Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches

Peter Merel: When a Hub-and-Spoke Executive Hijacks Your Agile Transformation — And What to Do About It Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes. "Either you're going to do what you know works, or you're going to step away. Either way, you're not going to do damage to your client." - Peter Merel After a successful transformation at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Peter Merel moved to Westpac, another major Australian bank, expecting to replicate the same approach. He found an executive who appeared eager to support an agile transformation — but this executive saw agile as the ideal form of micromanagement. Everything and everyone revolved around this one individual, and as Peter began facilitating conversations that didn't hub on the executive, the executive felt disempowered. Peter was blind to this dynamic — he had never encountered it before. The situation deteriorated because Peter had been hired to run a push-based transformation, when he knew from experience that only pull-based transformation works. At Commonwealth Bank, he had built a thin steel thread from business through to DevOps with a small group, proved it worked, and then grown it organically. At Westpac, he let himself be persuaded to push change into the organization, and it compromised everything. The lesson Peter shares is stark: if you can't do what you know works, and you can't step away, then you are the problem. He also warns that when coaches fail this way, they make life harder for whoever comes next — a responsibility that's easy to overlook in the moment. In this segment, we talk about pull-based transformation and why push-based change programs consistently fail in large organizations. Self-reflection Question: Are you currently in a situation where you've compromised on your approach to change — and if so, are you doing more damage by staying than you would by stepping away? Featured Book of the Week: The Agile Way by Peter Merel Peter's own book, The Agile Way, is his modern translation of the Tao Te Ching — a 3,000-year-old text he argues was originally about how to achieve agile development in organizations large and small. Peter first started translating this text in 1989, and after decades of iteration, the book draws connections between ancient wisdom and modern agile practices — XP, Lean, Theory of Constraints, throughput accounting, and permaculture. As Peter explains, "The sage in Lao Tzu is Shang Ren — agile people. This is a book about agile people, agility, and it always was." The book is available at agile.way.pm, and Kent Beck, who wrote the foreword, calls it "a dangerous little book" — dangerous in the same sense as the word extreme. [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends] 🔥In the ruthless world of fintech, success isn't just about innovation—it's about coaching!🔥 Angela thought she was just there to coach a team. But now, she's caught in the middle of a corporate espionage drama that could make or break the future of digital banking. Can she help the team regain their mojo and outwit their rivals, or will the competition crush their ambitions? As alliances shift and the pressure builds, one thing becomes clear: this isn't just about the product—it's about the people. 🚨 Will Angela's coaching be enough? Find out in Shift: From Product to People—the gripping story of high-stakes innovation and corporate intrigue. Buy Now on Amazon [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends] About Peter Merel Credited in the first agile book (XP Embraced), keynoted the first agile conference, invented the first agile training game, founded the xscale alliance, authored the agile way, Peter developed software by hand for forty years, coached agile in person for twenty years, and is working now to revolutionize the AI alignment landscape. You can link with Peter Merel on LinkedIn. You can also find his work at agile.way.pm.

BONUS: Why Your Agile Transformation Keeps Snapping Back — And What Systems Thinking Says About It Natalia Curusi co-authored a book that doesn't tell you what agile should look like — it tells you what actually happens when you try to transform an organization. Friday-night deployments, zombie teams going through the motions, transformations that met a wall of silence. In this episode, we unpack the real lessons from the front lines: how personal values drive the shift to agile, why some teams have all the ceremonies but none of the substance, and what systems thinking reveals about why transformations fail — or snap back. When Your Values Don't Match Your Ways of Working "I felt like there is a mismatch in my values, my moral values and principles, and customer-centric orientation. So when I found out about Agile around 2010, I understood — okay, this is the answer. Now I have the answer how I can map my moral values and principles with software delivery." Natalia's journey to agile didn't start with a methodology — it started with a gut feeling that something was wrong. Working in large corporations in the early 2000s with fixed-scope contracts, late deployments, and scripts running directly in production, she sensed a disconnect between how work was done and how it should be done. When she moved to a smaller company around 2010 and experienced transparency, collaboration, and the freedom to ask any question without fear, she realized this was the agile mindset — even before she knew the term. The key insight: agile isn't something you adopt, it's something that aligns with values you may already hold. That alignment between personal principles and ways of working is what makes the difference between going through the motions and genuinely transforming how a team operates. Don't Be an Agile Zombie "The first thing I observe — if I go to some of the ceremonies and I see that stand-up becomes like a status meeting, and everybody is reporting to somebody. People are afraid to say some of the things, afraid to escalate risks or assumptions." One of the strongest chapters in the book is titled "Don't Be an Agile Zombie." Natalia describes teams that have all the boards, all the roles, all the right meeting cadences — but nothing is actually changing. The Scrum Master becomes a secretary. The Product Owner is a proxy afraid to make decisions. The tell-tale signs? Fear and formality. When people report upward instead of collaborating sideways, when risks go unspoken because the environment punishes transparency, that's a watermelon project — green on the outside, red on the inside. Natalia's approach starts with observing the tone and dynamics in ceremonies. If the stand-up feels like a status report and not a coordination meeting, something deeper is broken. And her advice is direct: if an organization is delivering waterfall and happy with the predictability and value, that's fine — just call it what it is. Don't put lipstick on a pig. As Rebecca Homkes discussed on this podcast, the key is to communicate the truth with care, but communicate it nonetheless. Task-Driven vs. Value-Driven: The Real Spectrum "It's not right to say that you are agile if you are not. Just name the things how they are — name the things using the right word." Rather than the old waterfall-vs-agile binary, a more useful lens is the spectrum between task-driven and value-driven product development. On the task-driven side, somebody creates the list of tasks — requirements, architecture document, design document — and a project manager distributes them. Teams execute but aren't asked to be creative or adaptable. On the value-driven side, what matters is the impact of what teams build. Value is discovered through the dynamic interaction of functionality with customers — it can't be predetermined. Most organizations sit somewhere on this spectrum, and many are slowly moving toward the value-driven end even if they don't call it agile. The practical takeaway: transformation should be tailored to where an organization actually is, not where a framework says it should be. The book argues for a pragmatic, hybrid approach rather than evangelical purity. Systems Thinking: Why Transformations Snap Back "We did a big agile transformation — five years of real transformation. Then the company was bought, merged with a bigger payment provider. And now they are working with SAFe. And that's the end of the story." In the later part of the book, Natalia and her co-author move into systems thinking — Cynefin, the Iceberg Model, causal loop diagrams. Many agile practitioners stop before they get here because it feels academic. But Natalia argues it's essential, and she illustrates why with a real example: a payment company that went through five years of successful agile transformation using LeSS, only to be acquired by a larger organization that pushed SAFe — and the transformation snapped back. This is the basin of attraction concept: a system has to pass through a point of genuine disruption before it can settle into a new stable state. Without that, it returns to where it was. For practitioners looking to get started with systems thinking, Natalia recommends The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge and learning to build causal loop diagrams — a practical tool that creates productive conversations about how organizational dynamics actually work. The Post-Agile Era: Beyond Labels "It's like comparing apples and orchestras. You cannot compare agile and AI — they are completely different things. Agile is not enough, but it's also not dead." Natalia addresses the "Agile is dead" debate head-on. Her argument: comparing agile to AI is a category error. An apple cannot play an orchestra, and an orchestra cannot replace an apple — they serve entirely different purposes. AI can handle a significant portion of day-to-day tasks, but it lacks common sense, empathy, and the ability to read a room. Rather than declaring agile dead, Natalia sees a post-agile era — not one where agile disappears, but where we move beyond the label wars. The trends that matter aren't about whether agile is popular; they're about collaboration, adaptability, and understanding how teams and organizations actually work. We can finally talk about what matters in our industry without being pressured to label it. About Natalia Curusi Natalia Curusi is an Agile Coach at Endava with over 20 years in software delivery, specializing in agile transformations, delivery optimization, and systems thinking. She leads Asia Pacific initiatives driving business agility. She is co-author of From Resistance to Resilience: Practical Agile Lessons for Transformation. You can link with Natalia Curusi on LinkedIn and visit her website at nataliacurusi.com. You can also join the Agile Continuum community on LinkedIn.

