How do you navigate a bumpy job market with an agile mindset? Join Brian and leadership coach Mark Kilby as they explore practical strategies for staying prepared, leveraging your network, and taking ownership of your career during uncertain times. Overview In this episode of the Agile Mentors podcast, Brian Milner and Mark Kilby explore how to approach the challenges of today’s unpredictable job market with an agile mindset. Drawing on insights from Mark’s extensive career as a leadership and career coach, they discuss how preparation, adaptability, and proactive networking are essential to staying ahead. Mark emphasizes the importance of treating your career like a product, continuously iterating and inspecting trends to navigate change effectively. The conversation also delves into the power of maintaining strong professional relationships, keeping your resume and LinkedIn profile up to date, and using experimentation to explore new career paths. Whether you're facing a career transition, considering your next step, or simply looking to stay prepared, this episode offers actionable advice to help you take ownership of your professional journey. References and resources mentioned in the show: Mark Kilby From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams: Collaborate to Deliver by Johanna Rothman & Mark Kilby Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner® Advanced Certified ScrumMaster® Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule Join the Agile Mentors Community Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Mark Kilby is a leadership and career coach specializing in helping leaders and teams thrive in complexity. Passionate about building more inclusive and effective organizations, he draws on years of experience guiding professionals through organizational change, remote work transitions, and sustainable growth, all with a focus on fostering trust, collaboration, and long-term success. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're back and this is another episode of the Agile Mentors podcast. I'm with you as always Brian Milner and today I've got a friend that I have seen talk several times at conferences, we were talking, I don't think I've actually crossed paths with him personally yet, but Mr. Mark Kilby is here. Welcome in Mark. Mark Kilby (00:21) Thank you, Brian, and glad that we finally had a chance to meet virtually face to face at least. Brian (00:26) Right? Right? Yeah. And today's world, you know, that's actually saying a lot. You know, that's kind of the default. Mark is a leadership and career coach and has been, you know, a speaker at multiple Agile conferences over the years. He has a book that he co-authored called From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams. And he has spoken on lots of different topics. Mark Kilby (00:31) Yes it is. Brian (00:51) But when we talked about having him on, we talked about a topic that I know is very topical here. For some of you, maybe, know, kind of right in the meat of where you are at the moment, but really starting to think about this bumpy job market a little bit and how to navigate that with an agile mindset. You know, this agile stuff is not just stuff we talk about in working with a team, but it actually is a way of thinking about you know, doing anything. give me kind of your description there, Mark. When you think about, you know, navigating a bumpy job market with an agile mindset, how does that look different from others? Mark Kilby (01:27) So, well, it. The best way to think about this is whether you get this out of college at career placement or you're working with a career coach later on, it's always plan out your route and just follow the steps. Well, it's kind of hard over the last couple of years to say what the right steps are because so much has happened. And you and I were talking just before we hit the record button about one of the things that gets a little bumpy here in Florida, and we call those hurricanes. And I've learned over the many years living in Florida that you can prepare for hurricanes, but you can't prepare for exactly what happens. And so it's kind of the same way these days with our careers. You can maybe get certain certifications, you may get the right resume, the right LinkedIn profile, but if... If you're not paying attention to how the market shifts, and I think many people have been caught off guard with the latest market shifts, you can be in a world of hurt. how do do the prep to weather that storm? So that's kind what I'm focusing on these days. Brian (02:42) That's awesome. That's awesome way to look at it. Cause I think you're right. know, like I know I personally have gone through a couple of, you know, layoff periods in my career and, you know, it's never something when it hits, well, at least I shouldn't say this in my experience, I absolutely were completely prepared for, they were a little bit of a shock when they happened and Mark Kilby (02:51) yeah. Brian (03:05) first one much more so than the second one. I think you learn something from each time something like that happens. But you mentioned kind of the way the market is shifting and the way things are changing a little bit and trying to be prepared. So I wanna follow that for a little. So when you talk about navigating kind of a bumpy job market and the shifts and being prepared, how do you prepare for the unknown? For things that you don't really know what's coming or you don't really know how things are shifting. How do we do that? Mark Kilby (03:38) Yeah. Well, it's paying attention to some of the longer term trends. mean, 100 years ago, know, kind of fall into the hurricane example. We had no way to predict these. And now we've got a little better way. have models to kind of guess and it's still guessing. So, but at least we have a sense of, OK, how big is it going to be? You know, how big is the change that's going to happen? How do we prepare for it? Do we stay in place? Where we're at? Is it time to move and do something else? So it's kind of the same way with our careers these days. I'm gonna guess, not everyone's gonna have the visual, but with the amount of gray on the podcast right now, you could probably relate to this. Our parents probably stuck in the same job. most of their life. I learned early on, especially in tech, the changes that happen rapidly. Matter of fact, the place where I went as a summer intern shut down the next year. The whole plant went poof. But my parents were like, how can you? It's such a great place. This company's been around for decades. But I could tell that the winds were changing. Something was shifting there. So I learned to look at, right, how is the business doing? How is the market doing for the business? And what does that mean for me? So it really helps that we kind of build up our own little model to predict, you know, how is my job going to be here in the next year or so? Even five years ago, I saw early indicators that Azure coaches, scrum masters, we're going to be at risk. But the job market was going to turn. think several people could tell that. But I mean, we had so many that were going into that, that the set of roles and we were also, you we we were seeing some failures as well as successes with transformation. And I remember, so I actually had Ken Schwaber in my, as my my Scrum instructor, I remember him saying, know, Scrum will not solve your problems. It'll make them highly visible. But guess who gets blamed? The person who made it visible. you know, as, as agile coaches and Scrum masters, you know, were the, those folks in particular are always navigating a tightrope. You know, what, what do you, you know, what do you make visible, both the good and the bad? And if, if you're dealing, Brian (05:55) Yeah. Right. Mark Kilby (06:17) with cultures that are more focused on short-term kind of improvements and not looking at the longer term. How are people staying engaged? How are the steam aligned so they can do to deliver business value? You know, if that's not a focus of the organization, then it's that job, that role is going to be probably misunderstood and was. And so when things start going bad, fingers start getting pointed. It's like, okay, maybe we don't need these folks. And we've seen that for the last couple of years in particular, but