Rethinking Teams, Products, and Organizations for the Age of AI

00:00:07: Johannes Schartau: Welcome to episode 21 of Transform Together, the Holisticon podcast.

00:00:12: Johannes Schartau: I'm Johannes Schartau, and today I'm talking to Dave West.

00:00:16: Johannes Schartau: Dave is a product and software development leader, author, and frequent

00:00:20: Johannes Schartau: keynote speaker. He served for more than a decade as CEO and product

00:00:24: Johannes Schartau: owner of Scrum.org, working closely with Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber

00:00:29: Johannes Schartau: to advance the practice of Scrum around the world.

00:00:31: Johannes Schartau: He's also the co-author of the Nexus Framework for Scaling Scrum and

00:00:36: Johannes Schartau: Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design.

00:00:39: Johannes Schartau: In his recent work, Dave focuses on how organizations can combine

00:00:44: Johannes Schartau: product thinking, Scrum, and artificial intelligence to turn increased

00:00:48: Johannes Schartau: speed and output into meaningful business outcomes.

00:00:51: Johannes Schartau: He explores how AI is changing product development, team design,

00:00:56: Johannes Schartau: stakeholder collaboration, and organizational operating models, and what

00:01:00: Johannes Schartau: organizations need to change if they want AI to create real value rather

00:01:04: Johannes Schartau: than simply help people produce more faster.

00:01:07: Johannes Schartau: Dave, welcome to the podcast.

00:01:08: Dave West: Oh, thank you for inviting me.

00:01:11: Dave West: This is the first podcast I've done since I left being CEO of

00:01:16: Dave West: Scrum.org, so it's a pretty important one.

00:01:20: Dave West: So let's muck it up, hey?

00:01:22: Johannes Schartau: Great, let's get into it. So you just stepped away from Scrum.org after

00:01:26: Johannes Schartau: more than a decade as CEO. Looking back over those years, what has

00:01:30: Johannes Schartau: changed most in the way you personally understand Scrum?

00:01:34: Dave West: It's interesting. So 11 years ago, I joined Scrum.org.

00:01:39: Dave West: I was prior to that chief product officer at Tasktop working with a guy

00:01:44: Dave West: called Mik Kersten. And I honestly didn't want to leave that role at

00:01:49: Dave West: Tasktop. I thought we were doing amazing. I thought we were doing

00:01:51: Dave West: amazing things and working with Mik was, and the team was fantastic.

00:01:55: Dave West: But throughout my, I guess, last 20 years, maybe 15, Ken

00:02:01: Dave West: Schwaber had been increasingly a mentor to my work.

00:02:05: Dave West: And he's a mentor.

00:02:09: Dave West: And he's a mentor. He's also a little scary at times, but he was an

00:02:14: Dave West: amazing mentor, actually. And so he'd been apparently interviewing me

00:02:19: Dave West: for 15, 20 years, which I didn't really appreciate.

00:02:22: Dave West: So he offered me the position.

00:02:25: Dave West: I said, no, you know, I'd been the RUP product manager.

00:02:28: Dave West: I'd also been the research director at Forrester concentrating on agile

00:02:33: Dave West: and operational organizational models for, you know, product delivery

00:02:38: Dave West: organizations. So the last thing I wanted to do was work with a bunch of

00:02:44: Dave West: methodologists and process people. I wanted to build product.

00:02:48: Dave West: That's what I was into. I was running engineering. I was running product

00:02:51: Dave West: delivery. I was running architecture at Tasktop for Mik.

00:02:55: Dave West: And I was loving every minute.

00:02:58: Dave West: But he's a very persuasive guy.

00:03:03: Dave West: And I love Scrum. I was using Scrum at Tasktop.

00:03:08: Dave West: We were delivering incredible value.

00:03:12: Dave West: Our team was spread out throughout the world.

00:03:15: Dave West: It was super. And I was loving every minute.

00:03:18: Dave West: And I think after I started meeting a few key professional Scrum

00:03:23: Dave West: trainers, when I started talking to some other people in the industry,

00:03:28: Dave West: it was very clear that the opportunity at Scrum.org was incredible.

00:03:33: Dave West: So I went into it thinking, I knew Scrum.

00:03:36: Dave West: I can build engineering organizations. I know how to deliver product.

00:03:41: Dave West: During the time, I have learned so much more about what

00:03:47: Dave West: the challenges of adopting Scrum.

00:03:49: Dave West: You know, I coined the term Water-Scrum- Fall when I was at Forrester

00:03:53: Dave West: Research. And I was hoping, based on my own experiences at Tasktop, that

00:03:58: Dave West: that had dissipated and gone. But it turns out, ooh, it's actually more.

00:04:03: Dave West: It was more evident than ever, which was really, really worrying.

00:04:07: Dave West: The amount of sprint planning sessions that were really just about task

00:04:11: Dave West: lists. The amount of daily scrums that were really just focused on

00:04:17: Dave West: basically status reporting.

00:04:19: Dave West: Sprint reviews that were really demos.

00:04:23: Dave West: And it was very, very disappointing.

00:04:26: Dave West: And I think over the last 11 years, we haven't necessarily solved some

00:04:31: Dave West: of those problems. But we have definitely made them more transparent in

00:04:36: Dave West: organizations. We have really leaned into Scrum about value.

00:04:41: Dave West: Scrum, you know, the work I did with Lean UX, bringing that in.

00:04:45: Dave West: The work I did in Kanban to bring Flow in.

00:04:48: Dave West: The work I did with Nexus to talk about scaling.

00:04:51: Dave West: The work recently we've been doing a lot about the agile product

00:04:55: Dave West: operating model. And now, obviously, how AI is influencing that.

00:05:00: Dave West: And how, you know, the secret sauce for Scrum and Agile isn't anything

00:05:06: Dave West: particularly secret. It is aligned to a clear problem domain.

00:05:11: Dave West: Empower teams to make decisions.

00:05:15: Dave West: And provide support to get rid of the things that get in the way of them

00:05:20: Dave West: actually delivering value to customers. It's really, really simple.

00:05:24: Dave West: But most organizations still have a really hard time doing it.

00:05:29: Dave West: Even though now, I think they, hopefully, they understand a little bit

00:05:33: Dave West: better what those real challenges are.

00:05:36: Dave West: So, I think my evolution to Scrum has really been, and my learning and

00:05:41: Dave West: my changes of how I understand Scrum is really how to position it

00:05:46: Dave West: better. How to understand the context it runs in better.

00:05:49: Dave West: And really describe the challenges that most organizations are facing

00:05:53: Dave West: with it in ways that connects with those organizations.

00:05:57: Johannes Schartau: There was a really vocal and noticeable backlash against Agile and Scrum

00:06:01: Johannes Schartau: in particular last year, or maybe even a bit of time before.

