Catching up with Melissa Boggs

Melissa Boggs spent two years as the Chief ScrumMaster at the Scrum Alliance. In January she took on a new role as the Vice President of Business Agility at Sauce Labs. In this interview, we talk about what she learned in her time as Chief SM and what advice she has for others heading down that path, and why you should "just jump". 

You can find the interview here.

Coaching Stances with Dan Eberle

This episode features an interview with Dan Eberle. Dan is an Agile Coach, working at the New York Times and leading a few Agile-centric communities of practice. During the conversation, we discuss different coaching stances, how to develop your skill with employing them, how to measure your success as an Agile Coach, how being an internal coach differs from coaching at a consulting company, some tips for those moving towards a coaching role, and things to watch out for as you head down that path.

You can find the interview here:
https://www.projectmanagement.com/blog-post/68980/Coaching-Stances-with-Dan-Eberle

Agile Coaching Ethics with Shane Hastie

If you’ve been working as a coach or a consultant for any length of time you have run into situations where you have to make a decision about what the “right” thing to do actually is. Sometimes, it is pretty obvious, sometimes, not so much. Some professional organizations have established standards that credentialed professionals promise to adhere to. The International Coaching Federation has the ICF Code of Ethics and the Project Management Institute has a Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. In January of 2020 the Agile Alliance launched the Agile Coaching Ethics Initiative. In January of 2021, they launched a draft of their Code of Ethical Conduct for Agile Coaching along with a set of scenarios to help clarify what is, and is not an appropriate response in a variety of complicated situations.

You can find the interview and more on this topic here: https://bit.ly/2Q1zWbI

The Metrics Cookbook with Derek Huether

Derek Huether is out with a new book - Metrics Cookbook. If you are trying to figure out which metrics to pay attention to and why this book (and this podcast) are what you need. During the interview, Derek and I talk about why he wrote the book, what problems it addresses, and then we dig into a specific example of how taking a fresh look at metrics was just what a company needed to realize they were trying to take on way too many projects at once and take corrective action so some of the projects actually reached completion. 

You can pick up the book here: https://amzn.to/3uE8fo9

Video version of the interview: https://bit.ly/3osfv3c

Audio version of the interview: https://bit.ly/325dpx2

The Agile Virtual Summit - Adam Weisbart Takes Over

This is a completely unique version of the podcast. For the first time since 2008, I’m giving up control of the show and in this episode, Adam Weisbart interviews me about the session I’ll be leading at the Agile Virtual Summit, some of the changes in the new Scrum Guide, and iocane powder.

You can check out the podcast here

The Agile Virtual Summit [Bite-Size!] takes place on March 31st. The event is Bite Size! because it is only 3 hours long (12 PM - 3 PM Eastern). I will be giving a presentation along with Tricia Broderick, Richard Lawrence, Nicole Spence-Goon, Dr. Dave Cornelius, and Heather Dunning. And the Keynote is being given by Lyssa Adkins, who you definitely do not want to miss. 

Also, it’s free!

You can register for the event here: https://AgileVirtualSummit.com/Dave

The Product Goal with Ryan Ripley

Agile for Human co-host and Fixing Your Scrum co-author, Ryan Ripley joins me to try and sort out the Product Goal and how it fits in with the other ways we talk about the Product Backlog. 

You can find the interview here.

Resistance to Change with Christine Converse and Ross Beurmann

Christine Converse and Ross Beurmann are back and this time the conversation centers around the problems we face when trying to create change within a team or organization. More specifically, we talk about how you can influence others to change when you have no authority, the people you are trying to help may have no desire to be helped. Whether you are working in an agile environment, a traditional organization, or something that is careening back and forth between the two, this interview is going to give you a lot to think about.

You can find the podcast here.

Managing Work, Life, AND Your Band Using Personal Kanban with Mark Hodgdon

Mark Hodgdon is surrounded by Kanban boards. He uses Personal Kanban to manage his work, his life AND his band. This interview offers a kind of case study is how Mark uses Personal Kanban to keep everything sorted AND he's also started tracking his performance using generating reports to assess how he is doing. 

You can check out the interview here.

Planning Sprints and Releases

My colleague, Jeff Howey and I respond to a question I got from a student in one of my classes:

"I would like to know how long should milestones typically be and how many sprints should we break it down to. We have a goal of what we want to achieve and a rough timeline but we don’t log too many feature tickets ahead of time thinking that the task might become stale or pollute the board with an everlasting list of things to do and most of the time we were just closing the tickets. As a result, I feel we become short-sighted and optimize for the current sprint but not for the milestone."

You can find out response here.

Untapped Agility with Jesse Fewell

In this very special video episode of the podcast, I’m joined by Jesse Fewell, whose new book Untapped Agility is full of insights, tips, and tactics that you can use to help gain support for your adoption of Agile. Jesse and I go way back. We worked together a lot during the initial phases of getting The Project Management Institute and the Scrum Alliance to talk back in 2009-2010. It was great to catch up with him and I highly recommend his new book. 

Click here to watch the interview on ProjectManagement.com