we were getting early indicators well before that, well before the pandemic hit. So that shift was gonna happen. So we can model some of this is my point. Brian (07:01) Yeah. I like that. Go ahead. Well, I was going to go straight to that. I I like the comparison there with the hurricane. And I was thinking as you were talking about that, why are we better at it now? I would kind of presuppose it's because of the amount of data. But the more data we have, over the years, the better we are. And that if we've suddenly, magically, for whatever reason, lost all our historical data of hurricanes and what they do, then I would imagine we'd be back to square one of not really being able to predict very well about where they go. So translating that over into our careers, I love that comparison. And I love what you're pointing to to say, you can see indicators, can look at the trends, you can see how's the business doing. So that's kind of one of the things I want to ask you about a little bit is, especially here in this agile world, I know there's, I've heard lots of talk about, is this overall an agile thing that is on a decline or is this really more driven as an economy at large that's going through problems. And so we're kind of trickling down from that and feeling that. if I'm an employee for a company, what I'm trying to navigate then and figure out is I want to see trends for our business on the whole, but I also am trying to... Mark Kilby (08:38) Mm-hmm. Brian (08:40) fit that in with what the overall economy is and the market out there to see, is this just an overall thing for all of businesses right now and for the full economy or is this specifically something to do with our business that is kind of a, I would think a bigger warning sign than to start to get more prepared. Mark Kilby (08:59) Well, going back to the hurricane metaphor again, there's multiple things that impact that. It's the same thing for our jobs. So it's what data do you need to gather? And you pointed out to some of that. So what's happening with the company? What are you seeing in press releases? What are you seeing in commentary on your organization? I'll give an example of a company that no longer exists. So can safely speak about this company. So a company I was at early in my career and was well known in the Java programming space. They actually hosted a lot of Java sites at the time. They were also at the top of the, not the AI boom, but what was called the internet boom, know, dot com boom way back. And they went through the same Friends that a lot of companies did spending a lot of money Not pulling not pulling in revenue and it was very public how much they were spending When it became obvious that they bought like very expensive real estate office real estate in in Boston Harbor area and they bought very expensive real estate elsewhere You don't have to be a financial wizard to figure out like all right if they're spending all this money and and we're seeing pundits in other news sources say, yeah, we're not sure about this company. And you're seeing a lot of that. You might start to wonder as an employee, like, I wonder if I am really safe here. Is it time to hunker down or is it time to move? So you've got to gather your own data about your company, your industry, and even the broader economy. If you ignore that, you kind of ignore it at your own peril. We have to be the product owners of our own career. Brian (10:47) Mm, I love that. Yeah, that's a great way to look at it. Well, so shifting gears a little bit, because I think we obviously are not going to, we're soothsayers or anything. We can't foretell the future exactly. And there's always going to be things that kind of catch us off guard. There's the unknowns and that's Mark Kilby (10:48) Yeah. Yeah. Brian (11:10) Partly what we talk about a lot in Agile is just the idea that you can't know everything upfront. So you got to be prepared. You got to have a system that works for you that kind of allows for those unknowns to come along and then allows you to adjust as you're going through. So that's kind of where I want to go next then is if we accept the fact that, we have indicators and they can give us an indication about the job market or about our company. And we have to kind of assess those independently to see if it's time to move or we should be ready for something to happen or not. Once that threshold is crossed, once we make that decision, or it's made for us, then we're into a whole other world. And we talk about this being a bumpy job market. Well, it's bumpy on both sides of that threshold. So how would that apply to you? After you've crossed that threshold, how do we use Agile and an Agile mindset to navigate the task and the hardships of trying to find the next thing? Mark Kilby (12:16) Well, there's even a little bit before that. So that's OK, but a great question. And I'll come back around to it. So just as you're starting any agile project or program, there's some setup. There's some prep that you have to put in place. And I'm going to tie back to the hurricane metaphor here also. There are seasons for that prep sometimes. So think about the season you're in. Brian (12:18) Okay, sorry. Mark Kilby (12:41) month to month, quarter to quarter, and maybe you're wrapping up a big program, that would be a great time to update your resume and your LinkedIn. Not waiting until you're out of a job, but go ahead and just like, you know, I think I'm going to update. And people will say, but I don't want other people to know that I've updated my LinkedIn profile. There's an option for that. You can shut that off so that doesn't happen. But you want to get in that, that there's prep seasons like, okay, if something were to happen, what do I need to do? What do I, what, what I need to have ready? So keeping that resume up to date, keeping that LinkedIn profile up to date, then looking at, okay, I I've kind of doing these, these cycles of, of prep and also reflection on past work. Maybe I want to think about what was the work I enjoyed that I want to amplify through. LinkedIn, resume, and maybe even talk about a LinkedIn and kind of be broadcasting a little bit. I really enjoyed this project we just finished up. That gets you a little bit out there. And I can already hear the introverts cringing. But if you talk about the ideas, what you learned as an introvert, that works for me. Brian (13:47) Hahaha. Mark Kilby (13:56) I mean, that's how I got into remote work because I found interesting ideas and concepts to talk about. And that's how I got known by that. I looking to make a job switch? No. But I was broadcasting, hey, this is the kind of stuff I really enjoy doing, hoping to attract others who are also interested in that. And yes, it did lead to new job opportunities. So I got hired in 2014 because of the stuff I posted in LinkedIn around those times. So it's kind of doing that inspect and adapt, inspecting, where am I currently as I wrap up a big significant chunk of work? How do I capture some of that? What do I want to reflect? And what do I want to kind of make transparent about what I liked about that? Then let's say the winds turn and things get a little bumpy. Well, if you've... If you've been kind of connecting people, connecting with people online, if you've been kind of talking about, this is kind of things I do, it's much easier to go out there and say, hey, I'm looking for a new opportunity. You've seen what I've talked about online. What ideas, what do you have network? What do you have community? So it makes it much easier if you do some of that prep work and kind of reflect and inspect into that. Brian (15:20) Yeah, I'm getting a connection there too. I don't know if this is intentional or not, but I'm getting kind of a connection because I know in the agile world, we're all about how teams work together and just kind of that whole mindset of the best architectures, designs, right? The best stuff comes from a group of people working alongside each other. And I'm connecting that a little bit to what you just said, because you're talking a lot about how you're reaching out to the community through your LinkedIn profile and through post and other things. And that feels a little like you're kind of teaming, like you're teaming up with the network that you've made