Shows
Agents UnleashedFacilitation: Let AI take care of the mundane so you can bring the magic!f an AI can transcribe your meetings, auto-generate decision logs, summarize next steps, and even detect dissent in real time—why would anyone pay for a human facilitator whose value used to be scribing and timekeeping?
Ali Hajou anchors this exploration alongside Mark Richards and Stephan Neck, and Mark's visceral reaction to the question sets the tone: "If you think back to when you've had a magical experience with a facilitator... I'll guarantee it was not the fact that they were a scribe or a timekeeper." The magic was never the mechanics. It was holding space, sensing wh...
2026-01-1956 minAgents UnleashedValue Streams - The Tool AI Experts Don't Know They Need"I have never heard a single AI thought leader stand on a stage and say the words value stream." Mark's observation cuts to the heart of a strange disconnect: while AI dominates every conversation, the people building AI futures don't seem to know about one of Lean's most powerful tools—and the people who do know aren't connecting their expertise to AI possibilities.
Mark anchors this exploration with Stephan and Niko, asking why value stream thinking might be more relevant in an AI-disrupted world, not less. Niko identifies a split in the AI conversation: personal productivity (prompting, to...
2026-01-121h 01Agents UnleashedCoaching in the Age of AI: Trust, Tools, and What Remains Human"Coaching in the age of AI" sounds straightforward—until you ask what it actually means. Niko asked AI and got 20 different interpretations. Are we coaching leaders to use AI? Coaching AI systems themselves? Being replaced by AI coaches? Leveraging AI to become better coaches? The answer is yes to all of them—and therein lies the problem.
Niko anchors a conversation that refuses to pretend coaching will stay the same. Joining him are Mark, who's discovered his 15 years of coaching skills are more valuable in the AI world, not less, and Ali, bringing his characteristic skepticism about what...
2026-01-0557 minAgents UnleashedWill AI Replace the Trainer—Or Just the PowerPoint?Three trainers who've collectively spent thousands of days in the room—physical and virtual—sit with a question that's been nagging at them: what happens to training when AI shows up?
Mark opens with a scenario. Your trainee texts you at 11pm, panicking before their first PI Planning. You're asleep. They muddle through. But imagine they had an AI buddy from the course—one that knew the context and answered instantly. Relief that they got help? Or quiet terror that you just became optional?
The conversation moves through what AI might extend and what it might...
2025-12-291h 01Agents UnleashedSolution Intent in the Age of AIDoes AI make Solution Intent obsolete—or finally give it the living, breathing life it was always meant to have? Four practitioners who've never seen anyone "install" a solution intent explore whether AI creates dangerous rigidity or unprecedented opportunity.
Stephan anchors a conversation that begins with confession: Ali has rarely seen solution intent used as intended. Mark reframes it entirely—not as something to install, but as "a map, a mesh, and a mindset." Niko brings his alternative name: "product memory"—the bus factor savior. Together they navigate Stephan's opening paradox: AI can accelerate solution intent's creation while...
2025-12-261h 00Agents UnleashedAI and Agile Teams: Amplifying Excellence or Broadcasting Waste?Ali anchors a conversation that digs into the gap between AI hype and agile reality. With statistics showing agile adoption everywhere, he challenges Mark, Stephan, and Niko to examine what's actually happening when AI meets daily practice. The question isn't whether practitioners are using AI—they clearly are. The question is whether that usage is making teams better or just making individuals busier feeling productive. For anyone who's watched team members disappear into AI-assisted solo work, this conversation hits close to home.
The Amplifier Paradox
Stephan brings his musician's eye: AI is like an amp...
2025-12-1359 minAgents UnleashedWhen the ground keeps moving: AI and the ArchitectIf you put "AI Architect" on your LinkedIn headline tomorrow, what would you actually have to know—or explain—to deserve it? And in a landscape where the ground shifts weekly, how do you make architectural decisions without drowning in technical debt or chasing every buzzword that appears in your YouTube ads?
Mark anchors a conversation with Stephan and Niko exploring what it means to be an architect when the tools, expectations, and pace of change have all shifted under your feet. All three confess their architect credentials are 10-15 years old—but they've spent those years in the...
2025-12-101h 00Agents UnleashedMechanical vs. Meaningful: What Kind of Product Manager Survives AIAre product managers training for a role AI will do better?
Stephan Neck anchors a conversation that doesn't pull punches: "We've built careers on the idea that product managers have special insight into customer needs—but what if AI just proved that most of our insights were educated guesses?" Joining him are Mark (seeing both empowerment and threat) and Niko (discovering AI hallucinations are getting scarily sophisticated).
