Shows
Agents 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 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 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 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 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 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 min
Shaping Portfolio AgilityEvan Leybourn on the Vicious and Virtuous Cycles of Change“Just as delegation is a skill that can get taught to leaders and often is, the ability to take ownership is a skill that needs to be developed in people, and organizations often do not invest in training that.” - Evan Leybourn
In this episode, we are joined by Evan Leybourn, the founder and CEO of the Business Agility Institute. Evan has been a thought leader in the realm of Business Agility since 2008, advocating for organizations to rethink how they operate, lead, and govern to become more human-centric and adaptable in the face of constant change...
2025-01-0359 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 min
Shaping Portfolio AgilityKarl Scotland on Strategy Deployment (#11)"Real strategy deployment empowers teams to act on strategic intent with ownership and clarity." - Karl Scotland
We’re joined by Strategy Deployment expert Karl Scotland in this episode.
Karl helps businesses become Learning Organisations through outcome-oriented, continuous transformation, engaging everyone, everywhere.
Over the last 20+ years, he has been an advocate of Lean and Agile approaches to achieve this, working with companies including the BBC, Yahoo!, EMC Consulting, Rally Software, Cisco, SDL, Legal & General, Allegis, HSBC, Bank of America, Vocalink, Sky, and Irwin Mitchel.
During this time, he has been...
2024-09-1857 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 min
Shaping Portfolio AgilityNavigating Change and Building Empathy - Christine Babowicz on the Path to Portfolio Agility"So on any given day, I'm just managing those planes and flight patterns and trying to make sense and create that sequencing of road maps. Or at least highlight, hey, you're not going to achieve that, because this strategy over here in this portfolio isn't even thinking that way” - Christine Babowicz
When we decided to start inviting guests to join us, we were passionate about finding people with real lived experience to share their hard-won insights and wisdom. We were very grateful when Christine Babowicz agreed to join us as our second guest, and she c...
2024-08-281h 03Agents 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 min
Shaping Portfolio AgilityLuke Hohmann on Building Sustainable and Profitable Portfolios“The right collective organization tends to have fewer blind spots, because, by definition, a team is a transactional memory system of sufficient predictive power that we can know how to work together” - Luke Hohmann
When we decided to start inviting interesting guests to join our portfolio conversations, Luke Hohmann was an obvious first choice.
Luke is a four time author, three time founder, SAFe® Fellow, keynote speaker, and internationally recognized expert in Agile Software Development. His passion is sustainably profitable businesses, because it is only through sustainable profits that a business can thrive...
2024-08-2159 min
Shaping Portfolio AgilityWhat to expect as a member of a portfolio ’going lean’ (#8)"The journey to get there isn’t easy. The outcomes, when it works, are pretty amazing and unbelievable, but you’ll find a whole new set of problems you never imagined could go wrong"
Eric Willeke
With the initial arc complete, this episode adopts a new perspective triggered by our conversations at the SAFe Summit in Berlin. We step into the shoes of portfolio members, embarking on a lean journey. The conversation begins by exploring how their first steps into lean portfolio management will look different from your first steps into agility. As the e...
2024-08-161h 08Agents UnleashedBuilding large, complex, interlinked, cyber-physical systems the lean way (#16)"Experiment like a scientist, not a mad scientist" - Mark Richards
Have you ever pondered, "How can a lean approach work wonders for massive systems?" That’s exactly where we dive into this episode of SPCs Unleashed. Hosted by Swiss SPCTs Stephan and Niko, Dutch SPCT Ali, and Aussie SAFE Fellow Mark Richards, the show continues to unravel the complexities of enterprise solution delivery, this time with a focus on lean systems engineering.
Ali kicks off by revisiting the less glamorous but crucial core competency of lean systems engineering, which aims to trim the fat fr...
2024-08-1659 minAgents 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 minAgents UnleashedStrategy and Investment Funding - Start with what’s real and work from there (#18)“As an SPC on the Portfolio Level: The first time just be an assistant, not the head coach. Learn about how companies work, how they speak, how they behave.” - Nikolaos Kaintantzis
Hosts Nikolaos Kaintantzis, Stephan Neck, and Mark Richards take a deep dive into Lean Portfolio Management (LPM), focusing on the critical areas of Strategy and Investment Funding. The conversation sheds light on the real-world challenges of managing a portfolio in an agile environment, offering practical advice on how to make LPM a success.
Key Takeaways:
Start with Reality, Not...
2024-08-1656 min