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Ever left a meeting feeling more drained than before it started? That’s the dreaded meeting hangover. Brian Milner and Julie Chickering dive into why bad meetings have lasting effects—and what facilitators AND participants can do to make them better. Overview Bad meetings don’t just waste time, they drain energy, morale, and engagement long after they’re over. In this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, Brian and Julie Chickering unpack the concept of "meeting hangovers"—the lingering negative effects of ineffective meetings. They explore why bad meetings happen, the shared responsibility of facilitators and participants, and practical strategies for turning the tide. From fostering accountability to knowing when to walk it off, this conversation will help you rethink how meetings impact team dynamics and productivity. References and resources mentioned in the show: Julie Chickering #137 Stop Wasting Time with Guests Kate Megaw HBR The Hidden Toll of Meeting Hangovers by Brent N. Reed, et al. When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel H. Pink Remotely Productive by Alex Pukinskis Working on a Scrum Team Class 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. Julie Chickering is the brains and brawn behind JC Agile Consulting, believes that Lean and Agile practices are packed with potential — to enable positive culture change, business agility, and breakthrough results. Julie is a past president and board member of the Agile Project Management Network (APLN), a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), as well as a traditional Project Management Professional (PMP). Auto-generated Transcript: Brian Milner (00:00) Welcome back Agile Mentors. We're here for another episode of Agile Mentors podcast. I'm with you as always Brian Milner and haven't got to say this for a while. So I'm happy to say again, welcome back to the show, the fabulous Julie Chickering. Welcome back, Julie. Julie (00:15) Thanks, Brian. Glad to be here. Brian Milner (00:17) Yeah, very excited to have Julie back. Julie is a friend of the show. We've had her on multiple times and it's been too long. We just need to have you on more often again. So thank you for making the time and coming back. We wanted to have Julie on sort of as a little bit of a continuation from our last episode that we had with Kate McGaw. You we talked a little bit about facilitation there and there was a lot that we talked about initially to set that up to talk about Julie (00:30) Sure. Brian Milner (00:44) just the fact that there's an epidemic of bad meetings. There's kind of a harmful thing happening where it's extremely prevalent that meetings are going poorly. There's not a lot of attention that's given to this. There's not a lot of focus in a lot of organizations because it's such a prevalent issue. of our meetings being so bad. And Julie pointed out to me this Harvard Business Review article that sort of became a touchstone, I think, for what we wanted to talk about. It's called the hidden toll of meeting hangovers. And we'll link to this in the show notes. But the idea behind the article was just to say, they quoted a stat early on saying that they did a study and found that more than a quarter, 28 % of meetings left employees with lingering negative effects, such as impaired engagement and productivity. And so that's what they were referring to this sort of this meeting hangover, that bad meetings take a toll beyond just the lost time in the meeting. And that's kind of what we were talking about more with Kate is, you know, yeah, we want to make our meetings better, but there is sort of this ongoing lingering that, you know, from my reading of this and what I've experienced, kind of compounds, you know? One bad meeting then can lead to another bad meeting and another one and that feeling of anxiety and disconnectedness and like I said here, impaired engagement and productivity, those kind of grow and get worse and worse the longer that you have these bad meetings. So Julie, I'll just start with you and say, you know, when you read this article, what was it? What was it that really stood out to you, that jumped out to you, that made you think this was an important kind of area of focus? Julie (02:27) First of all, I love the title because I can relate to it. So when you're having a hangover, you just feel terrible, right? And this person that they talk about first, Jacob, about like, he was so frustrated when he left the meeting. So the introductory story when he was so frustrated when he left the meeting, he canceled his one-on-one right after because he knew he couldn't concentrate. And then he was just like so upset. for the rest of the day and talking about how he just didn't even want to work on the project anymore. So just this, I just got this physical sensation reading this around how it feels when you're in a meeting that's ineffective. And we've all been there and I could just like feel it in my body when I read this story. And I also feel like once you know what I, what an ineffective meeting feels like, the ineffective one is more noticeable and draining. yeah, so and then this this lingering effect of morale and just wasted, just wasted opportunity. And it feels like Brian Milner (03:32) Yeah. Yeah. Julie (03:47) in the corporate world, this is the norm. That we just have meeting after meeting after meeting that's just sucking the life force out of everyone. And then we wonder why nothing gets done. Brian Milner (04:00) Yeah, I mean, this article is packed with statistics and it's tempting for me to just kind of read them all off to you. I'm not going to do that. But there's a couple of things that kind of jump out to me. they talk about how around half of people have this feeling of that as a result of the hangover from the meeting, that they have negative or harmful impacts on their interactions with coworkers. They feel more disconnected from their team. and they want to spend more time alone based on the fact that, I went through this really kind of, there's no other way to say it, traumatic experience of having this really harmful, bad meeting. they connect the dots by saying, people will leave these meetings and oftentimes they will then go commiserate with coworkers and say, share their frustrations, which is helpful, it's good. But it also, you know, they noted here, this can kind of spread some feeling of negativity or hopelessness, you know, that it's always going to be this way. You know, yeah, I had a meeting like that as well. Boy, I guess this place is doomed. It's always going to feel like this. And so they have this kind of ongoing, as I said, compounding almost nature of it that one bad thing leads to another leads to another leads to another. And pretty soon you've got this really harmful, negative work environment and it's not necessarily something that's just happened. It's just the repetition of going through those things lead to this ongoing negative psychological impact in the organization. Julie (05:28) Yeah, I'm just smiling because I can just think of some meetings that I used to have a leader that would always show up late. Always show up late. We'd be halfway through the topic and then he would show up and we'd have to stop what we were doing and go circle back and just speed and you could just feel. the whole mood of the meeting change. We were actually making progress and we have to stop and we have to go all the way over. And this is constant. So what we would do afterwards is then have meetings after the meetings to complain about the leader doing that. The more adult thing would have been of course to say to the leader, when you do this, Brian Milner (06:15) Yeah. Julie (06:22) This is the outcome. Brian Milner (06:25) Yeah. So, so that's kind of, you know, what we want to talk about a little bit in here as well is, in the last episode, we, focused a lot on facilitation and the idea that, Hey, there's a lot of responsibility to the meeting organizer, whoever's facilitating this to not have it be this negative kind of environment. And I don't disagree with any of that, that we talked about in the last episode. I think there is a lot of that, that is true, but I think it's, it's. important for participants to not look at that as, it's all the facilitator then, right? I'm just a participant, I'm showing up and it's your job to get all this stuff out of me. And if the meeting goes poorly, that's entirely your fault. And I think it's important for us to recognize, no, if I'm a participant, if I accept that meeting invite and I'm here, I have a role to play. I have a contribution to be made and I can have, you Julie (07:14) Right. Brian Milner (07:19) as kind of Pollyanna-ish as it sounds, I can have a negative impact or a positive impact on this meeting. And I think that's an important kind of responsibility to take a hold of. Julie (07:25) you Yeah, I agree. And I think about that in a couple of ways. So actually, in both Scrum Master and Product Owner class, I remind them at the end of every meeting to ask two questions. The next time we have this kind of meeting, what would you want to do differently? But you gotta ask the question. And if you ask the question and nobody says anything, then they can't feel victim to a poorly run meeting. But you gotta be able to listen. You gotta be able to listen to it. Doesn't mean you have to say yes in the moment. It could be that you would follow up after, but just ask the question. What would you wanna do differently the next time we have this type of meeting And then ask them, what did they like? Brian Milner (07:48) Yeah. That's good. Julie (08:11) I used to do it the other way around. I don't know if I told you this story before or not, but do you remember Daniel Pink did the he was our keynote speaker at the Scrum Gathering, our conference a few years ago when he talked about. OK, when he talked about timing. OK, so something he said is like, yes, he said, as people, if there's two, if there's good news and bad news to always start with the bad news first. And end with the good news, because as people, we remember the last thing we talked about it. Brian Milner (08:20) Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Julie (08:40) So if I say to you, okay, the next time we have this type of meeting, what would you want to do differently? And nobody says anything. Okay. What did you like? And then they leave going, we actually got something done. Unless of course we didn't get anything done. Brian Milner (08:57) That's awesome. Yeah. I mean, I think about like how in classes, a lot of times when we talk about forecasting and estimation, you know, I make a little joke. It's not really a joke. It's the truth. But when I present, I've learned over the years when I present information to stakeholders about timings, I, know, if, if I do calculations and it says it's going to take between five and six sprints to do something, I've learned to say the maximum amount of time it will take is six sprints. there's a chance it could come in as soon as it's five sprints and yeah. Yeah. I mean, I learned to do that because what I say in classes, I've learned a lot of people stop listening after the first one. And I think actually though, I may be wrong. It may be more what you're saying that, you know, we, we remember the last thing that we hear. but it may be a combination, right? Cause if, if I hear the low number first and I I'm happy with that, I stopped listening and I don't want to hear the bad news. Julie (09:27) Brilliant! Brian Milner (09:50) So if I say the bad news first, it could take as long as this, but there's a chance it could come in earlier, then I'm leaving them with the good news that it could be this, you know, as soon as this, but they've set their expectation that, you know, it could take as long as, you know, the bad news that I gave them initially. So I don't know, maybe there's a combination of that there as well. But yeah, I agree with what Daniel Pink says about that. And timings do make a big, difference for sure. and how we present things. Julie (10:18) Okay, so a key though in that is that you can only ask those questions if you're staying within the time box and you've allocated time to actually ask the question. And like some of these things that came up as the root causes of like poor time management, like running over or stuff like that. If you're running over, nobody's going to really want to take the opportunity to give you feedback. So what do you think about, so what you talked with Kate a lot about when we talking about here is the role of the facilitator. And I think we should talk about what people can do if they are feeling like they're the victim of the lack of facilitation or poor facilitation. So what do think about that? Brian Milner (10:52) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think we have several roles to play, right? I I agree. If I'm not the facilitator, then it's important for me to come into that meeting, well, knowing what the expectation is. know, like if I'm coming into a meeting as a participant, I don't think it's responsible. to show up to the meeting. And I've shown up to meetings like this, showing up with the attitude that, hey, it's not my meeting. It's the other person's meeting. You got me. I'm here. But now it's on you to get out of me, whatever it is that you're hoping to get. And maybe I put in very little prep work for it. So there is some kind of interplay here between the facilitator and the participant. Because you could say, well, that's the facilitator's responsibility to help you understand. Yes, it is. That's, this is what I'm trying to say is I, I think it's a mistake to shirk that responsibility entirely and say, I'm not the facilitator. Don't look at me. Right. If, if they didn't ask me to prepare or, or, you know, here's what I need you to, to, come prepared to talk about. Well, then I've got a bad facilitator and you know, we're just, we're hopelessly going to be in a bad meeting. No, when I get the invite, you know, Kate said last week, you know, Julie (12:17) Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (12:22) You can decline invitations to meetings. You don't have to accept every meeting invite that you get. But if you do accept it, I think that there's an accepting of responsibility there to say, all right, I'm going to be a participant in this meeting. What do you need from me? And in advance, making sure you talk to that meeting organizer and saying, hey, I agree. This is probably a good thing for us to meet about, but I want to prepare. I want to know that I can come to this meeting armed with information that's going to be helpful to others and I can play my part. So meeting facilitator, meeting organizer, what did you have in mind for me in this meeting? What is it that you were hoping to get from me in this meeting so that I can show up prepared? And that small little question, I think, does several things, right? mean, one, it says, to the facilitator, do you know what it is that you want from this person? If they come back at you and say, I don't know, I just thought maybe you needed, well, if they say, you know, we just thought maybe you needed to be in the loop or whatever, well, I might come back at that and say, that sounds like an email, you know? Julie (13:31) Yeah, I'm also thinking though there's the flip side of then people, there's two different things. I want to go back to how I can also help. what also struck me when you were saying that is that I think there's also this cultural part of am I being excluded? That, you know, that sense of They're not inviting me. A lot of times people don't need to be there. What you're afraid if you're not there, does that mean something? Does it mean you're being cut out? You're not important? There's that whole ego part. Yeah. Brian Milner (14:04) Yeah. Right. Sure, mean, especially if there's a decision to be made, right? You could feel like, they don't want my voice in that decision. And I think that that's a legitimate concern. If I'm responsible for an area and decisions are gonna be made in the meeting and I'm left out of that invitation, I might have a concern and say, if there's gonna be a decision made around this, I probably should have an input. Is there reason why you didn't want my input in this meeting? And, you know, even asking that question can sometimes just trigger, well, this is lower level things. This is not really at the level that you weigh in on. Usually we didn't want to waste your time, you know, something like that. You might find out it has nothing to do with the fact that they didn't want your opinion. It was more of, we were trying to be conscious of your time and, and, and didn't think that this was the kind of thing that you would need to weigh in on. So you might have a micromanaging kind of problem there that you need to address as well. Julie (15:11) Yeah, this is all people's stuff. It's what makes it fun. Brian Milner (15:14) Yeah. I want to, want to just, I'm sorry. I don't want to mean to interrupt you, but there's one thing I've been thinking about this whole time as well, because we've been talking about bad meetings and bad meeting hangovers. And I think initially the first thought that kind of comes to our heads about that is facilitation and maybe the meeting not being organized well. But I think there's another thing that makes a meeting a bad meeting that it's important to call out as well. Julie (15:37) Mm. Brian Milner (15:40) I'll just give you an example. I remember there was a job I took the very first day of the job. It my first day on the job. We had a meeting with some of the other leaders in that organization, and I got called into this, and they introduced me. Hey, this is Brian. I remember them saying, he's the new whatever, whatever the last guy was that had my position. OK, he's the new whoever. And we got into discussion about upcoming things, the status of different projects and other things. in the middle of that meeting, there became a shouting match and there were F bombs dropped left and right. And I remember walking out of that meeting going, what the hell did I get myself into? You know? so what I'm