to try to solve this big problem that you have. Mark Kilby (16:05) And from a career standpoint, we team in different ways. mean, how many of us have been to courses, conferences, we've met people that we've kind of connected with, or we've talked about some great ideas, like, yeah, let's stay connected, let's talk more about that. How often do you follow up with those people? Do you like forget until the next conference? Do you maybe check in every six months? Maybe a little sooner? Maybe say, hey, what kind of projects are you working on based on that idea we talked about? Reach out to those connections that you made. of just not to keep them warm, but just to say, hey, what are you working on? How does it compare to what I'm working on? Let's just talk about that. Let's do some more reflection on that. Brian (16:49) I think that's great advice because I hear what you were saying earlier and agree. It's kind of a struggle when you're working at a company and you're not really sure yet whether you're moving on or you're not and no one has told you anything. But you're starting to feel the signs and you're starting to look around and say, maybe it's time, but it's not right for me to just blast it. It's not right for me to go to LinkedIn and... Mark Kilby (17:02) Mm hmm. Yeah. Brian (17:15) Because you don't want the boss or coworker to see that and say, what's going on? You don't want that to happen. But I think you're right. There's more subtle ways you can do that by just starting to connect to key people in your network. And I like that phrase. I like being able to say, hey, what's going on in this area? Or what have you done in this area that we talked about when we last connected? I think that's a great approach to that. Mark Kilby (17:40) because it's so much easier to ask for help when you need it then, rather than if you haven't talked to that person in five years since you saw them in a conference. But if you stayed in touch and just talked about, hey, here's some things I'm dealing with at work, how about you? What are you coming across? What are you learning? What are you trying? Or what are you struggling with? And if they know you're struggling, then they might say, hey, you know, I heard of this opportunity. And that's where the network helps you. That's where the team helps you out. Brian (18:12) Yeah. They always say that, you know, like that's the, that's your strongest avenue to, to another job is, is, you know, a personal connection and inroad, to the company. Cause you bypass all the, you know, all the silly AI stuff of scanning through resumes and do you have the right keywords and all that stuff? which, know, that's a whole other thing. but, you know, if you do, I think you're right. If you can make that personal connection. Mark Kilby (18:34) Mm-hmm. Brian (18:39) your resume can go to the top of the pile. You skip the initial vetting, you go to the interview, and once you get the interview, then you're golden from that point forward. Yeah, I love that. That's a great approach and I like the idea of continuing to maintain that network. But I will tell you, from my first layoff to my second layoff and how I kind of approach things was very, very different. And I'm kind of curious how this fits in with what you advise people as well, because I know my first layoff, I got a little snowed by certain people where I started to make strong connections. I started to go through energy process with people and they're in the full recruitment mode at that point, because they don't know if it's going to be you or somebody else. if you get to be... you know, one of the finalists, they're interviewing you, but they're also recruiting you. And I know I made that mistake early in my career of just thinking, well, I'm close. I'm close with these things. So I don't need to worry about continuing to do the day-to-day hard work of reaching out and making new connections and starting the process new. Because I don't want to lead them on. I don't want anybody to think that I'm, you know, interested when I'm so close with this other one over here. Mark Kilby (19:45) yeah. Brian (19:54) And yeah, I learned pretty quickly that's a mistake. know, those things, there's no promises. And you know, you gotta keep turning that crank every day of sending things out. So how does that fit in a little bit with the strategy? Mark Kilby (19:58) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well. Well. mean, to map it back to Azure concepts, you never prepped just one thing on the backlog. You're looking at what are some things that might pop up in this next sprint or this next phase of work? What is it that we might consider, but we're gonna make the final decision when it's time to make that decision? So you can't be in that stage as you talk about those final conversations and you're still doing the dance with them. It's like. You're confirming is this the right place and they're confirming are you the right one to bring in? That's not the decision point. The decision point is when the offer is made. So you've got to get some other things. You got to keep some other things going in the backlog. Keep it going, keep it going. And I would say even once you've accepted that offer, you might wait a week. because I've had some colleagues where they've gone in, they've gone through those interviews and maybe everything wasn't as advertised in the position. I think some of us have been in that where you go and it's like, this is not the job I signed up for. So keep those other connections warm for a week or two, just in case, just in case. Brian (21:24) Yeah, that's great advice. I tell a story sometimes to people in the classes about how there was a job I went to that's interviewed and they were asking me all sorts of agile questions. They wanted me to come in because of my agile expertise. I get in and unfortunately for me, it took a few months before it became clear that they were actually hearing the word agile from their division leader. And the division leader was not using capital A Agile. They were using small a Agile and saying, we just need to be faster. But he would throw out the word Agile. And so they heard Agile and thought, well, we need to know about this Agile thing. And yeah, that was not a good fit. That was not as advertised. I wish I had found that out earlier. But you make the decisions when you cross that threshold. Well, this is good advice. And I'm kind of curious then as well, you know, maybe taking it back a higher step because, you know, maybe I'm not in the place where I'm trying to decide, is it time to leave? But, you know, part of navigating a job market is also navigating a career and trying to understand what's the right next path for me or what's the right next step to get to the next level of where I think I should be in my career. How would you kind of apply an agile mindset to that kind of a process? Mark Kilby (22:44) So I will say, since I started with extreme programming, I'll bring in another concept, the spike. How do you set up an experiment where you can explore, is this possible or not? So let's say you're an individual contributor and you're wondering, should I take on a management? Brian (22:51) Okay. Mark Kilby (23:04) How can you experiment with that? So are you a member of any volunteer organizations? Can you lead an effort and see what that looks like to coordinate people? To actually maybe plan a budget to get some event going? What would that look like for you? What does it look like when not everybody's cooperating? Because when you deal with volunteer teams, it gets way more interesting than it works sometimes. Because you're really trying to appeal to their motivation. You can't fire them if they're a volunteer usually. So if you look for how can I experiment with what's next? And is there some way I can lean into some of the same activities? And then when I go and apply for that management position, say, yeah, I've run some of these things at my church or at this community center, and I've organized this, I've set the budgets for that. So you're already demonstrating some of the possibilities. You're trying to decide, this something that I enjoy, that I will benefit from, that I can lean into that next phase of my career? Brian (24:12) Yeah, yeah, I love that. That's really