágil de NTT DATA Latam, y contó con la participación de los siguientes líderes en sus organizaciones:  Irán Vargas, Corporate Agility Leader en Credicorp, Héctor Saira, Head of Agile CoE en BBVA Perú, y Paola Telaya, VP Transformación Ágil en Rimac Seguros y Reaseguros.

Before the pandemic hit, one of my favorite parts of the summer was going to the Agile Conference and doing podcast interviews with the speakers and thought leaders who were there. Each year, one of the very best moments of each Agile Conference was when I would get to sit down and talk with Troy Magennis. It's been two summers. I miss talking to Troy. So I reached out and he was kind enough to spare some time for an interview. During the conversation, we cover a number of topics, including: Is it actually possible for a team to become predictable? What gets in the way of predictability? What is BlockedApp and why did he create it? Which constraints are the most important ones to start with? Who is responsible for acting as the scientist of flow? Why are we still so focused on utilization and output instead of results? Why do we all need to know CPR? There is more, but you get the idea. Even if those aren't questions that keep you up at night, I promise that you are going to learn something valuable by listening to this podcast and that it will keep you engaged the whole way through because Troy is brilliant. Links: Focused Objective: https://www.focusedobjective.com/w/ BlockedApp: https://blockedapp.com This is Lean by Nicklas Modig and Par Pär Åhlström https://amzn.to/2Y3tUeD Contacting Troy: Focused Objective: https://www.focusedobjective.com/contact-us LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/troymagennis/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/t_magennis

Vic (@AgileCoffee) and Chris Hurney (@chris_hurney) were joined by Colleen Kirtland (@purposecreator) and first-time guest (and new Scrum Master) Kaitlyn Taylor in a virtual coffee shop to discuss the following topics: Words of advice for a new Scrum MasterTop Takeaways from #AOSC20Colleen's adventures outside of AgileStarling birds murmuration (video)Business Agility InstituteWhat do Devs do (while code is being tested)?Doughnut EconomicsKate RaworthRethinking Value | Mariana Mazzucato (The Long Now Foundation)"Greatness" by David Marquet (video) Looking for an Agile Conference this season? Check out the Agile Online Summit coming up October 26th – 30th, 2020. It's a FREE event over 5 days, with 5 tracks, 8 excellent keynote speakers, Live Q&A sessions, a sweet networking program. Help make this podcast ever more amazing. With your support, we hope to host a new Agile Coffee episode each week of the year, bringing fresh new voices and unique perspectives to the conversation. Help us out by signing up on Patreon today. Thanks!

Vic (@AgileCoffee) and Ben Rodilitz (@BenRodilitz) were joined by Allison Pollard (@allison_pollard) and Ruth Struck (@ruthstruck) in a virtual coffee shop to discuss the following topics: Getting clearer on outcomes and finding efficienciesHow are you engaging with teams to stay connected in this remote world?How do we coach leadership/teams whose attitude is "just tell us what to do"?How should managers support teams now? How involved is too involved? As we wrapped up the conversation, we congratulated Ruth for making her podcasting debut as an ambassador of Launching New Voices, a program of Women in Agile. (Shout out to Jenny Tarwater, Program Director. W00t!) Are you searching for a game to teach self-organization and empirical process control to teams? CardZinga! can be played in-person or online. Get the instructions and see examples at CardZinga.com Looking for an Agile Conference this season? Check out the Agile Online Summit coming up October 26th – 30th, 2020. It's a FREE event over 5 days, with 5 tracks, 8 excellent keynote speakers, Live Q&A sessions, a sweet networking program. Help make this podcast ever more amazing. With your support, we hope to host a new Agile Coffee episode each week of the year, bringing fresh new voices and unique perspectives to the conversation. Help us out by signing up on Patreon today. Thanks!

Megan Windle is an Agile coach and the president of the Agile 757 Meetup in Hampton Roads, Virginia. She specializes in the people side of change and wholeheartedly believes that happy teams sparkle with creativity and productivity.Windle recounts her journey from local talks to the national level at Agile2019. She tells all from the intense preparation and top-of-the-mountain highs, to overcoming critical adversity and how she copes with it all with intentional self-care.Words of Wisdom: “If you want to try speaking, you should go for it. The key is find someone who is there in your corner to support you.”Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Emilia Breton hosts.The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared.Podcast Library: www.solutionsiq.com/womeninagile Women in Agile website: https://womeninagile.org/Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/womeninagileorg

First time Agile Alliance conference attendees Mary Bobbitt and Sabine Khan share their experiences at Agile2019. If you’ve been on the fence about experiencing the largest annual Agile conference in the world, don’t miss this episode.  Bobbit and Khan give tips for navigating the conference, meeting others, and how to make yourself memorable in a crowd of nearly 2,000. They emphasize the sense of community and comradery among other agilist at the conference: “Going to Agile2019, our context may be different, but our problems are so similar, our opportunities and wins are so similar.”  The duo also attended the Women in Agile session and discuss how the movement has impacted the community at large: “It wasn’t just women talking about women’s issues, it was ‘how do we encourage honest dialogue about diversity, and specifically gender diversity, in an industry that has been historically dominated by men.” Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts.  The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared.Podcast Library: www.solutionsiq.com/womeninagile Women in Agile website: https://womeninagile.org/Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/womeninagileorg