BONUS: The Game Industry Is Ending — And Why That Might Be the Best Thing for Agile Teams In this BONUS episode, we preview the Agile in Gaming track at the Global Agile Summit 2026 with track host Eagan Rackley. Eagan shares how he curated a lineup of speakers that spans indie studios, AI-driven game platforms, and multi-studio leadership — all focused on the human side of game development during one of the industry's most turbulent periods. If you've ever wondered what Agile looks like when artists, designers, sound engineers, and programmers all need to ship together under pressure, this is the episode. From Agile Coach Client to Track Host "You helped me recognize strengths I'd been dismissing in myself as a leader that I could turn the volume up on, and helped turn me on to some of my more people-first instincts into actual leadership accents." Eagan's path to hosting the Agile in Gaming track started when he worked with Vasco at Malwarebytes in the early 2020s. That coaching relationship shifted how he thought about leadership — moving from dismissing his people-first instincts to leaning into them. When the Global Agile Summit opened up volunteer spots in 2025, he jumped in and co-hosted the development track. Game dev speakers drew strong audience engagement, and when the team suggested a dedicated gaming track for 2026, it was an easy yes. For Eagan, hosting is not just about giving — it is about learning from peers in an industry he transitioned into and loves deeply. Why Agile in Gaming Deserves Its Own Track "A lot of the problems we solve in gaming are the same problems people are solving in Agile everywhere, just with a different space. But also, Agile is very specific in gaming — even something like storyboarding is functionally different because you're describing a car in a city that makes these sounds, that drives with physics in this way." Gaming sits at a unique intersection of disciplines — art, sound, design, engineering, narrative — all collaborating under tight constraints. Agile shows up differently here. The frameworks are similar, but the mechanics of how multidisciplinary teams coordinate are distinct. At gaming conferences, you rarely hear people talk about agility the way the Agile community does, and at Agile conferences, gaming is almost never represented. Eagan saw that gap and built a track to bridge it. The problems — building trust under pressure, introducing change to skeptical teams, managing cross-discipline dependencies — are universal. The context just makes them more vivid. The Producer Who Hates Agile but Runs an Agile Shop "He doesn't like Agile at all. He runs a really humanist-centered version of waterfall that can pivot quickly, which my argument is it's fairly agile, but it's not something he believes in — but it's also one of the most agile places I've ever worked." One of Eagan's most striking observations comes from his current studio, led by an executive producer named Chris Whiteside. Chris explicitly rejects Agile as a label — likely burned by past implementations where someone tried to install a framework rather than nurture a mindset. Yet the way he runs teams is deeply human-centered, responsive, and adaptive. It is a useful reminder that the label matters far less than the behavior, and that some of the most agile organizations don't call themselves agile at all. The pattern Eagan has seen across studios mirrors what happens everywhere: framework-only installations that generate resistance, versus environments where the mindset develops organically. Accessible Excellence: The Skateboard Video Philosophy "I wanted to create a track that felt like accessible excellence. Just pushing beyond right where we were, but you could watch these talks and say, I could do that, that could be me. On Monday morning, I want to go in and try to be that person a little more." When selecting speakers, Eagan drew on an unlikely reference point: a 1990s skateboard video called Zero Hero by a company called Zoroac. The skaters were not doing impossible three-story drops — they were doing moves that felt just one or two steps beyond what you could already do. That is the energy Eagan wanted for the track. Not aspirational keynotes from unreachable experts, but stories from people whose work makes you think: I could try that on Monday. He deliberately chose speakers across a range of experience levels and industry positions to hit that sweet spot. The Speakers and What to Expect "I want this track to be the answer to the question of whether it's worth it to stay in the industry and keep going — with some evidence that there are people out there doing this work thoughtfully, doing it well, and finding ways to remain human." The track features a deliberately diverse lineup. Clinton Keith delivers the keynote, titled "The Game Industry As We Know It Is Ending — And the Future Could Be Much Better," which examines why the old AAA model is failing and where the industry is heading. Umar Ajaz focuses on building Agile into indie studios from the ground up — a timely topic as the industry shifts toward smaller, more agile teams. Kat Antonovich brings a social work background to team dynamics and change management, and Eagan intentionally sought an associate-level speaker because junior professionals have been disproportionately hit by industry layoffs. Marcos Jordt presents on Bitmagic, a fully AI-driven game development platform, along with his experience setting up Agile in Finland. And Kari Koivistoinen addresses the macro level: how to run multiple studios while preventing crunch and keeping team environments healthy. Who Should Register "These are the same problems everyone is solving in Agile. How do you build trust on teams under pressure? Introducing change when people are resistant or skeptical. Those show up everywhere." This track is for curious people — whether they work in gaming or not. If you are interested in how teams solve problems with creativity and constraints, how multidisciplinary collaboration actually works (or breaks down), and what happens when an industry goes through a genuine transformation, there is something here for you. The goal is not prescriptive solutions. It is about getting down to fundamentals: what makes people do their best work and what makes teams function well. For people already in the gaming industry, Eagan designed this track to be the answer to the question many are asking after years of layoffs, studio closures, and canceled projects — is it still worth it? The track says yes, and backs it up with evidence. About Eagan Rackley Eagan Rackley is the track host for the Agile in Gaming track at the Global Agile Summit and a seasoned software engineer and Agile leader with 24+ years of experience spanning game development, enterprise architecture, graphics, and highly parallel programming. A passionate problem-solver, he excels in building collaborative teams, driving innovation, and turning conflict into opportunity. He thrives on creating software that empowers people and transforms ideas into impact. You can link with Eagan Rackley on LinkedIn.

