Agile and Project Management - DrunkenPM Radio

Letting Go of Pure Agile w Andy Jordan

Nov 18, 2023

The podcast discusses the changes and challenges in the agile community, emphasizing the need to focus on results. They also explore the frustration with agile enthusiasts arguing about irrelevant things, the importance of understanding lean and agile together, and the concept of agile leadership. Additionally, they touch on the impact of AI on a writer's work, technology's influence on attention spans, and have a lighthearted conversation about music and project management.

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Introduction

00:00 • 3min

Letting Go of Pure Adjol

03:04 • 16min

Being a Leader and Agile Leadership

18:43 • 8min

The Impact of AI on a Writer's Work

26:25 • 4min

The Impact of Technology and Social Media on Attention Spans

30:05 • 2min

A Lighthearted Conversation about Music and Project Management

32:09 • 4min

Agile is going through a lot of changes right now. The changes aren’t so much in what it is and how it works - that seems to be a bit stable at the moment. The changes stem more from how adopters feel about it, their ideas about much agile they need, what they need to achieve it, and what kind of support they want getting there. As the space works through these growing pains, many Agilists respond to discomfort they way they (unfortunately) have since the very beginning, by pointing figures at each other and saying “OM%G! CAN YOU BELIEVE THOSE PEOPLE THINK THEY ARE AGILE?” It is a sad but true thing that baked deep into the culture of the agile community is this idea that the best way to prove that you are good enough, smart enough and doggone it, people like you is by calling out the people who you think are not good enough, smart enough and doggone it… you get the idea. In response to one of these incidents that showed up in his LinkedIn Feed, Andy Jordan posted an article called “Letting Go of Pure Agile” (https://www.projectmanagement.com/articles/893794/letting-go-of--pure--agile), making the case that whether or not you are truly Lean, or doing Scrum “right”, or whatever, doesn’t matter because the business cares about results and that is what we should all be focused on. I reached out to Andy to ask for an interview with the hope that we could dig a little deeper into his concerns over the purists, finding the right tools for the job, the current state of agile and project management, and, of course, how AI is impacting us. (It was also just great getting to catch up with him.) Andy, Mark Price-Perry, and I used to do workshops for PMI on Redefining your PMO. If you are curious about that you can learn more here: https://www.projectmanagement.com/videos/294895/pmxpo-2015--why-you-need-to-consider-redefining-the-pmo Andy’s Article: Letting Go of Pure Agile: https://www.projectmanagement.com/articles/893794/letting-go-of--pure--agile Contacting Andy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyjordan/ ProjectManagement.com: https://www.projectmanagement.com/profile/andyjordan/ Web: https://www.roffensian.com