 Can you look at this? I've got something like a can and this is this is a first Well, it's it's very rare. I'm not I don't think I've ever seen you. You didn't even drink Guinness in Ireland No, but well firstly, I'm not drinking cider, which is unusual. Yeah, and I'm going I don't like Guinness But I've ordered a tiny rebel Stapust marshmallow Now I'm purely only buying this for two reasons. Yeah, you're buying this right is because it's got a ghost busters reference There's the state of marshmallow and because I'm tempted in the video idea of marshmallow being sweet. Hmm That's the only reason I think it goes well behind in my head. The imagery is good. Yeah I'm gonna pour it Oh Most of it on the table It's like bovara That's darker than yours. Well, I'm point is you tell people what you got. Okay, so I've got an iron stock toasted water Now I think I've had an iron stock Larger before but it might not I might not I just the name sounds familiar. I haven't had a toasted water before It smells them whiskey like this to be honest It's it smells like Guinness To me to me it smells like a Guinness with a drop of whiskey Which is cool. That's got a cocktail. I made that up. It's whiskey. It's You know, I'm thinking of Guinness and Bailey's The toasted doesn't come until later to begin with it takes a little bit like a There's a slightly diluted Guinness any slightly. Yeah, not as Not the Guinness is big but Guinness is cream whereas. This is a little bit more Like a squash type texture, but then yeah, just at the end On the sort of middle of your tongue get a little bit of biscuit. It's got I'm gonna be brave now drink mine I'm proud of you so The initial taste is sweet and then and then the bitterness of the Game I'm getting quite technical now. Listen to me. Yeah But it's it smells sweet it smells and But like vanilla It's weird here. It's like an initial taste is like squash. Oh But then afterwards it's the bitters No, yeah, I want to try this on this side. It smells sweet, doesn't it? Yeah, it's a smell Marshmallow to it. Yeah, I can tell I definitely taste marshmallows It's definitely sweeter than this is it Yeah, it suits me that the sweetest it's definitely of the two you you made the best choice for you. Yeah We haven't said where we are. We know we have we're in a bar called Chapman's white Yeah, you can see that in the sign behind Paul's shoulder that Chapman's as in Charlie big step to the One of Paul's heroes. Yeah Quite a eccentric Bohemian style. Yeah before Yeah, we're in the seaside town of Moscow Yeah, buddy nice to be in a pub again nice to be outdoors nice to be Away from zoom. Yes Real light our temperatures checked And we're we're good. We're in the bubble Yeah, so though I have just seen a sign that says no camels. Oh dear. So we have to keep secret about your name Yeah, so I have a nickname for this for the family thing. Oh, did I? Yeah I was gonna say something about how important. Oh, it was probably that we're starting a new a new run This is 101. Yeah, not room 101 episode 101 the second century century The difficult second The Set the bar high. Yeah, and we I Did feel a little guilty But I've rationalized it and I've come to terms with it about what so I did ask on LinkedIn For any particular questions. Oh, yeah wanted us to cover in our hundredth episode But then we actually got together a lot quicker than I thought we would yeah It was a bit of a spur of the moment thing so we didn't get chance to cover them So the way I rationalized it was I would rather celebrate continuing on from the hundredth episode Is Like a batsman doesn't want to be out on the hunt. No, you don't know they often carry on the often Well, yeah, but often what happens is they have that sort of relief of getting Early Concentration Yeah, let's go again. So we are going again Going strong and we are listening to our Listening to listen to our listeners. Yeah, and our stakeholders. Have you got these questions? I haven't so I rely on you Because my phone is doing video recording. Okay We'll call a few there. It's good. Yeah I'm gonna 23 comments 23 comments So you're gonna pick them some of them are my random or Well, I think we both let's go with one that we both saw Straight away that we both liked This question was from Maya Zwicky Yeah, I think I've said said her name right Maya Maya And she said the question is she said things you have said or did That you thought might get you fired Okay So I look this I thought that's great. That is that's why I imagine the pub class would be about you Yeah, I'm just telling stories that we really shouldn't share Is there a statue to live as Asians on this I suppose they can't sack us now bit late now I mean, I think the closest you got to being sacked that I'm aware of yeah Is the fact that you were in a in a company of over a hundred thousand people. Yeah, you were in the top 10. Yeah Of people spending the most BT money. Yes on expenses my expenses And you were at a time one of the you were only the third grade Yeah in sort of seniority. Yeah, I was in Mia You know porn in the whole Game chess. Yeah. Yeah, you weren't you weren't buying for the iron throat. No, you were an extra I was and I got a phone call. Yeah, I remember the head of finance. Yeah at BT And I was petrified. I think you are you in the office? I was I was right behind you I was laughing absolutely in hysterics. I was telling everybody to come around and listen that was that supportive As a friend for you. So I had to basically quite quickly explain out and rationalize why I was spending money on flights higher cars taxis this is in the days of What's the name of one one view when I was going to Glasgow Every week so I was flying to Glasgow on Monday mornings and coming back on Thursday nights Stay in the hotel stay in the hotel More than like