Easy Agile Podcast Ep.7 Sarah Hajipour, Agile Coach

What a great conversation this was with Chris Stone, The Virtual Agile Coach!

Chris shared some insights into the importance of sharing and de-stigmatising failures, looking after your own mental health, and why work shouldn't be stale.

Some other areas we discussed were, why you should spend time in self reflection - consider a solospective? and asking "how did that feel?" when working as a team.

"I really enjoyed our chat. Plenty to ponder over the silly season, and set yourself up with a fresh perspective for 2021. Enjoy and Merry Christmas!"

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Transcript

Sean Blake:

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Easy Agile Podcast. It's Sean Blake here, your host today, and we're joined by Chris stone. Chris is going to be a really interesting guest. I really enjoyed recording this episode. Chris is the Virtual Agile Coach. He's an agility lead. People First champion blogger, speaker and trainer, who always seeks to gamify content and create immersive Agile experiences. An Agile convert all the way from back in 2012, Chris has since sought to broaden his experiences, escape his echo chamber and to fearlessly challenge dysfunction and ask the difficult questions. My key takeaways from this episode were; it's okay to share your failures, the importance of recognizing our mental health, why it's important that work doesn't become stale, how to de-stigmatize failure, the importance of selfreflection and holding many self retrospectives, and the origins of the word deadline. You'll be really interested to find out where that word came from and why it's a little bit troubling. So here we go. We're about to jump in. Here's the episode with Chris stone on the Easy Agile Podcast. Chris, thanks so much for joining us and spending some time with us.

Chris Stone:

Hey there Sean, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

Sean Blake:

I have to mention you've got a really funky Christmas sweater on today. And for those people listening on the audio, they might have to jump over to YouTube just for a section to check out this sweater. Can you tell us a bit about where that came from?

Chris Stone:

So this sweater was a gift. It's a Green Bay Packers, Chris, Ugly Christmas Jumpers, what they call it. And I'm a fan of the Green Bay Packers, I've been out there a few times to Wisconsin, Green Bay, Wisconsin. It's so cold out there in fact. When you're holding a beer and minus 13 degrees, the beer starts turning to slush just from being outside in the cold air. It's a great place, very friendly, and the jumper was just a gift one Christmas from someone.

Sean Blake:

Love it. There's nothing better than warm beer is there? Okay. So Chris, I first came across you because of the content that you put out on LinkedIn. And the way that you go about it, it's so much fun and so different to really anything else I've seen in the corporate space, in the enterprise space, in the Agile space even, why have you decided to go down this track of calling yourself the virtual Agile coach, building a personal brand and really putting yourself out there?

Chris Stone:

Well, for me, it was an interesting one because COVID, this year has forced a lot of people to convert to being virtual workers, remote workers, virtual coaches themselves. Now, what I realized this year is that, the aspiration for many is those co-located teams, it's always what people desired. They say, "Oh, you have to work harder, Katie, that's the best way." And I realized that in my whole Agile working life, I'd never really had that co-located team. There was always some element of distributed working and the past two years prior to where I'm currently, my current company, I was doing distributed scaled Agile with time zones, including Trinidad and Tobago, Alaska, Houston, the UK, India, and it was all remote.

Chris Stone:

And I thought, all right, this is an opportunity to recognize the fact that I was a virtual Agile coach already, but to share with others, my learnings, my experiences, the challenges I've faced, the failures I've had with the wider community so they can benefit from it because obviously, everyone, or more many have had to make that transition very quickly. And there's lots of learnings there that I'm sure people would benefit from. And this year in particular, I guess the honest answer, the reason for me being, I guess out there and working more on that side of things, being creative is because it's an outlet for my mental health.

Chris Stone:

I suffer from depression and one of my ways of coping with that is being creative and creating new content and sharing it. So I guess it's a reason of... it's linked to that also, but also the stories that people tell me afterwards, they motivate me to keep doing it. So when someone comes to me and says, "Hey, I did the Queen retrospective, the Queen Rock Band retrospective, and this program manager who never smiles connected to the content and admitted he liked Queen and smiled." And this was a first and when people come to me and say, "Hey, we did the Home Alone retrospective, the one of your Christmas themed ones and people loved it. It was great." It was the most engaging retrospective we've had so far because the problem is work can become stale if you let it be so.

Chris Stone:

Retrospectives can become this, what did we do last time? What are we going to do next time? What actions can we do? Et cetera, et cetera. And unless you refresh it and try new things, people will get bored and they'll disconnect and they'll disengage, and you're less likely to get a good outcome that way. So for me, there's no reason you can't make work a little bit fun, with a little bit of creativity and a little bit of energy and passionate about it.

Sean Blake:

I love that. And do you think a lot of people come to work even when they're working in Agile co-located teams and it's just not fun, I mean what do you think the key reasons are that work isn't fun?

Chris Stone:

I think because it can become stale. All right. So let's reflect on where we are today. Today, we're in a situation where we're not face-to-face with one another. We don't have time for those water cooler chats. We don't connect over a coffee or a lunch. We don't have a chat about idle banter and things of that on the way to a meeting room, we didn't have any of that. And that forces people to look at each other and see themselves as an avatar behind a screen, just a name. Often in particular, people aren't even on video camera.

Chris Stone:

It forces them to think of people as a name on a screen, rather than a beating heart on a laptop. And it can abstract people into just these entities, these names you talk to each day and day out, and that can force it to be this professional non-personal interaction. And I'm a firm believer that we need to change that. We need to make things more fun because it can, and in my experience, does result in much better outcomes. I'm very, very people first. We need to focus on people being people. People aren't resources. This is a common phrase I like to refer to you.

Sean Blake:

I love that, people aren't resources. You spoke a little bit about mental health and your struggle with depression. Something that I hear come up time and time again, is people that talk about imposter syndrome. And I wonder, firstly, if you think that might be exasperated through working remotely now. People are not so sure how they fit in, where their role is still the same role that it was 12 months ago. And do you have any tips for people when they're dealing with imposter syndrome, especially in a virtual environment?

Chris Stone:

Well, yeah I think this current environment, this virtual environment, the pandemic in particular, has led to a number of unhelpful behaviors. That there's a lot more challenges with people's mental health and negativity, and that can only lead to, I guess, less desire, less confidence in doing things, maybe doubting yourself. There's some great visuals I've shared on this recently, and it's all about reframing those imposter thoughts you have, the unhelpful thinking, that thing that goes through your mind that says, Oh, they're all going to think I'm a total fraud because maybe I don't have enough years of experience, or I should already know this. I must get more training. There's lots of “shoulding” and “musting” in that. There's lots of jumping to conclusions in this.

Chris Stone:

And a couple of ways of getting around that is, so if you're thinking of the scenario where I'm a fraud think, "Oh, well I'm doing my best, but I can't predict what they might think." When you're trying to think about the scenario of do I need to get more training? Well, understand and acknowledge the reality that you can't possibly know everything. You continue to learn every single day and that's great, but it's unrealistic to know it all. There's a great quote I often refer to and it's, true knowledge is knowing that you know nothing. I believe it's a quote from Socrates.

Chris Stone:

And it's something that very much resonates with me. Over the years I've gone through this learning journey where, when I first finished university, for example, I thought I knew everything. I thought I've got it all. And I'd go out to clients and speak and I'm like, "Oh yeah, I know this. I've got this guys." And then the more involved I've become and the more deeper I've gone into the topic, the more I realized, actually there's so much that I don't know. And to me, true knowledge is knowing that you know nothing tells me there's so much out there that I must continuously learn, I must continuously seek to challenge myself each and every day.

Chris Stone:

Other people who approach me and say, "How do you, or you produce a lot of content. How would you put yourself out there?" And I say, "Well, I just do it." Let's de-stigmatize failure. If you put a post out there and it bombs, it doesn't matter, put another one out there. It's as simple as that, learn from failure, Chuck something out there, try it, if it doesn't work, try something else. We coach Agile teams to do this all the time, to experiment. Have a hypothesis to test against that. Verify the outcomes and do retrospectives. I do weekly solospectives. I reflect on my week, what works, what hasn't worked, what I'm going to try differently. And there's no reason you can't do that also.

Sean Blake:

Okay. So weekly solospectives. What does that look like? And how do you be honest with yourself about what's working, what's not working and areas for yourself to improve? How do you actually start to have that time for self-reflection?

Chris Stone:

Unfortunately you got to make time for some reflection. One thing I've learned with mental health is you have to make time for your health before you have to make time for your illness or before you're forced to make time for your illness. And it can become all too easy in this busy working world to not make time for your health, to not make time and focus on you. So you do just have to carve out that time, whether that's blocking some time in the diary on a Friday afternoon, just to sit down and reflect, whether that's making time to go out for a walk, setting up a time on your Alexa to have a five minute stretching break, whatever it is, there's things you can do, and you have things you have to do to make time for yourself.

Chris Stone:

With regards to a solospective, the way I tend to do things is I tend to journal on a daily basis. That's almost like my own daily standard with myself, it's like, what have I observed? What have I... what challenges do I face in the past day? And then that sums up in the weekly solospective, which is basically a retro for one, where I reflect on, what did I try it? What do I want to achieve this week? What's gone well? What hasn't gone well. It's the same as a retrospective just one and allows me to aggregate my thoughts across the week, rather than them being single events. So that I'm focusing more on the trajectory as opposed to any single outlier. Does that make sense?

Sean Blake:

It does. It does. So you've got this trajectory with your career. You're checking in each week to see whether you're heading in the right direction. I assume that you set personal goals as well along the way. I also noticed that you have personal values that you've published and you've actually published those publicly for other people to look at and to see. How important are those personal values in informing your life and personal and career goals?

Chris Stone:

So I'd say that are hugely important, for me, what I thought was we see companies sharing their values all the time. You look on company websites and you can see their values quite prominently. And you could probably think do they often live up to their values? You have so many companies have customer centricity as their value, but how many of them actually focus on engaging with their customers regularly? How many have a metric where they track, how often they engage with customers? Most of them are focusing on velocity and lead time. So I always challenge, are you really customer centric or is that lip service? But moving aside, I digress. I thought companies have values, and obviously we do as well, but why don't we share them? So I created this visual, showing what mine were and challenged a few others to share it also. And I had some good feedback from others which was great.

Chris Stone:

But they hugely influence who I am and how I interact on a day-to-day basis. And I'll give you an example, one of my values is being open source always. And what that means is nothing I create, no content I create, nothing I produce would ever be behind a payroll. And that's me being community driven. That's me sharing what I've learned with others. And how that's come to fruition, how I've lived that is I've had lots of people come to me say, "Hey, we love the things you do. You gave me flying things. Would you mind, or would you like to collaborate and create this course that people would pay for?" So often I've said, "If it's free, yes. But if it's going to be monetized, then no."

Chris Stone:

And I've had multiple people reach out to me for that purpose. And I've had to decline respectfully and say, "Look, I think what you're doing is great. You've got a great app and I can see how having this Agile coaching gamification course on that would be of great value. But if it's behind the payroll, then I'm not interested because it's in direct conflict with my own values, and therefore, I wouldn't be interested in proceeding with it. But keep doing what you're doing, being people first, #people first." This is about me embodying the focus on people being beating hearts behind a laptop, rather than just this avatar on a screen. And I have this little... the audio listeners, won't be able to see this, but I'm holding up a baby Groot here. And he's like my people first totem.