trying to call out there is there are sometimes bad meetings. It's not about the facilitation or the order or the agenda or anything else. There's sometimes bad meetings because we don't bring kind of the Julie (16:15) Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (16:29) best parts of ourselves to the meeting. We bring the worst parts of ourselves to the meeting. And sometimes we don't censor that and we don't let those, we don't kind of, I don't know how to put it. We're not engaging civilly, right? And I know that sometimes when I've been in those and I've had multiple of those kinds of meetings like that, that I would say, yeah, that was a bad meeting. But it wasn't because the facilitator did a bad job. It's because the participants were kind of letting their inner demons manifest through themselves in the meeting and they weren't really treating everyone with respect. They were very disrespectful to their coworkers. And I think that that's maybe more common than we care to admit. Julie (17:05) Mm-hmm. Yes, when you're sharing that to me, that goes back to meeting working agreements. like, what can I, so if we go back to, if you're in a situation where you're in a bad meeting, even if the facilitator is doing the best that they can, there's things that you can do. So to me, if we've had, and I know you were brand new, but you said that that was not. uncommon. If we had meeting working agreements and you let out an F-bomb and that was against the meeting agreements that anyone else in the room can say, you just broke one of our, you can, you, anyone can call people on that behavior. shouldn't have to be just the facilitator because the facilitator might be like just trying to run through, okay, now what am I going to do? It might be needing to just take a little breath to figure out what do, right? But I can imagine if that was the norm in that environment that people got that disrespectful in the meeting that when people left, there was a hangover effect. Like you kind of was like, what am I doing? Brian Milner (18:07) Right. Julie (18:27) What's happening here? What's going on? What did I sign up for on day one? This is day one. What's day two going to be like? Are we holding back? Right. Here's the new guy. Let's be on our good behavior. We'll only drop three F bombs instead of four. So, at, I was very fortunate that at, Brian Milner (18:27) Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, they were on their best behavior, right? Guess I was new. Yeah. Julie (18:50) rally software, just, this was norm. It was normal to learn, everyone learned how to facilitate and be good participants and all that, except it was really quite funny at our coaches events because we had to have the working agreement that the facilitator actually got to choose how to facilitate, but we didn't get to facilitate the facilitators. But anyway, I have started recommending Alex Bukinski's book, remotely productive. took a lot of what Jean taught us and help is helping people apply that remotely. So like chapter four is how to help in a bad meeting. So if you're a participant and it's going bad, how can you help get back on track in a respectful way? So not being, not being a jerk about it. But even, so he just even gives examples of things like. when somebody makes a recommendation. like noticing when people agree on an action and you type it into chat. It doesn't have to be the facilitator who types it into chat. Like as a participant, you can go, okay, the action was or a decision was made noting decisions, decision, write the decision down, but helping the facilitator be like, we would talk about that. Actually, I forgot until I just started speaking out about it that often, especially in Brian Milner (19:54) Yeah. Yeah. Julie (20:11) big significant meetings, would have a scribe, a facilitator and a scribe. So this is what he's talking about actually is somebody scribing. Brian Milner (20:22) Yeah, yeah, that's a very important component because if we just shout things out and no one's really capturing what the next steps are, those are going to get lost. And we could have to repeat this meeting because we just didn't really follow up in any way. We didn't take any action. So I agree. That's an important component of it is at least designating that it doesn't have to be one person, but just designating that, hey, here's the expectation. Here's what we're going to do. Yeah. Julie (20:49) Um, yeah. So there's a bunch of really good tips in here and like the Kindle version's 1499 or something. So I've been telling people like, if you can have just one meeting that sucks less, you're going to get your 1499 back. So if you could have one less meeting hangover, you're to get your 1499 back, think for sure. Brian Milner (20:49) That's a great tip. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I should clarify with my story earlier that I'm a big boy. It wasn't the language that bothered me. It was directed at someone else, like kind of F-U, that kind of thing. That's a very different dynamic than just saying, those effing suppliers, I sure hate that. That's fine. Or maybe more fine for others than some, but. Julie (21:21) Mm-hmm. Right. Brian Milner (21:38) That didn't bother me, was more just that the attitude behind it was a negative one towards someone else. But yeah, that's a great tip there, just understanding that when I'm a participant there, when I show up, that I have a role to play in it as well. There's things I can do and if there's not notes being taken, then I can maybe step up and do that. Hey, someone said we're going to need to do this? All right, let me put that in the chat. Remember, this is what needs to happen. Julie (22:05) Yeah, and he gives nice, some like a template here on when we're making decisions like data, diagnosis, direction, do next. So he's given a nice, he gives a lot of really great tools. I'm really, and like liking it quite a bit. back to your, your example that is, in the, the behavior part. was a lack of respect versus really the content. Yeah, I get that. The conflict that's going on. Brian Milner (22:42) Yeah. The tip from the book you just mentioned kind of aligns also to something that's in this article, the Harvard Business Review article. One of the things it says is they have some tips in this as well. And one of the things they say is demand accountability every time. And I think that's a good kind of takeaway as well is they're specifically talking about these action items, things that we would do as a result. As a participant, think it's important to, I like that language, demand accountability. If we have this meeting, all right, what is it that you're hoping to get out of this? I'm showing up, I'm here, what do you need from me? What are we gonna do as a result of this? Any participant can ask that. Any participant can say, so that we don't just waste this time, what are we going to do next? Julie (23:11) Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (23:29) I think you demand accountability when you do that. Julie (23:33) Yeah, and I would say too, the first thing we should ask is what's the purpose of this meeting? And so if you go up to turn agendas into action plans, Jean taught us is you have a purpose statement. And then actually she taught us that what are the questions we need to answer in order to meet the purpose? Those are our agenda topics. When we've answered those questions, we're complete with this meeting. And then like where the Brian Milner (23:39) Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Julie (24:01) come back down here to make every minute count. Don't run over. Alex also gives some nice gentle waves of doing like we would say time check. We have 10 more minutes left. You could just put that in chat time check. We have 10 more minutes left. You don't have to be the facilitator to be like time check. So I do like that. He's helping people think about what they can do versus just being victim to Brian Milner (24:05) Yeah. Julie (24:29) the lack of facilitation. Brian Milner (24:31) Yeah. And as a participant, I can, I can check in at the start of the meeting and say, all right, just, want to, I want to, have a time box check here. Our meeting is scheduled from this time to this time. That's our time box, right? We can't, is there, or I have something right after this. just so you know, here's my time box. can't go further than this. and you know, I think as a participant, it's. Julie (24:46) Hmm. Brian Milner (24:56) you can have those same effects just like you said, hey, time box check, it's this, we got this much time left. And as a facilitator, I know I've reached the end of our time boxes sometimes when we haven't really gotten as far as I had hoped, but I've been okay saying this was a good start. This was a good start to what it is we need to decide. Obviously this is gonna take more time. We are at our time box, so we're gonna have to wrap this meeting up, but we'll schedule follow-ups and we'll take it from here. If I'm entering a meeting where I need a decision by the end of that time box, then by all means, make sure people are aware of that from the start. If I'm a participant or if I'm the facilitator, we're here together, but we all need to understand that we need to leave this with a decision on this. Julie (25:37) Yeah. So the other thing, Kia, I believe, around the decision is, and also be clear about how we're going to make the decision. So is this going to be a collaborative decision? We're all going to vote? Or are we getting, everyone going to give their opinion? Somebody else is going to make the decision? And then we'll check, like, how are we, how is the decision going to be made? So that's not a surprise as well. Brian Milner (25:50) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, extremely important. I know when I talk about in our product owner classes about doing things like buy a feature as a way to prioritize, one of the things I always try to say to the stakeholders is, hey, we're going to play by a feature, but this is no promise that this is going to be what the final prioritization is. You're helping me to prioritize, but I want to set the expectation. I have to take into account your opinions and other people's opinions and market factors and lots of other things. So make sure we're on the same page. We need to understand this is a component of the decision. I will make the final decision outside of this meeting, but I really appreciate the input and I need your input to help me make the decision. Julie (26:32) Right. Yeah, love that example. So moving down when they say press paw, how to recover how to press. Brian Milner (26:55) Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you find yourself having a hangover from one of these bad meetings, yeah. Julie (27:01) Well, even if it's a great meeting, I am a fan of Adam Grant and I can't like pull up the where he said it. And he said it someplace that the studies show that people actually need like 10 minutes between topics. So if you're going to finish a meeting, you should have at least 10 minutes before the next meeting to be able to. Brian Milner (27:19) Yeah. Julie (27:27) focus and reframe. So I also feel like sometimes these meetings are bad because people are rushing from meeting to meeting. They don't have time to take a bio break or get a bite to eat. So now they're hungry and all that kind of stuff. But we do this to people on a regular basis. Brian Milner (27:46) Yeah, yeah. But, and I agree with that. if it's a good meeting or a bad meeting, I'll find myself, because I work from home exclusively. Well, I shouldn't say exclusively. Sometimes I'll go and work on site with different companies. But when I'm working from home, I'll leave the meeting of something I've just talked about and I'll have to go get more tea or something. And there's a little decompression of, wow, let me kind of throw that off, right? Let me take a deep breath. And now I can reset and I'm ready for whatever the next thing is. But I find I do that kind of naturally and I can't imagine not doing it. I can't imagine kind of going one thing to the other all the time and never having that break. That would kill me. Yeah. Julie (28:31) It happens all the time. It happens all the time. back to meeting working agreements. That's another one that I suggest is people don't start like at the top or the bottom of the hour. Like they offset it a bit to build in breaks. But when you're setting that time box, you got to set, you got to leave space in your agenda time. You have to leave space in your time, your meeting time to close your meeting properly. Brian Milner (28:59) Yeah. Yeah. Julie (29:01) We don't think about how much time that takes either. So it all adds up for sure. Brian Milner (29:09) I like the idea too that they have in here of walking it off. I know just in my work history, kind of like the example I gave you, there have been times when I've been through meetings where I feel like, yeah, I just got to get this off of me. And I have taken... remember, know, in certain circumstances, I'm not a smoker at all, but I, I had, I've always had developers that smoke in some way, shape or form. I, I wouldn't be uncommon for me to go and just stand outside with them while they smoke. or I'll walk down to the corner and get a drink or something and come back. there's something about taking that walk, getting outside the office. or if I'm here working at home, you know, maybe I'll even just go take the dog for a quick walk around the block. And by the time I come back, that's such a good way to. just kind of let whatever that is go away and reset. Now I'm ready to do what I need to do next, but it all goes to know, eliminating that hangover effect that I might have that came from a bad meeting. Julie (30:12) Yeah, so another facilitation tip around that, especially if you've just done a big meeting, if you can, walk it off with someone else. But do it in a debrief way, like what did you learn? And so we would talk about walking the walls. If we're physically together, we have stuff all over, like grab a friend. Brian Milner (30:21) Mmm. Yeah. Julie (30:34) or grab something you don't usually talk to and then walk the walls, so to speak. So at the end of class when I do have enough time, I like them in their breakout rooms to just debrief each other. Like what are a few things you want to try and remember? Because we all remember different things. So there's different ways you can do it. The way they talk about walking it off is it Brian Milner (30:38) Yeah. Julie (31:01) to avoid the hangover, but hopefully we're gonna switch the culture and people are gonna have good meetings and they're gonna wanna talk about positive stuff at the end. I mean, there's both ways of thinking about that physically, I think. Brian Milner (31:13) Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Well, I hope people have gotten a lot of this. You know, we kind of debated, we do this? Should we talk about this? It's so close to kind of the last topic, but I do kind of see it as a part one and part two. You know, there is a part one of that that is, bad meetings sometimes are very much a cause and effect of not facilitating well. But I would hate for people to entirely think, well, it's just the facilitator. there are only one person in the room. And if all the other people think that's not really my responsibility and I don't really have a part to play in this, then the facilitator can only do so much. Julie (31:45) Yeah. Yeah, and depending on what type of meeting it is, like really big, significant, like quarterly planning meetings, then the facilitator needs to do more work, in my opinion, to set everybody up for success. So depending on the size, the length, the... Some meetings need more structure than others, but I agree that as participants, you gotta have accountability to and how it's going and do I need to be here? What's the purpose? If the purpose isn't introduced, then you would ask kindly, what's the purpose of the meeting? What are we trying to accomplish here? I'm just wondering, I'm just checking in. just, not like, the hell am doing here? Brian Milner (32:38) Right, right. Julie (32:39) was to make sure that I'm, you know, whatever. But I do like what Kate said. don't know. You should be able to ask the questions. You should be able to decline all of that. So here's what I'm thinking now, Brian. Another thing people could do, though, is if they start to pay attention to the cost. Brian Milner (32:44) Yeah. Julie (33:05) of being in meetings just through their own health and well-being, then yes, they can be proactive. They can learn a few tips from Alex, but then maybe they, even if they're not the Scrum Master or someone who would normally be assigned to becoming a facilitator, maybe they can get some of the facilitator training because... The training that Kate was talking about really is applicable to any kind of role. It doesn't have to be the scrum master or product owner or team lead or manager. It's really applicable to all people. And then the other thing too, if it's something that say you're in the developer level role, even if you're a business analyst, quality, whatever, quality engineer, whatever, and you wanna become a facilitator. get the training and see if you like it. Then you can kind of be stealth-like in there with, and I feel like that's some of the things Alex is trying to teach people as well. If you're going to be the facilitator or the participant, that there's ways that you can make a difference in a positive way. Brian Milner (33:59) Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely agree. agree. Well, this has been a great conversation. We got to have you on more often. So I apologize it's been so long, but I really appreciate you taking the time and bringing this topic up. And it's a great, great focus for us, I think. thanks for bringing it, Julie. Julie (34:21) Beautiful. Well, I don't have a meeting hangover, do you? Brian Milner (34:36) I do not. I feel great. I don't need to walk anything off right now. Awesome. There we go. I'm right there with you. All right. Thanks, Julie. Julie (34:39) Me either. I'll just go back to drinking tea. Okay. right. Thank you. Yep.