Jeff three course meal every night and breakfast and breakfast Taxis and no wonder I was running up a fairly large expenses. So they were fine with it But it was a bit of a nerve-wracking phone call. What was that? Was I close to being fired? I don't know probably close to being so this is my yeah, so here's my Why I think it was close because that got the attention and if they had chosen to just investigate your expenses Is there one thing in there that you probably shouldn't play for maybe And if they wanted to get rid of you it would have been a good excuse to do But it was all Above board and it was all I could explain it out. Yeah And for someone who with a young family was being asked to work away from home a lot. I didn't have a young family at the time But yeah, I was working away from home a lot and um That's probably why you didn't have a young family Hardly ever saw my wife at that point So about you you must have been probably the one that I Actually could have been really fired. Yeah, I actually included in one of my books, but didn't say it Oh, this is like a this is like a confession. Yeah um We I was incredibly frustrated with this isn't a thing that With with the speed of action or inaction within within a company and It took something like six months to get a new server Yeah through the process and we were trying to deliver something on a monthly basis And we needed a huge spec Spectre for the server and we didn't know what the requirements were going to be in all this kind of stuff But we just wanted to test some stuff. Yeah So I had a limit on my corporate card And I went down to pc world with the developer and bought The best machine they had and brought it back to the office drugged it in put it on the network And we tested the development instance of of a new service. Yeah No security no firewalls No protection sort of it's probably breaking all sorts of bc policies. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, it was I'm probably still this now You shouldn't have done it. Well So she like so this and this is a good point actually. It's a good agile. It's a good scrum master. You know, yeah And we've we've talked about it written about it and say if you're not prepared to lose your job You're not At your most effective as a scrum master. Oh Or a change agent And because of that The conversation about the lead time The service was escalated even at the time you could you felt you could just what you do. Yes But I feel I can justify almost anything That it's kind of almost a psychopathic characteristic of mine. Um, I can justify almost anything. Yeah But Jeff will know Jeff will know. Yeah, but um, no I It was kind of reckless But also do you regret it now? No. No, because I think good things came from it. Yeah um Did we Do everything we could To mitigate the risk. No Did we do something? Yes And we were pretty sure that yeah, it was it was only a development instance. It wasn't going to be going out live outside of the company firewall But yeah, it was it was a silly thing to do But it was something that actually was really really useful not just for the project But also for the conversation about why someone was driven to those Yes To actually have some progress how bad must things be that force you to do that. Yeah um The thing I've said before and it's it's an old story but Wasn't really a sackable offense, but I um Worked my hours Yes, when it when it wasn't socially acceptable to Just work your hours. I walked out and um So they call that working to rule that yeah Who's talked about before but yeah the idea of you know not expecting other developers to work beyond What they're comfortable what they need to But following what everyone else is. So I took a lot of Feed feedback for that I don't think it's it's nearly a sackable offense trying to get anything else that I've done that I Well, we I had a bit of a run in with Mike we'll call him Mike because that was his name. Um I think I don't think you're in the office at the time But I didn't tow the line on something I think I told my product owner at the time that we couldn't deliver on some certain time a certain date So I was hauled over the coals for that and told you've got to find Basically, I didn't tow the line for the department. I should have found a way to Caveat it with we we'll do our best. Yeah, but instead I just said that we can't do that We We did get a little bit of attention For some of our team team development activities, yeah, so quite often we would have Friday afternoons off Nigel will remember these good of the cinema watch the new star wars release. Yeah, you know as a team. Yeah um I wasn't really a big fan of star wars, but I came along anyway just to be a team players You know around great guy. Yeah And have the afternoon off work, but we didn't miss. Yeah, we didn't miss any deadlines. And I think the morale we got in the bond that we had as a team. Yeah Yeah More than that way those Fridays was a pretty unproductive day Quite normal, isn't it? Yeah, long long long breakfasts playing fireside football for two hours for lunch for lunch KFC and then maybe a cinema trip. Yeah, we didn't get a lot You would never we would never have been able to do a retrospective on Friday in those days well We probably did didn't we in a way in the pub? Yeah, maybe after the cinema Or even over breakfast. Yeah, well, it wasn't a facilitated structured, but we were Probably a little bit more of a moan. Yeah a winch, but then one of us would typically wear the hat of Glass half full what are we gonna do about it? So I think let's go to PC world. Yeah, for example Okay, all right, man, hopefully there's there's some you've got. Yeah, we've all got something on us now. Yeah, okay Where would we be now if our Jarlos from didn't exist? What would have replaced it? What