Chris Stone:

And the reason for that is I have a group called the Guardians of Agility, and we are people first. That's our emblem. And these are my transformation champions in my current company. I like to have Guardians of Agility, and I've got this totem reminding me to be people first in every interaction I have. So when, for example, I hear the term resources and I'm saying, well... As soon as I hear it, it almost triggers me. I almost hear like, "Oh, what do they mean by that?" And I'll wait a little moment and I'll say, "Hey, can you tell me what you mean by that?" And you tease it out a little bit. And often they meant, "Oh, it's people, isn't it?" If you're talking about people, can we refer to them as people?

Chris Stone:

Because people aren't resources. They're not objects or things you mine out the ground. They're not pens, paper or desks. They're not chairs in an office. They are people. And every time you refer to them as a resource, you abstract them. You make it easier to dehumanize them and think of them as lesser, you make it easier to make those decisions like, oh, we can just get rid of those resources or we can just move that resource from here to there and to this team and that team, whether they want to or not. So I don't personally like the language.

Chris Stone:

And the problem is it goes all the way back to how it's trained. You go to university and you take a business degree and you learn about human resources. You take a course, Agile HR, Agile human resources, right, and it's so prevalent out there. And unless we challenge it, it won't change. So I will happily sit there and a meeting with a CTO and he'll start talking about resource and I'll say, "Hey, what do you mean by that?" And I'll challenge it and he'll go, "Yeah, I've done it again, have I not?" "Yes. Yes, you have." And it's gotten to the point now where I'll be on this big group call for example, and someone will say it, and I'll just start doing this on a screen waving, and they'll go, "Did it again, didn't I?" "Yes, you did."

Sean Blake:

So some of these habits are so ingrained from our past experiences our education, and when you're working with teams for the first time, who's never worked in Agile before, they're using phrases like resources, they're doing things that sometimes we call anti-patents, how do you start to even have that conversation and introduce them to some of these concepts that are totally foreign to people who've never thought the way that you or I might think about our teams and our work?

Chris Stone:

Sure. So I guess that the first response to that is with empathy. I'm not going to blame someone or make out that they're a bad person for using words that are ingrained, that are normal. And this is part of the problem that that term, resource is so ingrained in that working language nowadays, same as deadlines. Deadlines is so ingrained, even though deadlines came from a civil war scenario where it referred to, if you went past the line, you were shot. How did that land in the business language? I don't know. But resources, it's so ingrained, it's so entrenched into this language, so people do it without intending to. They often do it without meaning it in a negative way. And to be honest, the word itself isn't the issue, it's how people actually behave and how they treat people.

Chris Stone:

I said my first approach is empathy. Let's talk about this. Let's understand, "Hey, why did you use term?" "Oh, I use it to mean this." "Okay. Well." Yeah, and not to do it or call them out publicly or things like that. It's doing things with empathy. Now, I also often use obviously gamification and training approaches, and Agile games to introduce concepts. If someone's unfamiliar to a certain way of working, I'll often gamify. I'll create something, a virtual Agile game to demonstrate. The way I do say, is I'm always looking to help people understand how it feels, not just to talk theory. And I'll give you an example. I'm a big fan of a game called the Virtual Name Game. It's a game about multitasking and context switching.

Chris Stone:

And I always begin, I'll ask group of people, "Hey guys, can you multitask?" And often they go, "Yeah, we can do that." And there'll be those stereotypical things like, "Oh yeah, I'm a woman. I can do that." It happens. Trust me. But one of the first things I do, if I'm face-to-face with them, I'll say, "Hey, hold your hands out like this. And in your left hand..." And people on the audio can't see me, I'm holding out like my hands in front of me. In my left hand, we're going to play an endless game of rock, paper, scissors. And in my right hand, we're going to play a game of, we have a thumb war with each other. And you can try, you can challenge them, can they do those concurrently? No, they can't. They will fail because you just can't focus on both at the same time.

Chris Stone:

Now the Virtual Name Game, the way it works is you divide a group of people up into primarily customers and one developer. And I love to make the most senior person in the room, that developer. I want them to see how it feels to be constantly context switching. So if you were the developer, you're the senior person to review the hippo in this scenario, the highest paid person. I would say Sean, in this game, these customers, they are trying to get their name written first on this virtual whiteboard. And we're going to time how long it takes for you to write everyone's name in totality. The problem is that they're all going to shouting at you continuously, endlessly trying to get your attention. So it's going to be Sean, Sean, write my name, write my...

Chris Stone:

And it's just going to be wow, wow, wow, who do I focus on? You won't know. And this replicates a scenario that I'm sure many people have experienced. He who shouts loudest gets what they want. Prioritization is often done by he who's... or the person who shouts loudest not necessarily he. We then go into another rounds where you say, I'm this round, Sean, people are to be shouting their name at you. But in this round, you're going to pay a little bit attention to everyone. So the way you're going to do that is you're going to read the first letter of one person's name, then you move on to the first letter of the next person's name, and you're going to keep going around. The consequence of that is everyone gets a little bit of attention, but the result is it's really slow.

Chris Stone:

You're starting lots of things but not finishing them. And again, in each round, we're exploring how it feels. How did it feel to be in that round? Sean, you were being shouted at, how did that feel? Everyone else, you were shouting to get your attention. You had to shout louder than other people, how did that feel? And it's frustrating, it's demotivating, it's not enjoyable. In the final around, I would say, "Hey, Sean, in this round, I'm going to empower you to decide whose name you write first. And you can write the whole thing in order. And the guys actually they're going to help you this time, there are no shouts over each other, they are going to help you." And in this scenario, as I'm sure you can imagine, it feels far better. The result is people finish things, and you can measure the output, the number of brand names written on a timeframe.

Chris Stone:

It's a very quick and easy way of demonstrating how it feels to be constantly context switching and the damage you can have, if, for example, you've prioritized things into a sprint and you got lots of trying to reorder things and so on and so forth, and lots of pressure from external people that ideally should be shielded from influencing this and that, and how that feels and what the result is, because you may start something, get changed into something else. You got to take your mindset of this, back into something else, and then the person who picks up the original thing might not have even been the same person, they've got to learn that over again. There's just lots of waste and efficiency costs through that. And that's just an example of a game I use, to bring that sort of things to life.

Sean Blake:

That's great. That's fantastic. I love that. And I think we need to, at Easy Agile, start playing some of those games because there's a lot of lessons to be learned from going through those exercises. And then when you see it play out in real life, in the work that you're doing, it's easier to recognize it then. If you've done the training, you've done the exercise, that all seems like fun and games at the time, but when it actually rears its head in the work that you're doing, it's much easier to call it out and say, "Oh wait, we're doing that thing that we had fun playing, but now we realize it's occurring in real life and let's go a different direction." So I can see how that would be really powerful for teams to go through that so Chris [crosstalk 00:22:26].

Chris Stone:

I'd also add that every game that I do, I construct it using the four Cs approach. So I'm looking to connect people... firstly, connect people to each other, and then to the subject matter. So in this game is about multitasking. To contextualize why that matters, why does context switching and multitasking matter in the world of work? Because it causes inefficiencies, because it causes frustration, de-motivation, et cetera. Then we do some concrete practice. We play a game that emphasizes how it feels. And at the end we draw conclusions, and the idea is that with the conclusion side of things, it's almost like a retrospective on the game. We say, "Hey, what did we learn? What challenges we face? And what can we do differently in our working world?" And that hopefully leaves people with actionable takeaways. A lot of the content I share is aiming to leave it with actionable takeaways, not just talking about something, but reflecting on what you could do differently, what you could try, what experiment you might like to employ with your working life, your team that might help improve a situation you're facing.

Sean Blake:

Okay. Yeah, that's really helpful. And you've spoken about this concept of Agile sins, and we know that a lot of companies have these values, they might've committed to an Agile transformation. They might've even gone and trained hundreds or thousands of people at accompany using similar tactics and coaching and educational experiences that you provide. But we still see sometimes things go terribly wrong. And I wonder, what's this concept of Agile sins that you talk about and how can we start to identify some of these sins that pop up in our day-to-day work with each other?

Chris Stone:

I guess, so the first thing I would emphasize about this is that using sin, it's a very dogmatic religious language and it's more being used satirically than with any real intent. So I just like to get that across. I'm not a dogmatic person, I don't believe there is any utopian solution. I certainly don't believe there's any one size fit to all situation for anyone. So the idea that there's really any actual sins is... yeah, take that with a pinch of salt. The reason the Agile sins came up is because I was part of... I'd done a podcast recently with a guy called Charles Lindsey, and he does this Agile confessional. And it's about one coach confessing to another, their mistakes, their sins, the things they've done wrong.

Chris Stone:

And I loved it because I'm all about de-stigmatizing failure. I'm all about sharing with one another, these war stories from one coach to another, because I've been a proponent of this in the past. I've shouted, "Hey there, I failed on this. I made this mistake. I learned from it." And I challenge others to do so as well and there's still this reluctance by many to share what went wrong. And it's because failure is this dirty word. It's got this stigma attached to it. No one wants to fail, leaders in particular. So the podcast was a great experience.

Chris Stone:

And it was interesting for me because that was the first time I'd given a confession, because I'll be honest with you, I'm someone who is used to taking confession myself. I go to this hockey festival every year and I got given years ago, this Archbishop outfit, and I kind of made that role my own way. I was drunk, and I said, "You're going to confess your sins to me." And if they haven't sinned enough, I tell them to go and do more. And I give them penicillin with alcohol shots and things like that. And I've actually baptized people in this paddling pool whilst drunk. Anyway, again, I digress, but I wasn't used to confessing myself, usually, I was taking confession, but I did so and it was a good experience to share some of my failures and my patterns was to create... and it was my own idea, to create my videos, seven videos of my seven Agile sins. And again, this was just me sharing my mistakes, what I've learned from that, with the intent of benefiting others to avoid those similar sins.

Sean Blake:

So you've spoken to a lot of other Agile coaches, you've heard about their failures, you confessed your own failures, is it possible for you to summarize down what are those ingredients that make someone a great coach?

Chris Stone: And that is a question, what makes someone a great coach? I think it's going to be entirely subjective, to be honest. And my personal view is that a great coach listens more than they speak. I guess that would be a huge starting point. When they listen more than they speak, because I've... and this is one of the things I've been guilty of in the past, is I've allowed my own biases to influence the team's direction. An approach I'd taken in the past was, "Hey, I'm working with this team and this has worked well in the past. We're going to do that." Rather than, "So guys, what have you done so far? What have you tried? What's worked well? What hasn't worked well? What can we create or what can we try next? That works for you guys. Let's have you make that decision and I'm here to guide you through that process to facilitate it, rather than to direct it myself."

Chris Stone:

Again, I find ... it's an approach that resonates more with people. They like feel that they own that decision as opposed to it being forced upon them. And there's far less, I guess, cognitive dissonance as a consequence. So listening more than speaking is a huge for me, a point an Agile coach should do. Another thing I think for me nowadays, is that there's too much copying and pasting. And what I mean by that is, the Spotify, the Spotify model came out years ago and everyone went, "Oh, this is amazing. We're going to adopt it. We're going to have tribes and chapters and guilds and squads, and it's going to work for us. That's that's our culture now."