In this episode, Kate Megaw joins Brian Milner to share simple but powerful techniques that can turn those soul-sucking meetings into dynamic, action-driven conversations. If you're ready to make meetings worth attending, this one’s for you! Overview Brian Milner and Kate Megaw uncover the secrets to running highly effective and engaging meetings. They tackle common facilitation pitfalls, the staggering amount of time wasted in ineffective meetings, and how simple tweaks can transform team collaboration. Kate shares practical strategies for keeping participants engaged, fostering psychological safety, and ensuring meetings lead to real action—because no one has time for another pointless meeting. References and resources mentioned in the show: Kate Megaw ARCLight Agile Katanu Katanu’s Facilitator Certification Course Katanu Resources #44: Transformations Take People with Anu Smalley Advanced Certified ScrumMaster® Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule 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. Kate Megaw is the Founder and CEO of ARCLight Agile, specializing in helping organizations create empowered, high-performing teams through agility and collaboration. A dynamic Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), Certified Team Coach (CTC), and Project Management Professional (PMP), Kate is a sought-after speaker known for sparking ‘aha’ moments that drive real transformation. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian Milner (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're back here for another episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast. I'm here as I always am, Brian Milner. I'm with you as your host. But today I have the one and only, amazing Kate McGaw is with us. Kate, thank you for coming on. Kate Megaw (00:17) Thank you for having me. Brian Milner (00:19) Absolutely. If there's some of you out there that aren't familiar with Kate, she is a CST, a Scrum trainer like myself. She's also a certified team coach. And she also has the other side of things, the dark side. She's a PMP. So she has that project management kind of background that she brings to the table as well, which I think is awesome. She's a CEO of a company called Arclight Agile. And she's a co-founder of one of our favorites here that's come on the show, Anu. But they team up together. So it's Kate and Anu. And so their company is Katanu. I love it. love it. So why we decided to have Kate on is because Kate and Anu both have done a lot of work around facilitation. And we did have a user request. Kate Megaw (00:57) That's it. Brian Milner (01:09) to have an episode where we focused on facilitation. And listeners of the show know there's nothing I love more than being able to fulfill listener requests here and try to do those as soon as possible. So let's dive in. Let's talk about facilitation. It's a funny word. There's lots of different misconceptions and things about it, I'm sure. What do you find people misunderstand most about facilitation? Kate Megaw (01:34) think one of the key misunderstandings around facilitation is that you're part of the meeting, you're part of the event, you're actively involved. And when you're facilitating, you're actually, taking a step back because you are accountable for making sure that everyone is speaking and that we're keeping an eye on the agenda and things like that. And if you are actively involved in the discussion, You can't be doing that because you're missing body language. You're missing people who need to talk and who aren't talking. So I think one of the main misconceptions is, or that people forget is a facilitator is neutral. So if, for example, you have a scrum master facilitating a retrospective and they need to be actively involved in the retrospective, they should be inviting somebody else in to facilitate it. and I think We're beginning to see a lot more interest in it now because it's one of these key things. If it's done badly, people generally will notice. If it's done well, hopefully you don't notice that much other than, you know what, that meeting was very efficient. We achieved the goal and I feel as though it was worth my time. One of the things I like to say to people at the end of a meeting is the fist of five, how worth your time was this meeting? And I'm looking for fives or fours. If we're getting threes, twos and ones, we've not facilitated it well, or the meeting didn't achieve its agenda and things like that. think a lot of the statistics around facilitation that have come out recently, and you and I were talking about these briefly before we started that the average at the Microsoft trend index shows us that average time spent in meetings by employees at the moment is 21 and a half hours a week, which is an increase, I know, an increase of 252 % since the pre-pandemic. So. Brian Milner (03:36) That's incredible. Yeah, I mean, that's more than half of a work week, right? I mean, we're spending more than half our work week in just locked in meetings. So you're right. We had this conversation beforehand and you were telling me that stat and it just kind of floored me that we're spending that much time in meetings. But it was the next one you told me that really floored me. And it's a combination of these two, I think, that people need to really grasp onto. So tell them what you told me next. Kate Megaw (03:49) Mm hmm. Yep. Yep. Yeah. So the next one is that the Harvard Business Review indicates their research, 67 % of meetings are considered by executives to be failures. So if we look at the financial impact of that, and this is something I didn't share with you, but the financial impact of that is for a company, imagine you have a company with 100 employees, unproductive meetings are wasting upward of $1.7 million a year. If you have a thousand employees, increase that number. it's one of these things that it is not difficult to do. It is just understanding why we need someone in the facilitator role. And the basics around the basic facilitation, the basic getting ready for the meeting, facilitating during the meeting and properly closing the meeting. takes those unsuccessful numbers up to successful numbers where you're getting those fives and people are sort of, yep, that meeting totally achieved the purpose and the outcome and it finished early. So I've got 20 minutes back before my next meeting. Brian Milner (05:24) Yeah, it's so incredible that combination of those two stats. I thinking that we're spending over half our time in meetings and that 67 % of them are failures, we're having a lot of them and we're not doing them well, clearly. Kate Megaw (05:36) Absolutely. I think with, I don't know with Zoom, well, I think with Zoom, it's got easier to have meetings. So we're probably having meetings where we don't need to have meetings. That's one of my favorite things to ask is, does this need to be a meeting? Or are you just going to talk at me and roll data out? In which case, send it to me in email. Don't tie me up for a meeting. Brian Milner (05:44) Yep. Kate Megaw (06:02) Because so many meetings are a waste of time that a lot of people are spending meetings multitasking. So we're taking an hour for a meeting that we could do in 25 minutes if people were 100 % engaged and following the agenda and things like that. Brian Milner (06:22) Yeah, yeah, that's so fascinating. it seems like such a, it's hard to believe that there's not more of that skill in just basic business training, right? Because if we're having all those meetings, then it would seem natural that there would be more segments that would say, you know, a little facilitation skill for, you know, a, you know, bachelor's in business, you know, like that might be a little helpful, right? Kate Megaw (06:41) Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And it's a small investment for something that will make a huge difference. I mean, one of the things Anu and I have been working on is the mnemonic of ready, reach, and wrap in order to make sure we have effective meetings. And the ready part of it is setting the foundation. So before you even get to your meeting, this is ahead of time. You're understanding, okay, what are the Rs? What are the roles and responsibilities? So if I'm facilitating, then who are the decision makers? Who is mandatory? Who's required to be there? Who are the, you can come if you want. Let's stop doing meetings to 30 people and expecting 30 people to show up. So we've got to understand the roles and responsibilities. The other, the E for the ready is expectations and engagement. Brian Milner (07:29) Ha ha ha. Kate Megaw (07:41) So if the expectations are that this is an interactive meeting, we're using Lucid or Mural or Mira, whatever tool we're using, it's going to be collaborative, webcams are going to be on, multitasking is going to be at a minimum, everyone knows going into that meeting what the expectations are. And then the A again is the agenda and the alignment. The agenda should be very clearly saying these are the items that the D is making sure where we have defined the purpose and the outcome. So every meeting, we need to know what the purpose of the meeting is, what the outcome of the meeting is, and they should be included in the agenda. We shouldn't be accepting meetings. Imagine the power of being able to decline a meeting if it didn't have an agenda in it. And if you think about it, why do we attend meetings? Brian Milner (08:27) Ha Yeah. Kate Megaw (08:33) with no agenda and people turn up to the meeting and said, okay, so what's this meeting for? Pretty sure we've all got better things to be doing. So make sure for every meeting we have a defined purpose and outcome. And then the why is making sure we as facilitators have your logistics ready. If it's Zoom, if we're using a remote whiteboard, do people need to practice it? Do we need to set up an environment? Do we need to make sure webcams are on? All that type of thing. So a huge amount of meetings would be better if we did nothing other than better planning with the roles, responsibilities, the expectations, the agenda, the defining the outcome and the logistics. If we just did that. Brian Milner (09:09) Yeah. Kate Megaw (09:23) I bet we're going to see the amount of productive meetings increase considerably. Brian Milner (09:29) Yeah, there's so much transfer here too as well, just to the normal scrum meetings that we have because, you know, one of the things I'll talk about lot in class is just to say, you know, you can't just expect to show up to something like Sprint Planning and have it go smoothly. You have to put in some work beforehand and get ready for it. Same thing with like a Sprint Review. You got to put in some work beforehand and make sure you know who's going when and who's speaking, you know, that speaking order and all that stuff. Kate Megaw (09:42) Yeah. Brian Milner (09:55) goes miles in making those more successful meetings. But the other thing that really interested me in that is you talk a little bit about purpose and that we don't really understand the purpose of the meetings. And that's something that's really stuck out to me is when I talk to people who don't like their Scrum meetings, it feels like 90 % that is just Brian math, but it feels like 90 % of the time, right? Feels like this. It feels like 90 % of the time. Kate Megaw (10:04) Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (10:20) that the people who have a problem with those meetings don't know the purpose of the meeting and that's really the root cause of it, right? If they knew why we were here, then the meeting makes sense. Now I understand what we're trying to do. Kate Megaw (10:26) Yep, absolutely. And I think one of the interesting things, I would love to repeat these numbers around the Scrum events, because I think by default, the Scrum events do have a purpose. They do have an outcome. We know what the roles and responsibilities are. We know what the expectations for engagement are. So I think the Scrum events are much more productive than your average event. Brian Milner (10:41) Yeah. Kate Megaw (10:59) But I do feel if we don't have well-facilitated Scrum events, that's where we get our criticism, or, this meeting was a waste of time. Okay, well, let's look at our facilitation and see, it an error in planning or was it an error in expectations? But it always surprises me when people say, well, Scrum's just so many meetings. And I'm so... No, we should have fewer meetings and if they're well facilitated, we need all of those meetings. So it's not as though we're having a meeting for meeting sake, which I think is unfortunately something we can't say for our non-scrum events. Brian Milner (11:43) Yeah, yeah, I mean, I go so far as to say, if you don't understand the purpose of it, don't show up. I mean, there's really no need to be there if you don't know what we're trying to get out of it. One other little side correlation there too, because this kind of ties in a little bit to some of the stuff I did this last year in kind of studying a little bit about neurodivergency and different neuro types and that kind of thing. And one of the things I found really fascinating was certain neurodivergent types, Kate Megaw (11:48) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (12:12) really need to have an agenda in advance. And if they don't, then it just raises their anxiety level. they're just, you even not, you know, neurodivergent types, just regular, normal, you know, neurotypical people. There are those that just don't respond well when you're just throwing out a blank slate and saying, give us your best idea, right? They need time to process and think in advance and Kate Megaw (12:15) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. Mm-hmm. Yep. Brian Milner (12:38) And so yeah, if we could send out that just the day before, it's not that much work. It's just one day earlier, right? It's actually the same amount of work. It's just doing it a day earlier. Right. Kate Megaw (12:45) Absolutely. Absolutely. It's just better organized. Yeah. I mean, I even on my team meetings, I know some members of my team want to know, because I always like to start them with segue questions and some of my team completely fine. Ask them a question, favorite food or you want to have any sort of segue question and they're fine with it. But I have my thinkers who want to think about it ahead of time. So I think it's important when we're facilitating any event that we understand the audience. How many of the audience are going to want to maybe read a document ahead of time? How many of the audience are, you know what, they can think on the feet, I can throw anything at them, but there are others that do need the preparation. yeah, I think that the planning that we do, if we can do it just slightly ahead. And then things like when we get into the meeting, of the mnemonic that we use for actually facilitating during the meeting is the mnemonic of reach, which is we're guiding the process. The very first thing we do when we go into the meeting is we review the agenda and open the meeting. So here's the agenda. I've got the agenda visible. mean, what the agenda that we use in classes. Is the to do doing and done. I use that for all my meetings. I've got that up on the virtual board and the topics of the meeting are moving across to doing and done because then our visual people can see how we're doing. But the reviewing, at the start of every meeting we said, OK, let's just review the agenda. Let's just remind everyone this is the purpose and this is the desired outcomes. And if the right people are not in the meeting. There's no point having a meeting that we cannot achieve the purpose and the outcomes because we don't have the right people. So, I mean, I always say open it, open it with a segue question and things like that, but level set on the agenda. And then the middle part of the meeting is the bit that people are familiar with, which is the gathering ideas. It's exploring. It's the A is the assessing, making sure we've got the collaboration and the discussion and the... Brian Milner (14:39) Yeah. Yeah. Kate Megaw (15:07) The C is our concluding, are we doing dot voting or is somebody else who makes the final decision? But the H is the one that we often forget at the end, which is let's highlight the action items from the meeting. Let's make sure we know what it is, who's accountable for it, when it's going to be done by, and then close the meeting. mean, you... Brian Milner (15:18) Hmm. Kate Megaw (15:33) you and I will both close out our classes. Maybe we use one word, maybe we use, give us a statement, all sorts of different things, but we forget to close out meetings. go, time's up. Okay. Bye everyone. And we've not reviewed the, this is what we're going to do for next time. And we've not formally closed the meeting, even if it's as simple as one word, but we've got to open and close it. Sorry. Passionate about that. No. Brian Milner (15:44) You You mean that's not how you close out a class? I've been closing classes like that for years. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, exactly. Ding, sorry. Kate Megaw (16:03) Yes, sorry, time's up, clunk. Yeah, sorry, dog's barking, dog needs to go out. So, but yeah. Brian Milner (16:11) Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, no. And there was something I came across just in trying to put together materials for classes where we have little segments on facilitation in it. Because I think sometimes there's a lot of focus on the different various techniques, like fist to five or thumbs up or whatever. There's different kind of techniques. I'm not trying to belittle those. Those are things we need to know. But. Kate Megaw (16:21) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (16:36) One of the things I came across was that the root word of this thing is this Latin word, facilius. stands or it means literally to make easy. And I've always had that kind of in the back of my mind when I'm a facilitator is like, what are they trying to do? And whatever they're trying to do, just, my job is just to make that as easy as possible, right? You know, it's always difficult when you're trying to make a decision and you have no direction about how that decision is going to be made. Kate Megaw (16:46) Yeah. Brian Milner (17:05) But a good facilitator can give the structure to it and say, no, no, no, it's OK, I got you. We're going to go through this little journey together, and we're going to end in this other side, and you're going to have something to take away from it. Kate Megaw (17:16) Yeah, we're going to have heard everyone's voices as we go through. We're not going to let one person dominate the conversation. We're going to use techniques like, that's a great point. Can we also check in on the other side of the table? Let's hear some counter points here. It's pulling people in, it's summarizing. So if I'm hearing you correctly, Brian, you're saying A, B, C, D. It's all of that going into it. And I think one of the other... big has when we teach facilitation is the facilitator is not the scribe. So people say, well, I'm the project manager or I'm the facilitator. need to be taking all the meeting notes. And I'm like, well, what direction is your head pointing when you're taking notes? And it's down at a piece of paper. So you're not seeing who's yawning because you're tired and you need to take a break. You're not seeing people who are confused or wanting to talk and things like that. sort of either you turn on the AI tool and have the AI tool summarize the meeting for you. Do check it before you submit, it out or B have everyone in the meeting as a grown ass adult. They can take their own agenda items. mean, their own action items, have an area on your virtual board or in the room you're having the meeting in that is action items. And again, what is it? Brian Milner (18:18) Sure. Kate Megaw (18:36) Who's gonna be doing it? When's it gonna be done by? And I think one of the key criticisms of meetings is, and you'll hear this as well, particularly by retrospectives is, well, nothing changes. And I'm sort of, well, who has the action item? well, there isn't an action item. And I'm sort of, at the end of every meeting, we should be doing the mnemonic we use here is rap. The first thing is retrospect. Brian Milner (18:53) you Kate Megaw (19:04) How was this meeting? We talked about the fist of five. Give me one word. Anything we need to do differently next time. And then the A is make sure we have all of these action items assigned to someone. And then the P is the one we forget about. Tracking that progress. How are we going to hold each other accountable for making sure that something changes as a result of the meeting? So. Brian Milner (19:22) Mm-hmm. Kate Megaw (19:31) If we're doing retrospectives, if the team is voting whatever technique they're using to choose the one thing they want to do differently, how do we make it visible? Do we put it on our scrum board somewhere? Do we talk about it every day as part of after we've done daily scrum? How are we doing with the communication techniques that we wanted to try and do differently going forward? We've got to have that visibility. Otherwise nothing changes. Brian Milner (19:57) Yeah, yeah, that's so awesome. I completely agree. And that's something that I think you're right is missing, not just from retrospectives, but just a lot of meetings in general. We don't really understand, all right, well, what's the takeaway? What's the thing we need to do as a result of this to make this not a waste of our time, to make this something that was a useful, not the 67 % that were failures, but something that actually leads to success. I want to. Kate Megaw (19:59) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah, yes, so that we're not having the same meeting again next week and the week after and nothing's changing. Brian Milner (20:30) Exactly. Exactly. I want to ask you one question about facilitation. I've heard this a lot in regards to retrospectives, but probably it's more a facilitation thing than it is a retrospective thing. But I think probably the number one question we get from people about retrospectives is, how do you handle a quiet team? so I'm just kind of curious. When you talk about facilitating and working with individuals who are a little more introverted, Kate Megaw (20:50) Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (20:57) or just not as comfortable speaking out in public, are there special considerations or are there things that you do differently just to try to accommodate and make those people feel more comfortable when you're facilitating them? Kate Megaw (21:09) So yes, several things. So one, I will look at a theme. So do they have a team name and do I want to set up a mnemonic around the team name to gather the data? Are they a visual team? Do I want to do something like the sailboat that's interactive and people can add things to the board? Are they a movie buffs? Do I need to do a Star Wars themed retrospective? So I'll generally try and find something to connect the team. I've done it before where I'm working with airlines. Okay, what is it keeps our planes in the air? What is it that grounds our planes? What are the storm clouds we need to be aware of? What are causing bumps during the air? So all of that type of thing, it's a theme relevant to the team. And I generally will find that if I can start a team talking, I can keep them talking. So if... one of the ways that I will often start a retrospective is if the retrospective, if your last retrospective was a ride at Disney, what ride would it have been? and get them talking or give me one word that describes the last retro or in a scale of one to the, mean, the last sprint, give me one word that describes it or scale of one to 10. How well do you think we did at the last sprint? But I love to get people talking. If I'm in the office, I sort of adapted the Adam Weisbart's retrospective cookies and I'll use candy bars and I'll wrap questions around candy bars and the team grabs a candy bar and there is a question on it which they answer and then other people in the room will then answer as well. Maybe things like, what can I do to better support you as a scrum master? Or, What can we do to better support each other as team members? So I think it's getting people talking, making sure the big reminder for me is as a facilitator, if you did not write the Post-It note, you should not be reading the Post-It note and you should not be moving the Post-It note. The team owns the Post-It notes. Everyone should be adding their own Post-It notes, whether it's virtual or in person. Brian Milner (23:07) Yeah. Kate Megaw (23:28) They should be grouping their own Post-it notes. They should be moving them. And the other one, people always say, well, what happens if there's the elephant in the room and this thing on the board that nobody wants to talk about? And I'm said, well, often I will say, okay, I'm going to add, we're going to do something different for this round. This time, I'm going to ask you to introduce something you did not write on the board. And let's talk about, I'm going to ask you to choose a topic and we're going to talk about that. Just read it, you read it out. Brian Milner (23:39) Yeah. Kate Megaw (23:58) and then we'll have a discussion around it. So as a facilitator, I can uncover the elephants in the room without anyone feeling too uncomfortable. Brian Milner (24:07) Yeah, that's great stuff. of parallel to this, think is kind of, I know we've, I've heard you talk about this, but the sense of safety in the room and just that people feel safe to talk about that. Are there things we can do as facilitators to actually raise that sense of safety? Kate Megaw (24:25) There are absolutely, there's a lot of things we can do. And I, every now and then I will hear something and I will just cringe. And there's, well my team doesn't really like sharing. They're not honest in the retrospective until the CTO disconnects from the retrospective. And I'm sort of, okay, so maybe what do you think this is maybe telling us? I'm sort of retrospectives are Vegas rules. It is the team. I will do retrospectives even with non-scrum teams, but it is the team that is there. There are no visitors. It is the team only. The other thing that makes me cringe is, yes, well we sent out the minutes of the retrospective and I'm sort of, excuse me, the retrospective again, Vegas rules. What is the one thing we're going to do differently as a team in the next sprint? Okay, is everyone okay if I put this up on our scrum board so it's visible? Brian Milner (25:07) Ha Kate Megaw (25:20) Okay, that's the one thing we're taking away. But back to the question you were asking, one of the biggest signs of a lack of psychological safety is that the team just doesn't want to talk. They're worried that the minutes are going to be captured. Somebody, one of the leaders is in there and, well, everyone's fine with my leadership. They're completely open and honest in front of me. And I'm sort of, okay, let's try a retrospective then with you there. Brian Milner (25:32) Yeah. Kate Megaw (25:50) And then we'll also try retrospective without you there. And let's see which one is more comfortable because otherwise it's a, it's a colossal waste of time. If nothing's going to change, why are we wasting sort of 45 minutes to an hour or even doing it? So I think that the psychological safety is a key one, making sure it is the right people, making sure that minutes are not being captured. The other thing is. A lot of times people say, well, I need to capture it because I need to bring all of the information again next time. And I'm sort of, no, you're trashing the Post-it notes. You're trashing the mural board, whatever. You're starting from scratch next time. they're sort of, well, I'm going to lose all this information. I'm sort of, no, if it's important enough, it's going to come up again next time. Brian Milner (26:23) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And things change, right? mean, what the universe of things we might identify this sprint could be entirely different for next sprint. I've always loved, Jeff Sutherland had this phrase, he would say about it to say that, you have to remove that one big thing. And when you move that one big thing, then the system adjusts and you don't really know where the next bottleneck is going to come from until you remove that one big thing. Kate Megaw (26:58) Yeah. Brian Milner (27:02) So it's likely to be somewhere you wouldn't expect. so you can't just hang on to your number two issue from one retrospective and then say, well, next retrospective, we'll just do that and we can cut out having the conversation because we identified important things in this one. Kate Megaw (27:14) Yeah. And it anchors the tea. It stops the creativity. that's the other thing with retrospectives. I occasionally will work with a client and there's the, oh yes, we've been doing what's going well and what's not going so well every two weeks for six months. And I'm sort of, it's not really any wonder your team's bored out of their minds at retrospectives and nothing new is coming up. There's so many websites out there. Brian Milner (27:41) Yeah. Kate Megaw (27:42) that retrospective should never, in fact, no meeting should ever be boring because we should always be opening and closing a meeting in a creative way. Even if it's, mean, one of the things that we like to do in the morning of class is have music. So when people are joining, the energy is there so that we're getting that interaction and things like that. So people are starting on a high and then... I mean, you'll notice in the afternoons people begin to yawn, especially after lunch. Okay, you know what? It's been 65 minutes. Let's take a break. Let's do a segue question at break. So when we come back, show us something on your desk that tells us a bit about you. Or one of the ones I like is go stand up, go and look outside and come back and tell us something you saw outside. We have chickens. We have all sorts of things that people are saying. but it's encouraging them to get up and go get some oxygen in their system, take a break and then come back and then it's more engaging. But if as a facilitator, I'm not planning that type of thing, the energy is going to go down and I'm not going to achieve the purpose of my half day event or my one day class, whatever it is. Brian Milner (28:56) Yeah, it doesn't happen by accident. It's all very intentional. Well, this is fascinating. And we could have this conversation for another several hours, I'm sure. I just wanted to let everyone know that in case you were scrambling to write down these mnemonics and other things, we're going to link that in our show notes. So you can go to our show notes, and we'll put you over to Katanu team. Kate Megaw (28:58) No. Yep, absolutely. Yep. Brian Milner (29:20) Katanu, I keep on saying cat and Anu, trying to say it right way. Yeah, but we'll link you over them so you can get those three Rs for meetings and know kind of what each one of those little letters stands for in there. Kate Megaw (29:24) Yeah. Brian Milner (29:33) This has been really eye-opening for me and it just is a fascinating topic and it's so delightful just to hear the intentionality and how we can do simple things. They're not hard things, but simple things that make such a huge difference. Kate Megaw (29:48) Yeah, yeah, mean, that's the key. This is not rocket science. It's one or two simple things that helps us take that if we are going to spend 20 % or 20 hours a week, which is half of our time in meetings, let's at least make sure they're productive meetings so that we're not literally burning money by having unproductive meetings. Brian Milner (30:12) Yeah, absolutely. Well, I also forgot to mention here at the beginning, and we'll put this in the show notes as well, but Team Katanu also has a facilitation course. The Scrum Alliance has a certified Agile facilitator designation that you could obtain if you were interested in that. We'll link that off as well. But yeah, I couldn't recommend any better people for you to take that from than Kate in a new idea. We were saying that she had a, when she was younger, used to have the nickname Cat, and now everyone's calling her Cat from that. Well, thank you again for coming on and sharing your wisdom with us. I really appreciate it. Kate Megaw (30:46) Yep. Yep. Thank you very much for having me, Brian. And I look forward to hearing amazing facilitation stories from everyone once they've implemented some of this stuff. Brian Milner (31:03) Absolutely.

Angela Johnson is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), Certified LeSS Practitioner (CLP), co-founder of Collaborative Leadership Team, and the author of The Scrum Master Files: Secrets every coach should know. As a professional people geek, Angela helps others successfully implement Scrum and Agile to achieve their goals and objectives. Click here to purchase The Scrum Master Files. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Angela Johnson is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), founder of the Collaborative Leadership Team, and the author of The Scrum Master Files: Secrets Every Coach Should Know. A self-proclaimed “professional people geek”, Angela helps companies successfully implement Scrum and Agile to achieve their goals and objectives, as well as people to get certified as scrum masters. Her expertise includes Kanban, eXtreme Programming, Facilitation and Organizational Change for business agility.

Angela Johnson is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and the author of “The Scrum Master Files: secrets every coach should know”. As a professional people geek, she helps others successfully implement Scrum and Agile to achieve their goals and objectives.   Free download on getting started with agile and scrum available at scrumfiles.com  https://collaborativeleadershipteam.com/ https://www.amazon.com/Scrum-Master-Files-Secrets-Should-ebook/dp/B097KFHB1H   More episodes like this visits: https://www.getunstuckmethod.com/podcast 

In this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, Brian welcomes Agile coach Reese Schmit who shares her tips for breaking recurring anti-patterns in teams and organizations through the power of the why. Overview In this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, Brian is joined by Agile Coach Reese Schmit to discuss identifying and tackling recurring Agile anti-patterns in teams and organizations. Reese shares her valuable insights on the significance of understanding the "why" behind Agile practice and avoiding the trap of "cargo cult Scrum." Listen in as she shares her tips for fostering transparency, collaboration, and trust among team members and how rediscovering the purpose behind Agile practices can lead to a world where people are excited and happy about their work. Listen Now to Discover: [01:10] - Brian sits down with guest Reese Schmit, a coach, trainer, and mom, from the Agile 2023 Conference in Orlando, to discuss identifying and tackling recurring Agile anti-patterns in teams and organizations. [03:10] - Reese talks about her revelation during an open jam session at the Agile 2023 Conference, where she realized the prevalence of the same anti-patterns across different teams and organizations over the past 15 years. [05:04] - Brian and Reese discuss the frustratingly common situation of organizations claiming uniqueness but facing the same Agile challenges. [06:19] - Reese highlights the misguided approach of blindly adhering to Agile frameworks like Scrum without understanding the principles. [06:38] - Overplanning and white-knuckling the backlog = irrelevant user stories and wasted efforts. [07:25] - Reese shares her journey as a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and her initial motivation to uncover the reasons behind the persistent issues in Agile implementations. [08:54] - Brian uses the analogy of a road trip to bring home the concept of why teams need a clear goal to keep them engaged and aligned with the Agile transformation rather than just imposing Agile practices on them. [09:35] - Organizations driving without a clear destination end up with confusion, disengagement, and a sense of going through the motions. [10:32] - Reese emphasizes the importance of a clear "why" at all levels - from product features to team goals. [11:16] - Reese shares her early experiences as a Scrum Master, where she lacked a clear understanding of a "cargo cult" mentality in your organization. [12:24] - The critical role of understanding the "why" behind Agile practices. [12:28] - Brian references Dan Pink's ideas on autonomy, mastery, and purpose, about the importance of understanding the "why" and measuring progress. [13:07] - Lack of autonomy results in disengagement, ineffective retrospectives, and helplessness to fix issues. [13:56] - Reese emphasizes the significance of recognizing the capabilities of team members and trusting them to build better products, teams, and organizations. [14:38] - Brian mentions a talk by Dr. Anne-Marie Charrett, a psychologist, that discussed the issue of trust within teams and what that entails. [15:40] - Reese shares her approach to building product teams based on expertise and interest rather than imposed structures. [16:46] - Brian emphasizes the importance of paying attention to the team's preferences when organizing them around products. [17:37] - Reese highlights the challenges faced in true Agile transformations, and why merely renaming roles or events does not lead to a shift in mindset or a genuine transformation. [18:15] - What true Agile adoption requires. [19:16] - Missing Opportunities: Organizations that fail to embrace Agile's inspect-and-adapt principle miss out on the chance to improve products based on real user feedback, optimize ROI, and focus on delivering the highest value to customers. [19:41] - Today’s show is brought to you by Mountain Goat Software's Advanced Certified Product Owner® Course, a two-day training course led by a certified Scrum trainer. [20:16] -Understanding the "why" allows for better adaptation and problem-solving. [21:26] - Reese emphasizes that Agile issues are often complex and not solved by one-size-fits-all solutions. [23:37] - Brian shares how presumptive fixes can lead to misunderstandings and reduced trust. [25:46] - Recognize that team members are capable and intelligent professionals to foster trust and collaboration. [26:58] - Reese emphasizes the need to help organizations acknowledge when their information or assumptions are wrong. [27:30] - The importance of having a clear sprint goal (hint: it transforms ceremonies into meaningful events where collaboration happens). [30:35] - Clear communication about the purpose of events enhances effectiveness. [31:48] - Avoid pointless meetings. [32:12] - Overcoming inertia is essential to make meaningful progress. [32:58] - Reese humorously references a book on becoming healthy, which boils things down to the simplest terms, (eating veggies, sleeping enough, drinking water). Agile success can also be obtained simply, too by focusing on the fundamental principles. [35:31] - Rediscovering the purpose behind Agile practices can lead to a world where people are excited and happy about their work. [36:56] - Making a pact for improvement: Brian encourages listeners to take the lessons from the discussion and make a pact to focus on the core principles and purpose behind Agile practices. [37:09] - Your feedback is valuable, so email us by clicking here. We'd love your thoughts about today's show and suggestions for future topics for the show. [37:47] - If you enjoyed the episode, the best way to support us is to share it with others and subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast on Apple Podcasts. References and resources mentioned in the show: Daniel Pink Drive Anne-Marie Charrett Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner® Join the Agile Mentors Community Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast on Apple Podcasts Agile 2023 Conference in Orlando 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 the 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. Reese Schmit is an Agile coach, trainer, and mom with nearly two decades of experience in the software industry, she wears multiple hats. With a deep understanding of Scrum, Kanban, and Agile methodologies, she fosters change through empathy, driving customer value, and continuous improvement. An avid volunteer for Agile organizations and conferences, she balances her time between coaching and enjoying life with her family and pets.