great. Well, this topic is, I think, so topical for a lot of people and, well, just about everyone. Because we're all at some stage of our career, and we're all at some stage of our relationship with the place we're at at the moment. I think we all have to be aware. I think we have to keep our eyes open and ears open. And like you said, try to find those sources of data that can clue me in as to what my situation is and maybe what I need to be prepared for. Is the hurricane coming my way or has it turned? Mark Kilby (24:44) Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Brian (24:48) Before I let you go though, I do want to take just a second here before we wrap things up. Because I mentioned your book earlier, the book From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams. And I know you've done lots of talks and research on distributed agile teams far before COVID happened. So I guess I'll ask you what What do you think has changed today in the years since COVID, when things now things have started to settle a little bit more? How has the nature of distributed teams shifted in just the past few years? Mark Kilby (25:25) Well, I think we're seeing some of those shifts even in the last couple months with the call away from hybrid to fully back in the office. We've seen it with Amazon, we saw it with Dell, we're seeing it with others. So I think we're seeing the companies and the management that was looking at what's next, what's possible, and those that are like, no, we like things the way they work. I assume that we're going to see many existing hybrid setups go away. I see, I think there's very few that are going to survive. There have been some other companies that have gone fully remote, but I think we're going to see a lot more of return fully to the office because it's really hard to live in both spaces at once to be in the office and be remote. It's, it's just too difficult. We probably didn't amplify that enough in the book. That's the one thing that Johanna and I, we've talked many times about updating the book and it's like, no, not yet. It's not quite time. Let's let this phase pass. But I think we're going to see things go back to almost 2018 where there's some companies that are doing well remote. And it's not just startups because there's companies, thousand, 2000 employees that are functioning well, fully remote, but it takes a different mindset. Brian (26:29) Yeah. Mark Kilby (26:49) around how do you connect, do you keep people engaged, how do you keep them motivated. So all those things that we were all forced to answer during the pandemic, some of these companies have been answering that a little bit more, I would say thoughtfully rather than being forced to answer them. Brian (27:09) That's a nice way to look at it. Yeah, I agree with that. Well, mean, so much road has passed our tires from when you guys started that. I mean, you wrote that prior to COVID, right? Yeah. Yeah, talk about a great timing. mean, you guys were really visionary looking ahead there. I'm sure there's no way you could have known there was going to be a massive pandemic, but yeah. Mark Kilby (27:20) Yeah, yeah, it came out late 2018. No, no. Brian (27:32) It was very timely when that happened to have that knowledge available for folks. Mark Kilby (27:36) Yeah, were, well, I want to add, we were never in the mindset that every organization should go remote. That was never ever our intention. But for those who wanted to go remote, that's what that book was for. Brian (27:44) Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. And you know, I know that's not our, not really what we, we focused on the, the podcast here, but I did want to just kind of dip into that a little bit for folks, just in case that is a topic that's of interest to anyone here listening as well. If you're really looking for information in that area, strongly encourage that book for, for you again, from chaos to successful distributed agile teams. And we'll put a link to it in the show notes so people can find it so they can, you know, find your work and. to follow up and any last thoughts here before we close it out? Mark Kilby (28:26) Yeah, so I would say whatever you're struggling with, step back from that. I don't care if it's remote work. I don't care if it's a career challenge, but step back and look at what are the patterns that you're seeing and how can you inspect and adapt for those patterns. That's an agile mindset. Brian (28:47) I love that. Yeah, it tends to follow that if we put to practice these things we're teaching, you know, and talking about and trying to do in our organizations now and kind of apply that to other areas of our life that, you know, we're going to see similar results. So, I really appreciate you coming on. this has been a great conversation. And, and, as I said, I know, Mark, there's going to be lots of people listening who are just going to eat this up because, you know, if you're in that position, You know, you're looking for any kind of help that you can get. So I hope this is really helpful to folks and I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge in this area. Mark Kilby (29:22) Thanks, Brian, for having me on. Brian (29:25) Absolutely.

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Clinton Keith, a veteran in the game industry and author of "Agile Game Development," shares his insights on adapting Agile methodologies to the fast-paced world of gaming. He discusses the evolution of Agile in this sector, the importance of finding the 'fun' in games, and the challenges of traditional practices like Scrum. Clinton also emphasizes the impact of tight deadlines, digital distribution, and the necessity of strong leadership in fostering a productive Agile culture. His anecdotes provide a fascinating look at the unique dynamics of game development.

In this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, Brian Milner chats with Murman about the value of attending Agile conferences, the importance of networking, and the impact of volunteering in the Agile community. They share personal stories, advice on making the most of conference experiences, and insights into how volunteering can open up new opportunities for personal and professional growth. Overview Brian Milner and Chris Murman dive into the world of Agile conferences, focusing on the upcoming Agile 2025 event and the benefits of attending. They discuss the evolving purpose of conferences, why networking and volunteering are crucial, and how approaching conferences with an open mind can lead to unexpected learning and connections. Chris also shares his journey from attendee to conference chair, providing a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into creating a memorable conference experience. Whether you're a conference regular or considering attending your first one, this episode offers valuable perspectives on getting the most out of these unique events. References and resources mentioned in the show: Agile 2025 Chris Murman Connect with Chris on LinkedIn Agile Alliance Speaker Submission Tips Webinar #105: Scrum Conferences & Neurodiversity with Brian Milner Special Episode Scrum Gathering Denver 2022 Mountain Goat Software’s Accurate Agile Planning Course Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Join the Agile Mentors Community Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Chris Murman is the Agile 2025 Conference Chair with over 15 years of experience in product management and leadership, He has directed successful launches for top brands like Verizon, NBC Universal, and Chick-fil-A. As the Executive Director of Product at JP Morgan Chase, and leads 20 cross-functional teams, driving innovative financial solutions and spearheading AI/ML initiatives that save over 6,000 man-hours per quarter. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're back for another episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast. I'm with you as always, Brian Milner. And today, a very special friend is here with us, Mr. Chris Murman. Welcome in, Chris. Chris (00:11) What's up, Brian? I don't know that I'm a mentor, but I'm here anyways. Brian (00:12) You're definitely a mentor. In fact, we're going to explain to people why you are here in just a moment. Chris is an Agile coach extraordinaire. He has been in the community for quite a while. And he is a fellow Dallas native here with me. And we connect a little bit at the last year's Dallas conference here for Agile. Chris (00:19) Okay, okay, sure. Sure, sure. Brian (00:40) And one of the things that I noted in that conference was they announced the next one, which is coming up in Denver, end of July, beginning of August -ish, we'll put it that way. And he was announced as the chair of that conference. So Chris is actually going to be in charge or leading or behind the scenes for just about everything that's going to take place at that Agile 2025 conference in Denver. So I wanted to have Chris on to talk about that a little bit. Don't think of this as an ad. It's not an ad for it because what I wanted to kind of help people understand was kind of the why behind it. When I normally talk about the conference, it's maybe a month or two before. Well, now it's next summer. So you have some time to plan. And now is the right time to kind of put that kind of stuff in your calendar if it's something that you're thinking about doing. or even maybe thinking about maybe should you volunteer or something like that for it. So Chris, how did you get involved with this kind of thing? How did you get involved with helping out with the conferences? What made you decide to help out in any way, shape or form? Chris (01:54) Well, like many, when I first started the work, I I fell into Agile backwards just like everybody else did. None of us did this on purpose. It just came along and we just started doing it and then it became something to do. in the 2010s when Agile was riding high and I... I saw these conferences as really cool learning opportunities and connection opportunities. People that I knew from the, that you and I both know from the local area, from meetups, would tell me about these conferences. I was attending DFW Scrum the last time that Agile 20XX was in Dallas. I did not go, but. cause I, was too late for me to find out and it was kind of pricey. And so I was like, so like conferences are where you just go and meet people and then they're like, yeah, you should just kind of go. So as, as with many of us who are like, well, how do I pay for these conferences to go? just said, well, I'll submit to speak. And, I don't know about you, but my first few submissions were not great. I, I, I. People always laugh when I say this, but I would literally copy and paste the headline and the entire copy of blog posts that I thought would be really cool to talk about. Because I started my blog, that was kind of how Chris Murman .com is kind of how people first started meeting me because I would promote it on platforms and stuff. Agile Twitter used to be really fun back in those days too. So I would just copy and paste the entire blog post as my abstract. And of course, now knowing what I know, like that was, that's just the worst thing to do in the world. but I didn't know what else to do. So I fell flat on my face the first few years and started getting some advice and feedback and such, and started getting accepted to speak around 2016. Spoke at. Spoke at several conferences that year, spoke at several conferences in 2017. 2018 comes along and they're like, and I'm like, hey, how do I help out? Like this is really cool. I connected with the Agile Alliance community, that specific conference community very, very well. And I'm like, well, how can I help? And they're like, here's three or four people, email them until they say yes. And I'm not. Brian (04:18) Yeah. Hahaha. Chris (04:34) I just was annoying and said, no, I'm not kidding. I want to help. And I got to chair a track. You know, I chaired all kinds of tracks for the next few years. coming out of COVID, I got asked to be on the program team. which is just when people are like, what's the difference between leading a track and leading like the entire program? Think of it as like, The track is like one tiny, tiny sliver in the program team has to go really very narrow across everything to know where everything is. Not that I know every set. I still, I'm like, that was that session was the conference that year. But, so we just have to be more broad in what are the themes that we want to talk about? What are the things that we want to do? and, and, you know, when you join the program team, you know, one of these years it's going to be your year. And then when you. when you're a conference chair, that's your final year on the program team. And then you just go back to civilian life, I guess. I don't know, which is, don't, I don't ask Dana. I don't know what civilian life is on the side of the conference just yet, but I will very soon. So I don't know. It's a, that's a rambling answer, but it's for the most part, that's really how I got going was just, I just wanted to go. You know what I mean? I just wanted to be there. And the only way I could do it was to get a free ticket. Brian (05:34) Ha ha ha. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's a, well, that's a great answer. I mean, I, I think I'm kind of, I mean, I probably have a little bit, there was probably a few more years I submitted before I got accepted to speak at the Agile Conference, but I probably submitted three or four years before I got something accepted. And that's even after reviewing a few years and seeing what good and bad submissions were like, you know, and trying to understand that. Chris (06:22) Thank Brian (06:25) But we were talking a little bit beforehand about just the concept of a conference in today's world. I know that we've seen sort of a decline in people who are attending conferences a little bit. And I'm not really sure whether this is a momentary thing or an economy -based thing or what. But when people ask you why attend a conference, what What do you tell people? Chris (06:55) Well, there's many things that you can get out of a conference. That's the cool part about it is that you can attend the conference for many reasons. And I would say now in 2024, coming into next year, 25, I don't know that the reasons for attending the conference are the same as they used to be, right? Because when we first started coming, there's this like, I don't mean to sound pedantic or like over inflate myself, but there's a level of like fame in our community. We have a tiny, tiny community. So you can get agile famous a lot of different ways. Like now you can just be an influencer and write like Chris Stone is a perfect example of someone who just cranks out a ton of content that it's for the most part pretty good and get the following that way. And then people meet you that way. Brian (07:27) You Yeah, yeah. Chris (07:53) there were a lot of ways that you could meet people back then. you could really meet a ton of people there. You could make a ton of connections. So ultimately, I just really wanted to learn. I love learning and I love being connecting with other people. I did theater as a kid, was performing at church as a kid. I was just that person that was always on a stage. so speaking is just another extension of that. You being in a training room all the time, again, it's just a performance. You're just giving a performance where there's hopefully... a few nuggets of wisdom. When I realized that that's all that it was, well then I wanted to do it. You know, I don't think that, but I don't know that that's the same anymore. I don't, you know, I don't hear people say, I learned a ton at this conference every year, right? Because a lot of work, we're, Brian (08:39) Right. Yeah. Hmm. Chris (08:59) we're rehashing the ideas in a new way. We're trying to explore things in a new way, but we're really kind of taking many people feel like that we're just taking the same rock and turning it over and just getting seeing if we'll be surprised the next time we flip the rock over, right? Like there's only so many times you can flip that rock over before you don't find anything new anymore. So, I, it is interesting to think about why do we What is the purpose of a conference? You know, because do you want to be known so you can get paid, right? Or get a job? You know, there's a lot of people that want a job. So can you get a job by going to a conference? I don't know. I don't, there weren't a lot of jobs in 2023 to hand out. There were some to be had this year. If you attended