Chris Stone:

I was like, "Well, let's just take a moment here. Spotify never intended for that to happen. They don't even follow that model themselves anymore. What you've done there is you've just tried to copy and paste another model." And people do it with SAFe as well. They just say, "Hey, we're going to take the whole SAFe framework and Chuck it into our system in this blueprint style cookie cutter." And the problem is that it doesn't take into account for me, the most important variable in any sort of transformation initiative, the people, what they want, and the culture there. So this is where another one of my values is, innovate, don't replicate. Work with people to experiment and find that Agile, what works for them rather than just copying and pasting things.

Chris Stone:

So tailor it to their needs rather than just coming in with some or seen dancing framework, and then the way I do it is I say, "Hey, well, SAFe is great. Well, it's got lots of values, and lots of great things about it. Lots of benefits to it, but maybe not all of it works for us. Let's borrow a few tenent of that." Same with LeSS, same with Scrum At Scale, same with Scrum, similar to Kanban. There's lots of little things you can borrow from various frameworks, but there's also lots of things you can inject yourself, lot's of things you can try that work for you guys, and ultimately come up with your own tailor-made solutions. So innovate, don't replicate would be another one for me.

Chris Stone:

Learning, learning fast and learning often, and living and breathing that yourself. Another mistake I and other coaches I think have made is not making time for your own personal development to allowing, day in, day out to just be busy, busy, busy, but at the same time you're going out there, coaching teams, "Hey, you've got to learn all the time. You got to try new things." But not making that time for yourself. So I always carve out time to do that, to attend conferences, to read books, to challenge myself and escape my echo chamber. Not just to speak to the same people I do all the time, but perhaps to go on a podcast with people I've never spoken to. To a different audience, maybe to connect with people that actually disagree with me, because I want that.

Chris Stone:

I don't want that homophilous thinking where everyone thinks exactly like I do, because then I don't get exposed to the perspectives that make me think differently. So I'm often doing that. How can I tend to conference that I know nothing about, maybe it's a project management focus one. Project management and waterfall isn't a dirty word either. There is no utopian system, project management and... sure traditional project management and waterfall has its benefits in certain environments. Environments with less footing, less flexible scope or less frequently changing requirements works very well.

Chris Stone:

I always say GDPR, which is an EU legislation around data protection, that was a two year thing in the making and everyone knew exactly what was happening and when they had to do it by. That was a great example of something that can be done very well with a waterfall style, because the requirements weren't changing. But if you are trying to develop something for a customer base that changes all the time, and you've got lots of new things and lots of competitors and things like that, then it varies, and probably the ability to iterate frequently and learn from it is going to be more beneficial and this is where Agile comes in. So I guess to sum up there, there's a few things, learning fast learning often. I can't even remember the ones I've mentioned now, I've gone off on many tangents and this is what I do.

Sean Blake:

I love it. It's great advice, Chris. It's really important and timely. And you mentioned, earlier on that the customer base that's always changing and we know that technology is always changing and things are only going to change more quickly, and disruptions are only going to be more severe going forward. Can you look into the future, or do you ever look into the future and say, what are those trends that are emerging in the Agile space or even in work places that are going to disrupt us in the way that we do our work? What does Agile look like in five or 10 years?

Chris Stone:

Now that again is a very big question. I can sit here and postulate and talk about what it might look like. I'm going to draw upon what I think is a great example of what will shape the next five or 10 years. In February, 2021, there's a festival called Agile 20 Reflect, I'm not sure if you've heard of it, and it's built as a festival, not conference, it's really important. So it's modeled on the Edinburgh festival and what it intends to be is a celebration of the past, the present and the future of Agile. Now what it is, it's a month long series of events on Agile, and anyone can create an event and speak and share, and it will create this huge community driven load of content that will be freely accessible and available.

Chris Stone:

Now, there are three of the original Agile manifestor signatories that are involved in this. Lisa Adkins is involved in this as is lots of big name speakers that are attached to this festival. And I myself, I'm running a series of retrospectives on the Agile manifesto. I've interviewed Arie van Bennekum, one of the original Agile manifesto signatories. They're going to be lots of events out there. And I think that festival will begin to shape in some way, what Agile might look like because there's lots of events, lots of speakers, lots of panel discussions that are coming up, coming together with lots of professionals out there, lots of practitioners out there that will begin to shape what that looks like. So whilst I could sit here and postulate on it, I'm not the expert to be honest, and there are far greater minds than I. And actually I'd rather leverage the power of the wider community and come into that than suggesting mine at this time.

Sean Blake:

Nice. I like it. And what you've done there, you've made it impossible for us to click this video and prove you wrong in the future when you predict something that doesn't end up happening. So that's very wise if you.

Chris Stone: Future proof myself.

Sean Blake: Exactly. Chris, I think we're coming almost to the end now, but I wanted to ask, given the quality of your Christmas sweater, do you have any tips for teams who are working over the holiday period, they're most likely burnt out after a really difficult 2020? What are some of the things you'd say to coaches on Agile teams as they come into this time where hopefully people are able to take some time off, spend some time with their family. Do you have any tips or recommendations for how people can look after their mental health look after their peers and spend that time in self-reflection?

Chris Stone:

Sure. So a number of things that I definitely would recommend. I'm currently producing and sharing this Agile advent calendar. And the idea is that every day you get a new bite-size piece of Agile knowledge or a template or something working in zany or a video, whatever it may be. There's lots of little things getting in there. And there's been retro templates, Christmas and festive themes. So there's a Home Alone one, a Diehard one, an elf movie one, there's all sorts. Perhaps try one of those as a fun immersive way with your team to just reflect on the recent times as a squad and perhaps come up with some things in the next year.

Chris Stone:

And there's for example, the Diehard one, it's based on the quotes from the movie Diehard so it's what you'd be doing in there, celebrate your... to send them to your team. Or there's one in there about, if this is how you celebrate Christmas, I can't wait for new year. And that question was saying, what do we want to try next year? Like this year has been great, what do we want to try differently next year? So there's opportunities through those templates to reflect in a fun way so give one of those a go. I shared some Christmas eve festive Zoom backgrounds, or Team backgrounds, give those a go and make a bit fun, make it a bit immersive. There's Christmas or festive icebreakers that you can use. What I tend to do is any meeting I facilitate, the first five minutes is just unadulterated chat about non-work things, and I often use icebreakers to do so. And whether that's a question, like if you could have the legs of any animal, what would you have and why, Sean, what would that be?

Sean Blake:

Probably a giraffe, because just thought the height advantage, it's got to be something that's useful in everyday life.

Chris Stone: Hard to take you on the ground maybe.

Sean Blake:

Yes. Yes, you would definitely need that. Although, I don't think I would fit in the lift on the way to work, so that would be a problem.

Chris Stone:

Yeah. That's just how I start. But yeah, that's just a question, because it's interesting to see what could people come up with, but there's some festive ones too, what's your favorite Christmas flick? What would put you on the naughty list this year? Yeah, does your family have any weird or quirky Christmas traditions? Because I love hearing about this. Everyone's got their own little thing, whether it's we have one Christmas present on Christmas Eve or every Christmas day we get a pizza together. There's some really random ones that come out. I love hearing about those and making time for that person interaction, but in a festive way can help as well.

Chris Stone:

And then on the mental health side of things, I very much subscribed to the Pomodoro effect from a productivity side of things. So I will use that. I'll set myself a timer, I'll focus without distractions, do something. And then in that five minute break, I'll just get up and move away from my desk and stretch and get a coffee or whatever it may be. But then I'll also block out time, and I know some companies in this remote working world at the moment are saying, "Hey, every one to 2:00 PM is blocked out time for you guys to go and have a walk." Some companies are doing that. I always make time to get out and away from my desk because that... and a little bit more productive and it breaks up my day a little bit. So I definitely recommend that. Getting some fresh air can do wonders for your mental health.

Sean Blake:

Awesome. Well, Chris, I've learnt so much from this episode and I really appreciate you spending some time with us today. We've talked about a lot of things from around the importance of sharing your failures, the importance of looking after your mental health, checking in on yourself and your own development, but also how you tracking, how you feeling. I love that quote that you shared from, we think it Socrates, that true knowledge is knowing that you know nothing. I think that's really important, every day is starting from day one, isn't it? De-stigmatizing failure. The origins of the word deadline. I did not know that. That's really interesting. And just asking that simple question, how did that feel? How did that feel working in this way? People were screaming your name, walk up work, when work's too busy, how does that feel? And is that a healthy feeling that everyone should have? So that's really important questions for me to reflect on and I know our audience will really appreciate those questions as well. So thanks so much Chris, for joining us on the Easy Agile Podcast.

Chris Stone:

Not a problem. Thank you for listening and a Merry Christmas, everyone.

Sean Blake:

Merry Christmas.

In this episode, I was joined by Leandro Barreto - Lead Software Engineer at Miro.

Leandro is responsible for helping engineering and product teams to be more productive through metrics and KPIs with a focus on increasing their operational efficiency. Before moving to Europe, Leandro worked for an Atlassian partner company in Brazil as Head of Technical Sales.

In this episode, we spoke about;

• Ikigai - what is it and how do you achieve it?
• The benefits of OKRs
• How can we combine agile, Ikigai and OKRs?
• How Ikigai can help agile teams achieve great results and stay motivated

I hope you enjoy today's episode as much as I did recording it.

Transcript

Robert O’Farrell:

Welcome, everyone, to the Easy Agile Podcast. We have an episode today with Leandro Barreto who is a lead software engineer at Miro. I'm your host for today, Robert O'Farrel. I'm the Growth tech lead at Easy Agile. Before we kick off this podcast, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land from which we broadcast today, the people of the Duruwa-speaking country. We pay our respects to Elders past, present, and emerging and extend the same respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Islander, and First Nations people joining us today on the podcast.

Robert O’Farrell:

Leandro currently works as a lead software engineer at Miro where his responsibility is to help engineering and product teams to be more productive through metrics and KPIs with a focus on increasing their operational efficiency. Before moving to Europe, he worked for an Atlassian partner company in Brazil and acted as a head of technical sales with the mission to increase the service offers in Latin America. Welcome, Leandro. It's great to have you here today.

Leandro Barreto:

Yeah. Thanks, Rob. Thanks also for the Easy Agile for the invite. It's a pleasure to be here today.

Robert O’Farrell:

Fantastic. You're here to talk about Ikigai, objectives and key results or OKRs in Agile, so let's kick it off. Ikigai, what is it? Can you give us a brief or a long explanation of what it is?

Leandro Barreto:

Yeah, of course, of course. So, Ikigai I use it to say is a philosophy of life that means like a reason for being or the meaning of life. So, the world Ikigai originates from a village in Southern Japan, where the average life expectancy of people is over 100 years old. So, Ikigai is basically divided in four components. The first, things you love. Second, something that you are good at, then something that pays you well. And finally, something that the worlds need. So, when you put it all together, then you have the Ikigai, but this is not easy. So, let me explain a little bit of each of these companies.

Leandro Barreto:

So, the first thing is something that you love, something that makes you be present, something that you must ask yourself what do you really enjoy in doing? What makes you happy? What holds your intention that makes you lose time and forget about time? So, for example, reading, dancing, singing, painting, learning, teaching, et cetera. So, maybe it's a little bit difficult to answer right now, but understanding and seeking what you love must is fundamental so that you can have a healthy balance between learning, putting it in practice, testing, failing, trying again, and keep the circle repeating itself.

