AI At Work: Dave West On Scrum, AI, And Better Stakeholder Collaboration

00:00:00 Neil: Welcome back to another episode of the AI at work podcast. Now, if you've been told AI will make product delivery effortless, I want to introduce you to the part of the workflow that still runs on emotions, politics, and the occasional awkward silence. Because today, I'm once again going to be talking with my good friend from the East Midlands, originally the CEO of Scrum.org. His name's Mr. Dave West, and together we're going to talk about yes, AI, but most importantly, stakeholder collaboration. Why it has become a bigger deal now as AI accelerates and how quickly teams can build and ship. Because once the tech stops being the bottleneck, everything else will become a lot more obvious. So if you've ever built the right thing for the wrong person or the wrong thing for the right person. You're in the right place today, and we'll have a little fun along the way. But enough from me. Let me introduce you to my guest right now. So thank you for joining me on the podcast once again, for anyone that's missed our previous conversations, can you remind everyone listening with a little about who you are and what you do?

00:01:22 Dave West: Well, thanks for inviting me back, Neal. Firstly, I'm surprised after the last time. Um, but but but you did. Um, so my name is Dave West. I'm the CEO of Scrum.org, the home of scrum and based in Boston, Massachusetts. But as you can tell from my accent, I am a Brit. I'm actually from Leicester. I'd rather not talk about the football at the moment. It is actually my biggest pain point. But I moved to America twenty, almost twenty six years ago and I removed as actually the product manager for something called the Rational Unified Process. Moved to Boulder, Colorado, spent some time in Vancouver, then the Valley, and now in in Boston. I've been in Boston. I don't know, whatever nineteen or so years. And, um, the reason why I sort of the sort of the underlying reason why I was in, in America and moved here was because I have a real strong passion for product development. And at that, in twenty five years ago, rational software was very heavily involved in sort of shaping, you know, things like UML, the unified process, obviously object oriented software development, things like rational rose, etc., service based architectures was shaping product development back in the day and software development back in the day. And, um, yeah, it started in software, but now it's very much product. And, uh, and that's been my journey. So my passion is product development. And I'm, I'm here an Englishman living in, uh, in Boston.

00:02:55 Neil: And before we go any further, you did mention football, so I've got to go there because I've been waiting ten years to say this, but we're. As a Derby County fan, we're finally above you in the league after ten years.

00:03:05 Dave West: I mean, to be honest, I think Harbour Town is probably going to be above us in the league soon. It's, you know, the sorry, Neil, I know your listeners are probably going to get very bored just for 20s here or so it's the irony. The last game of the season is on the day that the the ten years to the date that Leicester won the, the, the Premier League. And it's very likely that that will get relegated into the First Division on that day. And and I think it just shows you that, you know obviously we lost our chairman in in a horrific helicopter crash in the car park of Leicester City Football Club of King Power Stadium. And since then it's just been a it's just it's just been very, very disappointing. And, and it just shows you that even the best teams and the best organizations and you know, Leicester are a fantastic club and they've got a fantastic Um, fan base that even they can go through these, these, these times. And, and in football, it's all about money now. And it's got worse every, every year. And when Chelsea spends almost a billion dollars on players, I mean how can you compete with that. Um so anyway yes Derby better team than Leicester at the moment. But uh.

00:04:19 Neil: And there's the promotional sound clip that I needed right there. But seriously, if we bring it back to product development for a moment, I mean, you spoke about the gap between theory and practice and all things product development before, but what do you see in the field that convinced your stakeholder collaboration that it deserved? Its its very own dedicated course, rather than just being treated as another footnote in scrum training. There's got to be a story there too, right?

