Agile Frameworks Don't Work - or Do They? with Petula Guimaraes

Unlock the full potential of your team with wisdom from Agile luminary Petula Guimaraes as we dissect the world of Agile frameworks on The Agile Within. Prepare to traverse the cultural and professional landscapes that shape the Agile methodologies. Venture beyond the generic applications of Scrum and SAFe and learn why these frameworks may not be the silver bullet for organizational transformation that many seek. Petula argues for a more nuanced and domain-specific approach, using Extreme Programming as an example of how specificity can lead to success in software development.

Are your Agile transitions hitting roadblocks? This episode peels back the layers of complexity when shifting to Agile practices, likening the process to coaching a basketball team where learning and adaptation take precedence over rigid rule-following. We discuss the critical balance between innovation and preserving effective execution, unraveling the importance of collaboration and adaptability. Find out how to steer your organization through the stormy waters of change without losing sight of your core mission: fostering growth and delivering value to your customers.

Finally, we take you into the art of Agile conversations. Petula and I explore the intricate dance of coaching, negotiation, and the ethical responsibilities that come with guiding teams toward agility. Tune in to discover how to navigate the delicate practice of saying 'no' with diplomacy, and how to cut through organizational 'noise' to achieve clarity and alignment. This episode is a treasure trove for those aspiring to lead their teams with efficiency, integrity, and a touch of Agile grace.

Visit Mount Royal in Montreal, Canada:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Royal

Explore Petula's offerings:
https://allthingsagile.co/

Check out Petula's blog:
https://allthingsagile.co/blog/

Subscribe to Petula's YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@AllThingsAgile

Connect with Petula:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/petulaguimaraes/

Join The Agile Within Alliance using the link below 👇

Transcript

Mark: 0:06

Welcome to the Agile Within. I am your host, Mark Metz. My mission for this podcast is to provide Agile insights into human values and behaviors through genuine connections.

Petula: 0:20

My guests and I will share real-life stories from our Agile journeys, triumphs, blunders and everything in between, as well as the lessons that we have learned.

Mark: 0:37

So get pumped, get rocking. The Agile Within starts now. Well, welcome back, friends, to the Agile Within. This is Mark Metz. Today, I have a guest by the name of Petula Guimaraes, from Quebec, canada. Petula, welcome to the Agile Within.

Petula: 0:51

Thank you, Mark. Thanks for inviting me.

Mark: 1:00

Petula, if I were coming to Quebec, Canada, for a day, what's one?

Petula: 1:01

thing that you would say that you can't miss doing. Okay, so if you are the sporty type, I'm near Montreal, so I'm going to base my answers there. So if you are more the sporty type, go to the Mount Royal. It's kind of like our Central Park, but unlike the Central Park, we actually have a small mountain.

Petula: 1:18

So you really get to see the whole city from there. It's really beautiful. If you are the excited type of person, you go to La Ronde, which is our amusement park, and they have all the sorts of things that I can't do at all but people seem to love. They're too much for my heart and if you're a foodie, you are in good company. My favorite place is Chinatown. You get things that I cannot pronounce there, but they are so delicious. So Chinatown is small but mighty. I'm always there whenever I can.

Mark: 1:51

So I want to come to Quebec now.

Petula: 1:53

That sounds fun, yeah, and you can speak English here. You can just start with the bonjour that warms the heart of people, and then you can turn to English and it's going to be fine.

Mark: 2:05

Oh, nice, nice. Yeah, bob, high school French is very rusty at this point, and more rust than metal, I'm afraid.

Mark: 2:13

It's no joke how far a bonjour can carry you, so yeah, Well, as an introduction, petula is the head coach and the founder of All Things Agile Canada, which is a boutique of coaching and development that nurtures agile and change leaders. She firmly believes that work can be a place of both high performance and happiness, and her mission is to cut through the noise and bring effective, meaningful agility to the forefront of organizational change. Our topic here for today is why agile frameworks don't work, or do they?