BONUS: AI Won't Just Change How You Work — It Will Reshape Your Organization The Global Agile Summit is around the corner, and the AI in Organizations track is one you don't want to miss. In this episode, track co-hosts Michael Dougherty and Michał Parkoła walk us through what they've built — from the thinking behind the track name to the sessions that stood out, and why this isn't just another AI conference lineup. Why "AI in Organizations" — Not Just "AI" "AI will not only be useful to existing organizations, but it will reshape organizations in a very significant way, the same way cars reshaped cities." Michael and Michał drew a deliberate line with the track name. Michael points out that AI has been around for decades — it didn't start with ChatGPT. The real shift now is AI agents scaling to enterprise level, replacing automation that used to require specialized tools. Claude Enterprise holds about 29% of the enterprise AI market, Gemini around 15%. But Michał pushes the framing further: the first-order effect is applying AI to existing work. The second-order effect — the one he's most interested in — is how AI will reshape organizations themselves. New species of companies will emerge, smaller teams will achieve what used to require hundreds of people, and some existing organizations won't survive the transition. That's the conversation this track is designed to start. Filtering the Signal From the Slop "There was a bit of AI slop in the submissions. There was a lot of talk that, unfortunately, was meta-talk — there was no real value that I could glean." When session submissions came in, Michael was disappointed by how many were surface-level — big promises with no practical takeaway. The ones that stood out were practitioners showing what they actually do. Dave Westgarth, for example, demonstrated how he uses AI with Lovable and Claude embedded in Miro whiteboards to enhance real team interactions. On Michał's side, the standout was Max Pirata, who challenged the "vibe coding is slop" narrative. His argument: the quality of large-scale software has never depended on the infallibility of individual engineers — it depends on disciplined engineering processes. The same applies to agentic engineering. Your first attempt at vibe coding will be rough, but there are ways to apply engineering discipline to AI-assisted development. That's what Max will be talking about at the summit. Prototyping at the Speed of Thought — And the Human Bottleneck "Now I've got 20 prototypes that I can choose from. Which ones are the best? Which ones do I need to clear out? Product managers now have a different game they play." Two sessions capture opposite sides of the AI-in-organizations tension. Dave Westgarth's "Vibe UX: Prototyping at the Speed of Thought" shows how vibe coding lets you build full working systems instead of Figma mockups — so fast that the bottleneck shifts from creation to selection. Product managers and product owners now face a new challenge: clearing the closet of AI-generated options rather than validating a single bet. On the other side, Shawn Wallack's session — "Even With AI, Your System Will Never Be Better Than Its People" — brings the counterpoint. Michael explains the systems-thinking angle: AI does what you tell it, fast and accurately, but that speed reveals human bottlenecks everywhere else. He shares the cautionary example of AI declining twice the insurance claims humans did, with the human-in-the-loop rubber-stamping instead of actually checking — leading to a class action lawsuit. The lesson: AI doesn't remove the need for human judgment, it makes it more critical. Gojko Adzic on Spec-Driven Development and Building AI Products "True to his roots, he is exploring spec-driven development now, which is one of the popular threads in agentic engineering." Gojko Adzic — the author of Specification by Example and Impact Mapping — brings heavyweight credibility to the track. Michał reveals that while Gojko is exploring spec-driven development in the context of agentic engineering, the interview focused more on his hands-on experience building his own AI products. For attendees, this means real practitioner insights from someone who literally wrote the book on how specifications drive software quality — now applying those principles in an AI-first world. From Beginner to Builder — Who This Track Is For "My favorite case would be people who will quit their jobs and start new companies that will be able to achieve wonderful things with much smaller teams than we would otherwise imagine possible." The track is designed to meet people wherever they are. Pierre Beaning covers the basics of using Claude for beginners. Jason Little — who Michael describes as a "techno nerd" and "grand poobah" — shows how to build and scale multi-agent systems for business. The spectrum runs from "I've only used AI to plan a vacation" to "I'm orchestrating agent teams." But Michał's vision for the ideal attendee is bolder: someone who walks away ready to start a company. Michael backs this up with the story of an AI unicorn — $1.8 billion valuation, one guy and his brother, in the pharmaceutical industry, just a few months old. Hype? Maybe. But Michał's pragmatic take lands it: "If you make a few million, even if it dies later, that's not such a bad thing." The goal of the track is to blow away the fog — throw flares into key spots so people can sketch a map of what's possible and decide which areas deserve a follow-up. About Michael Dougherty Michael Dougherty is the Co-author of Shift: From Product to People, leadership coach with 30+ years helping organizations adopt people-centered, agile ways of working. Co-owner of the Global Agile Summit. You can link with Michael Dougherty on LinkedIn and find out more at shiftingpeople.com. About Michał Parkoła Michał Parkoła is an Agile practitioner based in Warsaw, Poland. Previously hosted the Value-Centric Product Development track at Agile Online Summit 2024. He is building Tapestry, an AI planning assistant. You can link with Michał Parkoła on LinkedIn and check out Tapestry at growwithtapestry.com.

