Scrum.org Community Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Leading with Imperfect Feet: Dave Dame on Leadership, Inclusive Design and Embracing Mistakes May 14, 2026

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In this episode of the Scrum.org Community podcast, Dave West sits down with Dave Dame, Senior Director of Human-Centered Design at Microsoft, to explore the lessons behind his new book, “Leading with Imperfect Feet.”
Dame shares his journey of leadership through the lens of imperfection, emphasizing the value of vulnerability, humility, and learning from mistakes. Drawing on personal experiences, including overcoming the challenges of Cerebral Palsy to walk on the beach, he illustrates how embracing imperfection can empower leaders and their teams.
The conversation dives deep into inclusive design, human factors, cognitive science, and user research, showing how thoughtful, human-centered approaches create better products and more effective teams. Dame discusses how organizations can balance efficiency with creativity and human connection, and why continuous learning and adaptive leadership are essential in today’s fast-changing work environment.
Whether you’re a product leader, designer, or someone striving to lead with empathy, this episode offers practical insights and inspiring stories on how embracing imperfection can drive innovation, inclusivity, and authentic leadership.
Leading with Imperfect Feet is now available for pre-order and will be published in June!

Making AI Work: Value, Risk, and Trust in the Age of Intelligent Systems Apr 30, 2026

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What does it really take to make AI work, not just technically, but organizationally?

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, host Dave West sits down with Dr. Alan Brown, researcher, advisor, and author of the new book Making AI Work for Britain, to explore the complex realities of AI adoption in large organizations and government.

Drawing on decades of experience in enterprise digital transformation from Rational Software to IBM to advising public sector institutions, Alan unpacks why AI is both an evolutionary step and a fundamental disruption, and why most organizations are struggling to bridge the gap between technological capability and organizational readiness.

Alan and Dave explore how lessons from the UK's digital government journey of consolidating demand, diversifying supply, offer a practical lens for every team navigating AI adoption today. They also dig into three principles Alan believes are at the heart of any disciplined approach to AI: value, risk, and trust and why that last one might be the most transformative idea yet for Scrum Teams.
Whether you're a Scrum Master, Product Owner, or senior leader trying to make sense of AI in your organization, this conversation offers a grounded, thought-provoking framework for moving from pilot chaos to purposeful delivery.

Book details can be found at https://futureofai.uk/

Blog: Making AI Work: What Scrum Gets Right and Organizations Get Wrong

Agile Beyond the Enterprise: Coaching the Businesses Next Door with Marina Alex Apr 16, 2026

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Most Agile coaches build their careers inside large organizations — but what happens when a new opportunity calls from an unexpected direction? Scrum.org CEO, Dave West, sits down with Marina Alex, an AI & modern management expert and Founder of The SWAY Academy, who answered that call. After the enterprise market shifted in 2022, Marina pivoted her practice toward small and medium-sized businesses in Knoxville, Tennessee — and discovered what she describes as a blue ocean: many companies that have never heard of a Sprint, but are ready for one.

Along the way, Marina found that AI has become a natural entry point into these conversations. With most small businesses neither tech-heavy nor equipped with an IT department, the excitement and anxiety around AI opens the door to deeper work around team culture, structure, and customer focus. Rather than leading with frameworks, she leads with outcomes — helping business owners understand that strong teams and clear processes are what make any new technology actually stick.

Marina walks Dave through the mindset shifts, networking strategies, and practical adaptations — from one-week Sprints to sticky-note Retrospectives — that have allowed her to build a thriving practice doing work she loves, serving the local business communities that need her most.

Free Guide from Sway Systems with tips to find new clients

Connect with Marina

Is AI Actually Making Your Team Better? Q&A Episode 4 Apr 02, 2026

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In this episode, Eric Naiburg and Darrell Fernandes of Scrum.org tackle a pressing question: How do you measure the impact of AI on your team? from a recent webinar focused on AI as a teammate.

They explore how AI’s role differs across organizations—from ideation and analysis to stakeholder engagement—and why its productivity gains are still evolving. The conversation highlights the importance of combining qualitative insights with quantitative metrics, including flow-based measures like velocity, to assess real impact.

They also discuss the growing responsibility of hiring managers to define AI roles clearly, set expectations, and ensure AI contributes value without disrupting team dynamics. Plus, they share how AI itself can be leveraged to help define roles, recommend metrics, and improve performance measurement.

Beyond the Code: Vibe Coding, AI Agents, and Scaling Autonomy with Tomasz Maj of Odevo Mar 26, 2026

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In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Dave West sits down with Tomasz Maj, Head of Product Ops at Odevo, to explore how a rapidly growing property management giant is navigating the AI revolution. Odevo faces a unique challenge: managing a massive, diverse portfolio across the northern hemisphere while balancing centralized scale with local autonomy.
Tomasz pulls back the curtain on "vibe coding"—the democratization of development that allows non-technical staff to build functional tools—and how Odevo balances this "wild west" of innovation with rigorous security and GitHub-backed governance.
Key topics include:

The Operating Model of Diversity: Why Odevo chooses not to have a single "master platform" and how that fuels speed.
Vibe Coding in the Wild: How accountants and maintenance teams are using AI to solve their own data problems.
The 5-Step AI Engineer: Inside Odevo’s comprehensive training program, from prompting to agentic development.
Governance vs. Innovation: How to implement "Module Zero" (legal, GDPR, and security) without killing the creative spirit.