Petula: 2:52

Yeah, that's an interesting question and you know, I find that the agile space is very polarized. Everything is good, is bad, is this or that. So, obviously, saying agile frameworks don't work or they do work, it's, you know, it's very on brand, but I think both answers would be acceptable here. Yes, they do work, they can work, and many times they won't work. So the basics of it is there are several limitations to agile frameworks, any framework in general, right. So if you're familiar with any other domain, you know, like in communication, you have the scarf model for leadership. But anything has limitations and I feel like sometimes the agile space fails to recognize it and that's why we have, you know, everything is scrum, everything is safe. Yet we don't seem to see, you know, for the level of adoption that we see, we don't seem to see you know, for the level of adoption that we see, we don't see the level of change that we would have expected to see. You know, as far as better results, better sustainable pace for teams, the ability of leaders to actually trim the fat, because it's not just about prioritizing things but deciding what you won't do at all. So all this sort of thing and none of those frameworks out there. They help you with that.

Petula: 4:05

So you could argue they're a little bit too generic because they want to cater to a broader audience and a little bit of their power is lost in that. So if you were a software developer and if you use extreme programming, you may not like it, but you're going to have much better results, let's say, than if you use Scrum, because Scrum is rather and those are not my words, those are Martin Fowler's words it's a little bit flaccid on the engineering and management practices Scrum is. It's very, very generic. So you are left with a lot of holes for you to fill in, but no indication on how to fill that in. So I'll make a pause here. We talk about that. They can work, but they are limited. Yeah, I just want to make a pause here so that people can give it a think a little bit. That's good.

Mark: 4:50

One of the things we probably should have led off with is how do we define the term framework? What do we mean when we say a framework?

Petula: 4:58

Love the question. Yeah, people don't like. Once again, the discussions abound, but framework is something very simple. Frameworks is something that frames how you work, usually with a set of steps. So it isn't surprising, right, that Scrum will tell you well, you do those meetings and these people do these things. In fact, Scrum was a lot more of a framework. I would say 2012 and even before. The Scrum guide was like tens of pages, almost 100 pages, but they would really tell you, like this is how you do planning, this is how you do. You know your retrospective and, once again, you may not like how it was done and you know, being part of a community, we all injected our own ideas, but it was very much of a framework. Like you have no idea what to do, I'll tell you what to do.

Petula: 5:45

Specificity will always bring clarity. So the more specific a framework, the clearer it is, so you can really use it for your own context. Now, what happens is that the more specific a framework is, it obviously doesn't apply to everything and that's just how it is and that is fine. It's perfectly fine, or it should be. But once you start saying no, it works for everybody, then you start taking pieces out or you start doing a little bit of a Frankenstein kind of thing and then it no longer works as good as it used to. It no longer gives you the set of steps to frame your work as it suggests.

Mark: 6:21

I'm curious to know from some of the clients that you've worked with if you have someone that is new to a framework and they're expecting you to detail everything of how to execute, and when it doesn't give that, how often do you see those levels of expectations conflict with what actually the frameworks bring?

Petula: 6:42

You went to a great place there, Mark. Yeah, that happens a lot, so one of the things that I do is that frameworks. They never explain the why of things.

Petula: 6:50

Once again, it's the nature of the framework gives you a concrete set of steps in order to explain you. It kind of like it presupposes that you already clear that. So what I do? I have my own model to simplify Agile for my clients and I explain. I call it Simple Agile when it's for building blocks and we literally have a discussion about those building blocks. It's basically do the right thing, do the thing right, do it fast and continuously adapt, and we have a discussion around what these things really mean for the organization. Most importantly, what already works.

Petula: 7:22

A lot of times, when you come in with those so-called preset agile frameworks, we ignore the reality, isn't it? Here is what we are going to do. We don't honor the past, we just destroy everything. Now you have those three to five new roles I mean, it gets crazier with SAFe but you still have the older roles. Sometimes you know like am I a project manager? Am I like what is happening here? So people are really left very confused.