00:04:46 Dave West: Yeah, yeah. So obviously stakeholder collaboration and working with stakeholders is a key part of our product owner curriculum are actually in every single product that we release as an element of that. Because when you work incrementally and you deliver frequently and you get a sprint review, for instance, in scrum, you have to get stakeholders involved. So it's always been a part of our curriculum. But there's, there's two reasons that we're really motivated me to, to work with Red Tangerine and Claudia and David on, on creating and releasing this class. One was that it continues even after all these years to be the biggest thing on every survey we deliver or we're having problems with stakeholders. No, no surprise there. And then the second thing is AI. AI is really accelerated the delivery of stuff. And, um, well, the interesting thing about that is, you know, as you increase the amount of stuff you're delivering, the, the interactions with your stakeholders become more friction points. And, um, dare I say bottlenecks. Um, also the way in which you engage stakeholders, if you want to take advantage of AI, you have to have a very disciplined approach to how you work with them. When I say disciplined, I mean documented, I mean, defined. I mean, a clarity of exactly what we're delivering, a clarity of who your stakeholders are, a clarity of the, you know, the, the domain or the context that this system is being delivered. If you've got that material, if you have a very disciplined approach to stakeholder management, then actually you can take advantage of AI, you can deliver more frequently, take advantage and not have stakeholders be an absolute friction point in, in, in the whole process.

00:06:38 Neil: And it's interesting you say that because there are many teams that will say in front of anyone that will listen, that they believe they are aligned with their stakeholders, yet that friction still appears around priorities and expectations. And in those surveys, they often surface as well, as you said. So where do you see the the biggest misunderstandings between those scrum teams and the stakeholders? What's going wrong here? Where are the biggest misunderstandings coming from?

00:07:02 Dave West: It's funny, when you walk into offices, there's always a big sign that says, you know, customers first. You know, we care about our employees. Teams are very important. And then you see how they work. And those things are the opposite of what what the situation is. It's all power, status, authority, politics, all that kind of stuff. But I guess it's the classics, right? It is the when will it be done and what is it? And the devil's in the detail. Um, uh, you know, it's funny. I think it comes back to a couple of things. I think people just don't like having difficult conversations and, you know, sort of those difficult. I even just, I don't know if you've ever employed a contractor in your home, but you know, those, those, those conversations. There's always a like, is it going to. We've recently done a significant amount of work on our exterior. And, you know, some would call it landscaping, I would call it creating a theme park. Um, the, it was, it's yes, my wife, I don't know what happened, but one thing led to another. And then, you know, we were sort of down this, you know, continuous process of digging up lawns and relaying them and the when will it be done? Conversation was a very sort of we kind of all kind of had this bizarre. I'm like, well, when's it going to be done? I would I want to have a garden party and not in the sort of royal sense, but a garden, you know, friends around and hang out in the garden in September while it's still nice. And they were like, well, yeah, yeah, September sounds real. You know, I mean, guess what it was? And it was done basically in November.

00:08:44 Speaker 3: Oh.

00:08:45 Dave West: And you know, having these conversations, these challenging conversations is very, very difficult and awkward and nobody really wants to have them. Secondly, I think that there's a lot of assumptions that we carry around as human beings. We assume that everybody sort of generally, we we approach the world in the same way. And that's that's blatantly not true. But and we know that on a logical sense, but that doesn't change our behavior. How we engage human beings tends to assume that they are like us. We build systems that support us and then hope that it works for, for, for, for, for other people. Um, and that can be, that can lead us down paths where we sort of like is, oh, hang on, what do you mean? Um, there's a great example that, that we're very familiar with is on our website, you know, so the latest Gillette razor was built using scrum. So the exfoliating male racer, I should say male razor rather. You know the best a man can get. And all that was built using scrum and, um. Dave Ingram, head of R&D also a Brit living in Boston, actually. Lovely chap. Uh, also got no hair. I mean, bit of a mafia thing here I think. But anyway, so he on the there's a video I think on our website where he tells this story about how one of the best things about scrum is it forced this very difficult conversation at the sprint review about pricing. So there was this underlying assumption around how much they could charge for a razor, this particular razor. And that had been causing all sorts of problems. And they and they brought this out in a sprint review. They just and somebody just even said it as well. We assume blah, blah, blah. And the CEO was there and he goes, what? Oh no, I just said that in passing. I didn't mean it. I mean, well, I meant it, but if you've got a reason why, then, you know, let's, let's talk about it and work for it. And then suddenly sort of like the constraints fell away. And, you know, the exfoliating razor has been voted one of the best razors they've ever created. I actually used it this morning and it's a fantastic razor. And the, the, you know, it's just funny that that everybody had got this assumption and everybody walks in with the I know what other people think. Maybe it's because I think they're like me, or maybe it's because I've got this model of them in my head and you have to challenge that. So all of that, you know, the, the, the sort of led us to this desire to, to work with red tangerine and build this, um, build this, build this class. And, and I think that continues to be the big thing, right? When will it be done? What is it? The devil's in the detail and coming in with all these assumptions and, and I think that most organizations are in that state.

