Agile Mentors Podcast from Mountain Goat Software

A summer update reflecting on how Agile topics have always centered on people, teams, and decision-making. Announcement of a new podcast exploring the human side of work as AI becomes a collaborator. Questions raised about team structure, multiple AI agents per person, and where human judgment and accountability should remain.

Cort Sharp, a Scrum Master and community leader who coaches teams on agile and retrospectives, dives into why retrospectives lose their value. He talks about boredom from stale formats. He discusses psychological safety and the need for fewer, measurable actions. He offers tips on tailoring retrospectives to team dynamics and keeping them engaging and actionable.

Scott Dunn, Certified Enterprise Coach and Scrum Trainer with 20+ years helping orgs like NASA and eBay, joins to rethink Agile ROI. He explores why teams go through the motions, the risks of declaring Agile too soon, and how to tie practices to concrete business outcomes. They cover leadership alignment, coaching, measuring meaningful metrics, and why Scrum matters in the age of AI.

Scott Dunn, Certified Scrum Trainer and coach at Rocket9 Solutions, brings practical Agile adoption and ROI experience. He discusses why Scrum works in complex, regulated settings, how to avoid common adoption pitfalls, and the role of coaching, leadership alignment, and small targeted changes. The conversation highlights measuring outcomes, using AI with sprint goals, and how modest investments can drive big returns.

Lance Dacy, Certified Scrum Trainer and founder of Big Agile, brings practical AI and product management experience. He explains AI as a probability-driven assistant and how to treat it like a controlled intern. Topics include prompt craft, using AI for backlog refinement and discovery, workflows with multiple agents, RAG for signal aggregation, and where product people should start adopting AI.

Stavros Stavru, organizational transformation researcher and author of Never Stop Experimenting, champions practical experimentation for team alignment. He explains why AI-driven disruption makes continual testing essential. Short examples and simple techniques, like the replay check, show how teams can build real learning habits and leaders can model curiosity and adaptability.

They talk about how teams often load up on process instead of seeing problems clearly. The conversation highlights starting with transparency, short feedback loops, and clear priorities. Listeners hear practical minimums like a visible backlog, short iterations, and a strict definition of done. They also cover common slowdowns such as coordination complexity and false confidence.

Scott Dunn, a Certified Enterprise Coach with 20+ years helping organizations like NASA and eBay, joins to challenge using velocity as a leadership score. They unpack why leaders cling to a single number, how velocity hides strategic uncertainty, and ways to pair metrics with outcomes. AI’s speed-up makes outcome-focused experiments and quick feedback even more urgent.

Mike Cohn, agile practitioner and CEO of Mountain Goat Software, co-founder of Agile Alliance and Scrum Alliance. He explores leadership choices that quietly undermine agile. Short takes on treating agile as process vs mindset, scaling too soon, weak product ownership, and leaders creating distractions. Practical pointers on where leaders should change first.

Hunter Hillegas, CTO at Mountain Goat Software with 20+ years in software development, discusses how AI is changing software teams. He covers where AI already speeds work, how coding roles are shifting toward review, and tools that lower barriers to product building. He also examines adoption pitfalls and how AI may reshape team dynamics.