Petula: 7:45

So whenever you're trying to use a framework, that is not the way to lead on, I would say you have to have the conversation first. So I have my own model. Whatever model you want to use, take the 12 principles, write four values and 12 principles. Let's have a chat about that. But have the conversation and it's not one, it's not two, it's probably a series of conversations that you have with your main sponsor, which is the person hiring you as a coach, as a project manager. They will explain to you the why. You will help them craft that why, if that thing is not clear, because that's also going to be a guarantee of your success as a consultant, as a coach, because in order for you to hit the mark, you need to know where the mark is. So everybody will gain clarity.

Petula: 8:29

And then from that discussion you can decide well, are we going to start just changing a few practices? Are we going to adopt a full-on framework and you really co-design that with the people? Everybody feels included. It really feels like kind of magic the way I'm saying, but it's actually that simple. And when people feel that involved, accountability just soars because I can't say you forced anything on me and that I don't understand. I was part of the conversation, so I feel like that's a non-explored part that now we can no longer escape, now that the frameworks are really falling flat in their adoption in general, I feel like now people are forced to investigate in agile agility. What organizations are seeking? They're even changing the name and starting to ask for different skill sets, as they should have in the beginning. But hey, later better than never.

Mark: 9:18

I have experienced personally where things are new and you use a framework that it can and this is what you were alluding to, I think, about having an agile coach or somebody to help coach you through the parts that the framework isn't prescriptive on. Things are too open. It's like you're a toddler and you've been exposed to the entire house. It's like overwhelming. Oh, I can go upstairs, I can go in the bathroom, I can go in the kitchen. There's dangerous things in the kitchen. You need a little bit of guidance. One of the things that I frequently try to do with team when we make this transition is to say don't focus purely on the and I'm giving air quotes here. I'm famous for doing that in a podcast where people can't see me but don't worry as much about the rules, because the rules aren't what we're trying to follow. We're trying to actually make customers happy and provide our organization with value. Let's be real make money for the organization. So if your main focus is on I just don't want to break the rules, you know there are pleasers out there, such as myself. That's what you're trying to do is I just don't want to break the rules. Let's think about it differently. What do we really want to accomplish and then maybe we break some of the rules in the beginning to make things easier and don't just obsess over them. I've given this example before in one of my episodes, but I just think that it's absolutely perfect.

Mark: 10:41

I know sports analogies don't resonate with everyone, but I grew up basketball was a passion of mine for a long time, so I coached my kids when they were very young playing basketball, and so when they're four and five year olds, you know, trying to play basketball, you can't expect them to follow all the rules. If you did, the referee would just be blowing the whistle because they would be doing something wrong all the time and you wouldn't have any fun, you wouldn't learn anything, there wouldn't be anything accomplished. But they break the rules to start with. So if you don't dribble the ball and you're just carrying the ball, well, that's okay to start with. We'll just get you acclimated to the game and let you learn by playing the game, and then, as we go, we'll enforce a few more rules along the way and introduce them once you kind of get your flow down. What do you think about that? What are the pros and what are the cons of that analogy, petula?

Petula: 11:31

That is interesting. You're making me think here. It's not uncommon that, especially in smaller companies. In bigger ones it's usually the industrial agile, but in smaller companies there's usually a team that says, hey, we're going to adopt this agile thing. They usually see Scrum, start using Scrum For a while. That team is going to be very happy.

Petula: 11:49

It has been my experience anyway that we really advance and a lot of good things can be achieved for the team. And then the law of theory of constraints will hit you really hard, because if you are not, you know you're. Maybe you were the problem to begin with, but maybe you weren't. But whatever happens is that now you are more effective as a team and now you're starting to need the other parts of the system respond to your change and boy, they have no clue. What is it that you're doing that you call scrum. So it will be great for a while, but you will eventually doesn't matter how long it will take you will meet this point where you're going to have to have the broader conversation for all that thing to make sense.