the conference and were looking like there were several people that had things to talk about and interviews to be had. Brian (09:28) Yeah. Chris (09:55) some of the jobs are starting to come back. like, okay, well, do you go because you want a job or if you're learning, like, well, what do you want to learn that you can't just learn from watching YouTube or TikTok or, you know, attend like, as you know, training classes are also struggling in the community. like, what is what what is learning in 2024 2025 in the agile community? I think it's worth thinking about, you know what I mean? Brian (10:23) Yeah, no, I agree. And I think, from my perspective, I think it's changed a little bit. It's shifted a little bit over time. I think when I first started to go, there was an idea of, yes, I wanted to network and I wanted to understand and meet other people in the community. But as an introvert, I, you know, that kind of scares the crap out of me. And, you know, I can only do a little bit of that before I just feel like my battery is completely depleted. But, you know, when I think when I first went, I did have the idea that I wanted to learn. wanted to kind of be on the cutting edge. I wanted to hear the cutting edge thoughts of people who were out there. And, you know, now I think I still have that mentality when I go, I still want to hear, you know, I want someone to challenge me, you know, like that's, what I really want to hear from, from a speaker is tell me something about this. don't know, or tell me something that, you know, would challenge my, my existing way of thinking about this. so that I can go back and examine it and think, huh, I never really thought of it that way, but maybe that's true and maybe I need to re -examine that. But you know, that's kind of rare. That's not something that you get from just a lot of talks. I know one of the things I try to do when I give a talk is I wanna end with something that I would say, hey, what's the one thing you commit to changing as a result of this? Like what's the one big idea? What's the one... If you left this room and don't remember anything else, what's the one thing that you wanna just star or circle in your notebook and say, I'm gonna go find out more about that or I'm gonna do something about that. And that's where I try to kind of drive toward the whole talk. But I've been in others that, like you said, maybe a little bit more of a rehash of something I've heard before. But I've never left a conference without feeling challenged in some way, even if it's not, even if it's just from a one -on -one conversation that I've had with people, you know, I've been challenged about ideas and had to go back and re -examine and think through things. I'd say it's more, you know, now my balance has shifted. It is more networking now for me than it is that challenging thought, but I still want to find that nugget somewhere in there in the conference time. Chris (12:41) So what you said is really interesting and I want to hone in on the specific words you mentioned about challenged, right? the, I do want to, you know, before it sounds like I'm not poo -pooing the idea of conferences in any way, shape or form, but what Brian just mentioned is something that I tell the people all the time. I said it from the stage this year in Dallas, which is like, you get out of it, what you put into it. If you come in with a beginner's mind intending to be challenged, intending to have your assumptions questioned and said, maybe I didn't think about this the way that... I would say that that's probably the thing that I learned every time is that something that I thought was true or wasn't true may not, right? Brian (13:11) Yeah, yeah. Chris (13:35) You know that half of the conferences are new people every year, right? There's someone new to agile every every year there are there. Thousands of people new to it every year. That's the cool thing about it is that every year there are people that like I just got my CSM like holy cow. That's so like can you imagine showing up to a conference and everybody's like this sucks. I don't want to be here like you're not going to learn anything. I don't get anything out of it like what an awful experience for. Brian (13:35) Yeah. You Chris (14:03) someone that's new and excited and just wants to, like, there will be something you haven't heard before. But for the most part, the reason why I always get something is because I show up expecting to hear something I haven't heard before. The story won't come out exactly the way you think, right? Or, Brian (14:09) Yeah. Chris (14:22) the story that they tell, because a good conference is always a great idea plus you, right? It's your stories, your experiences, how this affected you that matters. So sharing your soul, bearing your soul requires the audience to kind of be like, want to be, I want to have someone, you know, kind of bear themselves to me. I want to hear someone be vulnerable. Brian (14:45) Yeah. Chris (14:48) And those are always the best sessions that you and I always have, is when someone is super vulnerable, super vulnerable with where they are. I thought this was the only way to do this. That's my favorite is when I hear a speaker say, I thought this was the only way to do this. There are so many roads up the mountain that we have for our work. There is not one way to do it. So find a new, come to find a new one. There's a technique that you've probably not tried before or done, or if you have, you didn't do it the way that they did before, that'll seem easier. that's the whole purpose of listening to these things, but it, it, it requires you to show up with more than just here's my tray, man. I have some agile, please. Right. Like that's, this is not a buffet, right? Like you have to like, go find it, right. Seeking positive intent means I have to go seek it. Right. I have to go seek information that I want to have. Brian (15:21) Yeah. Hahaha. Chris (15:41) and then go get it. Because if I don't, I'm just going to go, yeah, it's cool. I mean, I met some cool people, but I didn't really. OK, well, then you didn't show up with the mentality of being challenged. I challenge our friends, people that have been coming for years, I challenge them every year. You will get something if you want to. Right? If you don't get something, it's because you didn't want to get anything out of it. Brian (16:01) Right. I mean, I think we're all kind of guilty sometimes of setting our conference path, choosing the sessions and things that we go to based on things that maybe we already have some familiarity with. And that sounds interesting. yeah, I researched that a little bit. Let me see what they have to say about that. I've tried to intentionally now try to find things that I have no background in. I have no experience in because those are the things that are really going to push me. Those are the things that I don't really have. any knowledge of or forethought on and I'm gonna be taken to a different place. I remember I used to be, I used to get this like really anxious, nervous feeling when I would find out I was wrong about something. You know, I'd be in a conversation at a dinner table with someone and they'd say, well, actually, you know, that's not the way to do it. They'd start to do something else and I'd start to feel kind of anxious about that. But now, now I've like, that's swapped for me. Now when I hear that, when someone says, no, actually there's another way to think about that. Chris (16:41) you Brian (16:57) I start to get excited. Like it's actually excitement in me because I start to feel like, great, wow, I didn't, this is something new. This is something I had never heard before. And now this is the point where I can grow and break through, you know. Chris (17:11) Well, there's, I mean, and there's people that we all, if we've been in these communities before, we can all think of someone that always challenges us, right? Like I can't have a conversation with Michael Sahota without him challenging something that I thought, I just thought was true. And I'm like, no, it's not like, or it might be, but not always. So there's always someone that's just like, Brian (17:20) Yeah. Yeah. Chris (17:37) sit down so that I can break your mind real quick. And that's always fun. You know, another thing