Viktor Glinka: Why Context Is King for Scrum Master Success — Building Capabilities That Drive Business Goals Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes. "Product management skills are crucial for Scrum Masters. Once you understand how retention impacts your return on investment, you will be able to coach your product owner." - Viktor Glinka Viktor offers a nuanced perspective on Scrum Master success by distinguishing between short-term and long-term success. On the long-term side, he argues that the purpose of a Scrum Master extends beyond working with teams — it's about helping improve the system as a whole. To do that, you need to connect your contribution to the product's success by helping build specific capabilities. Viktor grounds this in practical terms: start by asking what the business goal of your company is, and check whether people around you actually know it. Never assume everyone does. That simple act of curiosity gives you the information you need to figure out how to contribute. In his experience, the key capability his teams needed to develop was multi-learning — the ability to work across components — and that directly served the business goal. Viktor makes a strong case that Scrum Masters need product management skills. Understanding how metrics like retention impact long-term success allows you to coach product owners and analyze product dynamics. His practical advice: if you're not experienced in this, go shadow your product owner, spend time with the sales department, and look through customer support tickets. You'll understand far more about the system than staying at the development organization level. Self-reflection Question: Can you clearly explain how your work as a Scrum Master contributes to your product's success? What specific capability are you helping the system build right now? Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Data-Driven Discussions with Actionable Outcomes Viktor's approach to retrospectives is refreshingly pragmatic: it depends on the team. For teams not yet used to actionable improvements, he starts simple — review previous retro decisions, ensure new concrete ones are created, and bring data as food for thought. He particularly likes using the cumulative flow diagram and time distribution histogram to help teams reflect on consistency in delivery. One team he worked with adopted this as a natural habit over time. For mature teams, format matters less — one team ran a simple "good, bad, to improve" retro in 30 minutes on their own, without a Scrum Master, and it was one of the most engaged and effective retrospectives Viktor had ever seen. He also values the free-talk format when first meeting a new team, coming in with genuine curiosity and no biases. And when something clearly went wrong — an incident, a failure — Viktor drops whatever format he had prepared. "In those moments, it's important to trust your instinct, read the room, sense the tension, and step into the danger directly." [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends] 🔥In the ruthless world of fintech, success isn't just about innovation—it's about coaching!🔥 Angela thought she was just there to coach a team. But now, she's caught in the middle of a corporate espionage drama that could make or break the future of digital banking. Can she help the team regain their mojo and outwit their rivals, or will the competition crush their ambitions? As alliances shift and the pressure builds, one thing becomes clear: this isn't just about the product—it's about the people. 🚨 Will Angela's coaching be enough? Find out in Shift: From Product to People—the gripping story of high-stakes innovation and corporate intrigue. Buy Now on Amazon [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends] About Viktor Glinka Viktor is an organisational consultant and Professional Scrum Master who helps teams and leaders find simpler ways to deliver value while keeping the human side of work at the center. He's practical, curious, and focused on real outcomes rather than buzzwords. His true passion is adaptability - both in business and in personal life. You can link with Viktor Glinka on LinkedIn.

Viktor Glinka: When Internal and External Team Members Have Divergent Goals — The Silent Killer of Agile Teams Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes. "The root causes for destructive team patterns often lie outside the team itself." - Viktor Glinka Viktor shares a story from a manufacturing organization where one team stood out — and not in a good way. The team was composed of both internal and external members, and what no one saw coming was that their implicit goals were fundamentally divergent: the external members were focused on maximizing revenue for their own company, while the internal members cared deeply about product quality. The signs were visible to anyone who approached them — they barely talked to each other and preferred to work individually. When Viktor tried to raise the topic of cooperation and trust, he was met with awkward silence. One team member finally told him: "I don't want the team to blow up. In my previous experience, I raised this topic and that was the end of the team." Fear kept the truth underground. Viktor brought his observations to the manager, who acknowledged the lack of a shared goal as the root cause — but couldn't fix it because he wasn't authorized to manage the external people. The takeaway was clear: three key success factors for any team are the right team composition with people who want to work together, a shared goal that unites diverse perspectives, and clear expectations set by their manager. In this segment, we talk about LeSS self-designing team workshops and the importance of team composition in scaled setups. Self-reflection Question: Does your team have a shared goal that everyone — including external members and contractors — genuinely understands and cares about? When was the last time you checked? Featured Book of the Week: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland Viktor recommends The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland as the book that sparked his passion for Scrum. As he puts it: "I know the title is very controversial and often criticized, but I could deeply relate to the stories inside the book. They sparked a passion that is still with me." Viktor also recommends a bonus book: Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux, which showed him the real power of self-organization and validated what he had already started experimenting with in his project management career. It pushed him to explore holacracy, sociocracy, intent-based leadership, and coaching. [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends] 🔥In the ruthless world of fintech, success isn't just about innovation—it's about coaching!🔥 Angela thought she was just there to coach a team. But now, she's caught in the middle of a corporate espionage drama that could make or break the future of digital banking. Can she help the team regain their mojo and outwit their rivals, or will the competition crush their ambitions? As alliances shift and the pressure builds, one thing becomes clear: this isn't just about the product—it's about the people. 🚨 Will Angela's coaching be enough? Find out in Shift: From Product to People—the gripping story of high-stakes innovation and corporate intrigue. Buy Now on Amazon [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends] About Viktor Glinka Viktor is an organisational consultant and Professional Scrum Master who helps teams and leaders find simpler ways to deliver value while keeping the human side of work at the center. He's practical, curious, and focused on real outcomes rather than buzzwords. His true passion is adaptability - both in business and in personal life. You can link with Viktor Glinka on LinkedIn.