Petula: 12:26

Otherwise, this team actually went to moderately okay to very happy, to super frustrated, so that can be a little bit dangerous. I've seen companies where they lost big players because people got very excited about what agile could do for them. The organization was not that quick to adapt. And then you know, boom people, just boom, people, just add. Well, I know better, now I'll go somewhere else. So that can happen, that can definitely happen. In a bigger organization. Things are so much more rigid that you can't have so much, in my experience, that happy start, you know, where you just say let's just go with changing things a little bit and experiment, and that is really, I think, whenever you can. That it's nice, but you need to be aware that at some point you will be confronted with something bigger than the changes that you make. You are part of a chain. You're just one of the links. What's going to happen? Right, if you're not the weakest link, then the weak link is somewhere else, and if that weak link it's not persuaded to join in the fun, things start to get less nice.

Petula: 13:25

Now, one of the things that you said to me made me think we break the rules, and we should be breaking a lot of rules with knowledge. That's something I don't enjoy so much, especially in places like sometimes you see on social media. It's cool to have a shocking idea, but the reality is that the whole point of agility is helping organizations to perform better. Organizations are made by people, so we have to involve people in the mix. But there are such things as patterns of execution that are effective and others that just aren't. So when we say breaking the rules, it's fine so long as we continue to search for good patterns.

Petula: 14:05

So, for example and this is a problem I see with a lot of frameworks collaboration. Collaboration is great and it's one possible pattern of execution, depending on the types of problems that you have to solve. But when you force collaboration onto people, what happens to specialization? Some organizations are built on that and they have been successfully built on that, and one of the things that we know is that when you do something good, you double down on it. You don't just destroy and build something new where you're going to be a baby again and try to crawl until you can walk and et cetera.

Petula: 14:38

So instead of playing okay, we are highly specialized, you know, and lean thinking will help you a lot on that front and then people say no, abandon all this, put Scrum and now it just doesn't make sense. So we should become a little bit more knowledgeable first to understand what these patterns are. Multitasking will always be bad. We can try and justify it, but you can wish your way into effectiveness by using multitasking, so things of that nature. So I think what I'm trying to say is that it's a yes, and we should definitely have the agency to look for better ways of doing things, breaking the rules, but making sure we're inserting something that makes sense so that we're always moving forward. There's no point in trying things or testing that actually we already know we're not that great. That's my two cents.

Mark: 15:21

What about the situation where, as an agile coach, you're brought in let's say, you're brought in to install safe, and that's what the senior executives have brought you in to do and the teams are very resistant and don't like it? Talk us through the strategies of how you approach that.

Petula: 15:36

Yeah, so I can definitely talk about my experience. I feel like many times people don't treat the gig, the contract or the job with the respect it deserves, as in you have a sponsor. Who is that person? That sponsor? Is it a set of people? Who are these stakeholders and you want to have a chat with them? I basically give this personal report every now and again, but I don't clear the expectations with that person, because that's fine.

Petula: 16:04

You brought me here to bring in safe, cool. Why safe? Oh, because you know it's this amazing framework. Oh, yeah, amazing. Wow. You know what are the amazing things you like about it? Oh, actually, I don't know very much about it, and usually the conversation goes like that.

Petula: 16:19

And then my favorite thing is to revert back to, like I said, I have my own model for explaining agility. We have a conversation about that and we touch on the pain points. Well, you know, if it's all about doing the purpose and then being fit for purpose and then make sure that that is speedy, et cetera, et cetera, you know where do you think it's hurting the most? Well, I think, yeah, my teams are not fast. Oh, they're not fast. What kind of data do you have that shows that they are not fast. Well, data do you have that shows that they are not fast? Well, it's more of a feeling. Oh great, where did that feeling come from?

Petula: 16:47

So the forgotten art of having a conversation with another human being, because, if you go at face value, here you are trying to make a team go fast and then you realize that actually the whole management layer just keeps saying yes every couple of weeks to a different initiative.