00:06:05: Johannes Schartau: Personally, this made me a bit sad. But at the same time, I also noticed

00:06:09: Johannes Schartau: how I actually agreed with a lot of the criticism, even though I had a

00:06:14: Johannes Schartau: different understanding. But I could see where people came from.

00:06:16: Johannes Schartau: What do you think happened there? And why haven't we been able to get

00:06:20: Johannes Schartau: everyone excited about Scrum?

00:06:22: Dave West: I think that the world needed a villain.

00:06:26: Dave West: And I think, you know, Scrum became that.

00:06:29: Dave West: And there's a lot of fair criticism that was there, which is really

00:06:33: Dave West: strange for somebody at Scrum.org. Like, certification and training

00:06:37: Dave West: business had turned into this industrialized system that was less about

00:06:42: Dave West: helping people adopt Scrum and more about encouraging people to take the

00:06:47: Dave West: test, etc. And that's a very fair criticism.

00:06:50: Dave West: The intent, though, the reason why Ken invented a very hard set of

00:06:54: Dave West: certifications, level one, two, and three, was really to just legitimize

00:07:01: Dave West: the skills that people were building, encourage them to continuously

00:07:06: Dave West: build those skills so it turned into, you know, a better job, etc.

00:07:11: Dave West: And really get at what he described as, you know, the sort of charlatans

00:07:16: Dave West: in the industry. So the intent was fine.

00:07:20: Dave West: But how, you know, all these things over time get a little bit

00:07:23: Dave West: challenging to implement.

00:07:26: Dave West: So I think some of the criticisms was fine. I think the need to have a

00:07:29: Dave West: villain was fine. The thing that I didn't like about it, and maybe you

00:07:33: Dave West: share this experience, is that ultimately it became very personal.

00:07:37: Dave West: It became very personal against people that were practicing Scrum.

00:07:42: Dave West: People that had the title Scrum Master. People that believed in it.

00:07:45: Dave West: And that really disappointed me because 99.99

00:07:51: Dave West: % of the people that I've interacted with that were focused on Scrum and

00:07:55: Dave West: Agile really wanted to help organizations and, more importantly,

00:08:02: Dave West: the people in those organizations deliver value more effectively.

00:08:05: Dave West: They cared deeply about the improvements that they could make.

00:08:11: Dave West: Now, maybe some of them were focused on questionable elements of the

00:08:16: Dave West: framework or the Agile community.

00:08:19: Dave West: Maybe they were misled by thought leaders.

00:08:24: Dave West: People maybe even like me or misinterpreted things I'd said.

00:08:27: Dave West: I don't know. But ultimately, their intent and their heart was in the

00:08:31: Dave West: right place. And I found that anti-Scrum rhetoric was really, it became

00:08:37: Dave West: increasingly aimed at them. And they were embarrassed to say, I like

00:08:42: Dave West: Scrum and I'm using it for these reasons. And that was very, very

00:08:46: Dave West: disappointing. And I think that it became about people

00:08:52: Dave West: trying to use the sort of like the clickbait, the anger, the personal

00:08:58: Dave West: attacks to really generate favor in their community or at least to feel

00:09:03: Dave West: that they had. One thing that I cared very deeply about when I was

00:09:08: Dave West: leading Scrum.org was a virtue that I think that we at Scrum.org tried

00:09:13: Dave West: to practice, which was kindness. And kindness means we never go

00:09:19: Dave West: in and say, oh, Scaled Agile Framework, that's rubbish.

00:09:23: Dave West: That isn't, you're an idiot if you use it. We would never say that even

00:09:26: Dave West: with a strange Northern accent. I don't know where that came from.

00:09:31: Dave West: Obviously, when you're insulting somebody from Yorkshire.

00:09:35: Dave West: But, and by the way, that's not an insult to people from Yorkshire.

00:09:38: Dave West: They're awesome. I went to university in Yorkshire. Great place.

00:09:41: Dave West: But anyway, so, you know, we would never encourage that because the

00:09:46: Dave West: people that are practicing SAFe are doing it for lots of reasons.

00:09:50: Dave West: And ultimately, they're approaching it in a positive way.

00:09:53: Dave West: And I don't know all the context and the details.

00:09:56: Dave West: I can't possibly. So instead, if I've got a problem with something maybe

00:10:02: Dave West: that they're doing, I approach it from a place of kindness.

00:10:05: Dave West: I try to understand why they're separating product ownership from

00:10:09: Dave West: product management, for instance, as an example.

00:10:12: Dave West: I try to expose why we combine those ideas.

00:10:18: Dave West: I try to encourage us to have a dialogue and a conversation about it

00:10:22: Dave West: from a place of kindness. And I think our community over the last, and

00:10:27: Dave West: there's been moments where that's been shaky, not going to lie.

00:10:30: Dave West: But our community of professional Scrum trainers and, dare I say it, the

00:10:34: Dave West: ultimate big community of, you know, over a million.

00:10:38: Dave West: That's 1.2, 1.3 million certified professionals.

00:10:41: Dave West: Those people that have interacted with Scrum.org and maybe taken

00:10:45: Dave West: something from it. I'm hoping that that message, you know, has really

00:10:50: Dave West: come out from all of those people. Because I think that the thing that

00:10:55: Dave West: disappointed me about the Agile is dead, Scrum is evil, you know,

00:10:58: Dave West: whatever that whole thread was, was that they didn't approach it from a

00:11:02: Dave West: place of kindness. They didn't approach it from a, hey, you know,

00:11:07: Dave West: there's been a lot of, you know, misunderstandings of implementing

00:11:11: Dave West: Scrum. Let's look at some of those and let's see if we can learn

00:11:15: Dave West: together on improving this.

00:11:18: Dave West: It was, no, you're all idiots. I'm much smarter than you.

00:11:21: Dave West: I never believed in Scrum. It was about Ken and Jeff and all those Agile

00:11:26: Dave West: people making loads of money. And it's nothing else.

00:11:29: Dave West: And maybe some of that is true, but you don't have to approach it in

00:11:33: Dave West: that way, in my opinion.

00:11:36: Johannes Schartau: Yeah, right. And also, for me personally, just reading those comments, I

00:11:41: Johannes Schartau: always felt like, yeah, I have the same problem.

00:11:44: Johannes Schartau: I've been arguing against what you're describing for a long time.

00:11:47: Johannes Schartau: And if that is your experience of Scrum, then I'm really sorry.

00:11:50: Johannes Schartau: But we were fighting against the same thing, basically.

00:11:53: Johannes Schartau: So maybe we just like talk about that instead of just slinging mud at

00:11:58: Johannes Schartau: each other, right?

00:11:59: Dave West: Yeah, I think that's exactly how I felt as well.

00:12:02: Dave West: And the reason why Scrum is not successful in organizations is

00:12:09: Dave West: exactly what you would. It's not going to help if you don't call it

00:12:13: Dave West: Scrum and you call it, you know, I'm looking at a lot of these AI SDLCs.

