The Agile Heretic - An Interview with Jim Benson

Jim Benson has been involved with Agile since the very beginning. You may know him as creator of Personal Kanban, as the co-creator of Lean Coffee, through his work as CEO of Modus Cooperandi, his books, or from the many awards he’s won for his work in applying Lean practices to knowledge work. After years watching Agile being misused, misunderstood, and seeing it “calcify and solidify because of commercialization”, Jim’s new project The Agile Heretic is focused on calling attention to many of the things people are doing that are causing Agile to not work. In the videos and blog posts, Jim takes on a wide range of Agile related topics, he explores why things are off the rails and how to address them. In this interview Jim and I talk through what led to him creating this series, his hopes for it and what he is looking forward to seeing in the future of Agile. We also touch on some specific topics (like why he doesn’t like Story Points) and he shares a bunch of great stories (like why a group of developers once passed the hat amongst themselves and smuggled him into their company after their organization deemed his ideas too dangerous to their way of working. Note: During the podcast, Jim makes multiple references to the Kuhn Cycle, You can find some basic info on it here: Kuhn Cycle: http://www.thwink.org/sustain/glossary/KuhnCycle.htm Agile Heretic Links - here are two places to get started: YouTube: YouTube https://youtu.be/CmfZvdGWKv4 Medium: https://medium.com/@ourfounder/the-agile-heretic-an-introduction-29992e52052c Jim at Agile 2018 Jim will be leading a Stalwarts session at Agile 2018 called “Ask the Agile Heretic Almost Anything” You can find more about that here: https://agile2018.sched.com/event/EUEU/ask-the-agile-heretic-almost-anything-jim-benson-jim-benson For more in Jim and his work: Modus Cooperandi http://moduscooperandi.com Jim on Twitter https://twitter.com/ourfounder Jim’s books on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2LWuhx1 Personal Kanban http://personalkanban.com/pk/ Lean Coffee http://leancoffee.org