00:11:41 Neil: And we are now talking about AI and AI in the workplace. Everything's changing, Everything's up for grabs. And of course, that we're talking about today was built with, I think you said Claudia and David of Red Tangerine there. So how did that collaboration shape the practical real world scenarios inside the training? And and what is it that makes it different from maybe traditional role focused courses that we've seen in the past?

00:12:05 Dave West: So what's interesting about this, this is the first class that we've released where we don't own the IP. And I know that sounds really like, oh, that's just irrelevant. And who cares? You know, it's like Taylor Swift owning her catalog or whatever. But the reason why that's important is a couple of reasons. One, so we've traditionally built classes with our community and with our stakeholders, and we own the IP, we develop it, we maintain it. And, um, and that's great. And, you know, from a learner point of view, it's kind of irrelevant who owns the IP, right? But what's really interesting about this is that by allowing somebody else to use our platform and they continue to own the IP, maintain the IP. It creates an opportunity for a lot more richness on our platform, as you can imagine, right? We get, you know, historically, it's always been a bit of a difficult, you know, I wanted to include something that I've seen one of our trainers or somebody used and they go, well, that's my, that's my secret sauce. I don't want to do that. Yeah. And so what we found was by providing this opportunity, we actually got a lot of really cool stuff that has been very, I don't want to say hidden from the world, but you know, if it's owning, if, if one person's got it and there are finite, then it is being hidden from the world. It will be able to get out. So I'm, I'm really excited about that. And from a learner point of view, it means that we'll be able to build a much more robust platform, take advantage of tools like AI to, to harvest that in a more effective way. You know, we are using AI to speed up our delivery. No. No surprise. Yeah. And that gives us the ability to create an environment around learning paths and around journeys and around destinations. Maybe reconfigure some of this IP and these ideas in different ways. Take advantage of the richness of our community in quite an exciting way. And, um, the other thing that was interesting is it also particularly opens us to skills based classes. A lot of our trainers and broader community have a particular like, oh, this area of skill. And as Scrum.org has historically focused on the sort of like the bigger story and, and then the idea was after a face to face training or instructor led training, then the trainer would then work with the client and teach this, you know, backlog prioritization. Or in the case of stakeholder management, how you build empathy maps or whatever, you know. And now we can take advantage of, you know, by allowing them to use their IP, bring it to our platform. It allows us to move down things like these skill based classes, which are shorter, more focused. And I don't want to say more practical because I think all our classes are practical, but very much focused on a solution space.

00:14:59 Neil: We're talking today around the future of work in AI, etc. and AI is speeding up delivery. But on the human side of things, product owners, scrum masters and developers, they're all got a unique set of skills and they will offer different approaches to stakeholder engagement and from multiple different angles there to get what they need. And I've got to ask, how should each accountability be thinking about building trust without stepping on each other's responsibilities? Because that's something we see time and time again too.