BONUS: From 3,000 Scripts to 3 Tools - Building AI-Last Software With Conversational AI Pioneer Peter Swimm In this special BONUS episode, Peter Swimm—conversational AI veteran, creator of BotKit (the open-source chatbot framework that powered Slack and Teams bots), and former Principal Product Manager at Microsoft Copilot Studio—shares what 25+ years in tech taught him about working with AI. From his brutal experiment of running an entire business on voice-based AI for a week, to why he treats AI more like R2-D2 than C-3PO, Peter offers a grounded, practical perspective on where AI fits in software development teams. From BotKit to Copilot Studio: A Front-Row Seat to the AI Evolution "We had the number one bot in the Slack app store, because there were only 8 bots, and ours used regex. To show you how far we've come." Peter's journey into conversational AI started with a newspaper ad and a creative writing background. When Slack launched its API, Peter and BotKit co-creator Ben Brown immediately saw that building bots wasn't just a technical challenge—it was a social and creative one, like writing scripts for plays that interface with people in their daily lives. That insight powered BotKit into becoming the backbone of Slack and Teams bots, and eventually led to Microsoft acquiring the company. Peter spent years inside Microsoft shaping Copilot Studio, working on connectors that bridge the gap between APIs and real-world work. But the experience also gave him a healthy dose of perspective: he can show you slide decks from 2016 that promise the same things today's AI pitches promise, always saying "within 5 years." That pattern recognition shapes his practical, no-hype approach. The 3,000 Scripts Experiment: Why AI-Last Beats AI-First "At the end of the day, if I've been prompting all day, I should have a computer program that works offline, that works without a subscription. Otherwise, I didn't really make anything." Peter ran a week-long experiment trying to run his entire business using only voice-based conversational AI. The result: 3,000 generated scripts. After static code analysis, he discovered it was really only 5 programs made thousands of times—and those 5 programs were really just 2 or 3 core abilities. He deleted 36 gigabytes of generated code and kept 50 megabytes of what actually worked. This brutal compression led him to an "AI-last" philosophy: build reliable runtime software that works confidently in one click, then use AI only for exploration, connection-making, and creative riffing. The payoff is striking—within 3 weeks of a given application, his team sees a 90% reduction in AI usage in the first week, dropping to 0% within 13 days, because once a computer program does everything you need, you don't need AI anymore. R2-D2, Not C-3PO: How to Think About AI on Your Team "I think of our AI use more like R2-D2 than C-3PO. R2-D2 doesn't talk—bonus points. He doesn't interject his fear. He saves your butt. He's silent until you need him, and visible when you need him." Peter's Star Wars analogy captures his team's philosophy on AI integration. AI should be like a smarter linter—a quiet, capable tool that handles the boring, repetitive tasks so humans can focus on creativity and shipping. His team treats AI as a "super junior" with infinite time: set it up as if it invented Python, have it write buy-the-book code with unit tests, and then a human reviews and accepts (or rejects) the output. The tooling isn't consistent enough to ship autonomously or commit directly into the codebase—even frontier providers don't fully understand what their models do. The practical benefit is enormous for setup and configuration: what used to be a painful, arcane process of tracking down dozens of AWS or Azure docs becomes a 20-minute "hello world" that's actually a working proof of concept. Your job isn't to become an expert at cloud services—it's to ship product. The Biggest Mistake: Automating Broken Processes at AI Speed "All it does is automate all the mistakes you made, all the way, at AI speed." When asked about the most common mistake organizations make with AI, Peter is blunt: they port their existing infrastructure into AI-governed systems instead of rebuilding from the ground up. Companies with a self-inflated opinion of their processes think AI is just a million-person force multiplier—so they'll ship faster. But if your process was broken before AI, you'll just generate broken output at unprecedented scale. That 3,000-script experiment proved this firsthand. Peter's recommendation: rebuild from the bolts up. Start with AI-last architecture where reliable, offline-capable software handles the core, and AI is reserved for the edges—filling gaps, translating between systems, and making connections that don't exist yet. SaaS Is Bloated: The Case for AI Transformation Layers "The one thing AI is good at is transforming between boundaries." Peter's team has been divesting from SaaS providers, replacing the patchwork of middleware subscription plans that forced everyone to copy and paste between CMS, Excel, meeting notes, and email. His approach: product people use Notion, developers use GitHub, and the two cross-sync without needing Jira as an arbitration layer. Everyone tracks work in the tool they already live in. AI's real superpower here is translation—between APIs, between languages, between formats. Peter sees a future where small translation layers between CRUD operations replace the bloated, one-size-fits-all SaaS tools that are "built for 99% of users with generalized features nobody uses." His team also freed themselves from tools like Figma: the designer works in their preferred graphics program, the developer in their preferred IDE, and AI arbitrates the differences. Teams, Velocity, and Reinvesting the AI Dividend "5 to 7 people is still good, because you need a diverse set of people who are intensely focused on certain areas. But they should be allotted that savings in time to ship all the things that get cut." Peter pushes back on the idea that AI changes the ideal team size. The 5-to-7 person team still works—what should change is what those people do with the time they save. Instead of loading teams onto more projects or increasing portfolio velocity, reinvest the AI productivity dividend into quality: ship with unit tests from day one, ship WCAG-compliant from day one, and stop cutting features to hit deadlines. Version 1.0 should no longer need an immediate 1.1 follow-up. Peter also challenges the notion that AI eliminates the need for experienced practitioners—velocity metrics become meaningless when a 6-week coding plan finishes in 25 minutes. What matters is using the saved time to make software genuinely better. The Future: Demo-First Development and Solid Releases "I can show you a working demo of the thing at the first meeting, and you can pay for it. And then we can make it better than your dreams." Peter sees AI transforming the consulting and product development lifecycle from "launch, listen, and learn" to "listen, iterate, and launch." As a consultant, he now brings working demos to first meetings instead of $20,000 six-week proposals. Clients see the product in motion and immediately identify improvements—before money changes hands. This shifts the power dynamic: products iterate toward quality before launch, not after. Peter envisions a future where we ship solid releases that iterate in quality, with interfaces that show users only what's relevant to them instead of "90,000 buttons that don't apply to me." About Peter Swimm Peter Swimm is a conversational AI veteran with 25+ years in tech — from managing data centers to building Botkit (the open-source chatbot framework that powered Slack and Teams bots), to serving as Principal Product Manager at Microsoft Copilot Studio. He's the founder of Toilville, a consultancy helping businesses build conversational AI solutions. You can link with Peter Swimm on LinkedIn and visit his website at peterswimm.com.