AI on Scrum Teams: Context, Consistency, and Collaboration - Q&A Part 3 Mar 12, 2026

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In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Eric Naiburg, COO at Scrum.org and Darrell Fernandes, Executive Advisor at Scrum.org continue to dive into how to make AI a true teammate in product development while answering questions from a recent webinar on the topic. They explore the importance of creating a context library to store domain-specific knowledge, enabling AI to provide accurate, efficient answers. Learn how consistent definitions, thoughtful prompt engineering, and regular updates to your AI context can improve team collaboration, reduce costs, and empower Scrum Masters to guide effective AI usage.

Ask a PST - Leveraging AI to be a More Effective Scrum Master Mar 06, 2026

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If you are a Scrum Master, Agile Coach or in a related role and have questions about how to use AI as a tool to better support your job, teams and organization, this episode is for you!

AI has become a core capability in product delivery and is transforming every role. Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches have a key part to play in the use of AI and introducing AI to teams, products and organizations, acting as a catalyst for change. Through the proper use of AI tools, Scrum Masters, their teams and organization become more effective. But in what ways can you reap the benefits?

In this Ask a PST session hosted by Patricia Kong, PSTs Miriam Blommers and Said Azarfane took listener questions on how to leverage AI to be more successful as a Scrum Master! Whether you are looking to find ways to improve facilitation, collaboration or solve more challenges, get great advice in this episode on how to make AI a helpful and important part of your toolbox!

The 10x Organization: Redesigning for the AI Era with Org Topologies Feb 26, 2026

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In this episode, host Dave West sits down with Alexey Krivitsky and Roland Flemm to explore a systemic approach to enterprise agility and performance. As organizations scramble to integrate AI, many are finding that their current structures—riddled with silos, handoffs, and conflicting mandates—are simply not "fit for purpose".

The authors of the new book they co-authored with Craig Larman, 10x Org Powered by Org Topologies, argue that to stay relevant in an AI-driven landscape, companies need a 10x improvement in adaptability and learning. They introduce Org Topologies (OT): a framework-agnostic method that uses mapping and assessment to make hidden organizational challenges transparent.

In this episode, we discuss:

The 10x Performance Leap: Why organizations must reshape their structures before rolling out AI capabilities to avoid amplifying global inefficiencies.
OT Mapping: How to visualize value flows and dependencies to create a shared language for improvement.
The Mandate Problem: Understanding how organizational mandates impact team autonomy and the speed of delivery.
Beyond Scaling Frameworks: Why Org Topologies is unique in its ability to map and improve any existing framework, from SAFe to LeSS.
Practical Experimentation: How to start small with "change experiments" in tribes or release trains to test adaptive practices.

Whether you are a leader navigating a complex digital transformation or a manager looking for a shared language to align your teams, this conversation provides a roadmap for elevating your organization’s performance through systemic design.

The Company as a Product: Applying APOM to the Organizational Capabilities at Dyno Therapeutics Feb 19, 2026

Show notes

This episode is a must-listen for COOs, Agile Coaches, and Business Leaders who want to bridge the gap between "technical agility" and "business agility."

When startups grow, they often bring in "responsible adults" who implement traditional playbooks in Finance, HR, and Legal. While well-intentioned, these silos often create a "factory mindset" that undermines the very agility that made the company successful.
In this episode, Dave West is joined by Tyson Bertmaring, VP Partnership Success at Dyno Therapeutics and Yuval Yeret, Professional Scrum Trainer, to discuss how Dyno Therapeutics is taking a different path. By applying the Agile Product Operating Model (APOM) to General & Administrative (G&A) functions, Dyno is treating its organizational capabilities as a product to be engineered, not a hierarchy to be managed.
What you’ll learn:

The Stewardship Mindset: Moving from local optimization (like chasing $10k in interest income) to systemic value (ensuring vendor reliability).
The "Two Jobs" Challenge: Balancing "running the business" with "building a better system."
G&A as a Service: Identifying essential services—like talent acquisition and contracting—and developing them into exceptional "internal products."
More!

Subscribe to the Professional Scrum Unlocked Substack for more insights on this episode and others!

Scrum, AI, and the Real Costs: Q&A (Part 2) Feb 12, 2026

Show notes

In Part 2 of this Q&A series stemming from questions in the webinar, Managing Your AI Teammate, Eric Naiburg continues the conversation with Darrell Fernandes, diving deeper into how AI is reshaping the way Scrum Teams work.

Together, they explore practical applications of AI in Scrum — from drafting and refining user stories to strengthening Definitions of Done and improving Gherkin statements. Darrell shares how AI can help teams create clearer, more consistent, and testable backlog items, while also warning against over-reliance.

Eric and Darrell examine AI’s impact on team dynamics, including how meeting-recording tools can summarize conversations, capture action items, and support retrospectives. They also address the human side of adoption: differing mental models, fear of change, and the critical role Scrum Masters play as enablers — not gatekeepers — of AI experimentation.

Finally, they tackle a topic many teams overlook: total cost of ownership. As AI capabilities expand, Product Owners must understand infrastructure, data, and operational costs to avoid unintended financial consequences.

If you're navigating how to thoughtfully integrate AI into your Scrum Team — balancing opportunity, risk, and cost — this episode offers practical insights and grounded guidance.

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