00:15:28 Dave West: So, Neil, I think it's less about roles and more about human beings, the actual people. Each individual comes with their own relationships with particular stakeholders. That's both good and bad. Good because it provides Trust and provides an opportunity to learn. And you've got that direct conduit to that human being bad because it often undermines the the whole story, as it were, because that stakeholders getting mixed messages, maybe, or inconsistent ideas or doesn't actually trust the person who's been empowered to make those decisions. So I think one of the things that the, the class talks about is very much about building that sort of like more holistic, more transparent approach from a team or from a product. And I think that's really, really important that you, you leverage the strengths of the relationships you have in the team. You don't make assumptions, but you ensure that that these conversations are or these interactions or these relationships, what comes out of them, what's what's borne, what the fruit that is borne from them, a made transparent in a way to allow us to manage it in a more holistic and consistent, consistent way. And that's even more important when you've got tools like AI that might be possibly creating assets, creating materials, using words. And so I think that that, that it's important that you harness the whole group. You make it transparent, you are disciplined. And that that's a word I've used, I think a few times in this in this conversation. I think one of the most important things I took out from the class, and I'm no expert in stakeholder management. Luckily, we we, Claudia and David are is this disciplined approach because frankly, Neil, I don't know about you, but my experience of product delivery and working with stakeholders, it's all a bit a bit sort of seat of the pants, you know, sort of like you go to a meeting and you'd be just in like, particularly if it was an external product working with an external company, you'd be in the cab or on the tube and you'd be like, how are we going to present this? Then? What's, what's the objective? And it was all very last minute and and and you never really you were so concentrating on the product, you weren't concentrating on how the product was being perceived by the people and what you, what your objective was from the conversation that you were having with them. You know, the, the worst sprint reviews, the sprint reviews, where we don't have a series of questions in mind that we want our stakeholders to answer. The worst conversations are ones where we demo something without a reason. You know, where we're not continuously, you know, I'm going to show you this because I want to ask you these five things. Just want to make sure. So you frame the discussion, the, you know, there's and, and I think that that discipline, I think is super, super important. And you shouldn't discard your own in, you know, team members relationships with stakeholders, you should actively encourage it. It's not just the product owner or the product manager having conversations with stakeholders. It should be the whole team, but you need to approach it in a very disciplined way. Now.

00:18:39 Neil: one hundred percent with you. And another thing that stands out in the course is how it emphasizes identifying and almost segmenting stakeholders based on their behavior, their motivations, and communication styles. So why is that level of nuance so important in complex product environments? And also, what's the best way of doing that? We've seen in the past, those strengthsfinder type courses and stuff, and understanding different personality styles and different approaches to talking to people with those different styles. So why is it so important and how do you understand those differences?

00:19:14 Dave West: Yeah, I mean, we've all seen Mad Men right now. Yeah. And, uh, and though I would recommend not being drunk when you do it, you know, you, you, you listen to those, you know, the, those conversations and those pitches and they talk about the customer marketing have been doing this for years right there. And they're incredibly nuanced and incredibly sophisticated in this approach. Now what what you see product development. Historically we've been yeah, we might have we might have a stakeholder model. We might have a maybe some personas, but only really if they're using the software or using the product we're building. Usually we wouldn't, we'd sort of group all stakeholders other than the person that's paying for it much the same, or governance and compliance might be different as well. So and we've historically been a little bit, you know, haphazard with it. So with AI tools, it's incredibly important that you document your stakeholders and you document where they're coming from. I'm not talking about doing Myers-Briggs or personality. You know, I don't need to know their star sign. You know, it might be interesting. No, we don't know. I'm not I'm not. Um, what I am interested in is what they want, what they need, what their outcomes, their sort of background. You know, some things I have to say. Um, uh, with things like LinkedIn, etc.. I don't know about you, but when I'm having a conversation with somebody, I quickly point Gemini at your LinkedIn profile and say, hey, what kind of things should, you know, is this person going to be interested in? Do you think it doesn't always get it right, but it's very useful. That's that's made to improve the likelihood of it getting things right. You need to start documenting more about your stakeholders and segmenting those key stakeholders into, into groups, into decision making, into what they can provide. And then when you create an asset, maybe it's, uh, a status report. I know that sounds evil, that we still do them, but or a current, you know, maybe we do a newsletter about the product, we can personalize it and we can personalize it to the particular needs of those stakeholders. And so that means if the stakeholders are interested in compliance and governance and that's what they're responsible for then, then that email that goes to them about where the product is and where they're, you know, and gives them the opportunity for feedback, uh, particularly as we're releasing so much more frequently because of AI, then you get the ability to talk directly to those, to those, to those motivations and those needs. And I think that's really interesting. And it ultimately reduces what I use the term. And it's not in the class, but stakeholder drag, you know, this sort of like slows everything down because you end up having to, oh, I didn't know you were in that frame of mind. Oh, oh, that's interesting. Or, or, you know, having stakeholders attend the same meeting and you sort of do this generalized presentation when actually their interests are completely in a different place. And so then you have to have another meeting to focus on that. You can we can reduce that. And that allows us then to improve trust and, and ultimately learning and deliver more valuable products faster.