This is the first in a series examining how AI disrupts specific roles. The question isn't whether AI affects product management—it's whether there's a version of the role...
2025-11-1358 minAgents UnleashedWho's Responsible When AI Decides? Navigating Ethics Without ParalysisWhat comes first in your mind when you hear "AI and ethics"?
For Mark, it's a conversation with his teenage son about driverless cars choosing who to hurt in an accident. For Stephan, it's data privacy and the question of whether we really have a choice about what we share. For Niko, it's the haunting question: when AI makes the decision, who's responsible?
Niko anchors a conversation that quickly moves from sci-fi thought experiments to the uncomfortable reality—ethical AI decisions are happening every few minutes in our lives, and we're barely prepared. Joining him ar...
2025-11-0858 minAgents UnleashedNavigating AI as a Leader Without Losing the Human Touch
“Use AI as a sparring partner, as a colleague, as a peer… ask it to take another perspective, take something you’re weak in, and have a dialog.” — Nikolaos Kaintantzis
In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, the crew tackles a pressing question: how should leaders navigate AI? Stephan Neck frames the challenge well. Leadership has always been about vision, adaptation, and stewardship, but the cockpit has changed. Today’s leaders face an environment of real-time coordination, predictive analytics, and autonomous systems.
Mark Richards, Ali Hajou, and Nikolaos (Niko) Kaintantzis share experiences and practical lessons. Their message is c...
2025-10-2759 minAgents UnleashedWhy AI Literacy Will Define the Future of Work
“We’ve been talking about agile at scale forever; now we’re talking about experts at scale.” — Ali Hajou
In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, hosts Ali Hajou, Mark Richards, and Stephan Neck explore how AI is transforming the skills practitioners need to thrive. The conversation moves beyond tools and techniques to examine mindsets, behaviors, and organizational patterns that separate the AI-literate from the AI-illiterate.
The parallels to Agile adoption are striking. Just as some engineers resisted continuous integration or test automation, today some professionals resist experimenting with AI. The difference? This wave is moving much faster...
2025-10-2048 minAgents UnleashedBuilding AI Into the DNA of the Organization
“What the heck am I doing here? I’m just automating a shitty process with AI… it should be differently, it should bring me new ideas.” — Nikolaos Kaintantzis
Building AI Into the DNA of the Organization
In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, the hosts contrast the sluggish pace of traditional enterprises with the urgency and adaptability of what they call “extreme AI organizations.” The discussion moves through vivid metaphors of camels and eagles, stories from client work, and reflections on why most enterprise AI initiatives fail. At its core, the episode emphasizes a fundamental choice: will organizatio...
2025-10-131h 01Agents UnleashedMastering AI Begins with Real Problems and Daily Experiments
“Learning AI isn’t just about acquiring a new skill… it’s about unlocking the power to fundamentally reshape how our organizations work.” – Stephan Neck
In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, the hosts — Stephan, Mark, and Niko — share their personal AI learning journeys and reflect on what it means for practitioners and leaders to engage with this fast-evolving space.
They emphasize that learning AI isn’t only about technical skills — it’s a shift in mindset. Curiosity, humility, and experimentation are essential. From late-night “AI holes” to backlog strategies for learning, the discussion highlights both the excitem...
2025-10-0657 minAgents UnleashedWhen AI Meets Card, Conversation and Confirmation
“If you're not thinking about an agent being a part of every conversation, something’s wrong with you.” – Mark Richards
Episode Summary
Season 3 of SPCs Unleashed opens with a subtle shift. While the podcast continues to serve the SAFe community, the crew is broadening the conversation to explore how AI is disrupting agile practices. In this kickoff, hosts Mark Richards, Niko Kaintantzis, Ali Hajou, and Stephan Neck take on a provocative question: what happens to user stories in a world of AI-generated prototypes, specs, and conversations?
The debate highlights tension between tradition and transformation. User stories hav...
2025-09-281h 02Agents UnleashedFrom ROAMing Risks to Managing Risk Posture
“At some point you’ve got to look at a set of risks and say, how do we feel about our overall stance?” — Mark Richards
In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, hosts Mark Richards, Niko Kaintantzis, and Stephan Neck unpack the complexity of risk management in SAFe. Too often, risk management is reduced to ROAMing during PI Planning. While useful, ROAMing is only a starting point. The discussion centers on the continuum — from identifying risks to shaping an organizational risk posture that balances ownership, experimentation, and resilience.