Efe Gümüs: Success as a Scrum Master Means People Feel Safe Enough to Speak Up Before It's Too Late Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes. "The healthier your collaboration with other roles — developers, product owners, managers — the more successful as a Scrum Master you are." - Efe Gümüs Efe defines Scrum Master success not through team velocity or timely deliveries, but through the health of relationships. A successful Scrum Master actively contributes to organizational matters, increases transparency on both problems and solutions, and bridges the gap between roles. At the team level, the signal is clear: if people feel safe enough to approach you with their problems, if they speak freely in team events without fear of blame, if they can raise risks before the last day of the sprint — that's success. But Efe is honest about how hard this is to maintain. Relationships with stakeholders have constant ups and downs, and the work of understanding people never stops. His advice starts with empathy — not just reading the room in the moment, but understanding that every colleague carries a different career history, different coping mechanisms, and different experiences that shape how they react to change. For younger Scrum Masters especially, Efe emphasizes that what worked for you won't work for everyone. Speak the common language, understand their perspective, give them assurance through visible, outcome-focused progress. The health of those relationships is the measure of your impact. Self-reflection Question: Beyond metrics and deliverables, how would you describe the health of your relationship with the key stakeholders around your team — and what's one thing you could do this week to strengthen the weakest one? Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Diamond Retrospective "When you have diverse perspectives, a growth zone, converged thinking, and then action points — that diamond — people actually own the actions." - Efe Gümüs Efe doesn't name a single retrospective format as his favorite — instead, he describes the structure that makes any retrospective effective: the diamond. Start by opening up diverse perspectives (diverge), create space for exploration and growth (the growth zone), then converge the thinking toward clear action points. This diamond pattern — diverge, explore, converge, act — ensures that the team moves from broad reflection to specific, owned commitments. The key word is "owned": when people arrive at actions through this structured exploration rather than being told what to improve, they commit to the follow-through. Efe connects this directly to his broader philosophy: the best systems don't depend on any single person, and the best retrospectives produce actions that the team drives forward without needing the Scrum Master to push. [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends] 🔥In the ruthless world of fintech, success isn't just about innovation—it's about coaching!🔥 Angela thought she was just there to coach a team. But now, she's caught in the middle of a corporate espionage drama that could make or break the future of digital banking. Can she help the team regain their mojo and outwit their rivals, or will the competition crush their ambitions? As alliances shift and the pressure builds, one thing becomes clear: this isn't just about the product—it's about the people. 🚨 Will Angela's coaching be enough? Find out in Shift: From Product to People—the gripping story of high-stakes innovation and corporate intrigue. Buy Now on Amazon [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends] About Efe Gümüs Efe is an out-of-the-box Agile Coach and Scrum Master who brings fresh perspectives to Agile by connecting it with everyday life. He uses metaphors to reveal mindset patterns and applies continuous feedback loops beyond work, including music production and gym training, constantly refining performance, creativity, and personal growth and resilience. You can link with Efe Gümüs on LinkedIn.

Efe Gümüs: When Daily Stand-ups Become Status Updates — The Warning Signs of a Team Falling Apart Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes. "When people start creating their own bubble inside the team, it's because they either don't feel safe, or they don't feel relevant to what the rest of the team is doing." - Efe Gümüs Efe shares the story of an integration team — back-end and front-end developers working across legacy components, a monolithic environment, and a microservices transformation all at once. With so many different workstreams, team members ended up with their own individual projects. The daily stand-up became a status update: people shared what they were doing, but nobody was listening because nobody else's work affected them. The daily grew from 15 minutes to 30, sometimes an hour, morphing into an unplanned refinement session. Participation dropped — some stopped showing up, others attended but went silent. The team that had once been interactive and collaborative splintered into silos. Informal conversations disappeared entirely, and that was when Efe knew it was too late to make small fixes. Without trust, without a common goal, they were no longer a team — just a group of people sitting together. Then COVID hit, and remote work removed the last chance for accidental collaboration. The daily meeting, Efe realized, is your best radar for team health: pay attention to the energy, the interaction, the engagement — and you'll see the deeper dynamics before they become irreversible. Self-reflection Question: How engaged is your team during the daily stand-up right now — and does the level of interaction tell you something about how connected they feel to each other's work? Featured Book of the Week: Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz "The book is all about building success mechanisms inside your own mind. If you can set your life goal, then it's way easier for you to set your career goal, your team goal, your sprint goal." - Efe Gümüs Efe's most influential book isn't about Agile at all — it's Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz, a psychology book about building success mechanisms in your mind. Recommended by a fellow agile coach, the book helped Efe see the parallels between personal goal-setting and the iterative progress at the heart of Scrum. When you feel lost or stagnating, the exercises in the book help you create small pieces of progress — not quick wins, but genuine forward movement that builds momentum. Efe connects this directly to Agile: every event, every sprint, every review is a small achievement toward the next one. If you can set a clear life goal, setting a sprint goal becomes natural. The clarity of purpose unlocks action — and that's as true for individuals as it is for teams. [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends] 🔥In the ruthless world of fintech, success isn't just about innovation—it's about coaching!🔥 Angela thought she was just there to coach a team. But now, she's caught in the middle of a corporate espionage drama that could make or break the future of digital banking. Can she help the team regain their mojo and outwit their rivals, or will the competition crush their ambitions? As alliances shift and the pressure builds, one thing becomes clear: this isn't just about the product—it's about the people. 🚨 Will Angela's coaching be enough? Find out in Shift: From Product to People—the gripping story of high-stakes innovation and corporate intrigue. Buy Now on Amazon [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends] About Efe Gümüs Efe is an out-of-the-box Agile Coach and Scrum Master who brings fresh perspectives to Agile by connecting it with everyday life. He uses metaphors to reveal mindset patterns and applies continuous feedback loops beyond work, including music production and gym training, constantly refining performance, creativity, and personal growth and resilience. You can link with Efe Gümüs on LinkedIn.