00:12:17: Dave West: You know, they all rely on some fundamental things that Scrum relies on.

00:12:23: Dave West: Empowered teams, clear understanding of the problem, access

00:12:28: Dave West: to stakeholders, clarity and goals.

00:12:31: Dave West: All of these things are just, wow.

00:12:36: Dave West: And if you don't do that, then Scrum is not going to be necessarily as

00:12:40: Dave West: successful as it could be. And yes, maybe sometimes we

00:12:46: Dave West: became very inward looking because we were focusing on our own

00:12:50: Dave West: techniques and practices and the language because we realized how hard

00:12:55: Dave West: it was to change those external things.

00:12:58: Dave West: And that was a mistake. And we should have perhaps been, but instead of,

00:13:02: Dave West: you know, calling us idiots and saying it was because of Scrum.

00:13:05: Dave West: How about we, as you rightly said, we go after the real villain in the

00:13:10: Dave West: room. And that is organizations that are basically not built around

00:13:15: Dave West: delivering amazing products to customers, but they're built around

00:13:20: Dave West: power, authority, status and that political system that

00:13:26: Dave West: ultimately inhibits our ability to deliver value to customers.

00:13:30: Dave West: And legacy systems and legacy processes don't help.

00:13:35: Dave West: But anyway, so I agree 100% with your sentiment there, Johannes.

00:13:40: Johannes Schartau: You already kind of segued into the next question that I have, because I

00:13:43: Johannes Schartau: noticed that in your writing, you're looking at a lot of these so-called

00:13:47: Johannes Schartau: AI-empowered SDLC playbooks that companies release at the moment.

00:13:51: Johannes Schartau: And you've been critical of some. So you already mentioned that maybe

00:13:55: Johannes Schartau: there's some element missing or what have you seen specifically that you

00:14:00: Johannes Schartau: think needs improvement?

00:14:01: Dave West: So I'd like to say I'm not necessarily critical other than in the way

00:14:06: Dave West: that is, because I think these are great steps in the right direction,

00:14:10: Dave West: because they clearly describe to teams that are experimenting,

00:14:14: Dave West: particularly with agentic systems, the playbook,

00:14:19: Dave West: the set of practices that can really help.

00:14:22: Dave West: Whether it's, you know, whether it's, you know, whether it's, you know,

00:14:24: Dave West: Amazon were emphasizing the importance of mob programming, really

00:14:29: Dave West: working, a couple of developers working with a series of agents to

00:14:33: Dave West: effectively architect the right solution from the problem instead of

00:14:37: Dave West: just, you know, accepting the first one that comes.

00:14:40: Dave West: For instance, I was impressed with Google with

00:14:46: Dave West: how they manage context and things like that.

00:14:50: Dave West: And and and really talking about the importance of building harnesses

00:14:54: Dave West: around that. So it is true that I'm criticizing in terms of

00:15:00: Dave West: and not, you know, I think it's an and opportunity.

00:15:04: Dave West: I think, you know, it's funny that the Google Doc in particular, I

00:15:09: Dave West: think, was like 50 pages long or 40 pages long and governance wasn't

00:15:14: Dave West: mentioned. You know, things particularly in commercial I.T.

00:15:19: Dave West: So outside of product engineering in a technology organization.

00:15:23: Dave West: But in commercial I.T.

00:15:27: Dave West: I think that there's a certain naivety that people don't understand.

00:15:33: Dave West: And also, I think there was a product management.

00:15:37: Dave West: You know, I just listened to one of the co- founders of

00:15:45: Dave West: Google Brain,

00:15:50: Dave West: Andrew Ng, you know, talking about the future of software development.

00:15:54: Dave West: And I think the undervaluation of building the right thing, the

00:16:00: Dave West: you know, the sort of like that sort of.

00:16:02: Dave West: Oh, yeah, that's the easy bit. It's not. It's incredibly hard.

00:16:06: Dave West: Product management is incredibly challenging and making decisions on

00:16:11: Dave West: value and making those judgment calls are incredibly challenging.

00:16:15: Dave West: And the idea that, OK, if we just give the software engineer an

00:16:21: Dave West: A.I. tool and give him some analytics or give her some analytics, then

00:16:25: Dave West: we'll be fine to make those right calls.

00:16:28: Dave West: Isn't I think building a good vision is incredibly hard.

00:16:31: Dave West: I think engaging, particularly in most companies I work with, engaging

00:16:37: Dave West: multiple stakeholders that have all got their own agendas and investing

00:16:41: Dave West: in that vision together is incredibly difficult.

00:16:44: Dave West: I think stakeholder management is an incredibly important skill.

00:16:48: Dave West: I think that building a right solution that is both right today and

00:16:53: Dave West: right in the long term is incredibly hard.

00:16:55: Dave West: I think holding corporate knowledge and understanding how those

00:16:59: Dave West: solutions work is very difficult.

00:17:03: Dave West: And also managing those dependencies in effective ways is really hard.

00:17:08: Dave West: So I think that that the SDLCs that I saw from, in particular, Amazon

00:17:13: Dave West: and Google really did.

00:17:17: Dave West: Anthropic just brought out something which I've started writing about.

00:17:20: Dave West: It isn't out yet. I don't want to say naive, but they're incomplete.

00:17:26: Dave West: They're awesome, but they're incomplete.

00:17:28: Dave West: I think they move us somewhere, but they're not quite there yet.

00:17:32: Dave West: And I think if you just adopt that, you'll become a feature factory

00:17:36: Dave West: driven by engineers, which isn't necessarily bad, but isn't necessarily

00:17:42: Dave West: going to tick that value from AI box that every executive is striving

00:17:47: Dave West: for at the moment.

00:17:50: Johannes Schartau: I'd like to talk a bit about how Scrum could help in this age of AI and

00:17:55: Johannes Schartau: what it could look like if we take maybe some of the principles that

00:18:00: Johannes Schartau: have been useful for us and reapply that to that new age.

00:18:04: Johannes Schartau: Specifically, you've written about the fact that you believe that the

00:18:07: Johannes Schartau: product backlog needs to shift from implementation details toward

00:18:12: Johannes Schartau: intent, outcomes, risk, and accountability.

00:18:15: Johannes Schartau: What does a good product backlog look like when AI agents can do a

00:18:19: Johannes Schartau: significant share of the implementation work?

00:18:21: Dave West: I think that the principles of empiricism, empowered teams, self-managed

00:18:26: Dave West: teams, and continuous improvement hold fast.

00:18:29: Dave West: I think that those are universally true and even more true now of AI.

00:18:34: Dave West: So what you said at the start, I think is 100% accurate.

00:18:38: Dave West: I do think there's some things that do need to change with AI.

