Agile Mentors Podcast from Mountain Goat Software

Retrospectives are supposed to help teams improve, but for many teams they slowly become rushed, repetitive, or skipped altogether. In this episode, Brian Milner and Cort Sharp unpack why retrospectives lose their value and what Scrum Masters and leaders can do to make them useful again.

 

Overview

When a team stops engaging in retrospectives, it is usually a symptom of something deeper. Sometimes the format has become stale. Sometimes the team no longer feels safe being honest. And sometimes the biggest issue is that retrospectives create plenty of discussion but very little meaningful change.

In this conversation, Brian and Cort explore the most common reasons retrospectives begin to fail and how teams can rebuild trust in the process. They discuss the importance of psychological safety, why teams should focus on fewer actions instead of trying to fix everything at once, and how Scrum Masters can better tailor retrospectives to the personalities and working styles of their teams. They also share practical ideas for making retrospectives more engaging, more actionable, and more valuable over time.

 

References and resources mentioned in the show:

Cort Sharp
Amy Edmonson, Psychological Safety
#139: The Retrospective Reset with Cort Sharp
#141: Cooking Up a Killer Retrospective with Brian Milner
The Empirical Retrospective Approach by Mike Cohn
Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast

 

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This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input.

Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one.

Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at [email protected]

This episode’s presenters are:

Brian Milner is a Certified Scrum Trainer®, Certified Scrum Professional®, Certified ScrumMaster®, and Certified Scrum Product Owner®, and host of the Agile Mentors Podcast training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work.

Cort Sharp is the Scrum Master of the producing team and the Agile Mentors Community Manager. In addition to his love for Agile, Cort is also a serious swimmer and has been coaching swimmers for five years.

A lot of organizations say they’ve “gone Agile,” but still struggle with missed deadlines, unclear priorities, and teams that feel busy without delivering better outcomes. In this episode, Scott Dunn joins Brian Milner to unpack why Agile ROI is so often misunderstood and what leaders should actually be measuring instead. 

 

Overview

What does a successful Agile transformation actually look like? Too often, organizations adopt Scrum or Agile practices because everyone else is doing it, without first defining the business outcomes they hope to achieve. The result is predictable: teams follow the motions of Agile while leadership struggles to see measurable value.

In this conversation, Brian Milner and Scott Dunn explore why ROI conversations around Agile frequently go off track and how leaders can reconnect Agile practices to meaningful business goals like faster delivery, improved customer satisfaction, stronger collaboration, and better adaptability. They discuss the hidden cost of operationalizing Agile too early, why coaching and leadership alignment still matter, and how the rise of AI makes strong Agile fundamentals more important, not less.

 

References and resources mentioned in the show:

Scott Dunn
#104: Mastering Product Ownership with Mike Cohn
#132: Can Nice Guys Finish First? with Scott Dunn
Do the Proven Benefits of Agile Training Justify the Costs? by Mike Cohn
Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast

 

Want to get involved?

This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input.

Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one.

Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at [email protected]

This episode’s presenters are:

Brian Milner is a Certified Scrum Trainer®, Certified Scrum Professional®, Certified ScrumMaster®, and Certified Scrum Product Owner®, and host of the Agile Mentors Podcast training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work.

Scott Dunn is a Certified Enterprise Coach and Scrum Trainer with over 20 years of experience coaching and training companies like NASA, EMC/Dell Technologies, Yahoo!, Technicolor, and eBay to transition to an agile approach using Scrum.

Many leaders assume Agile breaks down in highly regulated environments. John Holmes has spent years proving the opposite inside aerospace, defense, and space programs where the cost of failure is extremely high.

 

Overview

 

In this episode, Brian Milner talks with Scrum Inc. Fellow John Holmes about what it actually takes to apply Scrum in complex defense and aerospace organizations. From military programs to space systems, John explains why Agile is often less about moving faster and more about creating visibility, improving communication, and reducing the risk of major surprises late in delivery.

 

John also shares practical lessons from coaching teams inside highly disciplined environments where command-and-control leadership has traditionally dominated. The conversation explores how Agile can strengthen discipline rather than weaken it, why trust and training matter more than process compliance, and how small operational changes can create meaningful improvements in delivery, alignment, and team effectiveness.