Leandro Barreto:

So, an example that I can give you is, for example, I had a jujitsu teacher that no matter the day, he was always training. And one day, I remember I got my arm hurt. And in the next day, I had a message from him like 6:00 in the morning, he was asking if I was okay. And I was waking up and he was texting me like, "Hey, are you okay? Are you going to be able to train today?" And I was like, "Whoa, take it easy, man." This is very funny because our class is 6:00 p.m. And he was punctually at the tatami or dojo. I don't know the English word for that.

Robert O’Farrell:

Yeah, dojo. We have dojo. Yeah.

Leandro Barreto:

Dojo. Awesome. Yeah. And he was always punctual. And after the classes, he always said that he wants to get home earlier after the classes because he has private classes. So, from morning to night, he always keeps training and you can see the passion in his eyes when he talks about jujitsu. "It's a passion for me". A little bit exaggerated.

Robert O’Farrell:

Something that definitely got him up in the morning and kept him going throughout the day to the late evening, by the sounds of it.

Leandro Barreto:

Exactly. Yes. And then, you have the second component, which is something that you are good at. Something that you can always improve with yourself. So, for example, what you are really good at. It's quite hard to answer, but what the people say is that I'm do... something correct or what they say something positive that what I do. So, for example, I remember the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell that says that usually, you have to spend 10,000 hours in something practicing to be good at.

Leandro Barreto:

So, don't take it as an obstacle but as a motivation to keep going, and understand this part of what you are good at. It's a good way to improve. And the third part is what pays you well? So, money is what... Some people say that "Hey, money don't bring... It's not... how can I say that?

Robert O’Farrell:

Money doesn't bring happiness?

Leandro Barreto:

Yeah, exactly. But it puts a roof in your head. It makes you provide a good life for your family. It makes you travel. It makes you have a hobby. So, according to Maslow, for example, one of the bases of human beings is to start thinking about security. So, we have to have this security in order we can improve as a person. So, money helps you to achieve it. Yeah. So, find something that makes your life as comfortable as you desire to, as you wish to. So, otherwise, you'll always be looking for something that you never had. So, for example, time.

Leandro Barreto:

So, you will spend so much time thinking how can you have more money? And here's the glitch, you will never be paid because you will be stuck on your daily basis thinking on how to get money instead of how to improve your skills to get money. Right? And then, you have the what the world needs. So, here, the idea is to find a proposal for what do you do and what is value to the society, your proposal. And sometimes it's quite difficult to find precisely because of the plurality of positions and responsibilities that we have nowadays. And even more today with the full expansion of technology that every month we have new positions to be filled by companies that needs different type of skills, soft skills and hard skills.

Leandro Barreto:

And here, the keyword is to serve. So, I will give a personal example. For example, one of the things that I missed most when I was a young teenager was having someone who could help me to explore the technology so I can get a job. So, it was in the early 2000 and it was quite hard.

Robert O’Farrell:

Yes, very much so.

Leandro Barreto:

The internet is starting, everything is new.

Robert O’Farrell:

People on dial-up, internet was slow.

Leandro Barreto:

Do you remember that sound like prshh?

Robert O’Farrell:

Oh, yeah. It comes to me in my dreams I think. I heard it so many times in that era.

Leandro Barreto:

My family and my friends, they wasn't in the IT field. So, there is no one to help me that. So, I had to learn it by myself. Seems impossible. But it took me time to learn it and enter in a company with a good position let's say that gives me money and the possibility to learn much more faster. So, since 2013, I dedicate part of my time to teach young people, acting as a mentor to help them enter in this market so they can learn new skills. I can open paths for them, put in contact with the right people, people which is going to be important for them, and all aiming to accelerate their dev development and giving them the opportunity.

Leandro Barreto:

And this for me is very meaningful because I'm helping those who don't have any references also, and sometimes don't have a chance. And the more I serve them, the more I earn and I grow with them. So, I came across like when I was introduced to Ikigai for example, another personal example.

Robert O’Farrell:

Sorry. Before we get to that, just reiterating. So, the four components, so there's something that you really lose time in doing, something that you get into the flow of doing very easily. And then, the second component is the thing that you are very confident in doing, something that you do quite well. The third one, being something that pays you well, and the fourth one, being something where there's a need for it. So, just reiterating that. That's correct?

Leandro Barreto:

Correct. Correct.

Robert O’Farrell:

So, I guess getting to that, our second question that like for yourself, you can apply obviously in a business sense, but in a personal sense, what's been your journey there, and do you believe you've achieved Ikigai, I guess, would be my next question?

Leandro Barreto:

Yeah. Well, actually personally, I have some things that's very clear in my life. I'm still not there, but let's say that I'm in the process.

Robert O’Farrell:

Work in progress

Leandro Barreto:

Exactly. Work in progress. So, I have clear goals and I have clear in my mind where I want to go in a few years, so I don't get disencouraged if the weather is cold or warm, if the stock market goes up or down. And the only thing that I focus is to be 1% better than I was yesterday. And this provides me a security that prevents me to wasting time and things that doesn't make any sense or simply doesn't matter for me in the future. So, I take my career very, and also my personal life very serious on that point. So, yeah, let's say that work in progress.

Robert O’Farrell:

I love that word security that you use there. It draws a parallel, I think, to a word that we also use when it comes to that plan that we have, which is that focus element, making sure that we do the things that matter. Do you think that it's also given you a sense of focus too on what you take on and what you say yes to and what you say no to with regards to your personal and professional development?

Leandro Barreto:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. When you know where you want to go, it's more easy to say yes or no to something that came up to you. Another personal example that I remember was something like 12 years ago, 12 to 13 years ago, my focus was to learn Java, for example, Java programming. Because I know in the midterm, I would like to be a Java architect. So, I have to improve my skills on that programming language.

Leandro Barreto:

So, during that time, the company that I was working was making some changes and then they asked me, "Hey, I know you are good at Java. You are learning, but we need you to start learning this another language, Ruby on Rails during that time. But you have to at least for the moment, forget Java." And then, I was like, "Mm-mm. No, no."

Robert O’Farrell:

It's not what I want to do.

Leandro Barreto:

Exactly. I totally understand that was a company's decision. But during that point, it begins to separate my focus on what I want to achieve from the company's purpose. So, it doesn't make any sense to continue on that company. I asked to leave. And again, best decision ever, because then I entered in another company that I learned so much. And then, in three years I became a Java architect.

Robert O’Farrell:

Yeah. That's a fantastic example of that focus. I'm quite curious out of those four components that you mentioned before, what have you found quite easy, I guess, to achieve or to at least get clarity around personally? And what have you found more challenging?

Leandro Barreto:

Good question. Good question. Yeah. So, learning something that you don't know, it's always a challenge but when you have a desire or a clear focus where you want to go in a few years, things start to be clarified for you. For example, in 2014, I did extension of my MBA in United States to learn about entrepreneurship and things that for me was really, really important. But totally new field, I have no idea what to expect but it provides me the vision to... I always had the idea to have my own company in other words. So, I know that in short term, not in short term, but in midterm at least five years to four years, during that period of time, I would like to have my company.

Leandro Barreto:

So, after I did this MBA, I came back to Brazil, and then I started to put myself in situations that makes me learn these new things. And in 2016, I open up our restaurant in Brazil. So, when you have an objective, things, and it's quite funny because the universe starts to help you.

Robert O’Farrell:

You make your own luck in a lot of regards too, I think.

Leandro Barreto:

Yeah.

Robert O’Farrell:

So, if you had somebody who was looking to learn about Ikigai and came to you for some, for your experience and your advice in how to apply it to their lives, what do you think your advice to someone would be who doesn't know much about it?

Leandro Barreto:

Good question. Great question. So, one tip that I, or advice that I can give is, and I think that this is fantastic and I apply it in my daily basis. Don't waste time in small decisions on a daily basis because every day we have thousands of decisions to make and our brain capacity is limited daily, at least daily. So, there are some times that we feel like mentally exhausted after, for example, you have six meetings in a row in a day. In the end of the day, you were totally tired. Right? And I once read that the greatest minds don't waste time thinking on small things, for example, Steve Jobs always wore the same jeans and t-shirt every day. And he didn't need to think to use it. He just took it and reuse it.

Leandro Barreto:

So, during that time, what I did in 2018, more or less when I was presented to Ikigai. So, what I did, I lived alone in an apartment in Brazil. So, I decided to change it, my life. What I did, I donated my entire wardrobe of clothes with things that I almost never used. And I was only wear eight t-shirts and two jeans.

Robert O’Farrell:

Quite a collection.

Leandro Barreto:

So, I avoid making those small decisions, especially in the morning, because in the morning, you have a clear mind and you don't have to spend those in small things, because if you think on small things, probably it'll grow during the day. So, for example, another thing that helped me a lot is plan the week. So, Google Calendar exists to be used, right?

Robert O’Farrell:

Yeah. Yes.

Leandro Barreto:

So, everything that is very important for you, events or plans that need to be done, put on the calendar. And also, talking about the clothes, separate your clothes a day earlier before you go into bed. So, you wake up more calmly, you drink your coffee calmly, and you focus your efforts on what really matters. And once you have freed your mind from thinking about these small things, you can focus your time and energy on learning new things or getting things done the way it should be. And whether it's learning a new language or a new skill, or you can also read a book in the morning because you have free time, let's say. You can focus on what matters to you exactly.

Robert O’Farrell:

Yeah. I'm quite curious about this aspect of finding something that you really get consumed by. And I think in this digital age, we have so many things that distract us. Our phone has a lot of notifications where we have a lot of information at our beck and call and sometimes it can be overwhelming to know what we should focus on, and I guess what we can really get passionate about. I'm curious, do you have any insight into that as to how people can find that thing that they just lose themselves in and that they're super passionate about?

Leandro Barreto:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Another thing that worked very well for me is to turn off all the notifications.

Robert O’Farrell:

Get a dumb phone just so you don't have that level of notifications coming through. Yeah.

Leandro Barreto:

Yeah. Because I read... I don't remember where exactly, but your brain took something like 15 minutes to focus on something. So, if you don't spend 15 minutes of your time, focus on what needs to be done. You cannot focus at all. So, what I usually do, I turn off all of the notifications from my phone. So, the principal one, I just took it off and I don't care about notifications. Also, one thing that I noticed is that when I, for example, when I had Apple Watch. In the Apple Watch, even if you turn the notifications on or off, the iPhone, it keeps doing on the phone. Oh, my God. So, this is one simple device that I can say, because otherwise, you will enter in a black hole in a community and social media and news, and then you'll lose yourself.

Robert O’Farrell:

Yeah. I found that personally with the Apple Watch, having something on your wrist that vibrates is incredibly distracting. And I was always very big champion of technology, but that was one area where I just moved away from it, went back to a mechanical watch, just didn't want that level of interruption when I was trying to focus on things. So, I think it's a really key insight to focus.

Leandro Barreto:

Yeah. In addition to that, when you, for example, when you are in a meeting with someone and you are actually expecting a message for, I don't know, maybe your family, and then it pops up on your phone and you are in a meeting, and then you take a look into the watch and the people notice that you are not paying attention because you are looking into watch. No matter why you are looking, if it's a message or et cetera, you do provide a psychology... How can I say that in English? Oh, my God. Psychology interference. Let's say it.