ABOUT Bruce Eckfeldt is a consultant, coach, author, and speaker on organizational development and performance management. Originally an architect, he was a pioneer in the use of computer-aided design and 3D modeling. He later transitioned to software design and development, converting his spatial problem-solving skills to informational architecture and user experience design of digital software products. Seeing the need for a more fast-paced and innovative approach to technology development, Bruce was an early adopter of Extreme Programming (an early Agile/Lean software methodology). He advanced the field as an early contributor to the Agile Conference and as the founder of Cyrus Innovation in 2003, one of the first Agile/Lean development consulting firms. After more than a decade of developing products and coaching companies adopting Agile/Lean practices such as Extreme Programming, Scrum, Kanban, and other Lean methodologies, Bruce sold Cyrus in 2014 to focus on broader organizational development initiatives and served as interim CEO, COO, and other executive roles across a number of different high-tech and professional service companies leading these companies through periods of high growth and leadership transition. Today, Bruce uses his experience as an entrepreneur and Inc 500 CEO to help high-growth companies scale more quickly with less drama. He is an expert in business and operational growth strategy, talent planning, performance coaching, and using Lean/Agile to achieve operational excellence.   PROFESSIONAL HIGHLIGHTS Graduating from McGill University in Montreal with two degrees in Architecture, Bruce transitioned to digital product development early in his career where he worked as a product strategy consultant for companies such as WebMD, Prada, the Department of Defense, and Motorola. In 2003, he founded Cyrus Innovation, one of the first Lean/Agile consulting firms, and worked with companies such as Boeing, Kaplan Test Prep, Simon & Schuster, Eze Software, and The New York Times on product development and Lean/Agile transformation initiatives. Cyrus was an Inc 5000 honoree for five years in a row and placed #241 on the Inc 500 in 2009. Bruce has been a member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization since 2007 and has served in many chapter and regional leadership positions including Learning, Forum, and Accelerator. Bruce has served as the US East Regional Forum Expert and the US East Regional Accelerator Expert. Since 2016, Bruce has been a contributing author to Inc.com where he writes a weekly column on business and leadership. He also hosts to two successful podcasts: Scaling Up Services provides insights and strategies for how to successfully scale service-based businesses and Thinking Outside The Bud explores innovation in the business of cannabis.   PERSONAL HIGHLIGHTS Born in Philadelphia, Bruce and his family moved to Minnesota when he was four. Growing up in Minnesota fueled his love for nature and the outdoors. As an athlete throughout high school and college, Bruce competed in rowing, cross country skiing, biathlon (shooting and skiing), and triathlon. He completed his first marathon cross country ski race at 18, first of four marathons at age 19, and completed an Ironman triathlon in 2003. Outside of competitive sports, Bruce has climbed to the top of Kilimanjaro, dove the Coral Sea off Australia, and hiked the Tour du Mont Blanc. He’s traveled extensively and has visited six of the seven continents. Bruce is also an avid freshwater and saltwater fly fisherman. He is a father of four young children and lives in New York City. Website: http://www.eckfeldt.com

In this BONUS episode, Tom Henricksen, the host of the Agile Online Summit presents this unique Agile conference that you can attend from home.  The Agile Online Summit has been on since 2017, and is now in its third edition. From 500 participants in its first year, the AOS 19 will have 3000+ attendees from all over the world, and when you look at the list of speakers, it’s easy to understand why. AOS 19 will have, among others:  Andrew Stellman will talk about the people aspects, and how those affect Agile adoption Al Shallowly will explore the 3rd decade of Agile, and what it might bring Rebecca Scott will share her ideas on how teams can improve their connection with other teams Bob Gallen will speak about Product Ownership Anantha Natarajan will share lessons from implementing agile in a non-IT organization Richard Lawerence will share his experience and ideas about Behavior Driven Development Date and place: October 7th to 11th This session packed conference will take place online from October 7th to 11th. Beyond the recorded sessions that will be accessible in those dates, there will also be live sessions organized to help you ask direct questions from the participants as well as interact with your fellow conference attendees.  For more details stay tuned to the Agile Online Summit website, where all the sessions are described, and where the information about upcoming live sessions will be added.  A networking opportunity you can enjoy from home or at the office As any IRL (in-real-life) conference, Agile Online Summit is a networking opportunity, which will help you get to know the speakers as well as other participants. There will be a slack channel available for all who sign-up at this link (NOTE: DISCOUNTED VIP TICKET for Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast fans).  The Slack channel will be the preferred community hang-out area with channels for you to interact with participants from all over the world, but there will also be live sessions where you can ask questions directly from the speakers. Sign-up for the conference to know when those sessions take place (NOTE: Tickets are FREE for live attendance, purchase the VIP ticket for life-time access to the talks).  About Tom Henricksen Tom Henricksen is a technical professional and coach. After working for many years as a developer, Scrum Master, and manager he has made a lot of mistakes and wants to help others achieve their goals. Tom has a passion for sharing wisdom with other agilists. Tom is the founder and host of the Agile Online Summit.  You can link with Tom Henricksen on LinkedIn and connect with Tom Henricksen on Twitter.  You can find Tom Henricksen’s website at MyITCareerCoach.com.

Ellen Gottesdiener, a product coach, author, and CEO of EBG Consulting, shares her wisdom about marrying product management with Agile principles and practices. She speculates a future where there will be a “blending of disciplines where you don’t necessarily have a business area and a technology area”, just one product team with interdisciplinary team members. Her piece of advice to product people: Have strategic awareness of your product in the marketplace or “big view”, and get rid of junk in the backlog.Gottesdiener also takes us down the memory lane to the beginnings of the Agile Conference – she has attended every one of them since Salt Lake City. She reminds us of the women who have had a large impact on the Agile community from the very beginning.Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts.- Reach Ellen Gottesdiener: ellen@ebgconsulting.com- Find out more about Women in Product: www.womenpm.org/The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared.Podcast Library: www.solutionsiq.com/womeninagileWomen in Agile website: www.womeninagile.orgConnect with us on social media!LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/Twitter: twitter.com/womeninagileorg

話したこと Agile 2019 Conference Washington D.C. について @kawaguti @martin_lover_se に話していただきました 感想や 質問、こんな話をして欲しい、などをぜひ #omoiyarifm までお願いします！ Agile 2019 Conference - Washington D.C. Global Scrum Gathering Vienna 2019 周辺地理の話 流行っていたテーマがあった？ 印象に残っているセッションは？ How to facilitate a Mob Programming session as a coach? (Woody Zuill) The Age of Agile: How Smart Companies Are Transforming the Way Work Gets Done Mapping The Enterprise Agile Journey (Stephen Denning) How to Change the World 〜チェンジ・マネジメント3.0〜 HARADA Kiro (@haradakiro) / Twitter 非公式モブプロ David Bernstein (@ToBeAgile) / Twitter Llewellyn Falco (@LlewellynFalco) / Twitter クリス Chris Lucian (@ChristophLucian) / Twitter Mob Mentality Show - YouTube モブプロの聖地 Hunter Industries で学んだこと - kawaguti's diary How to Manage Your Attention in a World of Distraction ish: The Problem with our Pursuit for Perfection Playful Leadership: Enable Transformational Change Fun Done Learn at Agile 2019 Lightning Talks - Speaker Deck Scrum does not work here in Asia - Joshua 스크람 Partogi - Medium Running Mob Programming - How we made our team x 4 faster! - Speaker Deck Mobster Joshua Kerievsky (@JoshuaKerievsky) / Twitter Modern Agile 情熱を保つ Agile Conference に友達に会いに行く Regional Scrum Gathering Tokyo 2020 Agile Open Initiative - Agile Alliance 区切りに学校のチャイムを使う アギレルゴ　アジャイル研修 A Scrum Book: The Spirit of the Game スクラムフェス札幌 スクラムフェス大阪 - Scrum Fest Osaka 2019 Agile Leadership Summit 2019 サテライト｜AgileJapan2019 米Target社の受入型集合研修(Dojo)でのモブプログラミングとDevOps - kawaguti's diary

We're just days away from the start of the biggest Agile event of the year. Agile 2019 begins in Washington D.C. on August 5th and LeadingAgile will be there in full force. In this episode of SoundNotes, LeadingAgile Executive Talent Lead Priya Sethuraman joins Dave Prior to share some tips and advice for those attending the conference who want to make the most out of their time. The Agile Conference is an intense week filled with hundreds of sessions and events focused on helping attendees level up their Agile game. Whether you're attending for the first time, or you're a seasoned conference pro,  this podcast will offer valuable recommendations to help you maximize the value you get from the time you spend in D.C.—and survive the conference intact. If you're attending, LeadingAgile has two sessions you won't want to miss: Mike Cottmeyer - Organizational TransformationMonday, August 5 at 3:45 PM Dennis Stevens - Assumptions and Ambiguity be Damned.Develop a Strategy to Embrace Change.Tuesday, August 6 at 9:00 AM And please stop by our booth to say hi! If you are interested in joining the LeadingAgile team, make sure to connect with Priya and Rachel Howard who will be in the booth recruiting all week. If you aren't able to make it to the conference, we'll be live streaming video podcast interviews with speakers and Agile thought leaders who are attending the show. So keep an eye on our Facebook channel throughout the week for live interviews from the exhibit hall floor of Agile 2019! Contacting Priya Sethuraman Web: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/priya-sethuraman/ Email: priya@leadingagile.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/priyasethuraman/ Contacting Dave Prior If you’d like to contact Dave you can reach him at: LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrsungo Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrsungo Email: dave.prior@leadingagile.com If you have a question you’d like to submit for an upcoming podcast, please send them to dave.prior@leadingagile.com  