00:22:30 Neil: Uh, did you take any useful lessons from Mad Men and Don Draper drinking some bourbon before pitching to him.

00:22:38 Dave West: Yes, though it did remind me a little bit of when I started in the City of London in the early nineties. Uh, it wasn't it's not. It was definitely that sort of like Friday afternoons were particularly drunken affairs, as I recall. But, uh, we used to go and drink in the underwriter, which was a pub just under the Commercial Union tower. And, uh, yeah, so I, I think I shouldn't drink at lunch is the only thing I learnt really from all of that and from Mad Men, because my afternoons are not particularly good then.

00:23:10 Speaker 3: Yeah, you and me both.

00:23:12 Neil: And outside of that empathy driven practices, they're also highlighted in the course as a way to uncover needs that are often missed when teams are just focused on stated requirements and have trouble drifting from that. So any examples where deeper listening maybe change the trajectory of a product decision. And he mentioned a great one with the Gillette a few moments ago, but anything else stand out? Yeah.

00:23:35 Dave West: So recently and, and you know, we, we were working on, we are working on a product. Um, and we're going to deliver it on a different channel. And it was really interesting. Had all these meetings and I hadn't attended all these meetings. And then I attended a meeting and I realized very quickly, because I was new to the meeting that they said tomato and this other team said aubergine, you know, I mean, not literally, but, uh, aubergine. Do we call them? I don't know. Yes. Or eggplant as we call them here. You see that? You see, it's so easy to make these mistakes, right? Anyway, so and it was very clear because I came in fresh now. And so I called out this disconnect and and it was quickly resolved and it led to a sort of level of resolution. Now, the benefit of being a new set of ears isn't always afforded to a team, right? You can't always be a new set of ears. So what's interesting is that by using tools, using a more systematic approach, you can, you know, and asking questions rather than telling things. So how often when you demo something or when you have a review, you, you, you're presenting the whole time because you know, it's, it makes you feel really good. It also reduces the chance they're going to ask really hard questions when actually it should be the exact opposite, right? Yeah. You should be asking loads of questions. You know, getting, getting, doing things like mirroring, getting feedback, you know, and yeah, I think that the example of when I came into this, this team that had been going for some time and sort of had a whole fresh set of ears, probably annoyed the heck out of everybody initially, but ultimately resulted in something quite good and has actually led us to a modularization of this particular class that we hadn't thought of before, because both sides were misunderstanding what they were saying, even though we were using the same language and not talking about aubergines or eggplants.

00:25:43 Neil: And self-paced learning, this is something that's becoming more and more common across professional development. And just for people listening, what advantages do these formats offer for busy product professionals compared to those traditional instructor led sessions that you've seen? Any big movement here, any big changes or any big pluses from that?

00:26:01 Dave West: I, I think it's so Scrum.org has always been in the business of trying to provide, you know, our ideas and stuff in different ways with, you know, the, the, the, the decoupling of certification from training classes was a great example of that for people that couldn't initially it was geographies. They couldn't because we were doing in-person training. Twelve years ago, people in if we didn't have a trainer in that geography, then they couldn't do it. right. So because of that, we were like, okay, well, maybe we'll offer the ability to test and we'll provide online resources, not as not as good as a self-paced class. They were more just blogs and videos and stuff like that. But, but you will at least be able to get to a level of knowledge where you can assess it against, against that test. So we've always been in that business, but we, we always shied away from self-paced learning, primarily because we thought it would undermine our trainer community, you know, and, and secondly, we weren't sure if we could do it well enough. You know, it some of these things. Yeah. But with the technology now is so much better than it was. And it is so easy to quickly test ideas, build them using AI tools. You know, we use a particular platform of products that allow us to rapidly build videos to try interactive things. And also Covid has, you know, the pandemic trained people to be able to communicate, to learn in this way, which I honestly don't believe before that. But it has some implications. Like you have to do shorter segments, you have to focus, you have to mix it up, you have to try different mediums. You know, people only, you know, twelve, fourteen minutes max in one start and then you have to change. So I think but the biggest outcome for learners is now we have the ability to fit it around your schedules, to fit it around your needs and still get that rich, robust experience to teach you. You know, in the case of stakeholder management, you know, how to do empathy mapping or whatever and to fit it around your, your schedule. And I think that historically, we've kind of just assumed that people would come to us and now, you know, we have to go to them. And I think that's a good thing. I think it's making us better. I think it's making us challenge. How do people learn these ideas now and testing them in different ways? So I think that that's something that, um, that self-paced definitely has brought to us. And, um, and, and we learn every day and I, and I can only see it getting better, particularly with the impact of AI around not only the creation of the assets, but also the ability to rapidly test them, deploy them and get feedback on them.