Robert O’Farrell:

Yep. Psychological interference.

Leandro Barreto:

Interference. Yeah. Thank you. That will provide a negative influence to other people. So, yeah, that's why you made the right choice to move into the-

Robert O’Farrell:

Yeah. I've heard some people that will actually ask people to leave their phones outside when they go into meetings or leave their laptop outside so that you're present and that you are engaged in the conversation. Because I think even the mere fact that you have your phone near you is a distraction. Even if there's no notifications, its presence is enough to ensure that you're not 100% present in the conversation, which I think is quite interesting from how we focus and our dependency on that rush that we get or that endorphin rush of getting that ping on the phone or that notification.

Leandro Barreto:

Exactly.

Robert O’Farrell:

I thought we could move on to talk about objective and key results. Or for those people that may not have come across this term before, OKRs are collaborative goal-setting methodology and used by teams and individuals to set challenging and ambitious goals with measurable results. So, to break that down further, the objective part of the OKR is simply what is to be achieved and the KR part of it, which is key results, benchmark and monitor how we get to the objective. So, getting to the heart of setting successful OKR is establishing it clear and compelling why. Is there a secret formula to creating a powerful why to get everyone on board?

Leandro Barreto:

Yeah. Great question. So, OKRs, it's all about action and execution. And I think the secret formula, let's say it's having a well-defined proposal and also everyone engaged in seeking the result as the main objective. So, companies in my opinion are made of living ecosystem called human beings. And every human being has its own desires, proposals, goals. And en suite, unite all of the objectives of both the companies and all the people together. That's when we can achieve best results. And that's why some companies are focused on the cultural fit.

Leandro Barreto:

And this is one thing that I see growing a lot in the HR area, companies and persons that must, which the cultural fit must match. It basically means that the person has the same values and desires to achieve results as most of the people in the company or what the company understand as their force that they need to keep growing as a company. And I have seen many technically good people failing in selection, in process selection, simply because they don't adhere to cultural fit. And this is much more than a psychological issue because you don't know how to say like people that cannot work as a group.

Leandro Barreto:

So, it's better for the company to hire someone who can play as a team instead of someone who is like the lonely wolf that keeps working alone. And the results is for only him and not for the entire company. So, yeah, this is the classic example that I can see. And also, one thing that is good for that is nowadays, our fault tolerance is quite good because today at least serious companies don't punish failures. So, they even encourage you to learn.

Leandro Barreto:

And the Spotify models, I remember they say like, "Fail fast and learn fast." So, that was the fail wall was born. So, where everyone shared their failures and they can learn as a team, as a clan, guild. And this is quite beautiful because you can create such an environment where everyone can learn and grow together because humans can fail. And this is normal.

Robert O’Farrell:

Do you think that-

Leandro Barreto:

And-

Robert O’Farrell:

Sorry, I'm just curious. Do you think that companies are more focused around the why these days, or that why has become more important in their measure of success? And you mentioned cultural fit and I love this idea that more companies are much more sensitive to what is their company culture and how does this person work within, or are they going to fit into this company culture? Because the existing people in that company are aligned around their why. And if someone is coming in and doesn't align with that, they understand the impact on their success. So, do you think that company's becoming more and more aware of this and more sensitive to this?

Leandro Barreto:

Yes. I think they are. So, as far as they have the right people in the right environment with the right proposal, no matter the why they will find it blindly, let's say. I think it's like a sense of behavior for the people. Because if you see someone from, as your peer, let's say, that's running to an objective that was defined by the company. And you are aligned with your values and goals. You will follow it.

Leandro Barreto:

So, this is good for both persons as human beings and also for the company because they show the proposal, they show what is the why we must be, for example, the first selling company for our product in the market, why, and then people who is working on it, they will take it as a personal objective. And this is when you make the connection between the company's objective and the people's objective because when the company grows with this why, with this north star, the people will grow together with you.

Robert O’Farrell:

I completely agree. I'm quite curious too from the opposite point of view. Do you think that employees are becoming more aware of understanding the company's why before they join the company? Because we've seen with the pandemic that a lot of companies are now moving to this remote recruitment. And so, the possibilities for employees to work for a much broader range of companies now have increased. And do you think that employees are now finding better wire alignment when they're looking for new jobs because they do have a broader pool to play in per se?

Leandro Barreto:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that's why Glassdoor is so popular. So, when you are invited for a meeting or for an interview, you can see everything from the company. Like from salary to feedbacks from the people who works there or is not working anymore. And then, you can see if there's a match. And this is quite funny because like 10 years ago, which is not so popular, we are blindly thinking to work, let's say, in a position like software development. So, I have to be a software developer. I have to be a...

Leandro Barreto:

So, it was more focused on the position instead of the purpose. And now we are seeing the opposite. Now, the people are looking for the purpose, what the company can help me achieve. And it's more like a win-win-

Robert O’Farrell:

Situation.

Leandro Barreto:

... situation let's say, situation. Exactly.

Robert O’Farrell:

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think also a lot of people are really focused on how the company takes care of them as a person. They're very sensitive to the fact that they are committing their time to that company. So, there has to be that alignment around professional goals and personal goals. And I think that it's a great shift to see, to come back to the OKR side of things. I'm curious about what benefits do setting OKRs within an organization give or provide?

Leandro Barreto:

Yeah. I think OKRs, they are very, very simple. They do not require a specific knowledge to implement it. So, when you have the people committed and engaged to the goal and the why they want to achieve, then the implementation and using of OKRs became naturally. So, company can benefit because he's straight to the point. He's like, "Objective, it's the direction. And the key results are yes or no." So, keep it simple. That's the main benefit of the companies.

Robert O’Farrell:

Yeah. I love that. The fact that there's no gray area. You either succeed or you don't, and there's a lot of clarity around that as well.

Leandro Barreto:

Exactly.

Robert O’Farrell:

I think that with that aspect of OKRs, in your experience, have you seen OKRs set that tend to stretch the team further than they normally would be stretched in terms of what they attempt to achieve than companies that don't set OKRs from your experience?

Leandro Barreto:

Yes, but I think it matters on what the company, what's the culture of the company, because I have seen companies that is setting OKRS in the good way, but I have seen companies that is setting OKRS because it's fancy. When it's fancy, you don't have a clear objective. You don't have a clear vision. You don't have the right people. And then, it's very tricky and you will never achieve what you are proposing.

Robert O’Farrell:

I'm curious to dig into that a bit more to get your insight on that. Because as somebody who would come into a company that might be setting OKRs, how would you determine that the OKRs are probably not as clearly defined or that they're implementing a process that don't necessarily have the depth or the belief in doing? So, how would somebody come in and determine that?

Leandro Barreto:

Good question. Good question. So, the idea to have a objective is like to have something that can be... How can I say that, can provide you like a, not a fear, but it's going to be like, provides you a direction for, but the people who sees it, they think like, "Hey, this is quite hard to achieve I think." So, one example for Google, for example. So, Google in 2008, they tend to launch the Google Chrome. And as I remember, the first year was like, "Hey, this is the objective." Like, "Hey, we want to launch the best browser in the world." And the key result is the number of users because the users will tell you if the browser is good or not.

Leandro Barreto:

In the first year, they didn't achieve the key result. But the second year, they rise at the bar again, like, "Hey, now we are much than double the objective." And the second year, they still didn't achieve it. But it was very, very close to it. And the third year, they pass it. So, keep in mind that the objectives must be something that seems like a challenge, a huge challenge, but at the same time, it's very inspirational.

Robert O’Farrell:

Inspirational.

Leandro Barreto:

Inspirational. Thank you so much. For those who are working on it. So, I think this is most of the point.

Robert O’Farrell:

Yes. And what do you see as some of the pitfalls when setting OKRs for an organization?

Leandro Barreto:

Awesome. Awesome. So, the pitfalls from my perspective, there are some common mistakes when implementing OKR. So, for example, as I said, not having a clear vision of the goal, so people cannot engage. And especially when you have senior engineers because they don't want to work in something that don't bring purpose for them. Right? So, this is the first one, for example. The second one could be like a system that supports the monitoring of the results. So, you cannot follow up, which is quite important to keep following it if you are, we are close to achieve it. Yes or no? So, a good point.

Leandro Barreto:

And one thing that seems quite strange, but it's very, very common in the market is that your product is not finished yet. One personal example that I faced not quite recently, but do you play video games?

Robert O’Farrell:

When I get the time. I have two young boys, so I get very little time to do that these days. But yeah, I do.

Leandro Barreto:

Yeah. I love doing, I don't have also time, but when I have a litle bit of time, I can spend. So, this little time I try to spend in the best game that I found in the market. And here is the point because some years ago, there was a game that was released and before released, there was several gaming platforms, new sites, and et cetera, that was telling us that, "Here is the game challen... no, the game changing for the gaming market, because it's going to be very good. The marketing for this game was really, really good. And the game was like highest expectations for that. It was always in the top. "Hey, you have to play this because it's going to be very great. You are going to be having a great experience on that."

Leandro Barreto:

And the funny thing is that after they launch it, a few hours later, I notice some YouTubers who start testing the game. They began to post videos about so much bugs that they are facing. And within a week, the game had to stop selling because that was a disaster.

Robert O’Farrell:

Yeah.

Leandro Barreto:

And... Yeah.

Robert O’Farrell:

I was just going to say, I can think of a few games that come to mind that fit that criteria.

Leandro Barreto:

Yeah. Probably we are thinking the same, but I can say it, so.

Robert O’Farrell:

Yeah. Yeah. Do you find that people get OKRs and KPIs confused within an organization? Or have you ever come across any examples of that, where people misunderstand the purpose of between the two of them?

Leandro Barreto:

Yes. One thing that came up to my mind is the key result is a simple measure to understand if you are going in the right direction to your objective or not, but KPIs is it's more a performance index for performing for your team. For example, if they are performing in a good way, if we have the right resources for delivering something. And so, I think this is mainly the difference is the KPI, it's a measure for you to, maybe to bonus, to create a bonus for your team or et cetera. And the KR must be not linked to bonus or salary, et cetera. Must be like a direction. Something that, yes, we are achieving it or not. Or if not, what we have to do to correct the direction.

Robert O’Farrell:

Yeah. Fantastic. So, coming around to Agile, I'm curious about this marrying of the two, of OKRs and Agile together. How can we combine Agile and OKRs in your experience and your understanding to achieve results that drive high performance?

Leandro Barreto:

Awesome. So, as the Agile manifesto says, "People over process," so I believe whenever you maintain a fail-safe environment along with a good leadership, you can get the most of your team. So, connecting what I said earlier regarding the Ikigai and when you have a good leader, for example, in a safe environment and colleagues or peers who shares the same values and goals as you, then you can extract maximum efficiency because high-efficiency teams are teams that are focused and committed with the company results, and that will achieve great business results. Sorry.

Robert O’Farrell:

I also love that aspect with the OKRs, with that clear definition, too, that Agile, that processes is that sprint by sprint activity where you're going back and you're looping around and looking at the results of that sprint and going back to the customer and getting customer feedback and that real alignment around what you're trying to achieve as well, to give you that clarity of focus that when you are going through that sprint process, you're coming back and saying, "Okay, are we acting on the initiatives that have come out of these key results that contribute to that OKR?"