00:18:42: Dave West: And I've actually spent, since leaving Scrum.org, I sort of felt a

00:18:47: Dave West: moment of release. So I don't have to get Jeff and Ken to agree to

00:18:52: Dave West: change the Scrum Guide. I was like, oh, it's a religious moment.

00:18:57: Dave West: You can imagine, you know, when Excalibur was pulled out of the stone, I

00:19:00: Dave West: was like, had this, there's a light shining on me.

00:19:02: Dave West: I'm like, hang on, I'm not constrained by the Scrum Guide anymore.

00:19:07: Dave West: I was like, oh my gosh. It was like, I can imagine a sort of Victorian

00:19:11: Dave West: lady taking off her girdle, you know.

00:19:14: Dave West: I mean, let's be frank. The girdle made me very attractive and it was

00:19:18: Dave West: incredibly powerful. But I felt that that release and, you know, my

00:19:23: Dave West: stomach was finally free. So I think there's a few things that

00:19:28: Dave West: probably we need to really explore.

00:19:31: Dave West: One of them is the backlog, as you rightly said.

00:19:34: Dave West: I'm not totally sure you need two backlogs anymore.

00:19:37: Dave West: Sprint backlog and a product backlog.

00:19:40: Dave West: I'm increasingly seeing when I'm using agentic

00:19:46: Dave West: systems to maybe build a new website that might come out at some point

00:19:49: Dave West: very soon. The intent, outcome-centric descriptions

00:19:55: Dave West: of intent or bets, really, or experiments

00:20:01: Dave West: are clearly the things that we want the backlog to have.

00:20:07: Dave West: The task list, the work, the plan for implementing them is so

00:20:13: Dave West: fluid. It's still important, but it's very fluid and it's in the tools.

00:20:20: Dave West: You know, there are questions about how can we make that more

00:20:23: Dave West: transparent and how can we make that more part of an inspection

00:20:28: Dave West: moment. That's a whole different thing.

00:20:31: Dave West: But it's so dynamic and fluid that it's almost impossible to treat that

00:20:36: Dave West: as a first-class artifact. So I think that the backlogs that I'm

00:20:42: Dave West: working on with members of my team or people

00:20:48: Dave West: that I'm collaborating with are very intent-based.

00:20:54: Dave West: They're very outcome-centric.

00:20:56: Dave West: They're very measurement-centric. I'm also connecting those to context.

00:21:04: Dave West: So I'm bringing in those backlog items with context that's unique

00:21:10: Dave West: to that moment and my understanding at that time.

00:21:13: Dave West: And then thus that becomes the driver for the agentic systems and the

00:21:19: Dave West: ability for, particularly as I try to use agents to do the work and

00:21:24: Dave West: agents to inspect the work afterwards, it gives a sort of contract

00:21:28: Dave West: between those two different agents to actually ensure

00:21:34: Dave West: that there's some level of transparency for me as the very slow carbon

00:21:41: Dave West: -based life form in the room. And I found that very useful.

00:21:45: Dave West: So I think backlogs need to change.

00:21:48: Dave West: I don't think I've got all the answers yet. But the one thing I'm very

00:21:51: Dave West: aware of is if your product backlog is just a series of tasks, then it's

00:21:57: Dave West: going to be very problematic to keep it up to date and to manage it if

00:22:02: Dave West: you're building using agentic systems.

00:22:05: Dave West: I think they need to become more outcomes.

00:22:08: Dave West: I think they need to become more measurable. I think they need to

00:22:12: Dave West: reference context in a more explicit way.

00:22:14: Dave West: By the way, because that context will change as your understanding of

00:22:18: Dave West: the problem changes through the development.

00:22:22: Dave West: For instance, imagine I'm working on a website at the moment.

00:22:27: Dave West: And imagine that I've got this really strong opinion of how information

00:22:31: Dave West: needs to be presented. I then start experimenting.

00:22:34: Dave West: So I have a very clear outcome. These are the people that are going to

00:22:37: Dave West: be coming to my website. I've described those with my context.

00:22:40: Dave West: I've described the outcomes that I'm seeking from that.

00:22:43: Dave West: And I've described how I'm going to measure success.

00:22:46: Dave West: And I'm using AI with all its amazing experience to ideate on that.

00:22:52: Dave West: Though that I then build, you know, an information architecture and then

00:22:57: Dave West: execute on the information architecture for a thin slice for maybe the

00:23:03: Dave West: research element of my website, for instance.

00:23:05: Dave West: The blogs and white papers and that part.

00:23:08: Dave West: I then realized quite clearly that without some sort of, you know, from

00:23:13: Dave West: that process, I realized that actually my context is slightly wrong.

00:23:17: Dave West: So I need to refresh that with respect.

00:23:20: Dave West: So there's this cyclical process that the whole thing's a bundled thing

00:23:25: Dave West: that needs to sort of continually be directed.

00:23:29: Dave West: And then by the outcomes that I seek.

00:23:32: Dave West: So that intent, that goal. And then I realized that goal actually is

00:23:36: Dave West: poorly described.

00:23:38: Dave West: That bet is actually a mistake. So how do I then change that and refresh

00:23:43: Dave West: that? So then is that another goal? Is that an update?

00:23:46: Dave West: Yes. How I manage it is I refine that goal and bring out another goal,

00:23:50: Dave West: which then goes into the backlog. But it's very dynamic now.

00:23:54: Dave West: So backlogs are going to have to change, particularly compared to the

00:23:58: Dave West: ones that I see. Now, obviously, I'm at the moment working on my own or

00:24:03: Dave West: working with a very small group of collaborators. Imagine then if I've

00:24:07: Dave West: got dependencies across multiple product teams that related in

00:24:12: Dave West: some cross product initiative of some description.

00:24:15: Dave West: How do we better align those when teams could disappear off very quickly

00:24:20: Dave West: now because of the productivity capabilities, which are not allowed to

00:24:24: Dave West: say if we work with Anthropic, the value- based opportunities that these

00:24:28: Dave West: tools are creating. Now, that becomes a problem.

00:24:33: Dave West: And that's what organizations are wrestling with.

00:24:36: Dave West: And it seems to be the two solutions that are coming into play at the

00:24:40: Dave West: moment is a much more clarity on the boundaries between products.

00:24:46: Dave West: So reducing dependencies. So a bit like what we did with Nexus.

00:24:51: Dave West: But the other thing is basically bringing teams together that were

00:24:55: Dave West: originally in different teams. So product boundaries are going to be

00:24:59: Dave West: changing rapidly, I think, because of this and a lot more fluid as well,

00:25:04: Dave West: which is very, very challenging for large organizations that have these

00:25:08: Dave West: very clear controlled paths for teams and people, etc.

00:25:13: Dave West: And the power structures that support them. But yes, so backlogs got to

00:25:16: Dave West: change. The other thing that I'm thinking is about sprints.

00:25:20: Dave West: And by the way, you've got this really hot off the press because I've

00:25:24: Dave West: just spent a week talking to probably 20.