00:28:57 Neil: And one thing we've got to shine a light on today around scrum is your passionate community. And I suspect we have more than a few listening that have been following your work over the years, watching everything evolve. So how does this new course fit into scrums or broader mission of helping teams solve complex problems in a way that feels sustainable and human centered in an age of AI? It's a tricky balance, I would imagine sometimes.

00:29:21 Dave West: Uh, so I think number one, you know, we've always wanted a stakeholder class. We had some issues with IP and ownership and stuff like that, which we've managed to iron out with the new platform thing, and we've managed to get this out. So we've always wanted to do this. I think that now we've actually got the ability to do it. Um, so I think that, you know, it fits into the mission that number two, I think it's part of a broader agile product delivery curriculum that we've always wanted to build. And I think that, I think that we'll continue to invest in that. And it gives us because the, because we have the ability with self-paced and with the platform to deliver more nuanced training that we've never, you know, you're like, well, unless, you know, ten thousand people do this every month, we're not going to do it now with the ability to for smaller segments of our community that have got a particular problem to fit in and to repackage it into more, more broader models. Um, and then the third one is I think that the, our mission is all about the community. You mentioned that earlier, and I think this gives a great amplifier for the great work that our community has been doing over the last, I don't know, twenty something years to help people deliver complex problems, solve complex problems, and deliver products more effectively in the in the age of AI. And, and I think it gets us sets us up for the for when AI increasingly becomes the mechanism that serves content. A bit like the sort of, you know, the a, you know, on Spotify, you have the AI DJ, right? Yeah, I, I think that is going to be the reality for learning in the future. And so by having all this content structured, documented with the appropriate metadata in the platform, then that allows us to rapidly assemble this to have a unique experience for for you. Now for what you need at that time in your context, in your situation. So I think this is a step towards that. We're a long, long, long way from it, don't get me wrong. I think the as anybody that's used the AI DJ on Spotify, it's not an experience that's as fun as listening to radio two. Um, or if you're feeling young radio one. Um, but, uh, but it is, it is a step. You can see how the world's changing.

00:31:53 Neil: Yeah. I'm, uh, I'm still in denial. I'm sticking with radio six music. It's like one and a half to two. I'm not ready for two just yet, but I'm kind of hanging on in there. And now and again, you end up with some crazy drum and bass or something, but, uh.

00:32:07 Dave West: Nothing crazy about drum and bass, my friend. I think, you know, having grown up in the nineties. Yeah, I do love that. Massive attack is one of my, uh. Yeah. Oh my God. And Pete Tong is one of my favorite. And Pete Tong is still on radio one, even though he's. I think he's older than us.

00:32:25 Neil: He's got to be, I think. Yeah.

00:32:27 Dave West: Yeah. Never, never go wrong with a bit of Pete Tong.

00:32:31 Neil: Love it. And we've now reached a part of the podcast where I'm going to pull out my virtual soapbox to try and lay to rest any misconceptions or maybe even untruths that you might have seen in your polarised news feed that just frustrate you. So what do people misunderstand most about your industry? Are there any myths about your job? Field of expertise or anything we can lay to rest today? The floor is yours, my friend.