Leandro Barreto:

Exactly. And also, adding to that, that's why we have the goal for the sprint, right? So, we have the direction for the sprint. So, every sprint you can measure if you are achieving this goal or not.

Robert O’Farrell:

And I love it as a mechanism, too, to link back to that, that why piece to really give a clarity around why, which I think a lot of software development sometimes doesn't focus as much as they can on. So, I'm curious, so how can Ikigai mix into this? So, we've talked about that at the start and we talked about the components of it and it was a great framework about understanding a purpose, but how can we use that to achieve better results and stay motivated as a team?

Leandro Barreto:

Great question and also quite difficult. But yeah, I believe there are two thin lines that eventually met in the future. For example, the first one is like the individual as a person. So, how he seems himself in, within the organization and how can benefit, how this relationship can benefit from this win-win relationship. And also, the second one is like the individual as a professional. So, based on the skills that he already has. How can he help the company achieve the results more efficiently?

Leandro Barreto:

So, in a given timeline, these two lines will cross and then you will be able to extract excellent results because you will have a person with excellent internal knowledge, internal as a person, and also engaged with the companies is seeking as a greater objective, as a north star, and also helping your peers to grow all together.

Leandro Barreto:

And I think this is quite like a smile. When you smile at someone unconsciously, you make the other people smile too. So, when you have someone who is genuinely working with a proposal, that person will contaminate other in a good way. And then, you have a continuous string of people delivering consistent results. And I think this is the most important.

Robert O’Farrell:

Have you experienced that yourself where you see someone working with purpose and contaminate or infect how you... infect is again, not a great word, but inspired is probably the best word there, inspired the people around them to work in a similar fashion. Has that something that you've witnessed yourself?

Leandro Barreto:

Yes, yes. I remember back in the company that I was working in Brazil, that was my first day. I was like, "Hmm, there's something strange here," because everyone is so passionate on delivering their best results for their customer, that this thought influenced me in a positive way to start being like hungry for good results, not only for the company but for me as an individual, as someone who have to learn and teach others. And nowadays, I see these companies, it's achieving a great results with a great leader because even if we have a good team, we have to get someone who is a servant leader, who you can follow and maybe follow blindly in a good way. But yeah, I experience it.

Robert O’Farrell:

That's fantastic. But I'm interested, is there anything that you wanted to talk about personally with regards to either of those three topics or even outside of that, that has been inspirational, I think, in your professional development, in your personal life?

Leandro Barreto:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think Leandro five years ago was totally different person. And when I started looking, not only by myself inside me, but also outside and the opportunities that the world can give me and how can I serve back this, or how can I provide this back to the world? This is very funny because good things start to happen. For example, I never imagined to be working here in Amsterdam. And now, I'm here in Amsterdam, working in a great company with great people, delivering such great results, which is giving me a lot of knowledge to keep learning and keep the wheel turning on, keep the cycle.

Leandro Barreto:

And I think today, like performing the best Leandro's version ever, maybe tomorrow, a little bit more, and I can provide this knowledge to other person and I can also learn from other persons, from other people. And that's very exciting. I think that's what motivates me to wake up in the morning, do my sport things like running and jujitsu, and then let's do the work.

Robert O’Farrell:

That's fantastic. I love that, that reflection on the past five years, how far you've come. It sounds like you've had a lot of inspiration from a number of different sources, but is there something in there that you think was key to that? Or was it just a general progression over that time?

Leandro Barreto:

Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I tried to focus on people who have positive influence on others. So, I try to be more not equal because if you are equal, so you are the same person, so it doesn't provide value to the others, but try to be quite different in your own way. So, yeah, basically, that's what motivates me to get different sources of references and trying to be the best version of myself.

Robert O’Farrell:

That's fantastic. I love this mix of the philosophical, which is for me, the Ikigai, and the concrete, well, not concrete, but the workflow aspect of the Agile side of things coming together. Have you traditionally worked in Agile methodologies or did you transition between that may be starting, because if you're from the 2000s, so you probably touched on Waterfall at some point in the past and then came into Agile. Was that your professional progression over that time?

Leandro Barreto:

Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I worked a lot with the Waterfall methodology in 2008, when I was introduced to the Agile methodology with Scrum... no, actually 2009, then I saw. "Hey, this is very, very interesting." Let's learn more about it. And then, during this time, I keep working both with the Waterfall methodology and the Agile methodology. And the more I work it with the Waterfall, the more value I saw in the [inaudible 00:54:24]-

Robert O’Farrell:

In Agile. Yeah.

Leandro Barreto:

Yeah. And that was quite fantastic because then I also learn about SAFe and how to scale it, and yeah.

Robert O’Farrell:

I'm quite curious, like because we had a similar path in that regard and I reflect on where we are with OKRs and Agile, and it's interesting that Agile brought us closer to our customer and we speak to our customer on a more regular basis, which I thought was a massive win over Waterfall where you might have months and months of development, and you've got a requirement that you're trying to put into code, and then suddenly, you have this big delivery and that's when you talk to the customer. And usually, the customer comes back and says, "We want all these things changed." And it's a real pain.

Robert O’Farrell:

Agile was instrumental in that, but then going up from there and putting that layer of why on top of that, which I think is, again, one of those big fundamental shifts on how we focus on what we are doing. Do you see anything emerging from your experience, your professional experience that is tackling another key challenge with regards to, I guess, how we work and how we deliver value?

Leandro Barreto:

Yes. And for example, the customer, they want to see value on what is going to be delivered. They don't want to spend six months to wait something to be delivered. So, I think that's why cloud start being so popular, like SaaS companies, because when you are working on something that is on cloud, for example, you always have the last version. And no matter the day or the hour of the day, there will come new features. And usually, it's transparent for you. And internally from the engineering perspective, the more you deliver, the more quickly you can correct and the more you can understand the market.

Leandro Barreto:

And also, that's why some strategies, some release strategies came up so popular like Canary release. So, you deliver a few things to a particular person, and then you can test it. And if they provides you good or bad feedback, you have time to correct it. So, that's why it became so popular. So, I think during this time from now on, we must see a lot of SaaS companies starting to growing because things are in real life now, real time now, so I think it's natural.

Leandro Barreto:

By the way, there's a good strategy that was implemented by Spot 5 if I'm not mistaken that was like, but this is more for engineering perspective. They have some robots that keeps doing bad things to the servers.

Robert O’Farrell:

Oh, that's the Chaos Monkey.

Leandro Barreto:

The Chaos Monkey.

Robert O’Farrell:

That was Netflix. Yeah. Yeah.

Leandro Barreto:

Netflix, yeah.

Robert O’Farrell:

Netflix. And it would take down bits of their infrastructure and break things. Yeah, yeah.

Leandro Barreto:

Exactly. It's quite hard to see in some companies, but I think this has become to be more popular during the next couple of months or years, because it will teach the engineers how to deal with that because no one wants to stay working in the weekend. You stay with your family.

Robert O’Farrell:

Yeah. I completely agree. I remember when I first heard about the idea of the Chaos Monkey, that it shocked me that someone would inflict that upon their business and upon, I guess, their systems, but then it only takes a production incident to realize that if you had something like that, that you would've built in some provision should that eventuate. And I think that there's a lot of wisdom to it. And so, I absolutely love the idea. I love this, what you were saying about real-time delivery of value to customers.

Robert O’Farrell:

And I think back to how Agile has really been fundamental in pioneering that, well, not pioneering it per se, but with the release cadence that you get from one to two-week sprints, you're putting yourself in a position where you are delivering more often. And you mentioned Canary deploys, I think within that. Is there any other deployment strategies that you've come across that also support, I guess, that immediate delivery of value to customers?

Leandro Barreto:

Yes. There is another strategy which is called the Blue-Green release, but the difference between it is like the Canary release, you deliver something in the small portions, but the Blue-Green, you, like a switch that you turn on and off.

Robert O’Farrell:

Yes. Yes. Right.

Leandro Barreto:

Yeah, you can test it. You can deliver new version of your environment or your tool, and then everyone can use it. And if something goes failed, then you have the plan B, where you can just turn on and off, and then you can rearrange the traffic to your tool. But this is very technical.

Robert O’Farrell:

Yeah. Very interesting to me, but we might lose a few of our podcast listeners. One last question from me, just within your current professional engagement, were they implementing OKRs before you joined the company? Or was that something that you've seen introduced over that period of time?

Leandro Barreto:

From my current company, they are currently working with OKRs, so I didn't participate and implemented it. So, I'm just more focused on helping the teams in implementing the KRs. There were some companies that I worked in the PEs that I helped to build it, and also to build not only the objective but also the KRs. And the objective, it's you spend so much time because you have to understand where the company wants to be in the future.

Leandro Barreto:

So, you have to know inside what we have, what we can improve, where we can improve, and then we can base it on that, base it on the objective. We can build up to four key results to be more precise in achieving this. Yeah. But it's quite challenging, but at the same time, very exciting.

Robert O’Farrell:

I think that was going to be my question in your experience in seeing a company go from not doing that to then implementing it, what were the real challenges in doing that? And how long did you see that process take before they really got good at doing that? Because it is not only setting the meaningful objectives and obviously measurable key results but also then getting the alignment from the teams around that. What were the big challenges there and how long did you see that process take?

Leandro Barreto:

Yeah. I think it depends from company to company. I remember back in Brazil, I had to work with companies that spent months on deciding, but at the same time, I remember my own company took three months to start implementing it. So, I think it depends on the commitment of the people who is responsible for this objective. So, yeah, depends on the maturity also of the company, the people who is working, and yeah. Because the OKRs are quite old, but at the same time are quite new for people, for the companies. Right? So, this is like very challenging. And how do you balance it?

Leandro Barreto:

There are some people who doesn't know how to set the correct objective. And then, we came up with the same thing that we are discussing earlier. Like if you don't know where you're going to go, if the objective is not clear enough, no matter if you have good people or bad people, the people will not see value on that.

Robert O’Farrell:

Yeah. And you won't get your alignment because people don't either understand or don't believe in the objective.

Leandro Barreto:

Exactly.

Robert O’Farrell:

That's fantastic insight, Leandro. And I really appreciate your time today. Again, is there anything that you'd like to chat about before we wrap it up? I'm just conscious that we have been chatting for about an hour now and gone off script a little bit too.

Leandro Barreto:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. No, actually I'd like to thank you, Rob. Thank you, Agile team, everyone. I don't want to spend much time talking also. It was a pleasure and thanks for invite again. And I hope we can think good things in the future. Like, "Hey, I hope I can provide good insights on this."

Robert O’Farrell:

That's fantastic. You certainly have. I've learned a fair bit today as well. So, I'll be going back to revisit some of the talking points from this chat. So, thank you very much again for your time, Leandro. I really appreciate it. And, yes, have a great day. It's kicking off for you and it's ending for us. So, yeah, really appreciate it, mate.

Leandro Barreto:

Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate it too. Thanks again. See you. Have a great day.

Robert O’Farrell:

You too. Cheers.

Leandro Barreto:

Cheers.