00:25:28: Dave West: My wife's like, aren't you meant to be not working as much now?

00:25:33: Dave West: And I've talked to about 20 people about this.

00:25:36: Dave West: And I built a document, which at some point will turn into something

00:25:40: Dave West: about what challenges I've had with Scrum in a positive way.

00:25:44: Dave West: I love Scrum and we're building on it.

00:25:47: Dave West: But the sprint is really, really interesting.

00:25:51: Dave West: And I'm not sure if it is.

00:25:57: Dave West: So the sprint at the moment for most organizations combines has two

00:26:00: Dave West: purposes, one which is about learning and one which is about governance.

00:26:07: Dave West: When I say learning, you know, you've got backlog items and ultimately

00:26:11: Dave West: there's a large amount of unknown uncertainty.

00:26:14: Dave West: And therefore, you're bringing them through into the system and you're

00:26:17: Dave West: experimenting and doing stuff and you're making that transparent and

00:26:20: Dave West: you're doing that stuff. It's also about governance.

00:26:25: Dave West: I've spent money on this Scrum team. It's probably a lot of money.

00:26:29: Dave West: Are they doing the things we want them to risk compliance?

00:26:34: Dave West: All that kind of stuff. And the sprint review often brought those two

00:26:37: Dave West: worlds together in a very nasty way, usually.

00:26:41: Dave West: Well, in a positive way, if you're using a professional Scrum.

00:26:45: Dave West: And then you learn and you moved on to the next sprint. Now, if you're

00:26:49: Dave West: learning cycles because of AI are now hours, minutes.

00:26:54: Dave West: But let's say hours because it just gets really crazy.

00:26:59: Dave West: Then do you need a Sprint?

00:27:02: Dave West: What does a sprint review do? Is it purely a governance control point,

00:27:08: Dave West: which would encourage you to. Is the intersection between governance and

00:27:12: Dave West: learning actually where all the interesting stuff happens?

00:27:16: Dave West: This is Scrum still right there.

00:27:19: Dave West: And I just don't know. I think that what

00:27:26: Dave West: we did actually at Tasktop was interesting because we had three horizons

00:27:31: Dave West: always on the go at any one moment.

00:27:34: Dave West: Horizon one being bug fixes, fix our existing products.

00:27:38: Dave West: Horizon two being the product roadmap as clearly described to our

00:27:41: Dave West: investors and customers that we were making progress against.

00:27:46: Dave West: And horizon three was crazy ass ideas that were informing decisions

00:27:51: Dave West: about the next product roadmap items.

00:27:54: Dave West: At any one moment, my Scrum teams were doing maybe more of H1 and less

00:28:00: Dave West: of H2 and H3 because a big customer like BMW, I think, you know,

00:28:05: Dave West: because that was obviously written about in Mik's books. So I think

00:28:07: Dave West: we're all very conscious that they were, you know, a big customer had

00:28:11: Dave West: literally broken the product because anyway.

00:28:16: Dave West: And so we were like, oh, my God, we're going to get them fixed. And that

00:28:18: Dave West: suddenly the capacity to do roadmap work was was a lot less.

00:28:22: Dave West: And then, you know, depending on the sprint, it varied.

00:28:27: Dave West: So so there were at least three cycles running at any sprint.

00:28:32: Dave West: But the sprint review actually, interestingly, only ever concentrated on

00:28:36: Dave West: the H2, the roadmap stuff with with investors and Mik etc.

00:28:42: Dave West: The other stuff was out of cycle kind of review and feedback, which then

00:28:47: Dave West: fed into. It's interesting.

00:28:49: Dave West: Do we make that more explicit? Discovery has fundamentally changed

00:28:53: Dave West: because of AI. Should that manifest itself in the in the in the

00:28:58: Dave West: framework in a more explicit way? We certainly should describe outcomes

00:29:02: Dave West: more clearly. Anyway, all these are ideas that, you know, that I think

00:29:07: Dave West: we need to wrestle with because I think the core tenets of Scrum still

00:29:11: Dave West: hold. But the dare I say harness, you notice what I did there, the

00:29:17: Dave West: harness will have to change, which means the framework and needs to

00:29:22: Dave West: change to reflect that, I think, in some way, shape or form.

00:29:26: Dave West: Probably.

00:29:28: Dave West: No, but maybe not. I don't know. Anyway, this is so early.

00:29:31: Dave West: So you asked a question about backlogs and I talked about sprints and

00:29:36: Dave West: then accountabilities. You know, humans.

00:29:40: Dave West: Oh, my gosh. Humans are the only people that can be accountable as

00:29:45: Dave West: proven in that. Well, in the US anyway, I don't know about in Europe,

00:29:48: Dave West: but in the US, the US Constitution clearly says it's about humans.

00:29:53: Dave West: I did a really cool podcast with a lawyer that

00:29:59: Dave West: is a real expert in IP law. And she introduced me to that idea.

00:30:03: Dave West: She says, so, you know, but in Scrum, you have accountabilities and

00:30:07: Dave West: responsibilities. And I know in most languages we don't have that.

00:30:10: Dave West: But ultimately, it's trying to highlight that difference between you're

00:30:13: Dave West: accountable for something, but somebody's got to do the work.

00:30:16: Dave West: Perhaps it isn't you because product ownership is a great example where

00:30:20: Dave West: if you did all that work, you'd never go to bed.

00:30:23: Dave West: You'd have to do a lot of probably mind altering drugs to help you stay

00:30:28: Dave West: awake and to do it. Not that I'm recommending that, obviously, but we'll

00:30:34: Dave West: drink a lot of coffee, which is much better. Right.

00:30:37: Dave West: Anyway, but the point is that so accountabilities, are they going to

00:30:40: Dave West: change? You know, are you building?

00:30:44: Dave West: Are you developing? Is the Scrum master a really, you

00:30:50: Dave West: know, you're owning this workflow.

00:30:53: Dave West: Should it be a systems owner? How are these things going to change as

00:30:57: Dave West: well? That's another question. And do we just accept that product owner,

00:31:01: Dave West: product manager was just, needs to be just one like it was in the

00:31:05: Dave West: original version of Scrum? Or do we like that separation now that you

00:31:11: Dave West: certainly can't separate strategy from execution with product, right?

00:31:17: Dave West: That's just silly now. So I don't know.

00:31:22: Dave West: Should it be just called product leader and avoid all of that stuff?

00:31:25: Dave West: I just don't know. So there's lots of things that I am thinking about

00:31:29: Dave West: with respect to Scrum from a position without my girdle

00:31:37: Dave West: on. I'm not as constrained as I once were.

00:31:42: Dave West: But I also really, if you're doing Scrum well today, you're so much

00:31:47: Dave West: better positioned to take advantage of AI. Not necessarily because of

00:31:51: Dave West: the Scrum, even though obviously I'll take all the points.

