The Agile Skills Library

Geoff Watts · Paul Goddard
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Welcome to The Agile Skills Library — a practical, human-centred podcast for anyone who wants to get better at agile beyond the framework. Created and curated by Geoff Watts and Paul Goddard, this podcast draws on over 50 years of combined experience working with teams, leaders, Scrum Masters, and organisations across a wide range of industries. Each episode focuses on one skill that great agile practitioners rely on every day — facilitation, coaching, decision-making, conflict, communication, systems thinking, and leading in uncertainty.

  1. 8월 18일

    EP21: Using Benjamin Franklin’s 13 Virtues to Build Team Norms and Continuous Improvement

    Geoff and Paul discuss Benjamin Franklin’s “13 virtues” as a practical framework for self-improvement and, more importantly, for developing team norms, shared standards, and a culture of continuous improvement in agile teams. They explain how Franklin created virtues to address his own frustration with not meeting his standards, and how he focused on one virtue at a time in four-week cycles so all 13 were covered over 52 weeks. They propose a team activity where members first brainstorm virtues individually, then share and cluster them, with two constraints: the team must agree on exactly 13, and any single disagreement vetoes a virtue, prompting discussion, negotiation, and reframing (e.g., curiosity vs stability). They stress facilitation rigour, equal participation, time to do it well, and ongoing review, and they will share Franklin’s list plus a larger prompt list and a definition of “virtue.” 00:00 Welcome and Banter 00:47 Why Franklin Virtues 02:37 Remembering the 13 03:32 Virtues vs Values 05:09 Team Virtues Exercise 06:54 Handling Conflicts 08:56 Franklin Focus Cycle 10:23 Team Milestones Cards 11:27 Facilitation Tips 13:29 Time-boxing and Review 14:52 Resources and Wrap Up

  2. 8월 11일

    EP20: Kano Analysis: Prioritising Features by Customer Satisfaction (and Building Minimum Lovable Products)

    Geoff and Paul welcome listeners back to the Agile Skills Library and introduce Kano analysis, a customer satisfaction model from the 1980s by Noriaki Kano, used to support data-driven prioritisation via surveys comparing how customers feel when a feature exists versus when it doesn’t. They explain the five feature categories—threshold/must-have, linear/one-dimensional, delighted/excited, indifferent, and reverse—and use hotel-room examples (toilets and beds as threshold; bed size, Wi‑Fi speed, and room attributes as linear; anniversary card and chocolates as delighters; padded hangers and heavy bed throws as indifferent; too many pillows/furniture and unwanted items like rats as reverse). They connect Kano to release planning, arguing teams often over-focus on threshold features and should instead balance trade-offs to create a “minimum lovable product,” including knowing when not to build or when to remove backlog items. 00:00 Welcome Back Banter 01:40 Why Kano Matters 04:52 How Kano Surveys Work 06:13 Must Have Basics 07:12 Hotel Threshold Examples 08:58 Linear Performance Needs 11:20 Delighters and Exciters 15:08 Indifferent and Reverse Features 17:45 Using Kano for MVP vs MLP 21:05 Wrap Up and Next Steps

  3. 8월 4일

    EP19: A Retrospective From the Future - Using Future Perspective to Create Positive Change

    Geoff and Paul open by celebrating Paul’s birthday and discussing mixed feelings about ageing and birthdays, then pivot to a coaching technique: a “future perspective” or “retrospective from the future.” Geoff explains imagining a future time (e.g., 6-12 months or five years) where things are going well, describing what’s true, then looking back to identify the decisions and actions that made it happen; he notes it can be analytical or visualisation-based and more strategic than typical retrospectives. They discuss using it individually (including a “Nirvana letter”) or with teams to counter present-focused negativity and create motivating goals. Paul practices the exercise, describing a future with balanced variety and stability, meaningful work, family time, and deeper rugby club involvement that expands into consultancy, plus leading indicators to track progress. They close by asking listeners to leave a review and download companion content to try the technique. 00:00 Birthday Banter 01:53 Ageing And Milestones 02:33 Future Retrospective Idea 03:11 How The Exercise Works 05:42 Team And Solo Variations 06:59 Paul Visualises Five Years 09:11 Make It Specific 11:09 Turn Vision Into Actions 15:09 Leading Indicators And Signals 16:41 Mindset And Team Longevity 19:06 Birthday Gift And Wrap Up

  4. 7월 28일

    EP18: Commit/Expect: Building Working Agreements Between Product Owners and Teams

    In this Agile Skills Library episode, Geoff and Paul introduce a workshop technique called “Commit and Expect,” used to clarify responsibilities and improve relationships within agile teams. They describe how a product owner and a development team (and optionally a scrum master) each create two lists: what they will commit to and what they expect from the other party, then compare lists to identify agreements and disagreements and turn shared items into working agreements. The discussion emphasises starting with areas of alignment, using facilitation to handle delicate mismatches, and treating commitments as relationship-building that can grow over time with evidence in retrospectives. They address objections that it resembles a RACI or feels transactional, arguing it prompts nuanced conversations beyond job descriptions. They also mention downloadable templates and briefly demonstrate the technique by negotiating episode editing and content hosting. 00:00 Welcome and Setup 00:45 Why Commit Expect 01:36 Origins and Rediscovery 02:59 How the Exercise Works 04:10 Agreements and Working Rules 06:15 Variants and Team Charter 08:35 Conflict Case Study 10:42 Go Slow Build Trust 12:33 RACI and Transactional Concerns 16:44 Facilitation Tips and Templates 18:03 Live Commit Expect Demo 18:45 Wrap Up and Goodbye