The hosts explore who owns risk, how unforeseen disruptions lik...
2025-09-2559 minAgents UnleashedSAFe for Hardware: Stories and Strategies from the Field
“We’re unable to build an entire component within just two weeks… so the question becomes: what can we verify at the end of a sprint? It’s about finding the shortest path to your next learning.” — Ali Hajou
In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, the hosts dive into the newly released SAFe for Hardware course and use it as a springboard to explore agility in hardware more broadly. Ali Hajou, joined by Mark Richards, Stephan Neck, and Niko Kaintantzis, reflects on how Agile principles—originally inspired by hardware product development—are now circling back into engineering conte...
2025-09-2559 minAgents UnleashedShifting Left on Audits“How do you make auditors happy? It’s in the built-in quality stuff… not being the headless chickens anymore, being pretty much relaxed if someone pushes the Audit button.” — Stephan Neck
In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, the crew tackles a topic many practitioners dread: audits. Too often, audits trigger a frantic rush to patch documentation and hide gaps—a fire drill of “headless chickens.” But as the hosts remind us, audits in a SAFe® context don’t have to be adversarial. Done well, they can accelerate transformation by embedding quality, transparency, and risk management into everyday ways of wo...
2025-09-2555 minAgents UnleashedFrom SPC to ASPC: Advancing Change Leadership with Confidence“Creating ASPC is… a career highlight, one of the most joyful things I've done.” — Cheryl Crupi
In this episode of *SPCs Unleashed*, the crew welcomes Cheryl Crupi from the SAFe Framework team to unpack the brand-new **Advanced SPC (ASPC) training**. While Cheryl joins as a friend rather than in an official role, her fingerprints are all over the course design. Together with Mark, Niko, and Stephan, she explores what “advanced” really means for SPCs, how the training was shaped by research with more than 1,000 practitioners, and why practice, mastery, and confidence-building are at its heart.
Actionab...
2025-09-2557 minAgents UnleashedWhy the Organizing Portfolios Toolkit Isn't Just Another Workshop“You’re making a big withdrawal from the transformation credit bank to get that many senior executives into a room for two days, aren’t you?” – Mark
Introduction
What justifies pulling senior leaders away for two days of portfolio work? In this episode, Mark, Ali, and Niko dig deep into the newly released Organizing Portfolios for Strategic Agility toolkit. The discussion is honest and pragmatic—tempered by real use, not just theory—but above all, it’s focused on how the toolkit can prompt meaningful insight and concrete movement inside organizations that rarely pause to re-examine their boundaries and a...
2025-06-0650 minAgents UnleashedWhat the State of SAFe Survey Actually Tells Us (and What it Doesn't)
“Information is crucial. If you use it the wrong way, it’s the wrong data—it will influence your actions in a drastic way.” —Stephan Neck
In this episode, the Unleashed crew—Mark Richards, Ali Hajou, Stephan Neck, and Nikolaos Kaintantzis—bring a practitioner’s lens to the latest State of SAFe survey. Instead of glossing over findings or defaulting to boosterism, they pull apart the data, the context, and the stories those numbers can (and can’t) tell. Ali keeps the conversation grounded, Niko brings fresh metaphors and questions, and Mark and Stephan bridge the gap between framework theory and lived experien...
2025-05-2653 minAgents UnleashedFrom Framework to Fieldwork: Making Sense of SAFe’s New Disciplines“The disciplines are about problem solving. They’re a way to navigate to knowledge… Different people love to find their knowledge different ways.” — Mark Richards
Introduction
SPCs Unleashed returns with a stepwise, hard-nosed look at the new Scaled Agile “disciplines” announced in Sorrento—an architectural shift intended to make the framework more usable, less dogmatic, and ultimately more valuable in the context of enterprise change. With Mark Richards guiding the connection points and Stephan Neck leading the inquiry, the team (joined by Nikolaos “Niko” Kaintantzis) explores what this modular reframe really means for practitioners and transformation leaders invested in real agi...
2025-05-2650 minAgents UnleashedDecouple, Contextualize, Evolve: A Sorrento Summit Debrief“Safe is evolving in small batches now—not just big bangs.” - Nikolaos Kaintantzis
Introduction
Niko moderates this debrief of the 2024 SAFe Summit in Sorrento—but it quickly becomes more than a recap. While only he and Ali attended in person, Stephan and Mark bring layered reflection from the sidelines. What begins as a highlight reel turns into a conversation about direction: not just where the framework is going, but how change agents are meant to meet it. What does it mean to decouple without diluting? How do we contextualize without fragment...