00:31:54: Dave West: Because of the discipline and structure and open-mindedness

00:32:01: Dave West: with structure that you're approaching the problem with.

00:32:07: Johannes Schartau: I find it very reassuring that you don't come in and give easy, wrong

00:32:11: Johannes Schartau: answers.

00:32:12: Dave West: No, this is my interpretation of the current situation that everybody's

00:32:16: Dave West: still trying to figure it out. And I find that personally very exciting

00:32:19: Dave West: because it means there's a lot of potential.

00:32:21: Dave West: And everybody almost feels like it's being set back to the same point

00:32:26: Dave West: where the honest answer is just like, we don't know.

00:32:30: Dave West: It's new for everyone. We are all in the same place and we're still

00:32:33: Dave West: trying to make sense of this. But what we do know is a core tenet of

00:32:37: Dave West: Scrum has to apply, which is a retrospective.

00:32:42: Dave West: Now, how frequently you do it is a whole different question now.

00:32:44: Dave West: But the point is that if you are not sitting down with your colleagues,

00:32:49: Dave West: exposing what's happening with your AI- empowered workflow, and

00:32:56: Dave West: then thinking very clearly about how we can improve it and

00:33:02: Dave West: what's causing us problems, where the bottlenecks reside, then I think

00:33:06: Dave West: you are not in a position for success.

00:33:10: Dave West: I think you've got to step back.

00:33:13: Dave West: And the other problem I have with AI is it's very addictive.

00:33:18: Dave West: I love it. And it discourages me from working with others because they

00:33:24: Dave West: just slow me down. They're such idiots.

00:33:26: Dave West: And the tools don't encourage you to work with others either.

00:33:31: Dave West: Though they'll write you an email or create a Slack message or whatever.

00:33:36: Dave West: Don't get me wrong. They'll do that. But they don't say, hang on a

00:33:40: Dave West: minute, Dave. You should probably stop now and talk to Bob.

00:33:43: Dave West: I don't have a Bob, so I've just made that name up.

00:33:45: Dave West: But I think I should have a Bob. Go and talk to this person or go and

00:33:49: Dave West: seek counsel or, hey, you've just dropped in this bit of context that

00:33:53: Dave West: was offered by this person. Maybe as an opportunity to have a

00:33:56: Dave West: conversation about it. Now, if you say, I think I should talk to that

00:34:01: Dave West: person, they'll create a lovely workshop to have that conversation.

00:34:06: Dave West: But it would encourage you to sit on your own,

00:34:12: Dave West: which as an ex-recovering software engineer, though I haven't built code

00:34:17: Dave West: in anger for 25 years, commercial software for 25 years,

00:34:24: Dave West: the desire to just sit on my own and do stuff is very alluring.

00:34:30: Dave West: So I think that you've got to force yourself to step back and say, hey,

00:34:35: Dave West: can we do this better? Could we take advantage of a different harness?

00:34:41: Dave West: Should we do this in a different way?

00:34:45: Dave West: Are we being successful? How do we measure this?

00:34:49: Dave West: Those sort of questions, I think, are super important.

00:34:51: Johannes Schartau: It's funny because you always keep getting into my next question.

00:34:54: Johannes Schartau: And I was going to ask about this because I'm noticing with my clients

00:34:58: Johannes Schartau: that there is a tendency for individuals to become even more isolated

00:35:02: Johannes Schartau: because now you can finally build more polished versions much quicker.

00:35:08: Johannes Schartau: And that means that there's less interaction, any kind of asymmetry

00:35:12: Johannes Schartau: between individuals. For example, if someone has more knowledge about

00:35:16: Johannes Schartau: something, then it just means they're drifting further away.

00:35:19: Johannes Schartau: And it seems like you've also noticed this or you're a fan of this.

00:35:24: Johannes Schartau: So is it correct that this doesn't mean that we can now finally work on

00:35:29: Johannes Schartau: our own all the time and we don't need those pesky human interactions

00:35:34: Johannes Schartau: anymore? What does that look like in the future, in your opinion?

00:35:38: Johannes Schartau: Is that something we should preserve, the human part, the human

00:35:41: Johannes Schartau: interaction?

00:35:41: Dave West: Oh, I mean, I have never been so adamantly opposed to

00:35:47: Dave West: something that the isolationist element.

00:35:50: Dave West: And it's for two reasons. One is because the allure and addiction of

00:35:55: Dave West: having that servant that just wants to serve you and wants to.

00:36:01: Dave West: And always at the end of every, because it's such a good marketing sales

00:36:06: Dave West: product, right? Because at the end of every response to a prompt, it

00:36:11: Dave West: tells you what it thinks you should do next.

00:36:14: Dave West: To do the next prompt and to spend that extra number of tokens.

00:36:21: Dave West: So I have never had a prompt that says, hey, you should book a meeting

00:36:25: Dave West: with Fred, Bob and Jim and talk about this and come back to me and we

00:36:29: Dave West: can transcribe the meeting. We can feed that back into it.

00:36:32: Dave West: Though that would actually be a good thing for it to say as well.

00:36:35: Dave West: But I haven't personally had that. So I think there's number one is the

00:36:38: Dave West: allure. The other problem I've got is the quality of the artifacts that

00:36:43: Dave West: it creates don't encourage you to poke holes in them.

00:36:48: Dave West: They're so damn good. I was talking to Dr.

00:36:53: Dave West: Alan Brown, who I've worked with for a long time.

00:36:56: Dave West: And he's doing a lot of work in the UK on large organizations and the

00:37:00: Dave West: government, House of Lords. He works with those guys and the use of AI

00:37:05: Dave West: and public policy and sovereign stuff and stuff like that.

00:37:07: Dave West: And we went back and forth about, we were debating something.

00:37:11: Dave West: And Alan went and built a website to sort of illustrate, it

00:37:17: Dave West: was about measurement and how do you measure AI.

00:37:20: Dave West: So he built this assessment website, which was fabulous.

00:37:25: Dave West: But ultimately, after we've been playing with it for a long time, I sort

00:37:29: Dave West: of questioned, I was like, hang on a minute. I think it's wrong.

00:37:33: Dave West: But it felt so lovely that it was really hard to say that.

00:37:39: Dave West: And Alan said, yeah, I think you're right, mate.

00:37:43: Dave West: But we'd wasted so much time on a total rabbit hole

00:37:49: Dave West: because it looks so pretty. So it discourages sort of feedback.

00:37:54: Dave West: So those two elements, I think, are really dangerous.

00:37:57: Dave West: But the other thing that's really dangerous as well is how organizations

00:38:00: Dave West: are perceiving. I wrote on LinkedIn, I posted something and somebody

00:38:06: Dave West: said, you're wrong. And in a nice way, it wasn't, he wasn't being nasty

00:38:10: Dave West: or anything. The future is single generalist product people,

00:38:16: Dave West: basically one person, bunch of agents.