SPaMCAST 545 we have an interview with Cheryl Hammond, Jenny Tarwater, Faye Thompson, and Linda Podder.  We talk about Launching New Voices, Women in Agile, planned activities at Agile 2019 and more. There is a lot of good advice and ideas if you’re new to speaking or if you are a seasoned speaker. There is a call to action at the end of the interview. 2019 Women in Agile Conference site https://www.agilealliance.org/events/women-in-agile-2019/   Cheryl Hammond Cheryl Hammond, a.k.a. @bsktcase, has a couple of decades' experience as a software leader in the private and public sectors. She ran her team's successful adoption of Scrum-ban for a mission-critical regulatory compliance project under multi-agency state and federal government oversight, mentored former COBOL devs into true-believing unit-testing XP evangelists, and turned a threatened software product at risk of litigation into a lean, revenue-generating flagship offering in nine months, all of which leads her to believe that anything is possible. She is not sorry for her many biases, including strong preferences for servant-style leadership and team-based, holistic problem-solving and a strong aversion to agile zealotry. Whether consulting or in-house, Cheryl endeavors to make life suck less for software delivery organizations and the humans who inhabit them.   Faye Thompson With more than twenty years of project delivery experience, Faye Thompson is a consultant coach and scrum master. With a focus on an agile mindset and continuous improvement, Faye has had a positive impact in the financial services, healthcare, advertising, automotive and aviation industries. Passionate about using innovative solutions to drive business value, she supports workgroups as they transform themselves into highly engaged and energized teams. Faye enjoys serving on the board of directors for the Central Ohio Agile Association and as President of the Women in STEMM Alumni Society of The Ohio State University. She spends her free time volunteering as an emergency medical responder and public affairs coordinator for the American Red Cross. Jenny Tarwater Jenny Tarwater is an International Speaker, Agile Coach, and Trainer local to the Kansas City, Missouri area. Jenny has over 23 years of corporate experience bringing business teams, technical teams, and sponsors together to reliably deliver large-scale development projects with her disciplined approach of cultivating success and growth in people, process and products. Jenny has a passion for driving the adoption and understanding of Agile values, principles, and practices, and her endless motivation drives her involvement in cultivating the “small company startup culture” across organizations large and small. Jenny is a kinetic leader, partner, and consummate student who brings enthusiasm and awareness to projects and keeps teams focused and delivering success in rapidly evolving and dynamic environments. Linda Podder Linda Podder is a passionate learner and experienced Scrum Master at Hyland Software in Westlake, OH.  She was instrumental in helping launch Hyland’s first SAFe implementation and continues to work with additional SAFe programs as they launch.  Linda loves encouraging her teams to explore, innovate, and celebrate their failures just as much as their successes. She is also passionate about empowering her teams to achieve technical excellence through Agile engineering practices.  Outside of work, she loves to game with her family and take pictures of her fluffy black cats. Re-Read Saturday News Today we continue the re-read of Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. This week we re-read chapter 2. Chapter 2 tackles the relationship between effort, attention, and thinking slow. Thinking slow, system 2 thinking, requires effort. That effort must be marshaled and directed which requires attention. The more effort needed, the more attention needed. Attention is a finite resource, therefore, the more we spend on system 2 thinking, less attention available for everything else. A word of warning, don’t do higher math while driving! If you do not have a favorite, dog-eared copy of Thinking, Fast and Slow, please buy a copy.  Using the links in this blog entry helps support the blog and its alter-ego, The Software Process and Measurement Cast. Buy a copy on Amazon,  It’s time to get reading!   The installments: Week 1: Logistics and Introduction - http://bit.ly/2UL4D6h Week 2: The Characters Of The Story - http://bit.ly/2PwItyX Week 3: Attention and Effort - http://bit.ly/2H45x5A Next SPaMCAST SPaMCAST 546 will feature our interview with Michael Milutis. Michael and I talked about putting people back in charge of their careers. Michael provides advice that every listener can put to use immediately and in the long run.

During the 2017 Heart of Agile Conference in Pittsburgh, Savannah Rayat gave a presentation called “Enhancing your life with Personal Agility”. During the session she explained how she has applied some basic Agile practices from Scrum and Kanban to refine and focus her approach to life, deciding what is most important to her, and managing teams. Savannah has also applied Agile in other non-IT areas. During the interview, we talk about some of the Scrum practices she has applied in working with her team of Realtors. Show Notes 00:10 - Interview Begins 00:52 - Background on Savannah 01:42 - How Day-Trading fits in with being a Realtor/IT Professional 02:15 - How Savannah defines Personal Agility 04:44 - Savannah’s approach to Personal Kanban and her issue with deadlines 05:31 - The important of setting and maintaining WIP Limits 07:06 - Reducing your WIP to 3-4 10:00 - Preventing the backlash of cutting stuff our of your life 12:15 - Having affection for your interests 12:42 - Deciding what you can live without 14:29 - Long term and short term road mapping 15:48 - Savannah’s Day to Day practice of Agile 18:50 - The need for slack 21:35 - The benefits of self-reflection and coping with the guilt of doing unplanned stuff 23:16 - Making the time for Personal Kanban 24:19 - Accountability Partners 25:33 - How to get started with using Personal Agility 27:44 - How Savannah uses Scrum to support collaboration on her Real Estate team 32:38 - Getting in touch with Savannah 34:39 - Interview Ends Contacting Savannah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/savannah-rayat-8942b8120/ on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SavannahRayat Savannah’s Realty site: http://rayatrealtygroup.com Savannah’s Heart of Agile 2017 http://heartofagile.com/Session/enhancing-your-life-with-personal-agility/

Note: This is the audio only version of the video podcast which can be found here -> https://vimeo.com/217951635 This is a short version of the HOA + Personal Agility Canvas session led by Dave Prior at the 2017 Heart of Agile Conference in Pittsburgh. During this video Dave provides a walk through of the Personal Agility Canvas with a focus on the expanded Heart of Agile. If you are new to this tool, it is a great way to conduct a self-assessment on your own Personal Agile Transformation. It will also help you establish personal goals for your desired state of personal agility and help you define actions you can take immediately to amp up your adoption of Agile. THE PERSONAL AGILITY CANVAS If you'd like to download a PDF of the canvas to complete on your own while you are viewing the video, you can find it here: http://bit.ly/2pVW7Ol CONTACTING DAVE You can reach Dave on the LeadingAgile site at https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/ On Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrsungo Or on his personal site at: https://drunkenpm.blogspot.com/ FEEDBACK/QUESTIONS If you have comments on the podcast, or have questions for the LeadingAgile coaches that you’d like to have addressed in a future episode of LeadingAgile’s SoundNotes, you can reach Dave at dave.prior@leadingagile.com LEADINGAGILE CSM AND CSPO CLASSES For information on LeadingAgile’s upcoming public CSM and CSPO classes, please go to: http://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/ Use the discount code: LA_Podcast to receive a 15% discount on the class. HEART OF AGILE And to learn more about The Heart of Agile, please visit Alistair Cockburn's site here: http://heartofagile.com

Jessie Shternshus is the founder of The Improv Effect and the author of “CTRL SHIFT: 50 Games for 50 ****ing Days Like Today”. In her work, Jessie often incorporates improv techniques to help people tap into the things they need to become better communicators, team members and leaders. She also coaches organizations through Agile transition and cultural change. After recently completing my first improv class, and not feeling very confident that I “got it”, I had lots of questions. Jessie was kind enough to spend some time talking with me about my experience, the benefits improv can provide, what “yes, and…” really means, why it is important and the elements needed to create a safe space where people can thrive and be creative. SHOW NOTES 00:00 Podcast Intro 01:58 Interview Start 02:22 What Jessie has been up to lately 03:42 Jessie’s work coaching people to help them amp up their presentation skills 04:45 The Creative Courage Summit 05:58 Jessie’s Book “CTRL SHIFT: 50 Games for 50 ****ing Days Like Today” 06:17 Intro to the Improv Discussion 07:00 Dave’s fears about the safety provided by the improv framework 07:46 “I’m happy to tell you your being dumb” 08:22 How can you have an environment that is supportive AND critical 08:41 Dave missed some important pieces 09:08 Learning from what makes you uncomfortable 10:04 It’s important to find the class that is right for you 11:50 How you establish a safe improv space 13:36 Safety comes from setting expectations, modeling behavior and getting to know people 16:12 Finding a way to use improv to build camaraderie with remote teams 18:20 Do you always have to “Yes, and…” 18:50 How “Yes, and” works, and the benefits it can bring 21:22 What skills improv can offer to individuals and teams working in an office setting 22:50 Advice from Jessie on how to pick the right class for you 25:19 Part of being creative involves tapping into your childlike self, but you have to feel safe going there 26:18 What if you can’t let go of everything and reach that childlike state? 28:20 Being mindful of the things you are resisting 30:02 Getting in touch with Jessie CONTACTING JESSIE http://www.improveffect.com https://www.facebook.com/improveffect/ https://twitter.com/TheImprovEffect LINKS: Jessie’s Book: “CTRL SHIFT: 50 Games for 50 ****ing Days Like Today” http://amzn.to/2rhOxPk The Creative Courage Summit: http://CreativeCourageSummit.live My Video Podcast interview with Jessie at the 2015 Agile Conference: https://vimeo.com/135568636

Last week at the 2017 Scrum Gathering in San Diego, Dave Prior had a chance to sit down with Maria Matarelli and Alistair Cockburn to discuss the 2017 Heart of Agile Conference in Pittsburgh on April 27-28, Guest Leadership, the importance of dancing at conferences, Maria’s budding career as a DJ, her upcoming humanitarian work in New Zealand as well as her Agile Lifestyles event that will be live streamed from a stadium in New Zealand on May 3 (US time)… and of course… the Tango. If you’d like to learn more about the 2017 Heart of Agile Conference being held in Pittsburgh on April 27-28, follow this link: http://heartofagile.com/heart-of-agile-conferences/heart-of-agile-pittsburgh-2017/ Here are some additional links from the podcast: The Scrum Alliance has posted the presentations from the 2017 Scrum Gathering in San Diego on their site. You can find them here: https://scrumalliance.org/why-scrum/scrum-resources/gathering-presentations For more information Guest Leadership please check here: http://alistair.cockburn.us/Guest+Leadership Maria’s presentation in New Zealand on May 4th at 9 AM New Zealand time / May 3rd at 4 PM EST https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/join-powerful-agile-lifestyle-live-streamed-from-new-may-matarelli Dave’s previous interview with Alistair Cockburn on Designing Quality of Life https://soundcloud.com/drunkenpmradio/alistair-cockburn-designing-quality-of-life Contacting Alistair Cockburn Web: http://alistair.cockburn.us Twitter: https://twitter.com/TotherAlistair Contacting Maria Matarelli Web: http://mariamatarelli.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/MariaMatarelli Contacting Dave You can reach Dave on the LeadingAgile site at http://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/ On Twitter at http://twitter.com/mrsungo Or on his personal site at: http://drunkenpm.net Feedback/Questions If you have comments on the podcast, or have questions for the LeadingAgile coaches that you’d like to have addressed in a future episode of LeadingAgile’s SoundNotes, you can reach Dave at dave.prior@leadingagile.com LeadingAgile CSM and CSPO Classes For information on LeadingAgile’s upcoming public CSM and CSPO classes, please go to: http://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/ Use the discount code: LA_Podcast to receive a 15% discount on the class.