BONUS: Why a Distinguished Engineer Stopped Reading Code — Lights-Out Codebases and the End of the IC Philip Su has spent two decades at the highest levels of software engineering — Microsoft, Meta (where he reached Distinguished Engineer, IC9), OpenAI, and now building his own product solo with AI. In this episode, he makes a provocative case: the individual contributor role as we know it is over, code reviews are becoming a liability, and the best engineers are already managing AI agents instead of writing code themselves. From Amazon Warehouse Floors to OpenAI "Every day at work, I lifted six tons of packages with my arms. No one learned my name. And it was the structure — the ability to leave work behind when I clocked out — that pulled me out of a spiral." Philip's path through tech is anything but typical. After scaling Facebook's London engineering office from a dozen engineers to 500+, he stepped away from Big Tech entirely. During Peak 2021, he worked the floor at Amazon's flagship warehouse south of Seattle — 11-hour shifts, processing 15,000 packages a day. He documented the experience in his Peak Salvation podcast, exploring depression, the divide between the wealthy and the working class, and the maddening inefficiencies inside one of the world's largest employers. That experience reshaped how he thinks about work, systems, and what actually matters when you strip away titles and stock options. He later joined OpenAI as an individual contributor — going from leading hundreds of engineers to writing code again — before leaving to build Superphonic, an AI-powered podcast player. No More Code Reviews: The Lights-Out Codebase "We'll one day be scared, positively petrified, to use any mission-critical software known to have allowed human interference in its codebase." Philip borrows the concept of "lights-out" from data centers that run with zero human workers and applies it to codebases. A lights-out codebase is one where no human ever sees or edits the code. He's already built two apps this way — Tanya's Snowfield and OTD: On This Day — without looking at a single line of code from repository creation through production release. His argument is not just about efficiency. Code reviewers are becoming the bottleneck. The volume of AI-generated code is already too high for humans to keep up, and the same LLM that wrote the code often catches bugs that another instance of itself introduced. Philip has been running both Codex and Cursor as PR reviewers on GitHub, and has been surprised by how often they identify issues in both human- and AI-generated code. He believes we are approaching a threshold where human intervention in codebases will be seen as risky and irresponsible — not the other way around. AI Killed the Individual Contributor "You're not building the thing anymore. You're pondering and tweaking the machine that builds the thing." In his widely discussed essay "AI Killed the Individual Contributor", Philip argues that maximizing productivity with AI now requires engineers to spend their time on what are essentially management tasks: setting priorities, resolving conflicts, delegating to agents, reviewing output, and giving feedback. The IC role isn't disappearing because AI codes better — it's disappearing because the highest-leverage use of an engineer's time has shifted from writing code to orchestrating the systems that write code. Right now, it feels like managing a team of barely competent interns. But Philip expects that to change fast. Soon it will feel like managing high performers who are faster and more capable than you — and the engineers who thrive will be the ones who learned to let go of the keyboard and focus on judgment, direction, and taste. Building Solo with AI: The Superphonic Experiment "20x productivity means we have 20x fewer PMs than we need." Philip is putting his thesis to the test with Superphonic, an AI-powered podcast player he's building essentially as a solo founder. What would have required a team two years ago, he now ships alone — leveraging AI agents for coding, testing, and review. But the productivity multiplier creates its own problems. When you can build 20x faster, the bottleneck shifts from engineering capacity to product judgment. You need to know what to build, not just how to build it. Philip's reference to The Mythical Man-Month is deliberate: adding more people (or agents) doesn't solve the fundamental challenge of building the right thing. The hardest part of being both the architect and the manager of your AI agents is knowing when the model breaks down — when you need to step in and do the work yourself rather than delegating. What Teams Get Wrong About AI Integration "There is a lot more that can be done to increase the quality of AI output even if all progress on foundation models stops." For Scrum Masters and agile coaches helping teams adopt AI tools, Philip's warning is clear: don't treat AI as just another developer on the team. The integration requires rethinking how work is structured, how quality is assured, and what it means to be an engineer. Teams that bolt AI onto existing workflows without changing the underlying process will get marginal gains at best. The ones that redesign their workflows around AI capabilities — including accepting that humans may not need to review every line of code — will see transformational results. Philip's practical advice: do the work yourself first. Understand what the AI is doing before you delegate wholesale. The engineers who skip this step lose the judgment they need to manage the output effectively. About Philip Su Philip Su is a Distinguished Engineer (IC9) who scaled Facebook's London office from a dozen engineers to 500+, served as site lead at OpenAI, and now builds Superphonic — an AI-powered podcast player. He writes about the future of software work at Molochinations on Substack. LinkedIn You can link with Philip Su on LinkedIn.

Nate Amidon: Why Scrum Master Success Means Owning the Entire Idea-to-Deployed Pipeline Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes. "Success for a Scrum Master is maximizing value of the product through the organization. That's a full stop statement." - Nate Amidon Running a company of contract Scrum Masters gives Nate a unique perspective on what success actually looks like. For him, it comes down to one thing: are you increasing the value of the product through the system? Everything else is either a leading or lagging indicator. Practically, this means starting with the most fundamental question: why does your team exist? Nate suggests asking three team members separately what the team does and who they do it for — and checking whether the answers match. Once you have clarity on purpose, you can work with product and the organization to figure out how to measure whether you're getting closer. But here's where Nate pushes boundaries: he believes a Scrum Master's scope isn't limited to the Scrum team. If success is measured by value flowing through the system, then you have to take ownership of the entire idea-to-deployed pipeline — product prioritization, cross-team dependencies, QA processes, CI/CD, release schedules. You happen to work as a Scrum Master on a team, but your responsibility extends to anywhere value gets stuck. In this episode, we refer to Vasco's OTOG (One Team, One Goal) principle and Nate's previous episode about the brief-execute-debrief cycle. Self-reflection Question: If someone asked three different members of your team what the team exists to do and who they do it for, would the answers match — and have you checked recently? Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Meme Retro Nate's favorite retrospective format might surprise you: the Meme Retro. Give everyone 5-10 minutes to find a meme on the internet that describes the last sprint. Then go around the room, share the meme, and explain why you chose it. It sounds lighthearted — and it is — but that's exactly the point. As Vasco notes, "laughs per minute" is a great metric for retros, because when people are laughing, they can talk about serious issues without defensiveness. The memes give a different angle on what happened during the sprint, surfacing deeper feelings and patterns that traditional formats might miss. It's especially useful when teams are getting fatigued from running the same retro format over and over. [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends] 🔥In the ruthless world of fintech, success isn't just about innovation—it's about coaching!🔥 Angela thought she was just there to coach a team. But now, she's caught in the middle of a corporate espionage drama that could make or break the future of digital banking. Can she help the team regain their mojo and outwit their rivals, or will the competition crush their ambitions? As alliances shift and the pressure builds, one thing becomes clear: this isn't just about the product—it's about the people. 🚨 Will Angela's coaching be enough? Find out in Shift: From Product to People—the gripping story of high-stakes innovation and corporate intrigue. Buy Now on Amazon [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends] About Nate Amidon Nate, founder of Form100 Consulting, and a former Air Force officer and combat pilot turned servant leader in software development. Nate has taken the high-stakes world of military aviation and brought its core leadership principles—clarity, accountability, and execution—into his work with Agile teams. You can link with Nate Amidon on LinkedIn. Learn more at Form100 Consulting.