to think about is like, what we get out of the conference also dictates who's going to pay the bill, right? Because we hear in the community a lot, well, companies aren't paying for conferences anymore. Brian (17:41) Yeah Mm, yeah, yeah. Chris (17:59) That's not true for some aspects of IT. Like all the developer conferences, companies love footing the bill for that. The Microsoft conference, they love footing the bill for that because they send technologists there that come back smarter and can code better and more efficiently and whatever, right? Like better, faster, cheaper, all those things, right? Like they will get something out of it. So the... think the reason why we have to say what do you want at the conference is like, it's gonna kind of dictate who pays the bill. If the purpose of Brian and I who have been to this conference many times and have met so many of the cool people, that's the best part of me going every year is I get to see Matt Barkholm again. Like one of my favorite people in the world that I do not see other than over Zoom, right? Or any number of people, right? Any number of people. Brian (18:47) Hahaha. Chris (18:56) There's always someone new that I had spoken to online but never met in person. Someone that just, again, someone that just started the work and someone that's like, hey, I read something that you wrote about this years ago and it was really cool. That's cool, right? You won't get that if you don't go out and network and stuff. But here's the thing, if you're there for connections, companies aren't interested in footing the bill for connections. They're interested in footing the bill for... Brian (19:23) Right. Chris (19:26) learn something, improve something, come away with something. And if Agilent are going to the conferences and just like, I met some really cool people, what else? I met some cool people. All right, cool. I'm not paying next year for you to go to that, right? That's what a lot of companies are trying to do. So we have to sort of imagine like, if the goal is to get companies to pay for people to go again, well, then we need to... That's something that we've asked ourselves in the program team. Like what would get, like what is a program that companies will reimburse for? I think it's, and I don't know that we've got a strong answer either. Everybody's got, I think, there's a lot of I thinks and not a lot of I knows, right? I guess is a good way to think of it. Brian (20:00) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the other thing I wanted to kind of, because you are, you know, kind of the ultimate volunteer for this upcoming conferences as the chair, you know, I've tried to tell the audience here from time to time about the kind of the benefits of volunteering and why I do it as a speaker, why I've done it in the past as a reviewer. It seems like there's just so many different ways to get involved for something like this so that you don't have to just sit on the sidelines. You can actually be a part of this. And that's a, for me, that's an easy way to have a quick in with the community because you're interacting with people prior to it. So when you show up, it's like, hey, I know you and I know you, because we've been talking and working together on this stuff for a while. So. What kind of case do you make to people for volunteering for a conference like this, like a big conference? Chris (21:12) It's so again, going back to like, what do want to get out of it? I think the purpose of volunteering is to kind of learn how the sausage is made to a degree. if someone's like, I'm not really interested in seeing how my sausage is made, then you don't belong in the agile community. Like this is the community of people that want to see Brian (21:22) Yeah. Chris (21:32) Sausage being stuffed into its casing and just cranked out right like this is this is the community for that like I won't use any more sausage metaphors that although I The the The funny thing about how Volunteering works is that? Brian (21:41) Hahaha Chris (21:50) You can volunteer in the slightest of ways, just a few hours a week reviewing. When you're like, well, I want to review, that's fine, but I want to be a track chair. Because people always want to be a part of deciding the content. This is what I've always wanted to hear about. This is what I've always wanted to hear about. And of course, then I always ask the question of, OK, well, then someone has to submit that idea. all right, it's one thing to say, want to hear about this. It's another thing to say, how do I get that content out of a group of submissions every year, which we get thousands every year at the conference. And we got thousands, right? Like, you know, for all of the online hubbub over the conference every year over who gets accepted and who doesn't, like thousands of people submit wanting to speak every year. regardless of how they feel about whether they, when they get the rejection letter or the acceptance letter, like thousands of people want to speak at this conference. It's cool. Like it's a cool thing to do, but not everybody is a speaker, right? You can be a purple shirt and volunteer. In fact, some of my favorite people in the community are lifelong purple shirters that have done it multiple years. There are people that do it for a couple of years and meet people and then and they move on to another role. mean, there's just a bunch of different ways that you could be involved in doing something that doesn't involve speaking or deciding who speaks. And also, I will say, it's also really hard to cull thousands of submissions. into something that makes sense for everybody else. Because then you have to go find keynote speakers. There are people that are invited to speak who are luminaries in the industry. And how do you meet those people? So all of that is really like the fact that I can say I can email. any number of people, I won't use the name so I don't offend the people that I don't use, but like I can email any number of them and they're like, yeah, Chris, Agile, Agile 20XX guy. I, it would be cool if they're like, I just like Chris and I want to be friends with them, but you know, that's not the way the world works. so I, you know, networking in ways that don't always show up in a job or whatever is just, I'm, I'm just here to. Brian (24:00) Hahaha Right. Right. Chris (24:25) find good content and show the community that and the rest kind of takes care of itself, you know? Brian (24:32) Yeah. I mean, I'll say to, you know, just to give people kind of an idea of my path with the agile conference, you know, I probably submitted four or five years before I got accepted. And a couple of those years spent as just a reviewer for, you know, a track or, you know, with a certain team, not as a chair, but just as a reviewer. there's a, there's a, if you want to do that, you can do that. Right? mean, it's pretty much, it's easy to get into that kind of a mode if that's something that you're interested in. And I tell people who want to speak like that to me was one of the biggest and best educations I could have had on learning about speaking was reviewing what other people wanted to speak about. Cause you know, there's kind of two parts to speaking. There's the... the marketing side of getting your thing selected, and then there's the actual talk. But the part of trying to come up with your idea of the talk and frame it and put it in an interesting way and learning how to structure your talk in a way that would be interesting for people to listen to, that's a skill in itself. And the best way I learned about that was just reading others, reading what other people were submitting to do and... Chris is right. mean, there's so many submissions that, you know, even as just a reviewer for one track, I was sad for all the ones that I knew would not get to be heard because there's so many good ideas. it's, know, Sophie's choice about how you try to decide which one of these two things or which one of these 10 things, you know, you've got one slot and 10 of them that are 10 or 20 that are just amazing. and you can only take one, you know? So it's difficult, but reading those submissions to me was a really great education. Chris (26:33) Yeah, if you think about it this way, we always enter the room to build the schedule