Agile Mentors Podcast from Mountain Goat Software

It’s not a full episode this week—but it might be the one your heart needs. Brian Milner shares what he’s truly grateful for this year (spoiler: it’s not a new tool or framework), reflects on the human side of agility, and invites you to join him in a quick pause before the final sprint of 2025.

Overview

In this special solo episode, Brian Milner pauses to reflect on what he's most grateful for this year—and invites you to do the same. From a renewed focus on the human side of agility to the evolving nature of our roles as leaders and practitioners, this heartfelt message is a reminder that change isn’t just necessary—it’s powerful. Brian also shares his appreciation for the Mountain Goat Software team and a behind-the-scenes shoutout to Agile Mentors’ own Laura Kendrick for making the show possible. Short, sweet, and soul-centered, it’s a moment to breathe, acknowledge growth, and say thanks before we sprint toward the end of the year.

References and resources mentioned in the show:

Five Lessons I’m Thankful I Learned in my Agile Career by Mike Cohn
#123: Unlocking Team Intelligence with Linda Rising
#125: Embracing Gratitude in Challenging Times with Brian Milner
#134: How Leaders Can Reduce Burnout and Boost Performance with Marcus Lagré
Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast

Want to get involved?

This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input.

• Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one.
• Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com

This episode’s presenters are:

Brian Milner is a Certified Scrum Trainer®, Certified Scrum Professional®, Certified ScrumMaster®, and Certified Scrum Product Owner®, and host of the Agile Mentors Podcast training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work.

Auto-generated Transcript:

Brian Milner (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're here for another episode of the Agile Mentors podcast. As I always say, I'm here with you as always, Brian Milner. And today it's just me because this has kind of been tradition now. We've done this two or three years in a row since we've been doing the podcast. And I really like this tradition. It's the time of year when we say that we're grateful for things. Here in the US.

We have a Thanksgiving holiday that will be shortly after this episode releases. So we're gonna do something a little bit different. We're not gonna give you a full interview episode with anyone else. I just wanted to kind of just really briefly highlight, as I traditionally do in this message, a couple things that I'm thankful for. I know it's been a time of change.

for a lot of people. It's a time that maybe that change is more painful for you than others I know. So there's a lot to kind of maybe taking a moment just to pause and say, well, even with all those things, what are the things that I'm really thankful that I have right now that are kind of going this way?

So I want to start by just saying, one of the things I'm grateful for is sort of the shift I've seen in the Agile community towards more of a human-centered kind of approach to agility. This year just felt different in that way. There was more people talking about humans instead of tools, it seemed like in conversations. Teams...

named the real stuff, safety, burnout, stress, hope. I was hearing these kind of questions in classes. There was a lot more focus on things like psychological safety, which is really, really important. And I think that really matters. I think that maybe it's just my own kind of view of the world, but I have seen sort of a shift in conversations. And I think that's a good thing.

I don't know if it's just a recognition or maybe AI is driving some of that because it can't do that very well. But for whatever reason, I think that's a positive thing. And I think that's going to continue to be a positive thing for us here. One of the other things I'm really grateful for that I all too often neglect to say is the people that help with this show that are kind of behind the scenes. One is

to thank the one and only sponsor this podcast has ever had, Mountain Goat Software, Mike Cohn and the whole crew there. We don't have ads for hair growth products or, I don't know, all the weird things you hear on other podcasts. Everything that you're gonna hear here, even if it's an ad, is gonna be agile related and it's only gonna come from Mountain Goat. So I really appreciate them.

investing in this and continuing to invest in it, I believe it's a really worthwhile venture. And if you're listening, I'm sure that you do as well. So I'm very thankful that we have that strong support for Mountain Goat software. I'm thankful for specific help that kind of falls into this as well. So I say this in classes sometimes, but I don't say it enough here on the podcast.

My partner in helping me through this is a wonderful woman named Laura Kendrick. So Laura, I'm sure will listen to this and just want to say my thanks to all of the work and the effort that she puts into this. She does so much behind the scenes to help me with the scheduling and getting guests on and handling the files going back and forth to all the various places. It's just, it's a lot of work.

Now that we launched these on YouTube as well, it seems like it's even more work. So I just want to call out her as well, that she is a foundational part of this podcast and has been from day one. So Laura, my huge thanks to you for all your help through this. And I also want to say that I'm thankful that

Kind of the word that has stuck with me this year more than any other is the word evolve. And I'm thankful for the permission to evolve. Just personally, professionally, having the opportunity to grow and change and evolve my thinking, evolve my practices. You know, there's...

new projects, there's new risk, there's new directions, and new experiments. And that all feeds into that evolution. I feel like I've learned this year more than any other year that just staying static is deadly. And that we either are going to evolve ourselves, we're going to evolve what we do as Agile practitioners.

Or we're going to suffer what I've termed systems entropy, just kind of the slow backwards degrading slide towards messiness and disorganization that can occur when there's no new energy added to what you do. And experimentation, ongoing discovery and learning, that's that energy.

I appreciate that you as listeners, like I've given us the permission here to experiment a little, to go on some different areas. As we go through the podcast and try some different things. We tried a takeover here for a little bit of the show even. And, just, just like to continue to do that. we, we want to try to experiment with things. So don't expect that to stop. well, we'll experiment with some, some new formats and new.

new ideas, always in search of trying to make this the best use of your time. just three things there I wanted to highlight really quickly and encourage you to do the same. Take five, 10 minutes just at the start of the day or at the end of the day, whichever kind of fits better with your personality type. Sit down and just say, I'm going to take five minutes here and I just want to write down three things. What are three things that this year when I look back over

everything that's happened so far as we race toward the end of 2025. What are three things that I'm really thankful for? So, and as always, even outside those big three, I have to say I'm thankful for all of you. Thank you for continuing to listen. Thank you for continuing to engage and give feedback and say hi when I see you at different conferences and such. I really enjoy meeting people who listen to the show.

Thank you for continuing to listen to it. Thank you for telling your friends about it. That's really, really important for us. So that's it for this week. Just a short little Thanksgiving message. And I hope you have a wonderful blessed time with your family and your friends over this holiday season. And we'll see you next week on another new episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast.