Understanding Trauma w/ Brandon Brown

Regardless of whether you are a traditional PM or you are working in Agile, topics like emotional intelligence, creating safety and self-care are part of the current conversation about how we approach our work. This podcast presents another side of that discussion and focuses on how different experiences and events result in trauma that can leave lasting scars that we carry with us as we interact with others. Becoming more aware of different types of trauma, how it shows up in you as well as others, will help you become a more valuable and effective leader for your teams and organizations.

You can find the interview here - on The Reluctant Agilist

The Power of Volunteering w/ Reese Schmit

Kicking off 2020 with a podcast about the power of volunteering and how it can be one of the very best ways to invest in your career.

In this episode of the podcast Agile Coach, Reese Schmit shares her story of how she got involved in helping out with Burning Flipside (an Austin, TX-based Burning Man event), how that led her to start volunteering for local Agile and User Groups and how that led her to become part of the team of folks who plan and run the Scrum Gathering.

You can find the full blog post and the podcast interview here.

2019 Retrospective - 10 Years as PMPs Working in Agile with Jesse Fewell

It has been ten years since Jesse Fewell and I became Certified Scrum Trainers. During that time a lot has changed in the space occupied by PMPs who work in Agile. To close out 2019, Jesse and I did a retrospective on how things have changed, how the work we do has changed, and what kinds of things PMPs who are interested in Agile need to prepare for as we head into 2020 and beyond.

You can find the interview here.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

The Italian Dinner - How work flows from Release to Story to Task w/ Judy Neher, CST

In the CSM and CSPO classes I teach I often get questions about how work moves from the Release Plan into PBI's like User Stories and eventually into Tasks. Even though this is covered in the class, for some, it sometimes seems a little murky. In an effort to address this, I asked Judy Neher (a fellow CST) to help me talk through this flow of work by using the metaphor of traditional Italian dinner.

You can find the interview right here on project management.com

What people think of my CSM and CSPO classes...

LeadingAgile put together a cool video with feedback from students in my CSM and CSPO classes...

 

 If you'd like to learn more about upcoming CSM and CSPO classes, click here.

What to do when no one is talking in your Retrospectives... w/ Adam Weisbart

I class a few weeks ago a student asked a question about what to do when you can't get anyone to share during a Retrospective. In this episode of the podcast, Adam Weisbart joins me to talk through different tips and techniques that might help you get your team to be more open in your Sprint Retrospectives.

The podcast also includes a link you can use to download a free copy of Adam's Agile Adlibs. 

You can find the podcast here.
https://www.projectmanagement.com/blog-post/58381/What-to-do-when-your-team-wont-to-talk-In-Retrospectives-w--Adam-Weisbart

Using Improv to Improve Your Listening Skills w Jessie Shternshus

Jessie Shternshus, Founder and CEO of The Improv Effect, was kind enough to share some of her time and talk about how Improv techniques can be used to improve your skills as a listener and deepen you ability to read a room when you are teaching or presenting.

Talking to Jessie is always a lot of fun and very educational, but in the latter part of this interview, she completely schooled (in a kind, supportive and patient way) on how one of my "habits" when teaching is maybe not helpful in the way I intended and it is something I definitely intend to change.

You can find the interview here

Melissa Watts - Tips for ScrumMasters

Over the past two years, Melissa Watts, who is a Technical Project Manager at Major League Baseball, has been making her bones as a ScrumMaster. She and her team work  in a very complex environment, tightly coupled with external and legacy systems, supporting a wide range of platforms, in which downtime is not really an option.

In this episode of the Reluctant Agilist, Melissa shares some of her experiences over the past two years, offers advice for those dealing with similar challenges and explains why cat meme's are so very critical to her survival.

Chris Bailey - Hyperfocus and Optimizing Your Productive Time

If you ever wonder whether the various productivity hacks you read about on the interweb work or not, Chris Bailey is someone to pay attention to - he's basically a productivity hack stuntman. Chris gave the opening keynote this summer at Agile 2019. We weren't able to connect for an interview at the conference, but he was kind enough to make time for one afterwards. Chris has been running experiments, testing out the different productivity techniques for several years. You can read all about them on his website https://alifeofproductivity.com/ and in his book The Productivity Project. His more recent book, Hyperfocus, explores how to optimize your attentional space so you can get the most our of each hour of the day.

My interview with Chris is up on The Reluctant Agilist. It includes tips on how to optimize your time each day, why it is so critical to plan for time to let your mind wander, tips on meditation and some advice on what to do when your attempts at being more productive falter.

Scott Ambler on PMI's Acquisition of Disciplined Agile

In August of 2019, The Project Management Institute announced that it had acquired Disciplined Agile as part of its ongoing effort to find ways to introduce Agile tools and methods to the members of the Project Management Institute.

In this interview on ProjectManagement.com, Disciplined Agile co-founder, Scott Ambler, shares his thoughts on what this acquisition means for DA, PMI and the Agile community in general.