2025-05-0554 minAgents UnleashedValue Stream Mapping: When it Works, and Why it Fails“There are at least four different versions of a process: how managers believe it operates, how it's supposed to operate, how it really operates, and how it could operate.” —Mark Richards
Introduction
This episode begins with beach envy and ends with facilitation mastery. In between: a sharp, field-grounded discussion about Value Stream Mapping—its purpose, practice, and perils.
Ali, Stephan, and Mark trace their own learning curves, revisit facilitation misfires, and offer clear-eyed advice to SPCs who want more than “a map on the wall.” They’re not trying to convince anyone that Va...
2025-05-0249 minAgents UnleashedRunning a Smarter Value Stream and ART Identification workshop"Don't underestimate how much fear is in the room" - Ali Hajou
In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, Mark Richards, Stephan Neck, Ali Hajou, and Nikolaos Kaintantzis bring their collective experience to one of the most pivotal—and high-risk—moments in a SAFe transformation: the Value Stream and ART Identification Workshop.
Each voice brings a distinct perspective. Stephan sets the stage with a sharp metaphor and a focus on structure. Ali warns of the workshop’s destructive potential if rushed or misused. Nikolaos grounds the conversation in organizational reality and lon...
2025-04-251h 07Agents UnleashedThe software behind high-impact virtual workshops“Good flow is invisible, but it takes a lot of work to get there” - Nikolaos Kaintantzis
In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, Mark Richards, Ali Hajou, Nikolaos Kaintantzis, and Stephan Neck take you behind the scenes of their virtual facilitation setups. It’s a follow-up to their earlier hardware episode—but this time, the spotlight is on software: the tools, flows, and tweaks that help them deliver seamless, engaging remote workshops.
What emerges is less about specific apps and more about a mindset—crafting experiences that support le...
2025-04-181h 01Agents UnleashedAgile: Dead, Misunderstood, or Evolving?“It’s weeding time, right? Sometimes you have to weed out stuff that doesn’t work. Dead wood is not good on a tree.” - Stephan Neck
Is Agile really “dead,” or just misunderstood and badly applied? In this lively podcast episode, Mark, Stephan, and Niko challenge the buzz about Agile’s demise and share why core principles of flexibility, fast feedback, and collaboration remain essential—even if the word “Agile” has lost some of its shine.
The Agile Hype and the Reality Check
Over the past year, you may have h...
2025-04-1154 minAgents UnleashedStand, Share, Engage: Innovating your Remote Facilitation Setup“A cheap writing tablet can transform your PowerPoint into a shared canvas.” - Ali Hajou
Remote facilitation has come a long way since the early days of clunky video calls. In this lively episode, four experienced facilitators—Mark, Ali, Stephan, and Niko—swap stories about how they transformed their home offices into high-energy digital studios. From teleprompters and standing desks to iPhone cameras strapped to arms, they prove that you don’t necessarily need massive budgets to build an engaging remote-training setup.
Key Insights & Highlights
Start Small, Then Iterate: Al...
2025-04-051h 04Agents UnleashedThe Dual Operating System in Practice“Leaders have to do more than simply say ‘we have two systems.’ They have to actively steer the organization so it’s both robust and free to innovate.” - Stephan Neck
What happens when an organization outgrows the myth that “all you need is cross-functional teams”? In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, Stephan, Ali, Niko, and Mark dig into the Dual Operating System—the concept that healthy enterprises need both a stable hierarchy and a network of agile teams. Balancing these two “systems” can be tricky: too much network, and chaos creeps in; too much hierarchy, a...
2025-03-2957 minAgents UnleashedDesigning for Distance: Remote Facilitation Done Right“If you do no pre-work, the first 20 minutes are lost—someone can’t open Miro, doesn’t have the password, so you lose that time sorting out technical difficulties.” - Mark Richards
Remote facilitation may feel like juggling blindfolded—especially when every participant has a muted mic and a hidden camera. In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, our hosts (Mark Richards, Ali Hajou, Stephan Neck, and Nikolaos Kaintantzis) share what they’ve learned about driving engagement when no one’s in the same room. From innovative digit...