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TL;DR

Henrik Kniberg, the agile coach behind Spotify's model, discusses how AI is fundamentally transforming software development. Key takeaways: AI tools like Cursor and Claude are enabling 10x productivity gains; teams should give developers access to paid AI tools and encourage experimentation; coding will largely disappear as a manual task within 3–4 years; teams will shrink to 2 people plus AI; sprints will become obsolete in favour of continuous delivery; product owners can now write code via AI, creating pull requests instead of user stories; the key is treating AI like a brilliant intern – when it fails, the problem is usually your prompt or code structure, not the AI. Bottom line: Learn to use AI now, or risk being left behind in a rapidly changing landscape.

Introduction

Artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping how software teams work, collaborate, and deliver value. But with this transformation comes questions: How do we maintain team morale when people fear being replaced? What happens to code quality when AI writes most of the code? Do traditional agile practices like sprints still make sense?

In this episode, I sit down with Henrik Kniberg to tackle these questions head-on. Henrik is uniquely positioned to guide us through this transition – he's the agile coach and entrepreneur who pioneered the famous Spotify model and helped transform how Lego approached agile development. Now, as co-founder of Abundly AI, he's at the forefront of helping teams integrate AI into their product development workflows.

This conversation goes deep into the practical realities of AI-powered development: from maintaining code review processes when productivity increases 10x, to ethical considerations around AI usage, to what cross-functional teams will look like in just a few years. Henrik doesn't just theorise – he shares real examples from his own team, where their CEO (a non-coder) regularly submits pull requests, and where features that once took a sprint can now be built during a 7-minute subway ride.

Whether you're a developer wondering if AI will replace you, a product owner looking to leverage these tools, or a leader trying to navigate this transformation, this episode offers concrete, actionable insights for thriving in the AI era.

About Our Guest

Henrik Kniberg is an agile coach, author, and entrepreneur whose work has shaped how thousands of organisations approach software development. He's best known for creating the Spotify model – the squad-based organisational structure that revolutionised how large tech companies scale agile practices. His work at Spotify and later at Lego helped demonstrate how agile methodologies could work at enterprise scale whilst maintaining team autonomy and innovation.

Henrik's educational videos have become legendary in the agile community. His "Agile Product Ownership in a Nutshell" video, created over a decade ago, remains one of the most-watched and shared resources for understanding product ownership, with millions of views. His ability to distil complex concepts into simple, visual explanations has made him one of the most accessible voices in agile education.

More recently, Henrik has turned his attention to the intersection of AI and product development. As co-founder of Abundly AI, he's moved from teaching about agile transformation to leading AI transformation – helping companies and teams understand how to effectively integrate generative AI tools into their development workflows. His approach combines his deep understanding of team dynamics and agile principles with hands-on experience using cutting-edge AI tools like Claude, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot.

Henrik codes daily using AI and has been doing so for over two and a half years, giving him practical, lived experience with these tools that goes beyond theoretical understanding. He creates educational content about AI, trains teams on effective AI usage, and consults with organisations navigating their own AI transformations. His perspective is particularly valuable because he views AI through the lens of organisational change management – recognising that successful AI adoption isn't just about the technology, it's about people, culture, and process.

Based in Stockholm, Sweden, Henrik continues to push the boundaries of what's possible when human creativity and AI capabilities combine, whilst maintaining a pragmatic, human-centred approach to technological change.

Transcript

Note: This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Maintaining Team Morale and Motivation in the AI Era

Tenille Hoppo: Hi there, team, and welcome to this new episode of the Easy Agile Podcast. My name is Tenille Hoppo, and I'm feeling really quite lucky to have an opportunity to chat today with our guest, Henrik Kniberg.

Henrik is an agile coach, author, and entrepreneur known for pioneering agile practices at companies like Spotify and Lego, and more recently for his thought leadership in applying AI to product development. Henrik co-founded Abundly AI, and when he isn't making excellent videos to help us all understand AI, he is focused on the practical application of generative AI in product development and training teams to use these technologies effectively.

Drawing on his extensive experience in agile methodologies and team coaching, Henrik seems the perfect person to learn from when thinking about the intersection of AI, product development, and effective team dynamics. So a very warm welcome to you, Henrik.

Henrik Kniberg: Thank you very much. It's good to be here.

Tenille: I think most people would agree that motivated people do better work. So I'd like to start today by touching on the very human element of this discussion and helping people maintain momentum and motivation when they may be feeling some concern or uncertainty about the upheaval that AI might represent for them in their role.

What would you suggest that leaders do to encourage the use of AI in ways that increase team morale and creativity rather than risking people feeling quite concerned or even potentially replaced?

Henrik: There are kind of two sides to the coin. There's one side that says, "Oh, AI is gonna take my job, and I'm gonna get fired." And the other side says, "Oh, AI is going to give me superpowers and give us all superpowers, and thereby give us better job security than we had before."

I think it's important to press on the second point from a leader's perspective. Pitch it as this is a tool, and we are entering a world where this tool is a crucial tool to understand how to use – in a similar way that everyone uses the Internet. We consider it obvious that you need to know how to use the Internet. If you don't know how to use the Internet, it's going to be hard.

"I encourage people to experiment, give them access to the tools to do so, and encourage sharing. And don't start firing people because they get productive."

I also find that people tend to get a little bit less scared once they learn to use it. It becomes less scary. It's like if you're worried there's a monster under your bed, maybe look under your bed and turn on the lights. Maybe there wasn't a monster there, or maybe it was there but it was kind of cute and just wanted a hug.

Creating a Culture of Safe Experimentation

Tenille: I've read that you encourage experimentation with AI through learning – I agree it's the best way to learn. What would you encourage leaders and team leaders to do to create a strong culture where teams feel safe to experiment?

Henrik: There are some things. One is pretty basic: just give people access to good AI tools. And that's quite hard in some large organisations because there are all kinds of resistance – compliance issues, data security issues. Are we allowed to use ChatGPT or Claude? Where is our data going? There are all these scary things that make companies either hesitate or outright try to stop people.

Start at that hygiene level. Address those impediments and solve them. When the Internet came, it was really scary to connect your computer to the Internet. But now we all do it, and you kind of have to, or you don't get any work done. We're at this similar moment now.

"Ironically, when companies are too strict about restricting people, then what people tend to do is just use shadow AI – they use it on their own in private or in secret, and then you have no control at all."

Start there. Once people have access to really good AI tools, then it's just a matter of encouraging and creating forums. Encourage people to experiment, create knowledge-sharing forums, share your own experiments. Try to role-model this yourself. Say, "I tried using AI for these different things, and here's what I learned." Also provide paths for support, like training courses.

The Right Mindset for Working with AI

Tenille: What would you encourage in team members as far as their mindset or skills go? Certainly a nature of curiosity and a willingness to learn and experiment. Is there anything beyond that that you think would be really key?

Henrik: It is a bit of a weird technology that's never really existed before. We're used to humans and code. Humans are intelligent and kind of unpredictable. We hallucinate sometimes, but we can do amazing things. Code is dumb – it executes exactly what you told it to do, and it does so every time exactly the same way. But it can't reason, it can't think.

Now we have AI and AI agents which are somewhere in the middle. They're not quite as predictable as code, but they're a lot more predictable than humans typically. They're a lot smarter than code, but maybe not quite as smart as humans – except for some tasks when they're a million times smarter than humans. So it's weird.

You need a kind of humble attitude where you come at it with a mindset of curiosity. Part of it is also to realise that a lot of the limitation is in you as a user. If you try to use AI for coding and it wrote something that didn't work, it's probably not the model itself. It's probably your skills or lack of skills because you have to learn how to use these tools. You need to have this attitude of "Oh, it failed. What can I do differently next time?" until you really learn how to use it.

"There can be some aspect of pride with developers. Like, 'I've been coding for 30 years. Of course this machine can't code better than me.' But if you think of it like 'I want this thing to be good, I want to bring out the best in this tool' – not because it's going to replace me, but because it's going to save me a tonne of time by doing all the boring parts of the coding so I can do the more interesting parts – that kind of mindset really helps."

Maintaining Code Quality and Shared Understanding

Tenille: Our team at Easy Agile is taking our steps and trying to figure out how AI is gonna work best for us. I put the question out to some of our teams, and there were various questions around people taking their first steps in using AI as a co-pilot and producing code. There are question marks around consistency of code, maintaining code quality and clean architecture, and even things like maintaining that shared understanding of the code base. What advice do you have for people in that situation?

Henrik: My first piece of advice when it comes to coding – and this is something I do every day with AI, I've been doing for about two and a half years now – is that the models now, especially Claude, have gotten to the level where it's basically never the AI's fault anymore. If it does anything wrong, it's on you.

You need to think about: okay, am I using the wrong tool maybe? Or am I not using the tool correctly?

For example, the current market leader in terms of productivity tools with AI is Cursor. There are other tools that are getting close like GitHub Copilot, but Cursor is way ahead of anything else I've seen. With Cursor, it basically digs through your code base and looks for what it needs.

But if it fails to find what it needs, you need to think about why. It probably failed for the same reason a human might have failed. Maybe your code structure was very unstructured. Maybe you need to explain to the AI what the high-level structure of your code is.

"Think of it kind of like a really smart intern who just joined your team. They're brilliant at coding, but now they got confused about something, and it's probably your code – something in it that made it confused. And now you need to clarify that."

There are ways to do that. In Cursor, for example, you can create something called cursor rules, which are like standing documents that describe certain aspects of your system. In my team, we're always tweaking those rules. Whenever we find that the AI model did something wrong, we're always analysing why. Usually it's our prompt – I just phrased it badly – or I just need to add a cursor rule, or I need to break the problem down a little bit.

It's exactly the same thing as if you go to a team and give them this massive user story that includes all these assumptions – they'll probably get some things wrong. But if you take that big problem and sit down together and analyse it and split it into smaller steps where each step is verifiable and testable, now your team can do really good work. It's exactly the same thing with AI.

Addressing the Code Review Bottleneck

Tenille: One of our senior developers found that he was outputting code at a much greater volume and faster speed, but the handbrake he found was actually their code review processes. They were keeping the same processes they had previously, and that was a bit of a handbrake for them. What kind of advice would you have there?

Henrik: This reminds me of the general issue with any kind of productivity improvement. If you have a value stream, a process where you do different parts – you do some development, some testing, you have some design – whenever you take one part of the process and make it super optimised, the bottleneck moves to somewhere else.

If testing is no longer the bottleneck, maybe coding is. And when coding is instant, then maybe customer feedback – or lack of customer feedback – is the bottleneck. The bottleneck just keeps moving. In that particular case, the bottleneck became code review. So I would just start optimising that. That's not an AI problem. It's a process problem.

Look at it: what exactly are we trying to do when we review? Maybe we could think about changing the way we review things. For example, does all code need to be reviewed? Would it be enough that the human who wrote it and the AI, together with the human, agree that this is fine? Or maybe depending on the criticality of that change, in some cases you might just let it pass or use AI to help in the reviewing process also.

"I think there's value in code review in terms of knowledge sharing in a large organisation. But maybe the review doesn't necessarily need to be a blocking process either. It could be something you go back and look at – don't let it stop you from shipping, but maybe go back once per week and say, 'Let's look at some highlights of some changes we've made.'"

We produce 10 times more code than in the past, so reviewing every line is not feasible. But maybe we can at least identify which code is most interesting to look at.