00:38:19: Dave West: That's all we're ever going to need. And I was like, so saddened by that

00:38:24: Dave West: because the most important things that I've ever done haven't

00:38:30: Dave West: been alone. I'll be honest. You know, kids, obviously notwithstanding,

00:38:35: Dave West: we don't need to go down there. But you can't, you, it's about that

00:38:41: Dave West: bouncing that idea. Like I say, I believe that the sprint currently

00:38:45: Dave West: tries to do two things, I think in AI.

00:38:47: Dave West: And you say, by golly, that's rubbish, Westie.

00:38:52: Dave West: You're barking mad. And also, isn't the interesting bit the interaction

00:38:56: Dave West: of those two things? And I say, well, is it possible that we can

00:39:00: Dave West: actually explicitly describe those things in a more transparent way?

00:39:04: Dave West: You know, and we riff on it. And maybe AI is in the riff as well.

00:39:09: Dave West: I've actually been experimenting with that, where it's listening and

00:39:15: Dave West: providing feedback. Particularly GrokBot does that, which

00:39:21: Dave West: is interesting. But I think that humans need other humans, both

00:39:27: Dave West: from just a human perspective, from being alive perspective,

00:39:33: Dave West: but also to deliver better solutions. I think that that challenging

00:39:37: Dave West: point of view. And, but it does require us, though, to not be

00:39:43: Dave West: hoodwinked. Sometimes I feel that AI is a bit like, you know, those

00:39:48: Dave West: really good consultants from the big consultancy companies that wear,

00:39:53: Dave West: that are always attractive and wear fabulous suits or outfits.

00:39:56: Dave West: Now it's, you know, it's business casual, but you can tell.

00:40:02: Dave West: And you have conversations with them that feels incredibly rewarding.

00:40:06: Dave West: And then at the end, when somebody says to you, oh, so what was the

00:40:10: Dave West: outcome from that? You're like, oh, I don't really know.

00:40:14: Dave West: No. It felt good.

00:40:17: Dave West: But I don't. And they're very smart.

00:40:20: Dave West: And they understand the problem. But I don't feel like we're actually

00:40:24: Dave West: making any real progress in the cold light of day.

00:40:28: Dave West: If sometimes it feels like that. I don't know.

00:40:30: Dave West: Maybe you don't feel that. Sometimes I feel that.

00:40:33: Johannes Schartau: Oh, I've been there before. What I really liked about you is that you

00:40:36: Johannes Schartau: brought outside influence into the Scrum ecosystem.

00:40:39: Johannes Schartau: So you integrated Lean UX and then you co-create Nexus and you brought

00:40:44: Johannes Schartau: Kanban in. And then also you were talking about the product operating

00:40:49: Johannes Schartau: model. Now I'm curious, when we talk about the future of organizations

00:40:54: Johannes Schartau: and AI as an influence, what do you envision a company in the future is

00:40:59: Johannes Schartau: going to look like? Is that a combination of these things?

00:41:01: Johannes Schartau: Or is there anything else that needs to be added?

00:41:03: Johannes Schartau: Or like if you just had to let your fantasy run wild, what do you see in

00:41:08: Johannes Schartau: the future?

00:41:08: Dave West: I think that the UX, like design thinking, Lean UX,

00:41:15: Dave West: all of that stuff, you know, the truth curve, all of the work, you know,

00:41:19: Dave West: for Jeff and Josh and others in that community of really is incredibly

00:41:23: Dave West: powerful and valuable. And it's certainly going to be something that

00:41:26: Dave West: we're going to have to double down on and maybe teach more people it.

00:41:29: Dave West: And when I say teach, I don't quite know what learning is going to look

00:41:33: Dave West: like in this future world. And I'm very grateful not to be the CEO of

00:41:38: Dave West: Scrum.org to worry about that anymore because that is hard.

00:41:42: Dave West: And I, you know, and having two children at the moment, seeing how they

00:41:46: Dave West: learn is changing dynamically. But I do think that that sort of design

00:41:51: Dave West: stuff is definitely going to be crucial. I think flow metrics are going

00:41:54: Dave West: to be incredibly important, more so to provide us with the ability to

00:42:00: Dave West: critically look at our workflows and with which agents are an active

00:42:05: Dave West: part of and where the bottlenecks really, really are.

00:42:07: Dave West: I think things like EBM, I think that we've had a really hard time

00:42:12: Dave West: encouraging people to think about, are going to become more

00:42:18: Dave West: valuable for everybody, particularly when you look at current value and

00:42:24: Dave West: unrealized value.

00:42:26: Dave West: You know, using that to frame when you're looking at the work you're

00:42:30: Dave West: doing and the backlog and the items around that is going

00:42:36: Dave West: to be crucial. And I think the two metrics of innovation and cycle time,

00:42:42: Dave West: well, that they're more than two metrics. So the key value areas that

00:42:46: Dave West: can relate to multiple metrics are going to be really, really important

00:42:50: Dave West: as well. I think that there's

00:42:55: Dave West: going to be some old fashioned skills coming back, like really think I

00:43:01: Dave West: have to say things like UML and things like that, I think are going to

00:43:04: Dave West: come back. It might not be UML, but something like that, because trying

00:43:09: Dave West: to understand the, you know, 100,000 lines of code and not be a

00:43:14: Dave West: bottleneck to releasing it requires abstractions and

00:43:20: Dave West: visualizations that I think most engineers haven't really got at their

00:43:24: Dave West: disposal today. Like a finite state machine would be a fabulous way of

00:43:29: Dave West: expressing, you know, the states a system goes through to see

00:43:35: Dave West: if there's problems with that system and to make that very visible.

00:43:38: Dave West: That would be an example or a structure diagram or even a class model

00:43:44: Dave West: and looking at dependence. You know, I think that's a skill that I know

00:43:47: Dave West: I wrote a book back in the day on it and was heavily involved with RUP

00:43:53: Dave West: making that part of the standard.

00:43:56: Dave West: But I do think that that's going to be a skill we're going to have to

00:43:59: Dave West: attribute and get better at as we build these systems and more people

00:44:04: Dave West: are going to have. So, because imagine providing that.

00:44:09: Dave West: So we had a great example when we were looking at.

00:44:12: Dave West: So we built we use this thing called BigQuery, Google BigQuery at scrum

00:44:16: Dave West: .org to effectively bring together disparate data to allow Claude to

00:44:21: Dave West: make intelligent answers to questions like who buys a PSM one

00:44:27: Dave West: and where do they get stuck in the process? You know, things like that.

00:44:30: Dave West: What we found very quickly was the actual Claude would respond and tell

00:44:35: Dave West: you something and we'd go, well, no, I've got the data here.

00:44:38: Dave West: That's not the case. And the reason why is because Claude was running to

00:44:41: Dave West: a different state model than I was.