Petula: 17:04

So your system is at capacity, so it has nothing to do with the ability of your team to deliver fast, and the problem is actually the inability of making decisions. And that's a tough conversation to have, but we are going to have to have it and, to be fair, safe is very interesting on that sense, because we have to map that value stream. We will have to have those conversations one way or another and it's going to be very clear that you're giving 10 things for your team to do. How do you think that's going to happen? And so there's a lot of things that are too much in SAFe, and the thing I dislike the most is the Big Bang approach, but the fact that SAFe concerns itself with all the upstream Kan campaign and all the other things that in the end have everything to do with how an organization is run and it's much forgotten by other agile frameworks. I definitely give props to SAFe on that.

Mark: 17:55

Have you ever had to walk away from an opportunity that you came into? Because this is what I want you to do, and I don't necessarily want to answer all your questions. I'm bringing you into install safe.

Petula: 18:07

Yeah, yeah, I did, and that is a sort of I am rejecting gigs all the time. I don't think we do that enough, mark, and I think it's hard. We think about our livelihood, but I am someone driven by purpose and by passion, so I will not work on something that makes no sense to me. I can't speak for everybody. I can speak for myself. I have walked away from gigs from in the beginning or even in the middle. This is not working. And then we have that conversation.

Petula: 18:37

So I will definitely plug here that for the Agile coaches listening remember we have a code of ethics to respect, and one of the things in our code of ethics is our ability to perform and the other one is the diminished value for the customer, for our client.

Petula: 18:53

So if our ability to perform is hindered and or we are not being able to deliver the value that our client is expecting of us, we have at least the obligation to have the conversation. You don't need to just walk away Like you don't just flip the table like that. You know, remember the weird meme like flipping the table, that's not what it is but you have to have the conversation for the integrity of your career and your profession and you're going to come a much stronger coach out of that. But that is going to that's going to be an interesting conversation with your client. And imagine if that particular client he's on the third coach and, like man, you're the coach telling me this Like I have to do some soul searching, right? So I don't think we see the power of this mechanics, which is basically remaining in integrity within our profession. Maybe you scream in the bathroom a little bit or maybe you do whatever you do to release that anxiety and then you enter the conversation.

Mark: 19:41

We have an upcoming episode with Saruchi Patki that talks about the art of saying no and how you can say no by flipping the table and just walking out of the room. That's one option, but there are other options to negotiate, right? So I think that no doesn't always have to be N-O-no. It can be. We have options, right, we can do this, we can do that or we can do that. Which one do you think serves you best? And if it's, well, I don't like any of the options. Well, which option would you like to take? Then I'm open, I'm all ears. Tell me what would you like for us to do. But people usually are more open to having options as opposed to just pound the fist into the table. No, right.

Petula: 20:30

Yeah, you got it. You got it all, mark. We come in with the option right, and once again, this is what I'm seeing and this is my experience. What do you see? What has been?

Petula: 20:40

We try to find that point where our vision will meet, and I think it's a misconception to think you can come in and you install your SAFe, your Scrum or whatever. You constantly are negotiating which practices need to at least go first, and as they go first, here are the results we are getting. Do we really move forward this way? It's a constant, even the you know, when I said we talk to our sponsors, we are constantly talking to them because we are constantly renegotiating that end result as well. We might notice things. They're just not going to move as fast. We are not having access to the resources that were promised. So, hey, you know, something in our deal is not working here. Help me out. Do you want to change? Do you want to pivot here? And we shouldn't be afraid. These are normal conversations.

Petula: 21:28

That is what expected of us at our level of expertise when we coach. We're not. I know the industry gives you two day certification on this and that, but we are not beginners, you know. Agile coaches are not, you know. They don't wake up one day and declare themselves coaches. We have a, we have a path that brought us here. So we have to honor that and show up with the level of expertise and professionalism.