On this episode of SuperStar Communicator podcast, host Susan Heaton-Wright  interviews Angela Johnson, a certified Scrum trainer and author. They discuss the importance of trust and communication in building strong teams, particularly in the context of implementing Scrum and Agile methods. Angela shares her experience teaching virtual classes during the pandemic, detailing how her organization had to quickly adapt and pivot to virtual teaching to stay afloat. She highlights the challenges of teaching virtually to a global audience, recognizing the need to be more aware of cultural and linguistic differences.  Key points from the interview: [00:00:26]  interviewing Angela Johnson on Scrum. [00:06:42] Diverse opinions, respectful disagreement lead to strength. [00:10:26] Certifications are important but not sufficient. [00:11:32] Scrum Alliance adapts classes to virtual format. [00:17:47] Adapted classes virtually changed world of work. [00:19:16] Breaking silos, sharing knowledge, and promoting transparency. [00:24:04] Building trust through vulnerability and shared experiences. [00:26:33] Teams need agreements for effective collaboration. Some teams have them, but they may need revision. Guardrails can be set for behavior and decision-making. An expired agreement can lead to toxic behaviors. [00:29:43] Book about failures turned into valuable learning. [00:32:20] Engaging interview sparks thoughtful reflections and gratitude. Angela Johnson is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and the author of “The Scrum Master Files: secrets every coach should know”. As a professional people geek, Angela helps others successfully implement Scrum and Agile to achieve their goals and objectives. You can contact Angela at https://scrumfiles.com where you can also purchase her book. SuperStar Communicator   Here at SuperStar Communicator HQ Susan and Nick love sharing great content. If you like our podcast why not buy us a coffee And why not subscribe to receive great content from us. SuperStar Communicator Is a multi award winning international company empowering emerging leaders to speak and communicate with clarity, confidence, credibility and influence. We deliver: ·      masterclasses, ·      facilitate workshops, ·      deliver speeches – ·      face to face and virtually ·      coach individuals. Our focus is on emerging leaders to ensure they progress in their careers. If you would like more details of our work email hello@superstarcommunicator.com look at our website http://superstarcommunicator.com or why not book a call We have a lovely gift for you: Grab your 10 top tips to presenting here Thank you for listening!

Gain insights into building cohesive and agile teams that bleed into each other and explore how conflicts can be transformed into opportunities for growth and improvement when Brian and his guest Julie Chickering delve into how to create team safety. Overview: In this episode of the "Agile Mentors" podcast, Brian sits down with Julie Chickering to explore the topic of team safety. They dive deep into the concept of psychological safety and its impact on team dynamics and productivity. From navigating conflicts and encouraging participation to embracing multiple perspectives and detaching personal worth from ideas, Brian and Julie provide valuable insights and actionable advice for Scrum Masters and team members alike. Join them as they uncover the secrets to creating a cohesive and psychologically safe environment where teams thrive and excel. Listen Now to Discover: [01:12] - Brian welcomes Julie Chickering back to the show. Teams need to feel safe and agile to be successful; that's a foundational aspect of a team. So, we're talking about team safety today. [02:12] - Julie shares how one Manhattan bartender described her team that works well together; she says it feels like "we bleed into each other." [04:11] - Sometimes people misuse or abuse the safe space, having each other's back as a license to be rude. [04:57] - From pointing fingers to fixing problems together. [05:39] - Julie shares a book called "The Culture Playbook" by Daniel Coyle and a quote on distinguishing between relational conflict and task conflict. [06:38] - Protecting team dynamics: Learn how to navigate conflicts that escalate into personal territory and regain focus on improvement. [07:37] - Effective strategies to steer discussions back to areas of agreement and keep the focus on facts. [08:09] - Embracing multiple perspectives: Explore scenarios where opposing ideas are equally feasible and the importance of making a choice and moving forward. [08:51] - Sometimes safety is misconstrued and used to stop discussions. [09:17] - How to encourage participation based on comfort levels and through smaller group sharing. [10:00] - The true meaning of safety. [10:54] - Tension-free environments don't always lead to productive cultures: why disagreements are vital for meaningful discussions. [11:33] - Detaching personal worth from ideas so you can focus on finding the best solution (vital as the Scrum Master). [12:42] - How to facilitate conversations by focusing on facts and using visual aids to encourage objectively analyzing multiple ideas. [13:00] - Nurturing sensitive team members: strategies to create a sense of safety for individuals who are more susceptible to critique to ensure them of the value of their contributions. [14:13] - Why you should avoid labeling opinions as “wrong” and how assuming positive intent fosters a sense of safety. [14:45] - The challenge of assuming positive intent (especially in written communication). [15:21] - How to empower team members to define operating agreements that foster a sense of safety and a respectful working environment. [17:23] - This podcast is sponsored by Mountain Goat Software's Certified Scrum classes, including Certified Scrum Master (CSM), Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Advanced Certified Scrum Master (ACSM), and Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner (ACSPO). Mike Cohn taught his first Scrum classes in 1997, and since then, more than 24K people have chosen to train with Mountain Goat Software. All certified classes include a twelve-month Agile Mentors Community membership. [18:08] - How to open communication lines when unintentional offenses occur during interactions. [18:49] - Scrum, though a simple framework, becomes complex when people's dynamics come into play. [19:22] - Brian shares that achieving psychological safety requires a cultural shift and agreement among team members to express opinions freely. [20:54] - Julie shares why psychological safety matters. [22:09] - When the swirl of uncertainty and lack of safety is removed, teams can accomplish more due to increased productivity and effectiveness. [22:34] - Brian shares some tips for Scrum Masters to make psychological safety a focal point if it is lacking within their teams. [23:40] - Julie discusses the importance of understanding and supporting team members beyond Scrum practices and offers advice on ensuring everyone on the team is heard. [25:15] - The secret to team cohesion: how sharing coffee preferences can build a sense of safety and collaboration within your team. [25:51] - Julie explores the challenge of fostering a sense of team and safety at the corporate level and why starting at the team level is the key to cultivating a culture of trust and psychological safety, even in the face of external obstacles. [27:31] - Julie delves into why teams work in a particular way and how aligning work practices with the desired outcomes can positively impact results. [28:04] - How fostering psychological safety improves human interactions and drives better products, higher quality, and faster delivery. [28:51] - How to address safety concerns with higher-ups. [29:53] - The dangers of dismantling high-performing teams prematurely: the importance of nurturing team cohesion and the pitfalls of overlooking this critical aspect. [30:42] - Brian shares how protecting the team sometimes involves making tough decisions and advocating for a better fit for both the individual and the team. [32:06] - Julie’s parting advice encourages teams to assess their current state, ask critical questions, and collaboratively work towards creating a more cohesive and psychologically safe environment. [33:06] - If you have feedback for the show or topics for future episodes, email us by clicking here. And don’t forget to subscribe to the “Agile Mentors” Podcast on Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode. [33:46] - Look for a different type of show coming to you during our July "break." References and resources mentioned in the show: The Culture Playbook: 60 Highly Effective Actions to Help Your Group Succeed Certified Scrum Master Training and Scrum Certification Certified Scrum Product Owner Training Advanced Certified ScrumMaster® Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner® Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule Join the Agile Mentors Community Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast on Apple Podcasts 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. Julie Chickering is the brains and brawn behind JC Agile Consulting, believes that Lean and Agile practices are packed with potential — to enable positive culture change, business agility, and breakthrough results. Julie is a past president and board member of the Agile Project Management Network (APLN), a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), as well as a traditional Project Management Professional (PMP).

In today's rapidly changing business environment, activating a culture of agility is essential for organizations to thrive. An agile culture promotes flexibility, adaptability, and innovation, allowing organizations to quickly respond to new opportunities and challenges. To activate a culture of agility, organizations must focus on developing a mindset of continuous improvement, collaboration, and experimentation. This requires a willingness to take risks, learn from failure, and continuously iterate on processes and strategies. Leaders play a critical role in activating a culture of agility by setting a clear vision, communicating it effectively, and empowering employees to make decisions and take ownership of their work. They also need to create an environment that supports experimentation, encourages cross-functional collaboration, and rewards innovation. Overall, activating a culture of agility requires a long-term commitment to cultural transformation, but the benefits can be significant. Organizations can increase resilience, improve customer satisfaction, and foster a more engaged and motivated workforce. By prioritizing agility, organizations can position themselves for long-term success in today's rapidly changing business landscape. About Angela Johnson In 2010, Angela Johnson founded Collaborative Leadership Team and has since become a successful entrepreneur, educator, and coach. Through coaching, training, and empowerment, she assists individuals in using various techniques to reach their professional goals and objectives. Angela holds several certifications, including Certified LeSS Practitioner (CLP), Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), and is one of the first Scrum Alliance Path to CSP Approved Educators. With a career spanning over 24 years in aiding leaders and teams, Angela has worked with clients across multiple industries such as agency and services, software, hardware, marketing, financial services, insurance, learning and development, and more. Angela is the author of the book titled "The Scrum Master Files: Secrets Every Coach Should Know" Her LinkedIn profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelajohnsonscrumtrainer/  The Collaborative Leadership Team website https://collaborativeleadershipteam.com/  What We Discussed in this Episode on Culture of Agility: - Agile Methodology: Is it a Process or a Philosophy? - The Value of Agile: Improving Human Skills for Better Work Culture - Insights from "The Scrum Master Files" - Overcoming the Challenges: Why Non-Tech Functions Struggle with Adopting Agile Methodologies - Business Agility and Agile Methods: Is There a Correlation? - Agile Companies: Are They Better Performing than Their Peers? - Starting from Scratch: Implementing Business Agility - A CEO's Roadmap - Beyond Scrum: Exploring Other Methodologies to Enhance Business Agility - Agile Principles for Personal Growth and Development: Can They be Used as a Tool?   BONUS: Get a Free Guidebook for Reinventing How People Learn in Corporate   There is a science on how the brain processes learning - This can help organizations redesign the way people learn in corporate - I have compiled it in a free guidebook here

Angela Johnson is the author of “The Scrum Master Files: Secrets Every Coach Should Know.”  As a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), Angela helps others successfully implement Scrum and Agile to achieve their goals and objectives. She has helped clients transform in the areas of: agency/services, software, hardware, marketing, learning and development and more. The breadth and depth of Angela's experience extends beyond Scrum and includes Kanban, eXtreme Programming, Facilitation and Organizational Change for business agility. She is a graduate of Hamline University (B.A.) and the University of St. Thomas (M.B.C.) Angela resides in Minnesota where she loves working virtually which allows her to serve in her most important roles of wife and mom. In this episode we discussed: Her journey from project manager to business owner and author Common sense success methods for working with teams Lessons she learned from her author experiences with both ghostwriting and self-publishing Why having purpose is important Connect with Angela Johnson at: Website: https://collaborativeleadershipteam.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelajohnsonscrumtrainer/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AgileAngela   Thank you for listening! Be sure to follow the show so you don't miss the next episode! You can connect with Dr. Robin on LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram or contact me via email at: robin@purpose-based.com Go to: https://www.createmasterfulcourses.com to get her free training on "How to Turn Your Book into a MASTERFUL Course" Also, you can learn more about Leadership Purpose and her books at: https://www.robinlowens.com/ Talk to you soon! Episode edited by Podcast Manager - LJS Creative Services https://www.ljscreativeservices.co.nz

Join Julie Chickering and Brian Milner as they provide exclusive insight on utilizing your Scrum training, expanding your expertise, and passing your knowledge on to others. Overview In this episode of the Agile Mentors podcast, Julie Chickering sits down with Brian to discuss getting started in the key Scrum roles. They highlight the value of establishing relationships with like-minded individuals for both support and greater success. Plus, a look at some ways to use Scrum outside of the software development arena. Listen in as they guide you through the initial steps you can take when you are just starting out on your Scrum journey and how collaboration and continuing education can aid your career growth and advancement. Listen now to discover: [02:26] - The framework is simple. Then we put people into the mix. Julie shares the most crucial aspect for those starting in key Scrum roles. [04:04] - Brian shares Mike's foundational philosophy for approaching this work from Mike Cohn's popular conference keynote session, Let Go of Knowing. [05:58] - How communities online like The Agile Mentors Community and local groups like DFW Scrum help members achieve more success. [07:02] - How being part of a community was foundational to Brian's Scrum journey. [8:33] - Julie shares her introduction to Scrum and how the connections and support she received from the community were crucial to her growth and advancement. [09:42] - Brian shares his regrets about not getting involved with a community sooner. [11:56] - Brian shares how mentoring is like dating and why taking the time to have the discussions needed to form the foundations for authentic relationships is vital. [13:08] - Read the room. Julie offers guidance on avoiding mistakes while searching for a mentor. [14:46] - How cross-pollination and venturing out to form connections in other industries helps you grow in your own. [15:41] - Being part of a safe community can help you advance your skills while helping others. [16:57] - Julie shares how to get started as a Scrum Master after you've been trained and the overall value of finding the right fit. [18:50] - Successful product ownership requires two key components. [19:16] - Where the rubber meets the road: expanding what you've learned in your training through real-world experience. [20:45] - Start where you are: how applying your Scrum training to other areas beyond software development can help enhance your skills. [22:55] - Brian and Julie share some examples of Scrum hidden in the non-software world, including in education and marketing. [25:32] - How to use your skills to help a nonprofit in your area. [27:11] - Brian explains how A-level classes can help you overcome hurdles as you advance in your career. [28:53] - Learning never stops: the importance of obtaining knowledge for now and later. [29:10] - Julie shares the value of debriefing with someone else. [30:31] - Problem-Solving Leadership (PSL) [31:22] - What classes and tools have you used to advance your skills? We'd love to hear. Reach out to share your experience. References and resources mentioned in the show Let Go of Knowing The Agile Mentors Community DFW Scrum Book Early for Savings on Mountain Goat Software Training Classes Agile Mentors Podcast EP#32: Scrum in High School Sports with Cort Sharp Agile Mentors Podcast EP#23 How Agile Works in Education with John Miller Agile Mentors Podcast EP#21: Agile Marketing Teams with Stacey Ackerman Agile Mentors Podcast EP#31: Starting Strong: Tips for Successfully Starting with a New Organization with Julie Chickering Finding and Becoming Great Mentors and Sponsors with Carla Harris on WorkLife with Adam Grant Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? It would be great if you left 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. Julie Chickering is the brains and brawn behind JC Agile Consulting, believes that Lean and Agile practices are packed with potential — to enable positive culture change, business agility, and breakthrough results. Julie is a past president and board member of the Agile Project Management Network (APLN), a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), as well as a traditional Project Management Professional (PMP).