The original video version of this file can be found here: https://vimeo.com/213030252 The Heart of Agile 2017 is being held on April 27-28 in Pittsburgh. It is the 2nd annual HOA conference and it will also be the first Agile Conference held in Pittsburgh. Derek Huether and Dave Prior will both be speaking at the event. In this short video Derek and Dave each provide an overview of the sessions they will be leading at the event celebrating Alistair Cockburn’s approach to getting back to the basics of what makes Agile work. If you’d like to check out Derek’s session: How to Find Early Indications That Your Delivery System Will Fail April 27, 2017 1:30pm  -  2:15pm Empress Deck 1 http://heartofagile.com/Session/how-to-find-early-indications-that-your-delivery-system-will-fail/ And if you’d like to see Dave’s session: Heart of Agile + Personal Agility Canvas April 28, 2017 3:30pm  -  4:15pm Empress Deck 1 http://heartofagile.com/Session/heart-of-agile-personal-agility-canvas/ And if you need information on the conference in general or want to attend http://heartofagile.com/heart-of-agile-conferences/heart-of-agile-pittsburgh-2017/ We hope to see you there!

The 2017 Heart of Agile Conference will be held in Pittsburgh on April 27 and 28. This is the second annual conference dedicated to helping Agile practitioners let go of some of the dogma and ornamentation that has been glommed on to Agile and get back to the core principles and the Heart of Agility. In this interview, Rob Lingle, one of the conference organizers took some time to speak with Dave about the conference, why it is happening in Pittsburgh, why you should attend and what you can expect once you are there. In the latter half of of the podcast, (beginning at 08:12) Rob and Dave discuss the work Rob does volunteering for several different organizations, why he considers it to be so important and how being of service to others helps him in his work as an Agile coach. Leading Agile is proud to be a sponsor of the 2017 Heart of Agile Conference! Both Derek Huether and Dave Prior will be presenting at the conference. Show Notes 00:08 Podcast Begins 00:33 Some background on Rob and his work 01:01 The first ever Agile conference in Pittsburgh and on a Riverboat! 01:48 Boat jumping 02:35 Bringing the Heart of Agile Conference to Pittsburgh 04:25 Getting back to the basics of Agility 05:00 There is so much to learn, you’ll never be done. Stay focused on the core (or heart) of Agile 06:14 The intended audience/level of expertise for the conference… who should attend 07:10 Crowd sourcing topics for the conference 07:42 Pricing, dates and registration for the Heart of Agile 08:12 Rob’s work volunteering with different organizations 09:05 How Rob selects the organizations he volunteers for 09:30 Volunteering for Jubilee Soup Kitchen 10:15 Volunteering for Junior Achievers as a Teacher 11:01 Volunteering for Code.org’s Hour of Code 12:15 How the volunteer work influences Rob’s work as an Agile coach 12:54 “Real success … comes through service to others” 13:50 How dedicating your time and being of service to others can benefit you on many levels 15:15 Getting more details about the 2017 Heart of Agile Conference in Pittsburgh Links from the Podcast The 2017 Heart of Agile Conference in Pittsburgh https://www.eventbrite.com/e/heart-of-agile-pittsburgh-tickets-30705192056 The Heart of Agile Website http://heartofagile.com The organizations Rob volunteers for Jubilee Soup Kitchen http://jubileesoupkitchen.org Junior Achievement of Western Pennsylvania https://www.juniorachievement.org/web/ja-westernpa Hour of Code https://hourofcode.com/us Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank https://www.pittsburghfoodbank.org Contacting Rob Lingle LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/linglerob/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/lingle_r412 Summa Company Website - http://www.summa.com Contacting Dave LeadingAgile Profile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/ Email: dave.prior@leadingagile.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrsungo Personal Blog: http://drunkenpm.blogspot.com Feedback/Questions If you have comments on the podcast, or have questions for the LeadingAgile coaches that you’d like to have addressed in a future episode of LeadingAgile’s SoundNotes, you can reach Dave at dave.prior@leadingagile.com LeadingAgile CSM and CSPO Classes For information on LeadingAgile’s upcoming public CSM and CSPO classes, please go to: www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/ Use the discount code: LA_Podcast to receive a 15% discount on the class. social networks

WIKN is a one stop shop for advice from industry experts, offering their insights with hindsight about what they know now that they wished they knew then.   On Thursday the 2nd of November Computer Futures held The Future of Agile Conference. In this podcast I give an overview of The Future of Agile event that was organised by Cathy O Heaire from Computer Futures. In this short podcast we hear from three of the speakers on the day Rick Cusilito, Ronan Connaire […] The post WIKN E05 An Overview Of The Future of Agile Conference November 2016 appeared first on WIKN.