Petula: 21:49

And, in the end of the day, agility is about changing quickly, adapting to the change as quickly as it comes to our face. So it's going to always be meta. As we are introducing agility, we are going to have to be agile and adapt and modify things. In the end, even if we start with SAFe or Kanban, do agile frameworks work? Absolutely, especially the more that it's fit to your organization. So that SAFe that you tweaked to your organization, that Scrum that you tweaked on your department, that Kanban that has a plus for your teams, that is going to be the perfect agile framework and my personal favorite is the no-brand one that you're building with those people. So it will work. The more you make it tailored, the more you make it fit for purpose.

Mark: 22:40

So I'm reading about your mission, Patula, and you mentioned about cutting through the noise to bring effective and meaningful agility to the forefront of organizational change. What noise do you typically have to cut through?

Petula: 22:52

Yeah, frameworks are one, and I think the biggest noise they bring is roles and responsibilities. I'm a big fan of system thinking and lean thinking and they're very highly correlated and they all, in their own sort of ways, they say, hey, look at what you have and start with what you have. So I see no point in having let's have an army of Scrum Master product owners, but I still have my project manager, my director, the team manager, the line manager. This is very confusing. So let's not do that. This is very noisy right away, right. So not do that. This is very noisy right away, right. So let's look at what we want to achieve first. So, definitely, cutting through the noise is taking that step back, reducing jargon, removing stuff from the lingo that we sometimes even when we say mindset, a lot of things that we don't.

Petula: 23:37

We take for granted as agile coaches and we think everybody is on the same wavelength. Surprisingly, a lot of people are not. So we come in, we learn the language of our clients, we understand where they are and where do we want to they want to go. That gives us a gap. How far is the gap? And the gap can be all sorts of things. It can be like.

Petula: 23:54

I just want my teams to be able to work more effectively, which, let me tell you, sometimes you feel like you can't say anything bad about teams. It's always the fault of management. Another issue we see with agile frameworks there's no blueprint on management, yet teams can do everything, which is absolutely unreal in most organizations. You know, if I have to come in and, as a software developer, and make the decisions that my CEO does, I'm going to go crazy. I don't even want to know what those questions that he's answering are. So let's face it, sometimes teams need to be more effective.

Petula: 24:26

What we discover many times, though, is that you know there's no one without the other. When the team is not effective, management might be assuming a lot of things. Oh, they know that's tough, so I don't talk to them, I don't give them very clear guidelines to use in their day-to-day, or I smother them because I'm super protective or I'm super nitpicking everything. So usually, my experience is that, when you come in, you're going to calibrate people's interactions, and, once again, that's not the stuff that the framework will tell you about. You will notice that in your interviews, in your workshop, as you talk to people, and that talking to people is what I call cutting through the noise. More often than not the request you get that one-liner for the contract. Hey, come here and solve this. It's not what the problem is, and you're going to have to uncover a lot of other. There are skeletons in the closet for sure, so you're going to discover them.

Mark: 25:27

Have you ever been perceived as a threat by the teams coming into an engagement?

Petula: 25:32

Many times, yes, especially when it comes from top down. When the management says, hey, here's the coach, the coach is going to help you do that thing. The manager is already removing themselves from the conversation. The manager is already removing themselves from the conversation. So, yes, and some of my most beautiful experiences have been with people who really were very resistant to me, because I always say that the resistance is just a response. Nobody's resisting, people are responding. If they are resisting, probably I'm coming off too strong, I'm giving arguments that don't resonate with them. So let's have a talk.

Petula: 26:04

And many times those were folks that were, you know, 20, 30 years in an organization. Everything they did was praised until today. Today there's scrum and now I suck, nobody likes me anymore. My job is like doesn't matter. So this is huge. This is really serious. You know that person. Their livelihood is not threatened. I mean, they still have a job. They changed the name of the job, but it's worse because it's about their reputation. Now I no longer have a reputation.