Join Julie Chickering and Brian Milner as they provide exclusive insight on utilizing your Scrum training, expanding your expertise, and passing your knowledge on to others. Overview In this episode of the Agile Mentors podcast, Julie Chickering sits down with Brian to discuss getting started in the key Scrum roles. They highlight the value of establishing relationships with like-minded individuals for both support and greater success. Plus, a look at some ways to use Scrum outside of the software development arena. Listen in as they guide you through the initial steps you can take when you are just starting out on your Scrum journey and how collaboration and continuing education can aid your career growth and advancement. Listen now to discover: [02:26] - The framework is simple. Then we put people into the mix. Julie shares the most crucial aspect for those starting in key Scrum roles. [04:04] - Brian shares Mike's foundational philosophy for approaching this work from Mike Cohn's popular conference keynote session, Let Go of Knowing. [05:58] - How communities online like The Agile Mentors Community and local groups like DFW Scrum help members achieve more success. [07:02] - How being part of a community was foundational to Brian's Scrum journey. [8:33] - Julie shares her introduction to Scrum and how the connections and support she received from the community were crucial to her growth and advancement. [09:42] - Brian shares his regrets about not getting involved with a community sooner. [11:56] - Brian shares how mentoring is like dating and why taking the time to have the discussions needed to form the foundations for authentic relationships is vital. [13:08] - Read the room. Julie offers guidance on avoiding mistakes while searching for a mentor. [14:46] - How cross-pollination and venturing out to form connections in other industries helps you grow in your own. [15:41] - Being part of a safe community can help you advance your skills while helping others. [16:57] - Julie shares how to get started as a Scrum Master after you've been trained and the overall value of finding the right fit. [18:50] - Successful product ownership requires two key components. [19:16] - Where the rubber meets the road: expanding what you've learned in your training through real-world experience. [20:45] - Start where you are: how applying your Scrum training to other areas beyond software development can help enhance your skills. [22:55] - Brian and Julie share some examples of Scrum hidden in the non-software world, including in education and marketing. [25:32] - How to use your skills to help a nonprofit in your area. [27:11] - Brian explains how A-level classes can help you overcome hurdles as you advance in your career. [28:53] - Learning never stops: the importance of obtaining knowledge for now and later. [29:10] - Julie shares the value of debriefing with someone else. [30:31] - Problem-Solving Leadership (PSL) [31:22] - What classes and tools have you used to advance your skills? We'd love to hear. Reach out to share your experience. References and resources mentioned in the show Let Go of Knowing The Agile Mentors Community DFW Scrum Book Early for Savings on Mountain Goat Software Training Classes Agile Mentors Podcast EP#32: Scrum in High School Sports with Cort Sharp Agile Mentors Podcast EP#23 How Agile Works in Education with John Miller Agile Mentors Podcast EP#21: Agile Marketing Teams with Stacey Ackerman Agile Mentors Podcast EP#31: Starting Strong: Tips for Successfully Starting with a New Organization with Julie Chickering Finding and Becoming Great Mentors and Sponsors with Carla Harris on WorkLife with Adam Grant Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? It would be great if you left 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. Julie Chickering is the brains and brawn behind JC Agile Consulting, believes that Lean and Agile practices are packed with potential — to enable positive culture change, business agility, and breakthrough results. Julie is a past president and board member of the Agile Project Management Network (APLN), a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), as well as a traditional Project Management Professional (PMP).

Join Julie Chickering and Brian Milner as they discuss strategies you can use to get started on the right foot with your new organization. Overview It's the new year, and for many people, that means starting a new chapter in their life, maybe in a new position, with a new team, or possibly an entirely new organization. It's the perfect time for reflection to determine what you can do in these first few days and weeks to set yourself up for success. So, we thought it would be a great time to take this episode of the show to highlight some strategies you can use to hit the ground running. In this episode of the Agile Mentors podcast, Brian Milner and Julie Chickering discuss some strategies to set the stage for success in your new position. We will walk you through the vital steps for settling into your team and making an impact no matter what level of the ladder you are on. Plus, what to ask when you are interviewing to ensure you find the right fit. Listen now to discover: [01:40] - Julie Chickering is on the show to discuss starting strong with your new organization. [02:15] - How to use team retrospective to identify where things are going well to amplify the good stuff while on a discovery mission of what needs work. [03:35] - The one thing that Julie cautions about in one-on-one conversations that will help you avoid being influenced by others' opinions of their team members. [05:22] - How to create curiosity instead of animosity by offering reciprocal grace to help everyone work better together. [07:17] - Brian shares how to use an improvement board to keep a running track of things while identifying your next target, stay on the right track and avoid the worst-case scenario (as referenced by Henrik Kniberg in the Spotify Model - Part 2). [09:23] - What Brian calls his 15-minute' cheat code" for understanding the dynamics of a team. [11:31] - Julie shares her improvement backlog one-on-one ONE thing for Scrum Masters. [12:08] - Essential techniques to help developers make an impact and utilize their skills in their new team. [13:57] - How to get off on the right foot with a new team as a product owner. [14:14] - Julie shares how to determine if an agile framework like Scrum is helping you meet your business goals (or not). [15:34] - If you cannot communicate and collaborate with your stakeholders… you'll never deliver value to them. [16:32] - How story mapping exercises can help product owners. [18:31] - Why communication is the key to top-to-bottom team success. [19:40] - The most important questions to ask when you are interviewing to determine if the organization is a good fit for what you bring to the table. [22:17] - Why it's important to remember every interaction during an interview is a part of the job interview. [22:33] - Brian shares a story of why it's crucial to determine if the company you are going to work for is looking for someone agile or Agile. [24:42] - Why it's essential to do a background check on a company you're considering hitching your wagon to. [25:38] - Start with where you are: how to start strong if you have the skills and are certified but need to gain experience. [28:30] - How can you use your skills to give back and advance in your career? [29:38] - How to highlight your experience and use it to your advantage when seeking various roles within a company. [32:40] - The most powerful question you can ask your team that will help you start the new year fresh. References and resources mentioned in the show Spotify Engineering Culture - Part 2 (aka the "Spotify Model") The Culture Code How does project management work in Agile? with Julie Chickering #7: The Sprint Review is not a Demo with Julie Chickering Agile Mentors Community Meetup #13: What Does Cross-Functional Really Mean? with Lance Dacy Mountain Goat Software Scrum Alliance Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast on Apple Podcasts 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? Please 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. Julie Chickering is the brains and brawn behind JC Agile Consulting, believes that Lean and Agile practices are packed with potential — to enable positive culture change, business agility, and breakthrough results. Julie is a past president and board member of the Agile Project Management Network (APLN), a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), as well as a traditional Project Management Professional (PMP).

Join Julie Chickering and Brian Milner as they discuss strategies you can use to get started on the right foot with your new organization. Overview It's the new year, and for many people, that means starting a new chapter in their life, maybe in a new position, with a new team, or possibly an entirely new organization. It's the perfect time for reflection to determine what you can do in these first few days and weeks to set yourself up for success. So, we thought it would be a great time to take this episode of the show to highlight some strategies you can use to hit the ground running. In this episode of the Agile Mentors podcast, Brian Milner and Julie Chickering discuss some strategies to set the stage for success in your new position. We will walk you through the vital steps for settling into your team and making an impact no matter what level of the ladder you are on. Plus, what to ask when you are interviewing to ensure you find the right fit. Listen now to discover: [01:40] - Julie Chickering is on the show to discuss starting strong with your new organization. [02:15] - How to use team retrospective to identify where things are going well to amplify the good stuff while on a discovery mission of what needs work. [03:35] - The one thing that Julie cautions about in one-on-one conversations that will help you avoid being influenced by others' opinions of their team members. [05:22] - How to create curiosity instead of animosity by offering reciprocal grace to help everyone work better together. [07:17] - Brian shares how to use an improvement board to keep a running track of things while identifying your next target, stay on the right track and avoid the worst-case scenario (as referenced by Henrik Kniberg in the Spotify Model - Part 2). [09:23] - What Brian calls his 15-minute' cheat code" for understanding the dynamics of a team. [11:31] - Julie shares her improvement backlog one-on-one ONE thing for Scrum Masters. [12:08] - Essential techniques to help developers make an impact and utilize their skills in their new team. [13:57] - How to get off on the right foot with a new team as a product owner. [14:14] - Julie shares how to determine if an agile framework like Scrum is helping you meet your business goals (or not). [15:34] - If you cannot communicate and collaborate with your stakeholders… you'll never deliver value to them. [16:32] - How story mapping exercises can help product owners. [18:31] - Why communication is the key to top-to-bottom team success. [19:40] - The most important questions to ask when you are interviewing to determine if the organization is a good fit for what you bring to the table. [22:17] - Why it's important to remember every interaction during an interview is a part of the job interview. [22:33] - Brian shares a story of why it's crucial to determine if the company you are going to work for is looking for someone agile or Agile. [24:42] - Why it's essential to do a background check on a company you're considering hitching your wagon to. [25:38] - Start with where you are: how to start strong if you have the skills and are certified but need to gain experience. [28:30] - How can you use your skills to give back and advance in your career? [29:38] - How to highlight your experience and use it to your advantage when seeking various roles within a company. [32:40] - The most powerful question you can ask your team that will help you start the new year fresh. References and resources mentioned in the show Spotify Engineering Culture - Part 2 (aka the "Spotify Model") The Culture Code How does project management work in Agile? with Julie Chickering #7: The Sprint Review is not a Demo with Julie Chickering Agile Mentors Community Meetup #13: What Does Cross-Functional Really Mean? with Lance Dacy Mountain Goat Software Scrum Alliance Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast on Apple Podcasts 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? Please 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. Julie Chickering is the brains and brawn behind JC Agile Consulting, believes that Lean and Agile practices are packed with potential — to enable positive culture change, business agility, and breakthrough results. Julie is a past president and board member of the Agile Project Management Network (APLN), a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), as well as a traditional Project Management Professional (PMP).

Julie Chickering sits down with Brian to share the best gift books for the Scrum masters in your life. Overview We all have those books on our bookshelves that we’ve had for years and still refer back to time and time again, or that new title that we’ve just read that blows our mind with the way it makes a new concept more relatable. Julie Chickering is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), and a traditional Project Management Professional (PMP). Today on the show, Julie joins Brian to discuss the most valuable books they’ve read, the lessons they’ve learned from them, and the best ones for giving to the Scrum Master in your life this holiday season. Listen now to discover: [01:06] - Today, Brian and Julie Chickering will be sharing the most valuable books we’ve read. [02:10] - Julie shares how a book called Two Beats Ahead is helping her learn to let go of her creations. [04:00] - Julie shares an interesting story of how Beyoncé invited musicians in for collaboration and how that opened her mind to learning from her community. [05:07] - Brian shares why Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby and Diana Larson is his #1 book recommendation for Scrum Masters. [06:29] - Julie shares why she’s also a fan of Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great for the mix-and-mash recipe for creating menu selections. [08:06] - Julie shares why The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups insight into the three main things that make high-performing teams high-performing is her favorite book to give to the leaders on her list. [10:36] - Brian shares the three things from Daniel Pink’s Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us that align with Scrum. [12:34] - Julie shares how she learned to flip the script, start with the hard topics in a conversation, and finish with the positive from Daniel Pink, as included in his book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. [15:53] - Brian shares why Dan Pink’s books are most enjoyable via audio. [16:15] - Julie shares how a podcast interview with author Scott Sonenshein led her to his book called Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less -and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined, which helps teams unlock their potential to achieve more. [17:11] - Brian shares Frédéric Laloux's concept of the different colors of organizations as laid out in his book called Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness and how we can better enable change in organizations. [18:57] - Julie shares a book she recommends in Scrum Master class that’s great for sports fans called The Captain Class by Sam Walker, which walks the reader through what makes great sports teams great. [22:15] - Brian shares why sports analogies are great for teaching Scrum. [23:28] - Julie shares how even the Rolling Stones delve deep into figuring out how to improve. [24:30] - Why retrospectives are a great tool for improving the outcome of any mission. [28:25] - Brian shares why we still need to adjust to the current climate, even when the goal remains the same. [30:11] - Brian shares books by recent guests on the show, including Lead Without Blame: Building Resilient Learning Teams by Tricia Broderick, Strategise by Roman Pichler and Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)) by Lyssa Adkins. Listen in next time when Scott Dunn will be on the show. References and resources mentioned in the show Two Beats Ahead by Panos A. Panay and R. Michael Hendrix Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby, Diana Larsen The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle DRIVE by Daniel Pink | Animated Core Message Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward by Daniel Pink Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less -and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined by Scott Sonenshein Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness by Frédéric Laloux The Captain Class by Sam Walker Lead Without Blame: Building Resilient Learning Teams by Tricia Broderick Strategise by Roman Pichler Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)) by Lyssa, Adkins Mountain Goat Software Agile Mentors Community Scrum Alliance Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast on Apple Podcasts 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? Please 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. Julie Chickering is the brains and brawn behind JC Agile Consulting, believes that Lean and Agile practices are packed with potential — to enable positive culture change, business agility, and breakthrough results. Julie is a past president and board member of the Agile Project Management Network (APLN), a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), as well as a traditional Project Management Professional (PMP).

Julie Chickering sits down with Brian to share the best gift books for the Scrum masters in your life. Overview We all have those books on our bookshelves that we’ve had for years and still refer back to time and time again, or that new title that we’ve just read that blows our mind with the way it makes a new concept more relatable. Julie Chickering is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), and a traditional Project Management Professional (PMP). Today on the show, Julie joins Brian to discuss the most valuable books they’ve read, the lessons they’ve learned from them, and the best ones for giving to the Scrum Master in your life this holiday season. Listen now to discover: [01:06] - Today, Brian and Julie Chickering will be sharing the most valuable books we’ve read. [02:10] - Julie shares how a book called Two Beats Ahead is helping her learn to let go of her creations. [04:00] - Julie shares an interesting story of how Beyoncé invited musicians in for collaboration and how that opened her mind to learning from her community. [05:07] - Brian shares why Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby and Diana Larson is his #1 book recommendation for Scrum Masters. [06:29] - Julie shares why she’s also a fan of Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great for the mix-and-mash recipe for creating menu selections. [08:06] - Julie shares why The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups insight into the three main things that make high-performing teams high-performing is her favorite book to give to the leaders on her list. [10:36] - Brian shares the three things from Daniel Pink’s Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us that align with Scrum. [12:34] - Julie shares how she learned to flip the script, start with the hard topics in a conversation, and finish with the positive from Daniel Pink, as included in his book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. [15:53] - Brian shares why Dan Pink’s books are most enjoyable via audio. [16:15] - Julie shares how a podcast interview with author Scott Sonenshein led her to his book called Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less -and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined, which helps teams unlock their potential to achieve more. [17:11] - Brian shares Frédéric Laloux's concept of the different colors of organizations as laid out in his book called Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness and how we can better enable change in organizations. [18:57] - Julie shares a book she recommends in Scrum Master class that’s great for sports fans called The Captain Class by Sam Walker, which walks the reader through what makes great sports teams great. [22:15] - Brian shares why sports analogies are great for teaching Scrum. [23:28] - Julie shares how even the Rolling Stones delve deep into figuring out how to improve. [24:30] - Why retrospectives are a great tool for improving the outcome of any mission. [28:25] - Brian shares why we still need to adjust to the current climate, even when the goal remains the same. [30:11] - Brian shares books by recent guests on the show, including Lead Without Blame: Building Resilient Learning Teams by Tricia Broderick, Strategise by Roman Pichler and Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)) by Lyssa Adkins. Listen in next time when Scott Dunn will be on the show. References and resources mentioned in the show Two Beats Ahead by Panos A. Panay and R. Michael Hendrix Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby, Diana Larsen The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle DRIVE by Daniel Pink | Animated Core Message Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward by Daniel Pink Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less -and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined by Scott Sonenshein Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness by Frédéric Laloux The Captain Class by Sam Walker Lead Without Blame: Building Resilient Learning Teams by Tricia Broderick Strategise by Roman Pichler Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)) by Lyssa, Adkins Mountain Goat Software Agile Mentors Community Scrum Alliance Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast on Apple Podcasts 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? Please 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. Julie Chickering is the brains and brawn behind JC Agile Consulting, believes that Lean and Agile practices are packed with potential — to enable positive culture change, business agility, and breakthrough results. Julie is a past president and board member of the Agile Project Management Network (APLN), a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), as well as a traditional Project Management Professional (PMP).