00:44:44: Dave West: So when it said a customer that it was like, oh, bought it, not taken

00:44:49: Dave West: it, taken it, you know, failed it, failed it, taken it again.

00:44:54: Dave West: And then it had a different I don't think it even had a model, but it

00:44:58: Dave West: had made some decisions because it's a prediction engine.

00:45:01: Dave West: Right. That I hadn't made.

00:45:03: Dave West: And so it fixed it by saying, here's what I think a customer's life

00:45:09: Dave West: cycle is expressed as a finite state machine.

00:45:12: Dave West: It went, oh, my gosh, that's so much easier now.

00:45:14: Dave West: It didn't say, oh, my gosh, but I could feel it saying, oh, my gosh.

00:45:18: Dave West: And it then did it. And the numbers were the same.

00:45:20: Dave West: And I'm like, yes, I am a genius.

00:45:24: Dave West: And by the way, I used Claude to help build that. I didn't build it on

00:45:27: Dave West: my own. But I think that's going to be a skill that we're going to have

00:45:30: Dave West: to build a lot more. You know, and I think understanding customers, I

00:45:35: Dave West: think understanding data, understanding what things mean.

00:45:39: Dave West: Data is going to become a lot more important to everybody.

00:45:43: Dave West: And, you know, so I think there's a lot more things to do and

00:45:49: Dave West: a lot more skills that we as generalists, which I think everybody's

00:45:54: Dave West: going to become more generalist, are going to have to sort of pick up

00:45:57: Dave West: along the way to ask more intelligent questions of our AI and of our

00:46:02: Dave West: agents.

00:46:03: Johannes Schartau: What are some other things you're curious about at the moment?

00:46:06: Johannes Schartau: What are some questions you're asking? What are you learning at the

00:46:10: Johannes Schartau: moment?

00:46:11: Dave West: I'm really interested. So there's two sort of separate blocks.

00:46:15: Dave West: One area is around the technology itself.

00:46:19: Dave West: And I'm really concerned that I didn't realize that context

00:46:25: Dave West: is there's no state.

00:46:28: Dave West: Even if you're running, you've got your own instance of running Claude,

00:46:32: Dave West: et cetera, that state is not a property that's held on

00:46:38: Dave West: the server. It's passed every time.

00:46:42: Dave West: It's stateless. And I didn't realize that until recently.

00:46:45: Dave West: And that basically means that it's an exponential use of compute every

00:46:50: Dave West: time and also bandwidth and all sorts of stuff.

00:46:53: Dave West: And my context is getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.

00:46:58: Dave West: So I'm really concerned that at a certain point we're going to see the

00:47:05: Dave West: harnesses become more important and the engine around the

00:47:10: Dave West: model become more important than the actual model.

00:47:13: Dave West: And innovation is going to be quite interesting around that.

00:47:19: Dave West: So I'm really interested to see where everything goes with respect to

00:47:22: Dave West: the technology. So that's what I'm very curious about and spending a

00:47:25: Dave West: great deal of time focused on that. The other thing that I'm because it

00:47:28: Dave West: has huge implications to the sort of the exponential growth of usage and

00:47:34: Dave West: impacts on that. And also there's obviously the thread as well about

00:47:38: Dave West: pricing. And the fact at the moment is we've got, you know, the sweet

00:47:42: Dave West: monster giving out candy like it's, you know, and there's just no way

00:47:47: Dave West: the economics of that are going to work. So that's going to have a huge

00:47:50: Dave West: impact on the systems.

00:47:53: Dave West: The other thing that I'm really interested in is on more of a sort of

00:47:56: Dave West: organizational element is are companies willing to change, to take

00:48:01: Dave West: advantage of technology? Experience would indicate with all other

00:48:05: Dave West: technology changes, whether it be client server, whether it be objects,

00:48:10: Dave West: whether it be, you know, sort of like the move to 3G and, you know, all

00:48:15: Dave West: of that sort of. We've seen these massive technology, the Internet, you

00:48:19: Dave West: know, the access to the customer, all of this stuff hasn't changed how

00:48:23: Dave West: companies want to align. And the biggest issue is the separation of

00:48:28: Dave West: business and technology, that it continues to be every company I go to,

00:48:34: Dave West: large company that isn't a technology company, that that separation is

00:48:38: Dave West: still very evident. And it is even more so than it was probably, you

00:48:44: Dave West: know, 40 years ago, it actually wasn't as evident because we had less

00:48:48: Dave West: technology and it was sprinkled in. And there's been moments where the

00:48:51: Dave West: technology has moved for deployed engineering is obviously encouraging

00:48:54: Dave West: certain things around that. But then it all goes back, you know.

00:48:58: Dave West: So I'm very interested to see how if organizations really are willing to

00:49:04: Dave West: change how they're organized to take advantage of this new technology.

00:49:08: Dave West: And does that mean that everybody's going to have to become more agile

00:49:13: Dave West: as we think about it?

00:49:16: Dave West: And what does that mean at a sort of enterprise level?

00:49:20: Dave West: I think that is it could be it could be an amazing moment in the agile

00:49:25: Dave West: movements, even though it's probably not going to be called agile, it's

00:49:28: Dave West: going to be called something else. It could be an amazing moment or it

00:49:32: Dave West: could be just exactly the same as it always is.

00:49:36: Dave West: Technology stovepiped into, you know, two different organizations trying

00:49:40: Dave West: to use technology in different ways with no connection between the two.

00:49:44: Johannes Schartau: Where should people go to follow what you do next?

00:49:47: Dave West: So find me on LinkedIn.

00:49:49: Dave West: There might be an announcement this week about other ways of working

00:49:54: Dave West: with me. But I'm really, you know, without the weight

00:50:01: Dave West: of running an organization of Scrum.org, I am now being free to

00:50:07: Dave West: really explore this a lot more with everybody.

00:50:11: Dave West: So don't be don't be shy. Ping me on LinkedIn and let's have a

00:50:16: Dave West: conversation about this as an opportunity, I think, to to really

00:50:22: Dave West: start changing the world even more than we have already.

00:50:25: Dave West: And I really break down some of these stovepipes and doing it in a kind

00:50:29: Dave West: and inclusive way that that doesn't take itself too seriously as well.

00:50:34: Johannes Schartau: Dave, thank you so much for your time.

00:50:37: Dave West: Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

00:50:39: Johannes Schartau: I hope this session has given you some concrete ideas for your own

00:50:43: Johannes Schartau: transformation challenges. At Holisticon, we provide companies with

00:50:46: Johannes Schartau: holistic support from strategy and technology to organizational change.

00:50:50: Johannes Schartau: If this sounds interesting, please feel free to contact us.

00:50:53: Johannes Schartau: You can find all the information you need at holisticon.de.

00:50:56: Johannes Schartau: And don't miss our next Transform Together session.

00:50:59: Johannes Schartau: I'll see you then.