Petula: 26:33

So the human aspect is extremely forgotten and the quicker you address that one getting to know people, what do they really think? And even if they say I don't think this is going to work. You can think, fair enough, you don't think this is going to work. That's a true story. And they say, well, but suppose you know, suppose it's not a total loss. You know what could that be and what parts do you think you can play in it and feel good about yourself and comfortable and feel like you did your part, but you don't betray what you know and love.

Petula: 27:04

And the conversation really go from there and, once again, if you're really adapting those frameworks and creating the agility that is fit for purpose, for that organization, this initial antagonism will disappear. It will disappear because we're not just forcing yet again. Do that meeting, do that dashboard? No, they are thinking. You know what? I think we could have a meeting for this. You know, I think we could start using this metric. And then you have a conversation about the merit of that experiment and you go from there onwards.

Mark: 27:37

Well, I think that's a very beautiful story that really encapsulates the whole topic of what frameworks do and don't cover, because they don't cover everything. That level of relating to people and just the personal side of the job many times gets lost in installing these frameworks. So any parting words, patula, that you would have to our guests if they are in a situation where they are trying to have a new framework thrust upon them.

Petula: 28:08

So well, people always right. If I could you know any agile framework, I think they should be designed, they make the graphics of it and they should have, like, a heart in the middle and the person right, something like that. So you'll never forget that it's about people. One of the things you can always do is remember they are people, have those conversations and be very agile in the sense of small bites. Go small, go slow, but steady. Sometimes we try something, we don't check on it or we check much later. So no, you go small. We're going to have daily sync. That's great. We start from now. Every week we say how is that daily sync? Go, keep an eye on it and go in evolution, because in the end, that's just how it is In most of the frameworks.

Petula: 28:54

They came from all these things that people experimented and then they packaged it and say, hey, it worked for me this way and it does. But if you're starting really from scratch and if you have a lot of resistance, it will pay off that you have the conversation, observe patterns that are effective and ineffective and, based on that observation, you're going to take a few practices and use them and really use, rinse, repeat, don't just keep adding stuff Like really see, am I satisfied? Then am I satisfied? I mean, are we all satisfied with what we're seeing? And move forward from that and you're going to be extremely speedy after a while once you start doing this, because you're also teaching people how they should be experimenting themselves and basically setting them for a future that, hopefully, is without you, because you're going to go to many more clients. You can't stay there forever, so I hope that makes sense. I'm not trying to make it trivial, but it is simple. So no noise, conversations, patterns of effectiveness, experiment with small bites and off you go.

Mark: 29:55

So, petula, if our listeners want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Petula: 29:59

The best way is definitely going to my website, allthingsagileco, and you can definitely get in touch with me there. You can book some time to chat with me, tell me all about your problems and we can figure out something for you for sure. I'm also active on LinkedIn, so if you just want to drop a word, be connected. That works as well, and I'm a real human being and we just connect. Let's chat.

Mark: 30:23

We can always learn from each other I've seen your videos on youtube as well yes, that's true, we are on youtube as well.

Petula: 30:31

I I have a blog that's more prolific than the youtube channel, so some of that become videos, so the blog is definitely juicier. Uh, I also write at length a little bit more. But if video is your thing, as soon as you go on my blog, pick one or two blogs, you're going to see a video there and then you're going to find me on YouTube.

Mark: 30:49

Great, we'll be sure and add all those links to the show notes so people can find you. And I want to say how much of a pleasure it was having you on the show today, batul. This has been wonderful. Thank you so much, mark. It's such a great conversation. You definitely make it so easy. It's just a lovely chat, really nice, great, all right, well, that brings to an end another episode of the Agile Within.

Petula: 31:17

So we'll see everybody next time. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Agile Within, if you haven't already.

Mark: 31:24

Please join our LinkedIn page to stay in touch.

Petula: 31:27

Just search for the Agile Within and please spread the word with your friends and colleagues. Until next time, this has been your host, Mark Metz.