Nate Amidon: When the Blame Game Between Product and Engineering Destroys Your Scrum Team From the Inside Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes. "Product and engineering are in the same boat. We need to visualize and internalize that it's one team, one fight." - Nate Amidon Nate was working as a Scrum Master on a full-stack team building an internal mobile application when he noticed tension forming between product and engineering. It started small — finger-pointing about missed requirements — but quickly escalated into a full-blown blame game. The QA started siding with product, creating a product-and-QA-versus-engineers dynamic. Engineers began refusing user stories unless they were "100% baked" with every detail spelled out, turning the team into lawyers negotiating contracts rather than collaborators building software. What's revealing about this pattern is what it looks like from the outside: a project manager might see meticulously detailed user stories and think the team is doing great work. In reality, it's a symptom of broken trust. Nate points out that in high-performing teams, you actually see less detail in the issue tracker — because people are talking, aligned, and adapting together in real time. His approach? He drew stick figures in a boat on sticky notes — one labeled PO, the other Engineering — and stuck them on people's monitors. Simple, visual, and direct: you're in the same boat. Self-reflection Question: What are the smells you're noticing in your team's interactions — and could overly detailed user stories actually be masking a deeper trust problem between product and engineering? Featured Book of the Week: Deep Work by Cal Newport Nate recommends every Scrum Master read Deep Work, and here's why: "Shoulder taps are expensive. If you go and bother an engineer that's in the zone, in deep work, you're adding about a 15-minute reset for them to get back into that zone." For Nate, safeguarding engineers' time is one of the most important things a Scrum Master can do. He also recommends Project to Product by Mik Kersten for Scrum Masters moving into Agile coaching — especially its emphasis on team structure and why "the team needs to be sacrosanct, and work should go to teams." [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends] 🔥In the ruthless world of fintech, success isn't just about innovation—it's about coaching!🔥 Angela thought she was just there to coach a team. But now, she's caught in the middle of a corporate espionage drama that could make or break the future of digital banking. Can she help the team regain their mojo and outwit their rivals, or will the competition crush their ambitions? As alliances shift and the pressure builds, one thing becomes clear: this isn't just about the product—it's about the people. 🚨 Will Angela's coaching be enough? Find out in Shift: From Product to People—the gripping story of high-stakes innovation and corporate intrigue. Buy Now on Amazon [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends] About Nate Amidon Nate, founder of Form100 Consulting, and a former Air Force officer and combat pilot turned servant leader in software development. Nate has taken the high-stakes world of military aviation and brought its core leadership principles—clarity, accountability, and execution—into his work with Agile teams. You can link with Nate Amidon on LinkedIn. Learn more at Form100 Consulting.

BONUS: Why Your Plan Is Lying to You — #NoEstimates, Throughput, and the Superstition of Project Management This episode is a cross-post from The EBFC Show, Felipe Engineer-Manriquez's podcast exploring Lean and Agile in construction. In this conversation, Felipe interviews Vasco about the #NoEstimates movement, throughput-based planning, and why traditional project management is still stuck in the middle ages of managing creative work. The Human Side of Scrum That the Scrum Guide Doesn't Cover "When you go into a daily meeting and you start looking at the people in that room, maybe they are the exact same people that were there yesterday, but the team is totally different. Somebody might have had a bad night's sleep, somebody might have had an argument with their spouse. These are human beings. These are not machines that you can just distribute work to." Vasco's path to agile coaching started with a realization that most practitioners eventually reach: the problems in software development aren't technological. They're about people — getting agreements, sharing information at the right time, making the collective brain of a team actually function. The Scrum Guide gives you organizing principles — how many meetings, who's in them — but it says almost nothing about the real-time feedback cycle between humans that makes or breaks a team. That's why the Scrum Master role exists: to be the lubricant for human interactions, to break down complex ideas into items the collective mind can process. It's the piece that makes Scrum work, and it's the piece that's hardest to teach. From Project Manager to #NoEstimates — The Bet That Changed Everything "The PM wanted 15 items per sprint, and the team said 'yeah, we can do 15.' I said, this is not gonna happen. The team had been delivering between five and eight items per sprint. I said, I'm gonna be positive — I'm gonna say seven. And no surprise, by the end of the sprint, they delivered seven." Vasco started as a project manager — and not the easy certification kind. He went through IPMA, which means six months of training, a four-hour written exam, and an expert interview, just for the entry level. Planning and estimating was the job. Then he ran his first Scrum project, specifically to prove it couldn't work. By the second month, he couldn't understand how anything else could work. The team delivered something to show every single sprint — something that never happened with traditional project management. The turning point came when he made a bet with a product manager: the PM needed 15 items per sprint, the team committed to 15, but historical throughput was 5-8 items. Reality delivered seven. That moment crystallized the #NoEstimates insight: we can't fight reality, but we can choose which seven items to deliver. Reality Is a Bitch — Why Linear Predictive Planning Fails "Never believe the plan. Or as in Scarface — never get high on your own supply. It's so unbelievable how project managers still today believe their freaking plans." At Nokia, Vasco managed a program of 500 people across 100 teams on four continents. No way to get everyone in a room. So he tracked system-level throughput — features delivered to integration per week. Six months into a twelve-month project, the data said they'd be at least six months late. He told the program manager: cut scope now. The program manager did what every PMI-trained program manager does — sent an email asking all 100 teams if they'd deliver on time. Every single team said yes. Nobody wants to be first to admit they're late. Twelve months in, they discovered they were six months late. The project got canceled. 500 people, millions of euros, all because somebody believed the plan. Linear predictive planning is useful for exploring what might be possible if nothing goes wrong. It is not reality. The only tool that reflects reality is throughput — the number of items completed per unit of time. Earned Value Management — George Orwell at His Best "It's not earned, it's spent. It's not value, it's cost. It's not management, it's just observation. Monty Python could not have come up with a better name." Felipe shares a story that mirrors the absurdity: an industrial project with a dedicated 35-person earned value management department. Before the meeting even started, the department head announced, "Let's all acknowledge that earned value management is more an art than a science." Their charts were made up, the contractor's charts were made up, and the goal of the meeting was to agree that the project would finish on time — regardless of what any data said. This is where traditional project management ends up when it disconnects from throughput: a $30 million scope addition with zero additional time, defended by charts that a mediocre attorney can invalidate in the first week of litigation. Felipe knows — he spent a year being cross-examined by forensic schedulers whose full-time job is proving that construction schedules are fiction. One Small Experiment to Test #NoEstimates "Never convince anyone. Convince yourself. Once you're convinced, whatever other people say, it doesn't really matter because you're not gonna take them seriously anyway." Here's how to validate throughput-based planning with your own data: take the last 10 sprints (or periods). Calculate the average throughput and control limits from the first five. Then check whether the next five sprints fall within that range. They will. If you're in software and using Jira, you already have this data. You don't need anyone's permission. You don't need to change anything. Just look at what your team actually delivers versus what they planned to deliver. The gap between those two numbers is the gap between superstition and reality. About Felipe Engineer-Manriquez Felipe Engineer-Manriquez is a best-selling author, international keynote speaker, Project Delivery Services Director at The Boldt Company, host of The EBFC Show podcast, and a proven construction change-maker implementing Lean and Agile practices on projects from millions to billions of dollars worldwide. He is a Registered Scrum Trainer™ (RST), Registered Scrum Master™ (RSM), and recipient of the Lean Construction Institute Chairman's Award. His book Construction Scrum is the first practical guide for applying Scrum in construction. You can link with Felipe Engineer-Manriquez on LinkedIn.