2025-03-221h 00Agents UnleashedSparking Change through Scaled Retrospectives“If you ask questions about the past, it’s always about going to a corpse and opening it up... If you ask questions about the future, it’s always about values" - Nikolaos Kaintantzis
“Are you all dumb?” When a senior stakeholder dropped that bombshell mid-retro, chaos threatened to derail everything. In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, Mark, Ali, Stephan, and Niko reflect on what makes art-level retros truly transformative. Spoiler: It’s a balance of authentic emotion, precise data, and a willingness to experiment with new formats.
Key Highlights
Data as a Com...
2025-03-1558 minAgents UnleashedMastering Distributed PI Planning“If you do it right, if you have the right people, and if you have some nerds and lots of engineering DNA, it really works on the tool side" - Stephan Neck
If you’ve ever believed that failing once in remote PI Planning means catastrophe, this episode of SPCs Unleashed proves otherwise. Mark Richards, Ali Hajou, Stephan Neck, and Nikolaos Kaintantzis discuss how their early horror stories—teams flying to the wrong city, frantic breakout links—led them to design stronger approaches for future PI event...
2025-03-1258 minAgents UnleashedDashboards and ART InsightsEffective dashboards and ART insights are crucial to navigating the complexities of Agile Release Trains (ARTs) and organizational alignment.
In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, Mark Richards, Stephan Neck, Niko Kaintantzis, and Ali Hajou delve into the strategic role of dashboards in improving alignment, transparency, and performance. They explore the balance between automation, stakeholder engagement, and avoiding vanity metrics.
Key Takeaways:
Purpose-driven dashboards: Focus on real-time guidance, stakeholder alignment, and context-driven insights rather than just data aggregation.“Dashboards should facilitate conversations; it’s not just about showing data.” - Mark Richards
Avoiding “vanity m...
2025-02-0859 minAgents UnleashedChange Management & The Implementation Roadmap“Shi(f)t happens: Either guided or becoming a loose cannon” - Stephan Neck.
This episode explores change management in the context of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), which refers to the process of planning, implementing, and managing changes within an organization as it adopts SAFe practices. It involves ensuring that individuals, teams, and the organization as a whole are prepared for and supported through the transformation.
Key Takeaways:
What are the biggest change management challenges in transformations?
What management strategies and/or techniques are applicable for...
2025-02-0156 minAgents UnleashedAlignment, Adaptability, and Politics: The Secrets of Successful LPM Coaching“If you want to coach senior leaders, you need to start by understanding what’s important to them—even if it has nothing to do with Lean Portfolio Management.” - Mark Richards.
In this lively and thought-provoking episode of SPCs Unleashed, Nikolaos Kaintantzis, Mark Richards, and Stephan Neck explore the unique challenges and opportunities of coaching in the Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) space. With engaging stories and practical insights, the team highlights how coaching at this level requires stepping into "big shoes" and mastering new complexities.
Key Takeaways:
The Rol...
2025-01-2554 minAgents UnleashedMastering PI Planning - Leadership Beyond the Framework"PI Planning is where the framework meets reality—it’s a test of alignment, collaboration, and leadership." - Stephan Neck
In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, hosts Stephan Neck, Niko Kaintantzis, and Ali Hajou explore one of SAFe's cornerstone activities: PI Planning. The trio leads an engaging discussion about how SPCs can elevate their organizations’ PI Planning sessions from mere rituals to transformative events.
The conversation illuminates the evolving role of SPCs in guiding teams through successful PI Planning while balancing the need for structure, adaptability, and human connection.
2025-01-1850 minAgents UnleashedFacilitation - The Catalyst for Change"A facilitator lights the spark of collaboration, then steps back to let the fire grow" - Stephan Neck
In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, hosts Mark Richards, Niko Kaintantzis, and Stephan Neck delve into the art and science of facilitation—a skill often confused with coaching yet distinct in its purpose and impact.
Mark kicks off with a surprise question, challenging Niko and Stephan to identify the greatest difference between coaching and facilitation. Stephan's response lays the foundation for a rich discussion: facilitation, he suggests, is about sparking action and empowering others to ta...
2025-01-111h 01Agents UnleashedGuiding Without Giving Answers - Redefining Coaching as a Skill“Coaching isn’t about being the answering machine; it’s about giving space for people to find their own answers..” - Niko Kaintantzis.
In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, Nikolaos Kaintantzis, Mark Richards, and Stephan Neck explore coaching—its essence, techniques, and the subtle distinctions between Agile coaching, systemic coaching, consulting, and mentoring. Packed with real-world anecdotes and thought-provoking metaphors, this discussion dives into what truly makes a great coach.
