No Nonsense Agile Leadership

Welcome to our 100th episode. In this episode, we talk about what we've learnt from our guests about agile, product development and leadership. We discuss what the podcast is about and why we started it. We unpack our critical take on fake agile and discuss agile leadership and product development. Join us as we take a deep dive into the insights, experiences and conversations that have shaped our...

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Evan Leybourn from the Business Agility Institute about business agility. We discuss how to define and measure business agility, examples of agile organisations, and the struggle with traditional bureaucratic models. We delve into the different types of leadership, the nature of internal cultural and political changes, and the challenges face...

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Ron Westrum about how organisational culture drives innovation and disaster. We discuss generative, bureaucratic and pathological cultures, using real-world examples from NASA, Boeing and others. This episode highlights the importance of leadership integrity, openness, honesty, the free flow of information, and a mission-focused approach to a...

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Jack Skeels about agile for digital and marketing agencies. Jack advocates for reducing the managerial overhead in organisations to promote productivity and improve communication. We discuss common hurdles in agile implementations. The value of a manager as a sports coach. The importance of scoping the work. Over managing and how real change...

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they discuss objectives and key results with Adrian Howard. Adrian explains how OKR's can be used as a strategic instrument for aligning goals within your organisation.  We walk through common pitfalls and misconceptions emphasizing the importance of using OKR's focused on outcomes rather than outputs. We discuss the potential for using OKR's with vendors....

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as discuss business agility and the heart of agile with Mike Leber.  We talk about how the heart of agile liberates you from rigid process frameworks by focusing on collaboration, delivery reflection and improvement.  We talk about how the agile industrial complex has turned agile into a heavyweight waterfall process.  And how innovation is happening outside t...

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Jason Knight on the state of product management.  Jason shares his insights and experiences on the responsibilities of a product manager, the evolving nature of the role. Differentiating buyer and user features the importance of testing and validating ideas. Supporting cross-functional teams and fostering a mindset of continuous improvement. ...

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Michael Lloyd about dysfunction mapping. Whether you are new to the agile world or a seasoned professional, you'll find valuable insights as we delve into understanding team dynamics, honing the coaching process. And the essential principle of iterative hypothesis testing. Join us as we learned the power of mapping dysfunctions to unveil powe...

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they as they chat with Bianca Grizhar about developing digital products in China.  We discuss the cultural differences between Germany and China, and how Scrum improved team  collaboration.  We talk about the benefits of working directly with people offshore in cross functional, cross organisational teams. Whether you're a product manager or a developer, th...

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they as they chat with Gabrielle Benefield, the inventor of the Mobius loop, an outcome focused delivery framework.  Gabrielle shares her journey in agile product development from Silicon valley to Yahoo.  And the importance of focusing on outcomes of outputs and improving decision speed. We discuss why organisations don't focus on outcomes, the problem wit...

Join Murray Robinson as he chats with Maarten Dalmijn about Sprint Goals. We discuss how sprint goals should act as a primary mission for a sprint, around which everyone's tasks should revolve, rather than focusing on individual deliverables. We talk about challenges to implementing this approach, the importance of measuring outcomes over output, and the need for competency and trust in the team....

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Joe Justice about how Tesla and Space X have developed a new operating model based on self-organising teams that continuously discover, deliver, and improve to achieve a thousand year goal. It's like the most radical combination of open space agility, OKR's, Continuous Discovery, Continuous Delivery and Continuous Improvement, you can think o...

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Stephen Bungay about the art of action. What can managers learn about leading in uncertain conditions from military history and modern NATO tactics? Military history shows that predictive plans and standard operating procedures work well when we are doing the same thing a thousand times, but fail badly when there's uncertainty, friction or co...

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Jose Corella about how leadership principles from the US air force can be applied in civilian organizations. Discover how effective leaders empower teams to think critically and take initiative to achieve the goal. Learn about mission command red team thinking, servant leadership and the power of leadership training. Tune in for practical ins...

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Jennifer Pahlka about her new book, Recoding America. Why government is failing in the digital age and how we can do better. In this episode, we discuss why governments at all levels produce poor quality online services, like healthcare.gov  in the US, that cost of fortune and a very difficult to use. Jennifer explains that government is hams...

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Jeff Patton about product thinking and user story mapping. Jeff emphasises that product thinking focuses on outcomes, not output. He explains that product market fit requires a deep understanding of customers and users problems and a balance of customer desirability, business value and technical feasibility. We discuss how to build a user sto...

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Ryan Lysne a product director at Amazon in charge of the Amazon app, the content creator economy and worldwide events. We ask whether Amazon is agile and discuss the structure of Amazon product teams. Then we talk about the 10 step product management cycle that Amazon product teams use. We talk about how they discover what customers want. How...

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Peter Lam, a management consultant specialising in fixing agile transformations. We delve into the value of consulting playbooks. The debate around centralised agile approaches and the disconnect between executives and workers. We examine why organisations often revert to bureaucracy after substantial change and the barriers functional silos...

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they discuss agile project management with certified scrum trainer, Jem Jelly (Jem D'jalel). We ask whether agile project management is possible or if it contradicts the principles of agile. We debate whether projects are inherently predictive, siloed, and staged or whether they can be adaptive fluid and cross-functional. And we discuss whether project mana...

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Jim Highsmith, one of the authors of the agile manifesto. We discuss the history of software development from the wild west to structured methods. The agile movement and the courageous leaders who implemented it . We talk about what agile is. The agile mindset. The problems agile solves and why it took off. We talk about what's missing from t...

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Pawel Huryn about product management. What it is, and isn't? How to motivate teams and what makes a product succeed. We discuss the difference between product management, which focuses on discovery and project management, which focuses on delivery. And how to do both at the same time in one empowered product team. We talk about how you can be...

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Stefan Wolpers about scrum anti-patterns. We discussed common Anti-patterns such as a scrum master assigning tasks to a disempowered team and the solution for them. And we discuss why these anti-patterns keep occurring. The problems with scrum master education and training and the big consulting companies who sell scrum as a project managemen...

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Brendan Marsh about what it was like to work at Spotify. How Spotify's agile ways of working are just a way to achieve the speed to market and speed to learning that their leaders feel are its key competitive advantage against bigger and better funded companies . How the Spotify model really works and how it's changed over time. And how the m...

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they discuss the fundamentals of product management with Roman Pichler, author of agile product management with scrum. What is a product manager? What is a product? What's the difference between a product and a project? What's the difference between a product owner and a product manager? How do you know what to build? How do you develop a product strategy?...

 In this episode, we discuss the sad state of the agile industry with Michael Kusters and Brett Maytom. We talk about how the agile brand has been destroyed by con artists, life coaches and big management consulting firms. People who provide poor quality advice to clients because they've never been part of a good agile team. We talk about why clients and managers hire people who don't know what th...