with, there's X amount of slots that we have plus X number of alternates and such. we always, you try to look at it like, like you look at the whole schedule and say, okay, is there an aspect of our work that we missed? Well, we didn't really get a, we haven't gotten a retro talk yet. okay, well there was one over here. So, cause you know, you're trying to balance it for like there's meat and potatoes kinds of sessions and then there's like the big idea sort of sessions. Then there's the workshops that are very engaging and meant to create something. Brian (27:16) Yeah. Chris (27:26) you know, there's a lot of, again, there's a lot of roads up that mountain. I would say that the joy of speaking now, if I could, anybody that wants to do it, the best advice I would say is like, you need to want to speak so that you can be a better presenter and organizer of your thoughts. Because, Brian (27:46) Yeah. Chris (27:49) Really, the abstract and the basic, there is essentially a formula to filling out a submission to a conference. I, with CP Richardson, who's now on the board, I did a webinar last November on what makes a good submission. It's something that I've gotten super passionate about. Again, it's recorded, it's on the Agile Alliance site if you wanna find it. There is a formula that anybody can follow and get selected, right? I had some, I had several people reach out and say, I watched your video and I follow what you said. And then I got accepted to speak, which for the record, watching what I say will not get you accepted to speak. You can follow the formula. You can, you can follow the formula exactly and still not get it because there's only so many slots and it's really hard to get in. but. Brian (28:26) Ha Chris (28:41) Once you follow the formula, then it's just down to like, does the idea resonate with the community? And I can't, I can't give you a formula for that because I'm not in anybody's brain, but, you know, I, again, it's always a great top, a great idea. Plus your stories and experiences is what really defines what a good submission is. And so you have to get that straight before you type a single word out. But then once you go through the submission process and there's edits, feedback, all that kind of stuff. Then you got to get accepted. Once you get accepted, then you got to build the session. And we find that a lot of times it's a rare breed of someone that knows how to write a good submission and can put on a good show. Not everybody can do that. And of course, a good show is a relative term, right? You don't got to be big and bombastic and loud to be good, right? Brian's not that and Brian's great in a room, right? So you can... Brian (29:16) Yeah. Chris (29:35) you have to kind of construct it in a way that makes sense. So, but again, the cool part is, that because I had people help me, mostly because I just annoyed the hell out of them and saying, please, please give me, please give me some help. I just want to keep passing it along. So I mean, I still get people at 12 months a year, I get people saying, I have an idea and I'd love to run it by you that they hit me up on LinkedIn or whatnot. So. Brian (30:04) Yeah. Chris (30:05) It's just something that I care about now. I got so much better with organizing my ideas and writing them and presenting them that it's a gift that I want to just keep passing on to people. I guess this is because I didn't intend this to be the cross that I bared, it is regardless. Brian (30:21) Yeah Well, the only other advice I'd throw out to people, there was a shift that happened with me too, where I went from, I want to be a speaker, let me find a topic. There's a very big difference from having that attitude to living your life and saying, wow, I'm really passionate about this. I'd love to talk about this. If you find the topic first that you resonate with and connect with, then it's, you you're a little more personally connected when you submit. So it can be more painful if you don't get picked, you know, when that happens. But on the other hand, when you do get picked, man, you're so excited about giving that talk. It's not just that you got picked, but it's like, I can't wait to tell people about this, this thing. And to me, that's, that's the magic. Like when that happens, you, you, yeah, you can't, you're, you're, it's not even nervous. You're, just so excited to tell people what you've learned about. Chris (31:21) Yeah, another piece of advice I tell people is as you're reading things, it doesn't have to be a book. It could just be an article or a video that you watch. As I always say, when I'm reading a book on something that has nothing to do, like I don't really buy a ton of agile books anymore. I buy a lot of social psychology, social economics, behavioral economics is a lot of my favorites. like Daniel Pink books is a tried and true. I met Daniel Pink once and he's like, what is it with you agile people that just love what I do? And I'm like, I don't know. I just, I don't know. I'm like, we just read it. So, but I read these books with looking for a lens into my world, right? I always read stuff that has nothing to do with IT. Brian (32:02) Yeah Yeah. Chris (32:16) that or leading teams or whatever it is your world, whatever you think it is. Find something that has nothing to do with your world and then say, how does that identify or how does that relate to my work? That's my favorite thing. I read a book on many years ago on, it was called The Control Heuristic. It was like where control comes from as an idea and psychology and why. We struggle with it. And I immediately turned that into a leadership talk on why we're all control freaks and here's, know, and what, what do we, what do we do about the fact that we're all control freaks? Like, again, I didn't read a book and say, I'm going to do a topic on a book. It's like, no, how does that tie into dealing with executives when I'm trying to get them to release the purse strings or release some of the control of their work, right? comes in handy, right? So you have to be looking for how does that idea sit in our world and then sort of play with that idea a little. Brian (33:22) Yeah. Yeah, this has been awesome. I really appreciate you making the time for this, Chris. And for those people listening, just a quick little shout out again. Agile 2025 is happening in Denver. It is the week of July 28 through August 1. So mark your calendars. And if you're interested in volunteering, if you're interested in being a reviewer or one of the Purple Shirt people who help out, Purple Shirt people help out at the actual conference making it kind of flow, right? They make sure it actually works. Yeah, yeah, the talks would not happen without them. Actually, nothing would happen without them. Yeah. Chris (33:54) They're the lifeblood of the conference. Yes. Nothing would happen without them. Nothing would happen without them. Yeah, if you hit me up on LinkedIn, my name is just how it appears here on LinkedIn. Toss me your idea. Yes, will, and I said, I shot my mouth off about mentoring people through their talks. That means you too. I... hit me up. Like there's no excuse for you to not because the worst thing that happens is you get to come to the conference. So, yeah. Brian (34:29) There we go. So mark your calendars, make sure that you reserve those dates, like I said, just block it off. Even if you don't know whether you can get the money to do it right now, block the dates off, and you're gonna be much more likely to actually attend if you do that, because then you'll see it coming up, and they go, yeah, that's coming up, I should do that. So Chris, thanks again for coming on, I appreciate you making the time, and thanks for joining us. Chris (34:56) Yeah, thanks for having me, Brian.

Mike Cohn, a leading figure in Agile methodologies, joins Brian Milner to unpack the secrets to Agile success. They emphasize the importance of embracing experimentation and flexible coaching. The duo highlights how effective communication, with a consistent vocabulary, can prevent misunderstandings within teams. They stress tailoring Agile practices to fit unique contexts instead of rigid frameworks. Personal anecdotes and practical tips fill the conversation, providing valuable insights for anyone looking to thrive in Agile environments.