In this iteration of SoundNotes, Devin Hedge and Dave Prior talk about how to get prepare for Agile 2016. If you’ll be heading to the conference for the first time, the Agile Conference is a big, awesome, exhausting week. You need to prepare, you need to pace yourself and you need to know what you want to get out of the conference. In this podcast you’ll get some tips from seasoned conference veterans on how to make the best of your week in Atlanta. The podcast is only 18 minutes long, so we’re not providing show notes this week. Instead, here is a list of the LeadingAgile events taking place at Agile 2016. Mike Cottmeyer "The Executives Step-by-Step Guide to Leading Large-Scale Agile Transformation" Monday at 10:45 Jann Thomas "2020: The State of Agility" Tuesday at 10:45 AM Jeff Howey "Practicing Agility in Human Resources" Wednesday at 11:30 Collective Soul June 27 at 7 PM. To learn more, please visit: http://collectivesoul.leadingagile.com If you'd like to contact Devin on Twitter -> https://twitter.com/agiledevin If you'd like to contact Dave on Twitter -> https://twitter.com/mrsungo

Hosts Ryan Ripley, Don Gray, Tim Ottinger, Amitai Schlair, Jason Tice Discussion Ryan Ripley (@ryanripley), Don Gray (@donaldegray), Tim Ottinger (@tottinge), Amitai Schlair (@schmonz), and Jason Tice (@theagilefactor) got together to discuss strategies for submitting talks to agile conferences and how to help the chances of your presentation getting accepted. **DISCLAIMER: This is an independent podcast that is not affiliated with or represents the views of any of the conferences mentioned on the show. Every person on the podcast speaks at conferences across the United States and around the world. We've also had our talks rejected at many conferences as well. While there isn't a silver bullet that guarantees success in this space, there are ways to increase the odds that your talk will fit in with the needs of the organizers and delight the attendees. It's our hope that this episode helps those new to public speaking get their ideas out in to the world and to give veterans of the conference scene fresh ideas on how to get more of their talks potentially accepted. And then…we called it a night. Will you help the Agile for Humans podcast grow? Please review Agile for Humans on iTunes or Stitcher and leave your comments on the blog site. Help your friends and co-workers find Agile for Humans by sharing your favorite episodes with them. Thanks for all you do to support the show. Agile for Humans is brought to you by audible.com – get one FREE audiobook download and 30 day free trial at http://www.audibletrial.com/agile Resources, Plugs, and More Ryan – https://ryanripley.com Path to Agility Conference – May 25 & 26 in Columbus, OH Don – http://www.donaldegray.com/ Coaching Beyond the Team Tim – http://agileotter.blogspot.com/ Industrial Logic Agile Otter Blog Agile in A Flash by Tim Ottinger and Jeff Langr Amitai – http://www.schmonz.com/ Agile in 3 Minutes on LeanPub.com [PODCAST] Agile in 3 Minutes Podcast Jason – http://www.thisagilelife.com/ [PODCAST] This Agile Life Agile Games 2016 Agile Coach Camp US 2016 The post AFH 032: How to Improve Your Agile Conference Submissions [PODCAST] appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this edition of Sound Notes, Dave Prior sits down with LeadingAgile CEO, Mike Cottmeyer to talk about the world's largest Agile Conference, Agile2015. Listen in as they discuss what to expect of the conference for new attendees, the diversity of perspectives and the social aspect of putting over 2,000 Agilists in the same place for five days. Mike also shares a preview of his Agile2015 talk, Three Things You Must Know to Transform Any Sized Organization into an Agile Enterprise as the two share common challenges around Enterprise Agile Adoption and Transformation.