“Focus on what really matters. If everything matters, then nothing matters. Make sure that what you do is aligned with what really matters." Peter Stevens and Maria Matarelli are the co-founders of the Personal Agility Institute and the authors of the “Personal Agility”. In this episode, Peter and Maria shared what Personal Agility System is and how we can apply this framework in our daily lives. They highlighted how many people face typical challenges that hinder them from truly getting what they want by using the “life is an ocean” metaphor. Both of them then gave a complete walkthrough of the 6 powerful questions in Personal Agility System, especially highlighting the key question to find “what really matters”. Peter and Maria then shared how this framework is not just applicable to individual, but also to leadership and organizational agility, and how it can help create alignment and trust within an organization. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:55] How Personal Agility Started - [00:10:10] Personal Agility System -[00:16:43] Life is the Ocean - [00:18:55] 6 Powerful Questions - [00:22:26] What Really Matters - [00:31:45] Applying PAS to Leadership and Organizational Agility- [00:37:06] Alignment - [00:41:04] Alignment Trust - [00:44:59] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:52:19] _____ Peter and Maria's Bio Peter Stevens is an Executive, Coach, Author, Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), and Founder or co-Founder of the Scrum Ambassadors, AgileExecutives.org, and the World Agility Forum. Peter serves as Chief Agility Officer for a Swiss digital health start-up. Peter also wrote Ten Agile Contracts: Getting Beyond Fixed-Price, Fixed Scope and Extreme Manufacturing. Maria Matarelli is an Executive Coach, Consultant to the Fortune 100, Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and an international best selling author. Maria and her team consult businesses to reach breakthrough results by applying Agile methodologies. Maria is the founder and CEO of Formula Ink and co-founder of the Agile Marketing Academy. Together, Peter and Maria founded the Personal Agility Institute with the mission of helping people and organizations align what they do with what really matters to become who they want to be and achieve what they want to achieve. Follow both: Website – https://personalagilityinstitute.org/ Follow Peter: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterstev Twitter – @peterstev Follow Maria: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariamatarelli/ Twitter – @MariaMatarelli Our Sponsor Today's episode is proudly sponsored by Skills Matter, the global community and events platform for software professionals. Skills Matter is an easier way for technologists to grow their careers by connecting you and your peers with the best-in-class tech industry experts and communities. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones. Head on over to skillsmatter.com to become part of the tech community that matters most to you - it's free to join and easy to keep up with the latest tech trends. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/80.

This episode features Lee Henson, the founder and president of Agile Dad. He is also a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), Project Management Professional (PMP), motivational speaker, coach, and a mentor. He talks about understanding organizational inefficiency to gain the best certification possible. Lee's 15 years of experience spans a broad array of roles and responsibilities. His unique blend of real-world experience in various roles combined with the ability to drive home complex concepts in an easy to understand manner make him an amazing coach to get any team best focused on project related initiatives. If you're running a company that has #OperationalInefficiency, you should consider reaching out to Agile Dad. Reach out to Lee Henson by visiting his website at www.agiledad.com or through LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/.Mitchell Levy is the Global Credibility Expert at AHAthat, the first AHA leadership (Thought Leadership) platform on the market for thought leaders, experts and companies to unleash their genius to the world. His passion is helping entrepreneurs, business owners and C-Suite Executives get known as thought leaders & become best-selling authors with the AHA platform. He is an accomplished entrepreneur who has created 20 businesses in Silicon Valley including four publishing companies that have published over 800 books. Mitchell is an international best-selling author with 60 business books, has provided strategic consulting to over 100 companies, has advised over 500 CEOs on critical business issues, and has been chairman of the board of a NASDAQ-listed company. Visit https://www.credibilitynation.com to learn more about the Credibility Nation community.Visit https://www.ahathat.com/author to learn how you can become an Amazon best-selling author in 4 months.

Björn Jensen studierte Informatik an der Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften in Hamburg und ist Diplom-Informatiker. Er begann im Jahr 2000 als Softwareentwickler in der IT-Branche zu arbeiten. Seitdem hat er viele Erfahrungen in verschiedenen Positionen innerhalb des Softwareentwicklungsprozesses gesammelt, wie z.B. Tester, Build Manager, Release Manager, Configuration Manager, Projektleiter und Entwicklungsleiter. Die Größe der Unternehmen, für die er arbeitet, variiert von sehr klein bis sehr groß (und stark verteilt). Er ist Gründer und Leiter der Java User Group Hamburg (JUGHH) und der Android User Group Hamburg. Außerdem ist er Gründungsmitglied der JetBrains Academy of Development. Seit seinem ersten Kontakt mit agiler Praxis (XP) im Jahr 2001 taucht er tief in die agile Welt ein und führte agile Entwicklungspraktiken und Scrum erfolgreich in mehreren Unternehmen ein. Mittlerweile ist er auch Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) sowie Mitglied im Trainer Approval Committee der Scrum Alliance.

Get to know these successful thought leaders and find out how they present themselves and their crafts as experts in their fields. Dr. Nekeshia Hammond is the founder and CEO of Hammond Psychology and Associates for more than 10 years, an Amazon international bestselling author, a speaker, and a licensed psychologist. Dr. Hammond hosts the BWE Mental Health Moment segment on the Black Women Empowered, Inc. FB page (almost 2 million followers), where she is increasing awareness on anything surrounding mental health issues. If you are concerned about your kids receiving the best care and support mentally and emotionally, consider reaching out to Dr. Hammond by visiting her website, http://hammondpsychology.com/, and going to http://aha.pub/DrNekeshiaHammond. Tammi Pickle is the VP of the Elite Connections Matchmaking Agency which has been in business for 25 years and has an A+ rating with the BBB. Tammi is a dating expert, dating coach, matchmaker of high-profile professionals and celebrities, TV personality, and radio host. She works with business professionals of all ages who are serious about finding quality individuals for serious relationships. If you are looking for a long-lasting relationship and are not being successful, you should consider reaching out to Tammi Pickle by visiting her website: https://www.eliteconnections.com and going to http://aha.pub/TammiPickle. Lee Henson is the founder and president of Agile Dad. He is also a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), Project Management Professional (PMP), Motivational Speaker, Coach, and a Mentor. Lee's 15 years of experience spans a broad array of roles and responsibilities. He is currently one of just over 160 Certified Scrum Trainers worldwide. His unique blend of real-world experience in various roles combined with the ability to drive home complex concepts in an easy-to-understand manner make him an amazing coach to get any team best focused on project-related initiatives. If you're running a company that has #OperationalInefficiency, you should consider reaching out to Agile Dad. Reaching out to Lee Henson by visiting his website at www.agiledad.com or through LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/. Global Credibility Expert, Mitchell Levy is a TEDx speaker and international bestselling author of over 60 books. As The AHA Guy at AHAthat (https://ahathat.com), he helps to extract the genius from your head in a two-three hour interview so that his team can ghost write your book, publish it, distribute it, and make you an Amazon bestselling author in four months or less. He is an accomplished Entrepreneur who has created twenty businesses in Silicon Valley including four publishing companies that have published over 800 books. He's provided strategic consulting to over one hundred companies, and has been chairman of the board of a NASDAQ-listed company. Mitchell has been happily married for thirty years and regularly spends four weeks in Europe with family and friends. Visit https://mitchelllevy.com/mitchelllevypresents/ for an archive of all the podcast episodes. Connect to Mitchell Levy on: Credibility Nation YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/3kGA1LI Credibility Nation LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/credibilitynation/ Mitchell Levy Present AHA Moments: https://mitchelllevy.com/mitchelllevypresents/ Thought Leader Life: https://thoughtleaderlife.com Twitter: @Credtabulous Instagram: @credibilitynation Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join V. Lee Henson and Pete Behrens as they discuss the state of leadership in Agile and why or why not top down Agile support should even matter.  Pete Behrens develops leaders to transform themselves and their organizations to improve business outcomes.Pete is the founder of the Agile Leadership Journey, a collaborative community of leadership trainers and coaches built on a philosophy that agile organizations only emerge from agile leaders, and who share a passion to build better leaders.Pete is the host of the (Re)Learning Leadership Podcast, for leaders, by leaders. Podcast episodes explore real leader stories and experts who help diagnose them for all of us to learn to be better leaders.As a thought leader in agile leadership, Pete is a Certified Agile Leadership (CAL) Educator, a Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC) and former Certified Scrum Trainer (CST). For the Scrum Alliance, Pete co-developed the CEC program in 2007 and the CAL program in 2016.

If you're someone who is comfortable with the “business side” of projects, you are probably the right person to aspire to achieve a #Certified #Scrum #Product #Owner® (#CSPO®) #certification. While the #Certified #Scrum Master® (#CSM®) helps the #Scrum Team work together to learn and implement #Scrum, as a #CSPO, you create the product vision, order the Product Backlog, and make sure the best possible job is done to delight the customer. Benefits of a #Certified #Scrum #Product #Owner certification: Expand your career opportunities across all industry sectors adopting #Agile practices Demonstrate your attainment of core #Scrum knowledge Learn the foundation of #Scrum and the scope of the #Product #Owner role Engage with #Agile practitioners committed to continuous improvement In addition to fulfilling the role of #Product #Owner on a #Scrum Team, your #CSPO #certification gives you an initial two-year membership with #Scrum Alliance®. Join local user groups and online social networks, gain access to deep discounts on Gatherings, and more. REQUIREMENTS Attend an in-person, 16-hour course taught by a #Certified #Scrum #Trainer® (#CST®). After successfully completing the course, you will be asked to accept the #CSPO License Agreement and complete your #Scrum Alliance membership profile. #scrumorg #agile #scrummaster #scrum #productowner #scrumalliance #productmanagement #psm #agilecoach #scaledagileframework #devops #scrumtraining #productmanager #itbusinessanalyst #businessanalyst #agileproblems #itbusinessowner #developmentteam #scrumteam #agileprocess #scrummasters #scrumdotorg #agil #certificacaoscrum #retrospectivas #teambuilding #agiledevelopment --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/aleph-global-scrum-team/message

This episode features Chris Li and Troy Lightfoot discus the state of Training in the industry, how poor training has not only direct impact but large residual impact at organizations and some neuroscience behind how people learn. Chris Li is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), and the first trainer in North America certified by Scrum Alliance as a “Path to CSP” educator to teach both the Advanced Certified ScrumMaster (A-CSM) and Certified Scrum Professional – ScrumMaster (CSP-SM) courses. Originally a Microsoft developer and database administrator, his close work with the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security give him a unique perspective into organizational change and technical delivery. He founded the Agile Institute at Agilex (now Accenture Federal), introducing agility and demonstrating its effectiveness to clients in these challenging sectors. Chris Li's Website Trainer Immersion Program This episode is hosted by Agile Uprising Board Member, Troy Lightfoot Book Mentioned Blooms Taxonomy Support the Agile Uprising If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a review, a rating, or leave comments on iTunes, Stitcher or your podcasting platform of choice. It really helps others find us.  Looking for real-time interaction and conversation with other practitioners?  Jump into the fray at our Discord Server! We at the Agile Uprising are committed to being totally free.  However, if you'd like to contribute and help us defray hosting and production costs we do have a Patreon.  Who knows, you might even get some surprises in the mail!

Devon Morris, 1st African American Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) Kyanna:            Let's talk about it. Talk, talk, talk. Let's go deep. We all have something to share. KnolShare with Dr. Dave. Dr. Dave:          Hey, so hello and welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave Podcast. I'm Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host. My conversation today is with… The post EAFH41: Devon Morris, 1st African American Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) appeared first on Leaders share how-to practices - KnolShare with Dr. Dave Podcast on GrokShare.com.

In November of 2020, Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber released a new version of the Scrum Guide. The new version of the Guide introduces some important changes to how Scrum works. One specific area that changed was the Scrum Artifacts. In this episode of the podcast, I am joined by my good friend Chris Li. Chris is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and the Founder of SparkPlug Agility. During our conversation, Chris and I go deep on changes to the Scrum Artifacts. We cover what has changed, how the changes are likely to impact Scrum practitioners, and we share our thoughts on how the changes to the Scrum Guide may help and hurt. This interview is a follow-up to the one Eric Tucker and I did last fall that offered a wide-ranging review of changes to the Guide overall. Where that was more general this one is locked in specifically on the Scrum Artifacts. If you’d like to check out a copy of the new Scrum Guide you can find it here: https://scrumguides.org/ If you’d like to contact Chris Li with follow up questions, here is the best way to reach him: Web: https://www.sparkplugagility.com Email: chris@sparkplugagility.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/realchrisli/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/realchrisli

Today Peter Saddington with Emrit joins us to discuss how you can earn $25 or more a month by hosting Emrit's CoolSpot. - Founded 4 startups - Emrit CoolSpot®, VINwiki, Action & Influence (acq. 2014), YEN - Published 3 books - Scrum, Agile, Personal Branding - Completed 3 graduate degrees - Education, Counseling, Divinity - Thousands trained in Agile/Scrum as a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) since 2009 - Racecar driver (SCCA Radical SR3) and go kart Dad -https://emrit.io/ View this episode on our website here. *Disclaimer. None of this information is financial advice. ~ Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Discord and Uptrennd today! ~ Want to learn more about cryptocurrency? Check out our educational videos today! ~ Looking to attend a cryptocurrency or blockchain event? Check out our events page! ~ Tune in on Crypto Current TV throughout the week for a 24/7 crypto stream on the latest action on crypto markets, news, and interviews with the industry’s top experts! ~ Enjoying our podcast? Please leave us a 5 star review here! ~ Stay up to date with the latest news in cryptocurrency by opting-in to our newsletter! You will receive daily emails (M-S) that are personalized and curated content specific to you and your interests, powered by artificial intelligence.  ~ We were featured as one of the Top 25 Cryptocurrency Podcasts and one of the 16 Best Cryptocurrency Podcasts in 2020. ~ Are you an accredited investor looking to invest in cryptocurrency? Check out Crescent City Capital. ~ Want to take educational courses on cryptocurrency & blockchain? Sign up for Blockchain Training Academy today! ~ Earn Interest. Receive Loans. Trade Crypto. Start Today! Learn more about how you can sign up for Blockfi  ~ Want to be on our show or know someone who should? Contact us today! ~ We hope you are enjoying our cryptocurrency and blockchain educational content! We greatly appreciate donations, which all go directly towards creating even better educational content. Thank you for your generosity! Buy us a coffee here :) BTC: 3BpSmgS8h1sNtbk6VMiVWxoftcwBxAfGxR  ETH: 0x743c0426CE838A659F56aFC4d3c10872d758EC79  LTC: MKCpf3qEVfT6yprhDhkJJcdNpqh5PZXSbx

Vic (@AgileCoffee) was joined by Martin Salias (@MartinSalias), Savannah Rayat (@SavannahRayat), Timon Fiddike (@TimonFiddike), and Raj Kasturi (@RajKasturi / @agileRaj) to discuss topics related to becoming a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST). Sites and resources mentioned in this episode: Björn Jensen's Trainer - KataCST® Journey - Facebook group for aspiring CSTsRetromat.org - a wonderful tool for your Retrospectives; co-created by TimonCertified Scrum Trainer® (CST®) Certification Overview - posted on the Scrum Alliance's website (6/2020) Looking for Scrum/Kanban training in Southern California or Nashville, TN? Rocket Nine has got you covered. Visit RocketNineSolutions.com today.