Ethical Considerations: Balancing Innovation with Responsibility

Tenille: Agile emphasises people over process and delivering value to customers. Now with AI in the mix, there's potential for raising some ethical considerations. I'm interested in your thoughts on how teams should approach these ethical considerations that come along with AI – things like balancing rapid experimentation against concerns around bias, potential data privacy concerns.

Henrik: I would treat each ethical question on its own merits. Let me give you an example. When you use AI – let's say facial recognition technology that can process and recognise faces a lot better than any human – I kind of put that in the bucket of: any tool that is really useful can also be used for bad things. A hammer, fire, electricity.

That doesn't have so much to do with the tool itself. It has much more to do with the rules and regulations and processes around the tool. I can't really separate AI in that sense. Treat it like any other system. Whenever you install a camera somewhere, with or without AI, that camera is going to see stuff. What are you allowed to do with that information? That's an important question. But I don't think it's different for AI really, in that sense, other than that AI is extremely powerful. So you need to really take that seriously, especially when it comes to things like autonomous weapons and the risk of fraud and fake news.

"An important part of it is just to make it part of the agenda. Let's say you're a recruitment company and you're now going to add some AI help in screening. At least raise the question: we could do this. Do we want to do this? What is the responsible way to do it?"

It's not that hard to come up with reasonable guidelines. Obviously, we shouldn't let the AI decide who we're going to hire or not. That's a bad idea. But maybe it can look at the pile of candidates that we plan to reject and identify some that we should take a second look at. There's nothing to lose from that because that AI did some extra research and found that this person who had a pretty weak CV actually has done amazing things before.

We're actually working with a company now where we're helping them build some AI agents. Our AI agents help them classify CVs – not by "should we hire them or not," but more like which region in Sweden is this, which type of job are we talking about here. Just classifying to make it more likely that this job application reaches the right person. That's work that humans did before with pretty bad accuracy.

The conclusion was that AI, despite having biases like we humans do, seemed to have less biases than the human. Mainly things like it's never going to be in a bad mood because it hasn't had its coffee today. It'll process everybody on the same merits.

I think of it like a peer-to-peer thing. Imagine going to a doctor – ideally, I want to have both a human doctor and an AI doctor side by side, just because they both have biases, but now they can complement each other. It's like having a second opinion. If the AI says we should do this and the doctor says, "No, wait a second," or vice versa, having those two different opinions is super useful.

Parallels Between Agile and AI Transformations

Tenille: You're recognised as one of the leading voices in agile software development. I can see, and I'm interested if you do see, some parallels between the agile transformations that you led at Spotify and Lego with the AI transformations that many businesses are looking at now.

Henrik: I agree. I find that when we help companies transition towards becoming AI native, a lot of the thinking is similar to agile. But I think we can generalise that agile transformations are not really very special either – it's organisational change.

There are some patterns involved regardless of whether you're transitioning towards an agile way of working or towards AI. Some general patterns such as: you've got to get buy-in, it's useful to do the change in an incremental way, balance bottom-up with top-down. There are all these techniques that are useful regardless. But as an agilist, if you have some skills and competence in leading and supporting a change process, then that's going to be really useful also when helping companies understand how to use AI.

Tenille: Are you seeing more top-down or bottom-up when it comes to AI transformations?

Henrik: So far it's quite new still. The jury's not in yet. But so far it looks very familiar to me. I'm seeing both. I'm seeing situations where it's pure top-down where managers are like "we got to go full-out AI," and they push it out with mixed results. And sometimes just completely bottom-up, also with mixed results.

Sometimes something can start completely organically and then totally take hold, or it starts organically and then gets squashed because there was no buy-in higher up. I saw all of that with agile as well. My guess is in most cases the most successful will be when you have a bit of both – support and guidance from the top, but maybe driven from the bottom.

"I think the bottom-up is maybe more important than ever because this technology is so weird and so fast-moving. As a leader, you don't really have a chance if you try to control it – you're going to slow things down to an unacceptable level. People will be learning things that you can't keep up with yourself. So it's better to just enable people to experiment a lot, but then of course provide guidance."

AI for Product Owners: From Ideation to Pull Requests

Tenille: You're very well known for your guidance and for your ability to explain quite complex concepts very simply and clearly. I was looking at your video on YouTube today, the Agile Product Ownership in a Nutshell video, which was uploaded about 12 years ago now. Thinking about product owners, there's a big opportunity now with AI for generating ideas, analysing data, and even suggesting new features. What's your advice for product owners and product managers in using AI most effectively?

Henrik: Use it for everything. Overuse it so you can find the limits. The second thing is: make sure you have access to a good AI model. Don't use the free ones. The difference is really large – like 10x, 100x difference – just in paying like $20 per month or something. At the moment, I can particularly strongly recommend Claude. It's in its own category of awesomeness right now. But that of course changes as they leapfrog each other. But mainly: pay up, use a paid model, and then experiment.

For product owners, typical things are what you already mentioned – ideation, creating good backlog items, splitting a story – but also writing code. I would say as a PO, there is this traditional view, for example in Scrum, that POs should not be coding. There's a reason for that: because coding takes time, and then as PO you get stuck in details and you lose the big picture.

Well, that's not true anymore. There are very many things that used to be time-consuming coding that is basically a five-minute job with a good prompt.

"Instead of wasting the team's time by trying to phrase that as a story, just phrase it as a pull request instead and go to the team and demonstrate your running feature."

That happened actually today. Just now, our CEO, who's not a coder, came to me with a pull request. In fact, quite often he just pushes directly to a branch because it's small changes. He wants to add some new visualisation for a graph or something in our platform – typically admin stuff that users won't see, so it's quite harmless if he gets it wrong.

He's vibe coding, just making little changes to the admin, which means he never goes to my team and says, "Hey, can you guys generate this report or this graph for how users use our product?" No, he just puts it in himself if it's simple.

Today we wanted to make a change with how we handle payments for enterprise customers. Getting that wrong is a little more serious, and the change wasn't that hard, but he just didn't feel completely comfortable pushing it himself. So he just made a PR instead, and then we spent 15 minutes reviewing it. I said it was fine, so we pushed it.

It's so refreshing that now anybody can code. You just need to learn the basic prompting and these tools. And then that saves time for the developers to do the more heavyweight coding.

Tenille: It's an interesting world where we can have things set up where anyone could just jump in and with the right guardrails create something. It makes Friday demos quite probably a lot more interesting than maybe they used to be in the past.

Henrik: I would like to challenge any development team to let their stakeholders push code, and then find out whatever's stopping you from doing that and fix that. Then you get to a very interesting space.

Closing the Gap Between Makers and Users

Tenille: A key insight from your work with agile teams in the past has been to really focus on minimising that gap between maker and user. Do you think that AI helps to close that gap, or do you think it potentially risks widening it if teams are focusing too much on AI predictions and stop talking to their customers effectively?

Henrik: I think that of course depends a lot on the team. But from what I've seen so far, it massively reduces the gap. Because if I don't have to spend a week getting a feature to work, I can spend an hour instead. Then I have so much more time to talk to my users and my customers.

If the time to make a clickable prototype or something is a few seconds, then I can do it live in real time with my customers, and we can co-create. There are all these opportunities.

I find that – myself, my teams, and the people I work with – we work a lot more closely with our users and customers because of this fast turnaround time.

"Just yesterday I was teaching a course, and I was going home sitting on the subway. It was a 15-minute subway ride. I finally got a seat, so I had only 7 minutes left. There's this feature that I wanted to build that involved both front-end and back-end and a database schema change. Well, 5 minutes later it was done and I got off the subway and just pushed it. That's crazy."

Of course, our system is set up optimised to enable it to be that fast. And of course not everything will work that well. But every time it does, I've been coding for 30 years, and I feel like I wake up in some weird fantasy every day, wondering, "Can I really be this productive?" I never would have thought that was possible.

Looking Ahead: The Future of Agile Teams

Tenille: I'd like you to put your futurist hat on for a moment. How do you see the future of agile teamwork in, say, 10 to 15 years time? If we would have this conversation again in 2035, given the exponential growth of AI and improvements over the last two to three years, what do you think would be the biggest change for software development teams in how they operate?

Henrik: I can't even imagine 10 years. Even 5 years is just beyond imagination. That's like asking someone in the 1920s to imagine smartphones and the Internet. I think that's the level of change we're looking at.

I would shorten the time a little bit and say maybe 3 or 4 years. My guess there – and I'm already seeing this transfer happen – is that coding will just go away. It just won't be stuff that we humans do because we're too slow and we hallucinate way too much.

But I think engineering and the developer role will still be there, just that we don't type lines of code – in the same way that we no longer make punch cards or we no longer write machine code and poke values into registers using assembly language. That used to be a big part of it, but no longer.

"In the future, as developers, a lot of the work will still be the same. You're still designing stuff, you're thinking about architecture, you're interacting with customers, and you're doing all the other stuff. But typing lines of code is something that we're gonna be telling our kids about, and they're not gonna believe that we used to do that."

The other thing is smaller teams, which I'm already seeing now. I think the idea of a cross-functional team of 5 to 7 people – traditionally that was considered quite necessary in order to have all the different skills needed to deliver a feature in a product. But that's not the case anymore. If you skip ahead 2 or 3 years when this knowledge has spread, I think most teams will be 2 people and an AI, because then you have all the domain knowledge you need, probably.

As a consequence of that, we'll just have more teams. More and smaller teams. Of course, then you need to collaborate between the teams, so cross-team synchronisation is still going to be an issue.

Also, I'm already seeing this now, but this concept of sprints – the whole point is to give a team some peace of mind to build something complex, because typically you would need a week or two to build something complex. But now, when it takes a day and some good prompting to do the same thing that would have taken a whole sprint, then the sprint is a day instead. If the sprint is a day, is there any difference between a sprint planning meeting and a daily standup? Not really.

I think sprints will just kind of shrink into oblivion. What's going to be left instead is something a little bit similar – some kind of synchronisation point or follow-up point. Instead of a sprint where every 2 weeks we sit down and try to make a plan, I think it'll be very much continuous delivery on a day-to-day basis. But then maybe every week or two we take a step back and just reflect a little bit and say, "Okay, what have we been delivering the past couple of weeks? What have we been learning? What's our high-level focus for the next couple of weeks?" A very, very lightweight equivalent of a sprint.

I feel pretty confident about that guess because personally, we are already there with my team, and I think it'll become a bit of a norm.

Final Thoughts: Preparing for the Future

Henrik: No one knows what's gonna happen in the future, and those who say they do are kidding themselves. But there's one fairly safe bet though: no matter what happens in the future with AI, if you understand how to use it, you'll be in a better position to deal with whatever that is. That's why I encourage people to get comfortable with it, get used to using it.

Tenille: I have a teenage daughter who I'm actually trying to encourage to learn how to use AI, because I feel like when I was her age, the Internet was the thing that was sort of coming mainstream. It completely changed the way we live. Everything is online now. And I feel like AI is that piece for her.

Henrik: Isn't it weird that the generation of small children growing up now are going to consider this to be normal and obvious? They'll be the AI natives. They'll be like, "Of course I have my AI agent buddy. There's nothing weird about that at all."

Tenille: I'll still keep being nice to my coffee machine.

Henrik: Yeah, that's good. Just in case, you know.

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Thank you to Henrik Kniberg for joining us on this episode of the Easy Agile Podcast. To learn more about Henrik's work, visit Abundly AI or check out his educational videos on AI and agile practices.

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