  5. 7월 21일

    EP17: DECIDE - A Technique For Collaborative Decision Making

    In this episode of the Agile Skills Library, hosts Geoff Watts and Paul Goddard discuss the DECIDE technique, a structured approach to collaborative decision making. They explain the importance of inclusive decision making in agile environments and introduce a deck of seven cards, each representing different stances like deny, inquire, concede, iterate, defend, and endorse. They highlight how this technique can help teams make more democratic and effective decisions, and share their experiences and insights on its application. Listeners are also invited to share their stories and feedback on using this technique. Downloadable content: www.inspectandadapt.com/podcasts/ep17-decide-a-technique-for-collaborative-decision-making 00:00 Introduction and Greetings 00:11 Today's Topic: The Decide Technique 00:47 Importance of Collaborative Decision Making 03:30 Introducing the Decide Cards 06:36 The Six Stances of Decide 09:42 Practical Applications and Customisations 16:08 Conclusion and Free Resources

  6. 7월 14일

    EP16: Top Trumps Prioritisation: A Scoring Technique for Product Backlogs

    Geoff and Paul, agile and leadership coaches, introduce a prioritisation technique Paul calls “Top Trumps prioritisation,” inspired by the card game where each card shares comparable attributes. Applied to product backlog items or user stories, the group first agrees 4–5 common value criteria (often aligned to product strategy or OKRs) that apply across all items, then scores each item against each criterion (e.g., out of 10) to reduce subjective debate. Scores can be agreed collaboratively, averaged from multiple stakeholders, and optionally weighted because criteria may not be equally important; the resulting total value score can be compared across backlog items and combined with estimates to consider ROI. They discuss running the exercise in workshops, anonymously, or online, and offer downloadable templates for listeners. 00:00 Sunny Welcome 00:26 Podcast Format 00:55 Top Trumps Prioritisation 01:47 How Top Trumps Works 03:49 From Game to Backlog 05:32 Pick Value Criteria 07:33 Score Stories and ROI 09:53 Weighting the Criteria 11:45 When to Use It 13:12 Templates and Download 14:13 Variations and Scaling 15:04 Wrap Up and Call to Action

  7. 7월 7일

    EP15: Using the Wheel of Life as an Agile Coaching Tool

    Geoff and Paul discuss the “Wheel of Life,” a pizza-shaped self-assessment tool borrowed from life coaching that can be used with individuals or teams to visualise how different aspects of work or life are going. They explain setting context and psychological safety so it’s clearly for self-development, not performance management, then co-creating 6–10 segments, defining what 0 and 10 mean, and scoring subjectively. For teams, members score individually first to avoid bias, then compare results and focus on spreads rather than averages to surface differing perceptions. The coach prompts reflection on the shape, helps select one or two focus areas, and encourages small experiments to improve scores and revisit over time. They give an example team wheel (e.g., goals, collaboration, psychological safety, quality, stakeholder alignment) and a personal energy-level example, and mention downloadable templates and a request for listeners to share and rate the podcast. Downloadable content here: www.inspectandadapt.com/podcasts/ep15-the-wheel-of-anything 01:17 Introducing Wheel of Life 02:28 How the Wheel Works 05:08 Safety and Confidentiality 06:13 Scoring and Reading the Shape 08:21 Team Use and Differences 11:29 Run Small Experiments 12:33 Team Health Example 17:23 From Two to Three Mindset 22:01 Templates and Wrap Up 22:17 Where to Find Us 22:51 Final Goodbye

  8. 6월 30일

    EP14: The Ball Point Game - An Agile Training Exercise for Iteration, Flow, and Self-Organisation

    Geoff and Paul discuss the long-running agile training exercise “The Ball Point Game,” often used in in-person Certified ScrumMaster courses to teach iterative improvement, inspect-and-adapt, and self-organisation. They explain the setup (typically 10–12 people and many tennis-ball-sized balls) and core rules: each ball must touch everyone, have airtime between people, not be passed to a closest neighbour, return to the starter, and dropped/removed balls incur a penalty while the team self-scores. The game is played over eight timed iterations with planning, running, scoring, and re-estimating, and teams usually improve after a chaotic first round. They highlight learning outcomes around experimentation, the dangers of targets and competition, facilitation/Scrum Master questioning, lean waste and flow, leadership dynamics, and contrasts with waterfall-style planning, and they plan to share a PDF of rules and invite listeners to submit scores or videos. 00:59 Podcast Intro Setup 01:25 Ball Point Origins 03:06 Game Rules Explained 06:18 Iterations Timing Format 10:09 Early Rounds Expectations 11:52 Experimentation Mindset 14:46 Targets Scores Psychology 18:00 Facilitation Prompts Tips 23:04 Variants Flow Competition 27:43 Wrap Up Resources Challenge 28:29 Final Goodbye

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소개

Welcome to The Agile Skills Library — a practical, human-centred podcast for anyone who wants to get better at agile beyond the framework. Created and curated by Geoff Watts and Paul Goddard, this podcast draws on over 50 years of combined experience working with teams, leaders, Scrum Masters, and organisations across a wide range of industries. Each episode focuses on one skill that great agile practitioners rely on every day — facilitation, coaching, decision-making, conflict, communication, systems thinking, and leading in uncertainty.

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  • 제작진
    Geoff Watts · Paul Goddard
  • 방송 연도
    2026년
  • 에피소드
    22
  • 등급
    전체 연령 사용가
  • 저작권
    © Geoff Watts · Paul Goddard
  • 웹사이트 보기
    The Agile Skills Library

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