This month I was lucky enough to talk with Maria Matarelli and Nic Sementa. They are the authors of the Agile Marketing Academy and believe that marketing can and should keep pace with continual delivery of product. Why is this important? DONE does not stop at production. Some development teams can believe the responsibility of shipping value stops with production, but good communication with customers is necessary. Change is happening faster. Product messaging needs to change with market trends. Be the fast follower and learn about your customers first. Here is What You Will Learn Moving from a sale to a success mindset. Focus less on sales but also on how you can attract those who may not be ready to buy now but ready to buy soon. The four-phase cycle to transform your marketing. Discover the test and learn method that rapidly track the effectiveness of your value proposition in the market. Sign Up Now You can get your free Comparative Agility account today and begin on your team's Continuous Improvement journey. About Maria Mattarelli Maria Matarelli is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) who travels the world on one-way tickets consulting and training companies on reaching true agility. In addition to applications of Agile in IT, Maria and her team have been applying Agile to the Marketing realm with incredible results. After founding the Agile Marketing Academy, Maria and a team of experienced trainers are dedicated to bringing Agile outside the normal applications. About Nic Sementa As a serial entrepreneur, Nic Sementa has co-founded a series of companies including nationally distributed college magazine Boosh, a community based artist incubator RGB Lounge, and crowd funding consulting company Minion Werks. With a strong background in advertising and sales, Nic has helped many companies turn small marketing budgets into breakthrough results. About Simon Hilton Simon Hilton is an Agile Coach and Teacher that has worked in and guided Agile transformations across a diverse range of organisations. Simon is an empathetic leader and instructor that has trained thousands of people as in Agile mindset, frameworks and transformation. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/comparativeagility/message

Kim Brainard (@agilebrain1) joined Ryan Ripley (@ryanripley) to discuss her jouney to become a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) with Scrum Alliance. Kim Brainard Leading an Agile Workshop In this episode you’ll discover: How to become a CST with Scrum AllianceWhat to expect when you decide to become a Scrum TrainerTip and advice for when the journey becomes difficult Links from the show: Certified Scrum Trainer – Scrum Alliance – https://www.scrumalliance.org/ Kim and Ryan’s Upcoming Facilitation Course: https://agilebraingroup.com/event/icagile-agile-team-facilitation/ Kim and Ryan’s Upcoming Coaching Course: https://agilebraingroup.com/event/advance-your-coaching/ Kim’s Website: https://agilebraingroup.com Take a Scrum.org Class with PST Ryan Ripley – https://www.scrum.org/ryan-ripleyRead Ryan’s New Book now in BETA – https://pragprog.com/book/rrscrum/fixing-your-scrum How to Support the Show: Thank you for your support. Here are some of the ways to contribute that were discussed during this episode: Share the show with friends, family, colleagues, and co-workers. Sharing helps get the word out about Agile for HumansRate us on iTunes and leave an honest reviewJoin the mailing list – Check out the form on the right side of the pageTake the survey – totally anonymous and helps us get a better idea of who is listening and what they are interested inLeadership Gift ProgramMake a donation via Patreon Buy Ryan’s New Book: Broken Scrum practices limit your organization’s ability to take full advantage of the agility Scrum should bring: The development team isn’t cross-functional or self-organizing, the product owner doesn’t get value for their investment, and stakeholders and customers are left wondering when something—anything—will get delivered. Learn how experienced Scrum masters balance the demands of these three levels of servant leadership, while removing organizational impediments and helping Scrum teams deliver real-world value. Discover how to visualize your work, resolve impediments, and empower your teams to self-organize and deliver using advanced coaching and facilitation techniques that honor and support the Scrum values and agile principles. Click here to purchase on The Pragmatic Bookshelf. Want to hear another podcast about the life of an agile coach? — Listen to my conversation with Zach Bonaker, Diane Zajac-Woodie, and Amitai Schlair on episode 39. We discuss growing an agile practice and how coaches help create the environments where agile ideas can flourish. The post AFH 110: How to Become a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) with Kim Brainard appeared first on Ryan Ripley.

Dave Prior is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) with Leading Agile, a Project Management Professional (PMP), and a podcast host. He got his start in project management at digital agencies. The problem he saw with the agencies was that they were willing to bend over backwards for the client, which made it difficult to stay profitable. The key to making digital agencies Agile, according to Prior, is to “get everyone trained together, make sure sales is part of that, figure out how to rewrite your statements of work, figure out how your company is going to bear the cost of teaching your client [Agile].” Prior also addresses the question: Should I still get a PMP, does it have any value? Howard Sublett hosts. To reach our guest: Twitter: @mrsungowww.leadingagile.com/drunkenpm.blogspot.com/www.projectmanagement.com/blogs/264092…tant-Agilist Podcast library: www.agileamped.com Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/

This is the second in a series of roundtable discussions on PMBOK® 6. The focus here is Agile and the Agile Practice Guide, which is included as a supplemental volume in latest PMBOK® Guide. For this discussion, one of the co-authors of the guide, Jesse Fewell, joins two previous panelists, Michael Hannan, and Randall Iliff, to talk about the decision-making process that went into the guide, and what it means for PMs who must learn to adopt a more hybrid approach to project management. Listen, learn, and get a free PDU! An educational podcast with PM Guests discussing key technical project management techniques in new ways. PDUs Awarded:  1 PDU Information Earn education PDUs in the PMI Talent Triangle for each podcast you listen to — over 12.25 PDUs by listening to the entire series! Use the following information in PMI's CCRS system to register the PDUs for this podcast: PDU Category: Online or Digital Media Provider Number: C046 Activity Number: PMPOV0045 PDUs for this episode: 1 About the Speakers   Jesse Fewell JesseFewell.com Agile Coach Jesse Fewell is an author, coach, and trainer in the world of modern management, helping teams across the world deliver products faster with higher quality. A leader in the advancement of management practices, he founded the first PMI Agile Community of Practice, co-created the PMI-ACP® agile certification, and co-authored the Software Extension to the PMBOK Guide®. A graduate of Johns Hopkins University, he is the world’s only certified Project Management Professional® (PMP) to also hold the expert-level agile designations of Certified Scrum Trainer® (CST), and Certified Collaboration Instructor® (CCI). Michael Hannan, PMP, TOC Jonah Fortezza Consulting, LLC Principal Consultant & Founder Mike Hannan is Founder and Principal Consultant for Fortezza Consulting, LLC, which helps CIOs, IT PMO Directors, and project teams improve the speed and reliability of their Project Portfolios. Mr. Hannan brings over 20 years’ experience as a Consulting Executive, IT Project Portfolio and Program Manager, Process Engineer, and Software Architect/Engineer/Designer/Tester. His background in Project Portfolio Management started at NASA in the early 1990s supporting large, complex programs such as the International Space Station and High-Performance Computing & Communications (HPCC). He has managed and consulted on $500M+ project portfolios, and trained CIOs and other senior executives in Federal Civilian, Military, and Commercial environments. Mike has been an active speaker at industry events, including local PMI chapter and community meetings, webinars, PM Symposia, and in the Agile community. He is a leading innovator of disciplined ways to integrate Agile, Lean, Critical Chain, and other techniques to drive dramatic breakthroughs in the performance of IT Project Portfolios. Mr. Hannan has been a PMP since 2005, and is a member of both the PMIWDC and Montgomery County chapters. He has been a Theory of Constraints Jonah since 2011, and has Masters degrees in Information Technology and International Affairs. He is also a devoted father of 3 teenage boys, a competitive masters-level track athlete, and an amateur oenophile.   Randall C. Iliff Eclectic Intellect, LLC Founder   Mr. Iliff has over 35 years’ experience leading developmental effort, and has participated in all phases of project execution from proposal to close out. He is a seasoned large-project PM as well as a recognized expert in Systems Engineering. Mr. Iliff holds a BS in Engineering / Industrial Design from Michigan State University, and an MS in Systems Management, Research and Development from the University of Southern California. Mr. Iliff is a charter member of the International Council On Systems Engineering (INCOSE), and currently serves as the INCOSE representative on an alliance between INCOSE, PMI, and the MIT Center for Program Excellence. Until early 2016 Mr. Iliff was VP at the award-winning design firm bb7, where he was also Director of Strategy, Methods and Learning. Prior to that he worked for Motorola, Martin Marietta, and McDonnell-Douglas. In 2016, he left bb7 and founded Eclectic Intellect.

In July 2015, Maria Matarelli and Harvey Wheaton presented the results of Scrum Alliance's State of Scrum 2015 survey. The survey returned 4400+ responses that led to some very interesting results. I was able to get Maria and Aakash Srinivasan (both veterans of this podcast) to discuss some of the more interesting analysis of these results. Now, about the audio quality of this episode...  I'm sorry, but you will hear some obvious static during this episode (more during the first few minutes).  It turns out that I was using an older microphone that I hadn't recalibrated with my laptop. I've tried to mute it as much as possible through some editing. I will go back to my normal microphone in successive episodes. I'm sorry, and it won't happen again :) -- Rick   About Maria Maria Matarelli is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and experienced Agile coach who travels the world helping people discover better ways to work. As president of Formula Ink, Maria travels to consult with businesses and speak at conferences around the world from Vancouver to Morocco, Sweden to New York, Hawaii to Istanbul. Maria is the author of the book Workaholic? and has coauthored three additional books. Maria is passionate about working with people and organizations to inspire agility.   About Aakash Aakash Srinivasan is a professional speaker and an Agile trainer and coach who travels to consult Fortune 100 companies, working with enterprise management groups, executive teams and individual project teams on business efficiency, process improvements, organizational change and large scale Agile transformations in addition to providing leadership coaching and other Agile trainings. Aakash also enjoys travelling to speak at industry events and user groups including Agile Indy, IIBA DC, Illinois Regional Agile Users Group, Washington DC Scrum User Group, Agile 2015 and leads training classes and workshops across USA.

Maria Matarelli, president of , Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), and author, talks with me about her experience in a recent CSM class where she brought in Suzanne Oliver, of Heart of a Fighter, to act as a real-life Product Owner of/for her non-profit organization.  Maria's idea to have the CSM class focus on a real non-IT organization to help them realize their goals, yielded some very interesting results.  Listen to our conversation to learn more. Mentioned in this episode: Maria Matarelli, from , from Blaine Blanchard, from  Chicago Jan Mosier, from Lightreach You can contact Maria Matarelli on , , , , at , at , and check out her book at  

Welcome to the Software Process and Measurement Cast 192! The SPaMCAST 192 features my interview with Mitch Lacey.  We discuss his new book, The Scrum Field Guide.  Mitch Lacey is an agile practitioner and consultant and is the founder of Mitch Lacey & Associates, Inc., a software consulting and training firm. Mitch specializes in helping companies realize gains in efficiency by adopting agile principles and practices such as Scrum and Extreme Programming. Mitch is a self-described “tech nerd” who started his technology career in 1991 at Accolade Software in San Jose, CA, a computer gaming company. After working as a software test engineer, a test manager, a developer, and a variety of other jobs in between, he settled on his true calling, project and program management. Mitch was a formally trained program manager before adding agile to his project tool belt. He began developing agile skills at Microsoft Corporation, where his team successfully released core enterprise services for Windows Live, where he has two patents pending. Mitch’s first agile team was coached by Ward Cunningham, Jim Newkirk, and David Anderson. Mitch cut his agile teeth working as a product owner or ScrumMaster on a variety of projects. He continued to grow his skills to the point where he was able to help other teams adopt agile practices. Today, with more than 16 years of experience under his belt, Mitch continues to develop his craft by experimenting and practicing with project teams at many different organizations. As a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and a PMI Project Management Professional (PMP), Mitch shares his experience in project and client management through Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum courses, agile coaching engagements, conference presentations, blogs, and white papers. Mitch works with companies across the world, from Austria to Colombia, California to Florida, Portugal to Turkey, and just about everywhere in between. Mitch has presented at a variety of conferences worldwide, is the conference chair for Agile 2012,  on the board of directors for the Agile Alliance and was on the board of directors of the Scrum Alliance. Web:   http://www.mitchlacey.com/ Twitter:   mglacey  Buy the Scrum Field Guide (dead tree)  Kindle The SPaMCAST 182 is sponsored by LeanKit Kanban.  LeanKit Kanban is a software tool for kanban that is as simple to use as physical kanban. If you put it up on a touchscreen in your team area, it practically IS physical kanban. But your boards are available from anywhere, and updated in real-time. A slew of colors, icons, and avatars take your visual signaling to the next level. And the system tracks the metrics for you, providing analytics on bottlenecks, lead time, work distribution, process efficiency, and variability - for a single board or a whole company. It's kanban for the Lean enterprise.  FYI . . . something special is coming to LeanKit Kanban.  Words like enterprise portfolio and groundbreaking, More to come soon! I am working on several projects with friends that we are using kanban to control flow. We are using LeanKit Kanban as a mechanism to keep the project on track and organized. LeanKit allows us to share the Kanban board across the miles with ease! Visit LeanKit Kanban! (and say hello for the SPaMCAST!) 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." News just in  . . . We also just got word that the SPM book has been adopted for a class at the University of West Flroida for the Fall.  Have you bought your copy? Contact information for the Software Process and Measurement CastEmail:  spamcastinfo@gmail.comVoicemail:  +1-206-888-6111Website: www.spamcast.netTwitter: www.twitter.com/tcagleyFacebook:  http://bit.ly/16fBWV Next The Software Process and Measurement Cast 193 will feature my essay on the impact of routine on change, innovaton and goals!