 

References and resources mentioned in the show:

 

John Holmes
#107: Transforming Organizational Mindsets with Bernie Maloney
#108: Adaptive Organizations with Ken Rickard
There Is No End State When Transitioning to Agile by Mike Cohn
Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast

 

Want to get involved?

This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input.

Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one.

Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at [email protected]

This episode’s presenters are:

Brian Milner is a Certified Scrum Trainer®, Certified Scrum Professional®, Certified ScrumMaster®, and Certified Scrum Product Owner®, and host of the Agile Mentors Podcast training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work.

John Holmes is a Scrum Inc. Fellow who has spent decades helping aerospace, defense, and government organizations apply Agile and Scrum in some of the world’s most complex environments. From launching Scrum for Space at Lockheed Martin to training thousands of leaders and teams since 2005, John brings a practical, field-tested perspective on what it really takes to make Agile work where the stakes are high.

AI can help product owners move faster, but faster is not always better. In this episode, Lance Dacy and Brian Milner explore where AI genuinely improves product work and where teams still need strong judgment, clear priorities, and real customer understanding.

 

Overview

 

As development teams adopt AI tools at a rapid pace, product owners are under pressure to keep up. Brian and Lance discuss how AI is already changing backlog refinement, product discovery, stakeholder communication, and day-to-day product work. They also explore why many teams are still using AI too narrowly and missing larger opportunities to improve decision-making and collaboration.

 

The conversation stays grounded in practical application rather than hype. Lance shares where AI can save product owners meaningful time, where human judgment still matters most, and why teams need to be careful about treating AI-generated output as automatically correct. If your team is trying to understand how AI fits into modern product leadership, this episode offers a realistic starting point.

 

References and resources mentioned in the show:

 

Lance Dacy
#117: How AI and Automation Are Redefining Success for Developers with Lance Dacy
#164: Why Innovation Efforts Fall Flat with Tendayi Viki
AI Doesn’t Eliminate Agile Teams — It Increases the Need for Great Ones by Mike Cohn
Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast

 

Want to get involved?

This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input.

Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one.

Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at [email protected]

This episode’s presenters are:

Brian Milner is a Certified Scrum Trainer®, Certified Scrum Professional®, Certified ScrumMaster®, and Certified Scrum Product Owner®, and host of the Agile Mentors Podcast training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work.

Lance Dacy is a Certified Scrum Trainer®, Certified Scrum Professional®, Certified ScrumMaster®, and Certified Scrum Product Owner®. Lance brings a great personality and servant's heart to his workshops. He loves seeing people walk away with tangible and practical things they can do with their teams straight away.

In a world changing faster than most teams can keep up with, standing still may be the biggest risk of all. Brian Milner sits down with Stavros Stavru to explore why experimentation is no longer optional and how teams can build a culture that adapts before disruption forces it to.

 

Overview

Many organizations say they value experimentation, but few create the conditions that make real experimentation possible. Too often, teams either stay trapped in familiar patterns or mistake random change for meaningful learning.

In this episode, Brian Milner talks with Stavros Stavru, author of Never Stop Experimenting, about what experimentation actually looks like in practice. Stavros shares how rapid advances in AI and constant disruption are forcing teams to rethink how they learn, adapt, and improve. Together, they discuss the difference between experimentation and “experimentation theater,” why small experiments matter, and how leaders can model the kind of curiosity and adaptability they want their teams to develop.

Stavros also shares practical examples from his book, including simple ways teams can test assumptions, gather more honest feedback, and create stronger learning loops in their day-to-day work.

 

References and resources mentioned in the show:

Stavros Stavru
Never Stop Experimenting by Stavros Stavru, Ph.D.
#56: The Power of Experimentation
#118: The Secrets to Agile Success with Mike Cohn

When Do Agile Teams Make Time for Innovation? By Mike Cohn
Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast

 

Want to get involved?

This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input.

Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one.

Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at [email protected]

This episode’s presenters are:

Brian Milner is a Certified Scrum Trainer®, Certified Scrum Professional®, Certified ScrumMaster®, and Certified Scrum Product Owner®, and host of the Agile Mentors Podcast training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work.

Stavros Stavru is an organizational transformation researcher and Agile practitioner whose work focuses on helping teams create lasting alignment instead of temporary improvement. After two decades working with thousands of professionals across 500+ organizations, he founded AhaPlay to turn strategy and behavioral science into measurable team alignment without relying on facilitators.