Key Takeaways:
The Heart of Coaching: Coaching isn't about giving answers; it's about creating space for...
2025-01-0355 minAgents UnleashedEffective onboarding of leaders into SAFe“Leadership is 'the art of getting people to want to do what must be done' - and this means not just the people who report to them but their peers and those they report to.” - Mark Richards.
In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, Nikolaos Kaintantzis, Mark Richards, and Stephan Neck explore Effective Onboarding of Leadership into SAFe — the essence of pivotal factors and ensuring that leaders not only understand the framework but can also adopt and champion its principles is key to driving long-term transformation.
Key Takeaways:...
2025-01-0352 minAgents UnleashedThe Art of Strategy Agility: How to Sense, Adapt, and Lead in a Dynamic World“Strategy agility isn't about waiting for a crisis. It's about building the muscle to stop, pivot, and adapt before disaster strikes.” - Mark Richards
This episode sees hosts Nikolaos Kaintantzis, Stephan Neck, Mark Richards, and Ali Hajou conclude their exploration of SAFe’s competency framework by focusing on Strategy Agility. It's packed with insightful discussions about market sensing, organizing around value, and the need for continuous adaptation in today’s dynamic business environment.
The Importance of Market Sensing: Ali shares a compelling story about a small electronics team that ide...
2024-10-0557 minAgents UnleashedLean Business Operations - Dancing Across Silos (#21)“You will cross some silos, stretch some rules, but in the end, you work together, have joy, and achieve greatness.” - Nikolaos Kaintantzis
In this penultimate episode of the SPCs Unleashed Competency journey, hosts Mark Richards, Nikolaos (Niko) Kaintantzis, and Stephan Neck dive into the dimension of Lean Business Operations within the SAFe competency model. The trio explores the critical role of leveraging value stream thinking to enhance flow in business operations and product development, emphasizing the symbiotic relationship.
Mark starts the discussion by addressing the often-confused concepts of the Operational Valu...
2024-09-2855 minAgents UnleashedFind the Balance between Sugar and Sustainability with Agile Portfolio Operations (#20)“Without consistency and standards none of this works. With too much consistency nothing changes. You have to steer and constantly sense and course-correct.” - Mark Richards
Mark Richards and Niko Kaintantzis join Stephan Neck in this episode with Agile Portfolio Operations from Lean Portfolio Management.
We kick off by sharing our passions: Mark’s thoughts about finding the balance between consistency and standards so that it works, but not too much of it so that nothing changes; Niko’s emphasis on avoiding large solutions by mastering this dimension correctly.
In the fi...
2024-09-1254 minAgents UnleashedIn control of complexity with Lean Governance (#19)"If you can start talking to audit, you can find solutions that they will help you reach that nobody else would have thought about" - Mark Richards
In Episode 19, hosted by Stephan Neck, Nikolaos Kaintantzis, Ali Hajou, and Mark Richards, the focus is on Lean Portfolio Management (LPM), specifically Lean Governance. The hosts stress the importance of governance in balancing spending oversight, compliance, and alignment between agile and non-agile teams. They highlight the need for engagement from roles like Value Management Offices (VMOs), business owners, and enterprise architects.
We discuss the...
2024-08-2759 minAgents UnleashedEffective Collaboration is the Backbone of Large Solution success (#15)“It's a wonderful toolbox, but you don't have to stand up a large solution to start using the toolbox.” - Mark Richards
In this engaging episode of SPCs Unleashed, hosts Nikolaos Kaintantzis, Mark Richards, Stephan Neck, and Ali Hajou dive deep into the complexities of enterprise solution delivery, focusing on coordinating large solutions, managing suppliers, and integrating hardware. The conversation touches on the challenges and strategies SPCs can use to navigate this intricate terrain. Profit even if you have no large solutions.
Key Takeaways:
The Importance of Integration: Niko emphasizes that...
2024-08-161h 00Agents UnleashedLeadership in Change: From one stable state to the next (#6)“Show up. Keep up. Shut up.” (Change agent’s creed, borrowed from golf pro caddy creed) - Stephan Neck
Mark Richards, Ali Hajou, and Niko Kaintantzis join Stephan Neck in this ‘reprise’ episode with Leading Change from the Lean-Agile Leadership competency.
We start by sharing our passions: Mark’s thoughts about the beauty and perils of change roadmaps, Ali’s explanation of why checklists are a good treat for anxious people, and Niko’s emphasis on necessary visions as a base for new behavior for change success.
In the first part, we reflect on ho...
2024-08-1655 min