Welcome to the Software Process and Measurement Cast 254 The Software Process and Measurement Cast 254 features my interview with Matt Heusser.  We discussed agile and testing.  It was a great interview full of thought provoking discussion and controversial ideas.   Matthew Heusser is the managing consultant at Excelon Development, where he focuses on software project delivery and risk management. A board member for the Association for Software Testing, lead editor of "How to Reduce the Cost of Software Testing" (Taylor & Francis 2011), Matt recently served as co-chair of the test and quality track of the Agile Conference. You can learn more about Matt at www.xndev.com or follow him on twitter @mheusser. The Software Process and Measurement Cast has a sponsor . . . As many you know I do at least one webinar for the IT Metrics and Productivtity Intstiute (ITMPI) every year. The ITMPI provides a great service to the IT profession. ITMPI's mission is to pull together the expertise and educational efforts of the world's leading IT thought leaders and to create a single online destination where IT practitioners and executives can meet all of their educational and professional development needs. THe ITMPI offers a premium membership that gives members unlimited free access to 400 PDU accredited webinar recordings, and waives the PDU processing fees on all live and recorded webinars.  The Software Process and Measurement Cast recieves a fee if you sign up using the URL in the show notes.   http://mbsy.co/fGdw  All revenue our sponsors goes for bandwidth, hosting and new cool equipment to create more and better content for you!  Support the SPaMCAST and learn from the ITMPI! THe Software Process and Measurement Cast is a proud member of the Tech Podcast Network.  If it is tech it is on the Tech Podcast Network.  Check out the Software Process and Measurement and other great podcasts on the TPN!   TPN:  www.techpodcast.com Do you have a Facebook account?  If you do please visit and like the Software Process and Measurement Cast page on Facebook.  http://ow.ly/mWAgU  The Daily Process Thoughts is my project designed to deliver a quick daily idea, thought or simple smile to help you become a better change agent. Each day you will get piece of thought provoking text and a picture or hand drawn chart to illustrate the idea being presented. The goal is to deliver every day; rain or shine, in sickness or in health or for better or worse! Check it out at www.tcagley.wordpress.com.  Shameless Ad for my book!  Mastering Software Project Management: Best Practices, Tools and Techniques co-authored by Murali Chematuri and myself and published by J. Ross Publishing. We have received unsolicited reviews like the following: "This book will prove that software projects should not be a tedious process, neither for you or your team." NOW AVAILABLE IN CHINESE!  Have you bought your copy? It is conference season! ISMA8 ISMA Rio will be an opportunity for all members of the Software Measurement Community to meet in beautiful Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in the week of September 30th, 2013. The eighth edition of the IFPUG International Software Measurement & Analysis Conference will be co-located with the 1st edition of the ISBSG IT Confidence Conference. That will bring together many international consultants, practitioners, and researchers from the Software Measurement arena. You can’t afford to miss it! The New York Times has nominated Rio the #1 tourist destination in the world. See you in Rio! http://www.ifpug.org/?page_id=980 Agile Phily - AgileTour 2013http://www.ifpug.org/?page_id=980Time: October 7, 2013 from 12:30pm to 4:30pmLocation: EbayEnterprise (previously known as GSI Commerce) in King of PrussiaStreet: First AvenueCity/Town: King of Prussiahttp://www.agilephilly.com/events/agiletour-2013 AgileDC - Agile, it's not just for big complex projects anymore.Date: October 8, 2013 http://agiledc.org/ Testrek 2013October 28-30, 2013 to the Eaton Chelsea Downtown Toronto!http://www.qaitestrek.org/2013Toronto/ Agile Practical Techniques WorkshopMonday, October 28, 2013: 8:30 AM - 4:30 PMFormat: Full-day Class Agile Practical Techniques Workshop helps developers, testers, business analysts, scrum masters and project managers to develop an understanding of Agile development techniques focusing on concepts such as test driven development that integrate testing into the Agile process. The workshop combines concepts from Agile (e.g. Scrum, xP and Test Driven Development) and Learning Organizations, providing participants with the tools to both participate on Agile projects and to develop and deploy related processes. Lean Software Development WorkshopTuesday, October 29, 2013: 8:30 AM - 12:00 PMFormat: Half-day TutorialLean Software Development Workshop (e.g. Kanban, Flow and Kaizen) uses a lean-agile focus to help everyone involved in developing, enhancing and maintaining software employ the Principles of Lean to enhance the delivery of value-added work. This workshop is hands-on and “things” will be thrown! Presentation: Agile Underperforming? Keys to Improving DeliveryWednesday, October 30, 2013: 9:45 AM - 10:45 AMJust because you have implemented Agile techniques does not mean you are performing to the level which your organization is capable. Is your implementation of Agile underperforming? Agile has been promoted as delivering higher customer satisfaction, better quality, faster time to market, increased productivity and — in some cases — to deliver world peace. The question is do you know and if you think you know, is your knowledge more than anecdotal? The only way to know truly is to measure. Measurement is only the first step in finding issues and taking action. Measurement provides focus. Being aware of problems and not spending the time and effort to study performance is a waste. W. Edwards Deming admonished us to have “constancy of purpose.” I would use the term “attention-span” in an attempt to make the same argument. Once we understand we have a problem, our next step is to take action and to perhaps make a difference in the value we deliver. Is your Agile underperforming? It doesn’t matter if you’re not going to fix it. Contact information for the Software Process and Measurement Cast Email:  spamcastinfo@gmail.comVoicemail:  +1-206-888-6111Website: www.spamcast.netTwitter: www.twitter.com/tcagleyFacebook:  http://bit.ly/16fBWVContact information for the Software Process and Measurement Cast One more thing!  Help support the SPaMCAST by reviewing and rating the Software Process and Measurement Cast on ITunes! It helps people find the cast.  Next: The Software Process and Measurement Cast 255 features my essay on self-management. The title of the essay is "Project Management Is Dead, Long Live Project Management." Self-management and agile go together like chocolate and peanut butter but . . . the concept is not well understood and rarely implemented well.

Come and join me at the Agile DC conference on October 22.  We have 3 tracks to choose from and lots of great speakers.Agile EssentialsAgile in the Government and EnterpriseOpen Talks TrackUse the discount code "agileToolkit" to get $20 off.Information here http://agiledc.org

Nancy speaks to Jack about the Deep Agile conference and his work in the embedded world. Jack will be speaking at Deep Agile. If you are interested in Agile in the world of embedded systems this conference is an opportunity to explore or improve your use of agile methods in that space. Enjoy this podcast. -bob payne

Nancy and James talk about the upcoming Deep Agile Conference. This sounds like a great conference and I hope some of you will get a chance to be there. Embedded systems present their own development/delivery challenges. If you are a beginner or an expert at Agile Embedded development you will find something at this conference. http://deepagile2009.eventbrite.com/ -bob payne

I spoke with "Joe" Krebs at the Agile Conference regarding the somewhat contentious topic of certification.Enjoy-Bob Payne

If you have not heard Pollyanna Pixton you are in for a treat.  Not only does she have the best Cold War Super Hero name of all the agilists she is a great speaker.  Enjoy this presentation that she gave to the Washington DC APLN chapter last year.This has been sitting on my hard drive for a long time and it needed to get out.  Please do not be confused about the her reference to the Agile Conference it is a reference to last years conference.  The Leadership Summit did sell out and you can hear some of the sessions that I recorded and released last year.I hope to get 2006 fully published by the time the Agile2007 conference comes around.  -bob payne