00:32:55 Dave West: I think that that Agile and scrum is dead. Yeah, I and because of AI, you're only going to have like one person teams and everything's going to push left. And it's the end of software development as we know it. I actually think AI is going to increase the opportunity for inspection and adaption. I also think it's going to highlight the fact that we're building the wrong software more quickly. I think it's going to highlight the fact that our relationship with our stakeholders is fragmented and broken. More effective, you know, because it because as soon as you're delivering more stuff, as soon as product delivery isn't the bottleneck, you know, the software development aspect, the testing aspect, the deployment aspect, when that no longer becomes the bottleneck, it means that the other elements of that process that you've been hiding about, hiding behind, you know that because software, because your software isn't being delivered fast enough, they'll be like, oh, well, it's their fault. It's always there when suddenly you're building the wrong thing. You're not. Your ability to make decisions is rubbish, and you ended up building too many things, or your relationship with your stakeholders is clearly broken. You know that. I think all of those things need a disciplined approach that ultimately scrum and agile provides an incremental, outcome centric, value centric approach that Scrum and agile provides. So I, I, I just don't see why people think that agile and scrum is dead. I do think that the way in which we've maybe learnt it, the way in which the training and the certification business is changing and that's great. That's an opportunity for us to look at it differently and go, oh, let's focus on this and do things differently. But I think that if people are discarding those practices and those ideas, you know, whether it's pairing, whether it's sprint reviews, whether it's a daily, whether it's sprint planning, this idea of a focus time, then I think ultimately you're going to be in a bit of a mess, even with wonderful power of AI. So I don't believe agile is dead. And yes, I know you're going to say Neil, but you're a little bit biased because it's paying your mortgage. And that is a fair point. However, even if I'm not making money from it, I think that you can't discard those practices and shouldn't be discarding those practices. Please don't.

00:35:20 Neil: Absolutely love that. How much better does it feel to get that off your chest once and for all?

00:35:24 Dave West: You know, we could make an entire show on that, actually, but maybe we'll do it in the future.

00:35:31 Neil: Absolutely. So if we, um, anybody listening interested in the course that we've discussed today or just carrying on the conversation around many of the topics we discussed, where would you like to point everyone listening today to carry that conversation on?

00:35:46 Dave West: Well, of course, Scrum.org the website, that's the primary place that's, uh, you know, uh, well over a million people go there every month, so, you know, it can't be wrong. Um, it's a great set of resources. Uh, recommend you go there and then of course, me on LinkedIn. Don't be shy. Uh, David, Justin West, I know, Justin, that it's a long story with my mum, but, um, you know, my mum laughs. You know, she married in November. I was born in February. She says just in Uh, that's the reason why. David. Just in West. So, yeah. So, um. David. Just in West or you obviously could do. Scrum.org. Dave West and you'll find me on LinkedIn. You know, don't be, don't be shy. Connect up and, uh, and stay in touch. I'd love to hear your perspective.

00:36:36 Neil: Love it. Well, I will have links to everything you mentioned there and also details around that effective stakeholder collaboration for scrum teams. I love how it's focusing not just on AI and technology, but the skills, the mindsets, the techniques that are needed for scrum teams to build trust, alignment and shared ownerships with all types of stakeholders. Maybe we can improve those surveys today if people pay attention, who knows? But right now I'm going to lie down on my couch, sip a whiskey like Don Draper with Massive Attack's Angel playing in the background. But a pleasure as always, my friend. Thanks for joining me.

00:37:10 Dave West: Well, thanks for having me, Neal.

00:37:12 Neil: I think if there's one takeaway from today, it's that AI can. Yes, speed up delivery, but it can't fix messy human dynamics. If anything, it will possibly shine a brighter light on them. Because if you don't have clarity on who your stakeholders are, what they actually need, and how they make decisions, you've just found yourself getting to confusion even quicker than before. And that is not the brief. So you'll find the links to Scrum.org, the new self-paced course on stakeholder collaboration, and Dave West, of course, on LinkedIn. And I've got to ask, where has AI sped things up for you and where has it exposed a human bottleneck that you can't ignore anymore? Love to hear about that too. As always, tech talks network.com. Let me know. Other than that, keep an eye on your podcast feed. I'll be back here with another guest before you now. Speak to you then. Bye for now.