Getting Ready for Agile 2025 with Reese Schmit

In this conversation, Dave Prior and Reece Schmidt discuss the upcoming Agile 2025 conference, focusing on its structure, keynotes, and unique features like the Hackathon for Good. They emphasize the importance of preparation for attendees, including tips for maximizing the conference experience, networking, and engaging with speakers. The conversation also addresses resources for introverts and those who may feel overwhelmed, ensuring a supportive environment for all participants.

You can find the interview here.

Jurgen Appelo - How to Measure ScrumMaster Performance

One of the questions I have been asked with increasing frequency in the Certified Scrum Master and Certified Scrum Product Owner classes I teach is:

How do we measure the effectiveness of the ScrumMaster?

When this question is asked what people are often looking or is a way to evaluate ScrumMaster performance (separate from the Product Owner and the Developers). This is not an easy thing to do.

Whenever I have brought up this question with other folks who teach or coach Agile teams, the conversation always finds it way back to Jurgen Appelo’s work. A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to interview Jurgen on his new project AgilityScales. After the interview Jurgen was kind enough to let me also ask him the question about ScrumMaster performance.


Jurgen is an entrepreneur and management thought leader who focuses his work on helping organizations change how they approach work management in order to support greater business agility.  He is the CEO of Happy Melly,   co-founder of the Agile Lean Europe  network and the author of a number of books including “Managing for Happiness”

His latest project AgilityScales is focused on inventing the future of organizational Agility. You can learn more about it by checking out the Agility Scales website or by watching the interview we did on the topic.

If you’d like to lean more about Jurgen, here are some links to check out.

• Web: http://jurgenappelo.com/
• AgilityScales: https://www.agilityscales.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/jurgenappelo
• Medium: https://medium.com/@jurgenappelo
• Amazon: http://amzn.to/2hZD5Vb

Jurgen Appelo - Agility Scales

Jurgen Appelo, the man behind Managing for Happiness and Management 3.0, is working on a new project to provide organizations with a platform they can use to develop the ability to innovate at scale and foster an agile mindset that spans the enterprise.  Agility Scales aims to be the “Waze for work”. The idea is to provide a navigation tool, that will help organizations achieve business agility using crowd-sourced business processes with peer to peer guides with the end goal of developing better capabilities around innovation and increased productivity.

What makes this project even more unique is that it is being crowd-funded. Agility Scales is currently open to investors who want to get involved in developing this new platform.

In this interview Jurgen and I discuss the Agility Scales project and the reasons for being one of the first Agile thought leaders to take a crowd-funded approach to developing a tool to support business agility.


If you’d like to learn more about Agility Scales and how to invest in the project:

• Web: https://agilityscales.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/agilityscales
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/agilityscales/
• Medium: https://blog.agilityscales.com

And if you’d like to learn more about Jurgen and his work:

• Web: http://jurgenappelo.com/ or http://noop.nl/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/jurgenappelo
• Amazon: http://amzn.to/2z6qbPO
• YouTube: http://bit.ly/2jvC0Z6

Interviews with Keynotes from Agile 2016

At Agile 2016, Adam Asch, Devin Hedge and I got to spend the week doing video podcasts with speakers and though leaders for LeadingAgile. The keynote presentations will eventually be posted to the Agile Alliance website and will be available to members, but while you are waiting... here are the interviews we did with them last week in Atlanta.

Jurgen Appelo, the CEO of HappyMelly, kicked the week off with his keynote on Managing Happiness. During the interview I got the chance to dig a little deeper on some of the specific tools (like personal maps) that he discussed during his session. If you don't want to wait for the Agile Alliance, you can also check out a previous version of Jurgen's talk here: TedX, or pick up his book here.

LeadingAgile Live - Jurgen Apello from LeadingAgile on Vimeo.

Devin Hedge got a chance to sit down with Industrial Logic CEO and Wednesday keynote Joshua Kerievsky to ask him questions about his keynote on Modern Agile and what changes he believes are necessary for the next step in Agile evolution. You can learn more about Modern Agile here.

Our last interview of the week was with closing keynote Carrie Kish. Unfortunately we missed her talk Leadership for Genius Tribes because we were still in the Hyatt basement doing interviews, but this conversation was one of the most fun and inspiring of the week for me. Carrie is the CEO of CultureSync and has a podcast called LeadershipUnleashed.

LeadingAgile Live - Carrie Kish from LeadingAgile on Vimeo.