would life be like in 2020 without it? Good question from Evangelo Panagi I'm not sure I have a good answer to this one because my instinct is It was inevitable and that's not because Unnecessarily believing fate But I think it was just the natural response to Things changed I'm sure there were some points along the way. You look back at the time where we branched Into this particular universe but It would have been called something different But I think the idea of tackling problems in small chunks was just a necessary. Yeah I think you'd have seen a lot more companies that just Do their own thing um, and you end up with Probably much more of a common sense kind of localized way of doing things that Gets you round certain issues and gets you round certain processes. I'll tell you what there you go I'm taking what you're saying there and it sparked an idea for me. Yeah Is that Rather than a set of Values and principles that spawned an industry and framers I think you'd have had something along the lines of the spotify model come first. Yeah, like a company that Follow them. Yeah There's a lot. Yeah, or you'd have had some really big companies Like bt and kodak and whatever go to the wall because they didn't change Like a shopping or something like this what happened to you if you don't do something about it But I still think something would have emerged because of this needs to follow something like I say a company it could be a company Or it could be A paper or or something that Because people need that kind of inspiration. That's that That north star Yeah, people would people prefer something Some kind of recipe follow Some kind of order in the chaos Yeah Something to blame but also something to say. I don't have to make my own mistakes. I'll copy your mistakes or I'll copy your successes It's maybe we're wrong. Maybe we still be doing what for now. We'd all hate our jobs Maybe we would be the other option, isn't the work would change But I think I don't think that's the case. I So either the the way you do the work changes to me what the work Is yeah, or you only take on what you're capable of doing. Yeah, then your process is allowed you to do. Yeah Um But I don't think that's the case because the work No, it's market conditions Market conditions mean this had to be the only way it could go Maybe that's survivor bias. I don't know Good question. Thank you, evangelo So, uh question three. Oh, is it three? This is the one Oh, yeah, this is from one of our patrons One of our patrons pair Kristen Muller. Yep Um, I've picked his non agile question. Okay. He gave us two questions. I picked the non agile one Uh, it would be fun to hear about what the two of you will be doing now if you weren't agile Okay, okay Um, so I was an accountant My first job was as an accountant. I think I would Have you got a quick answer to this one? Do you? Yeah, you do. Okay, go on. I think I'd be a teacher Can I change my mind? Because I'm gonna try this raspberry and vanilla stat instead of things. Thank you. Cheers Um, I think I'd be a teacher by now. So I had a bit of a I don't think we've talked about it I had a bit of a wobble. Do you remember this wobble I had? Yeah, I had a wobble, um Early 2000s, I spoke probably when I first met And I was considering a total career change about retraining re-skilling as a teacher. This is before I was Training spam, I think it must have been I just knew when you were still a job A job guru. Um, either that or I was doing basic um project management Probably for fast track, but I just wasn't very happy and I wasn't doing things that I enjoyed So I was looking at a career change. I think had I not done that I'd have probably by now retrained as a teacher I think I would have regretted it based on what my sister as a teacher is going through now and The amount of work she's done to do but I think That's a cool can Would you have been Like a secondary school teacher, but a subject or a primary school teacher? I don't think I I think I'd have been a primary school teacher something like that or maybe older primary school children Yeah, I genuinely think I was looking at courses and looking at re-skilling and training What about you? Oh I don't know the only the only time I considered a career change was was to sort of move into something sort of therapy I probably would have so I mean, I just basically said yes to stuff in my career. Yeah apart from the accountancy, which I said noticed. Yeah And I basically whenever an option came up I pretty much said yeah, all right. Let's give it a go. Yeah, so it would have been whatever came up next and So yeah, I'd have probably been some kind of I never had a Specialism. Yeah so You know having never worked No, I've been worked at BT for a long time. I'm never knowing how a phone works or never knowing how The cloud or networks works. I wouldn't have been able to Be a special specialist in any kind of area. So it would still have been working with people Yeah, or you know, I did I did always want to own a pub We we had an idea about opening a piano bar, didn't we? Yes, yeah We're a puzzle room We've had so many ideas that we thought that's probably over too many drinks. I even found a pianist. You did You had a whole business model. So we were scouting out venues I think was probably the right decision not to do Yeah, I can't do yeah, not not gonna be particularly popular right now and thought gone to the wire All right, we've got time for one more question. Thank you. All right, here we go Um, I had it a minute ago. Let's come back to Oh, come on, where is it? No I've just this from Amy Lane. I've just heard another um Just heard about another major company eliminating the scrum master role as useless Perhaps to address this and any agile that relate any relapse movement related agile is failing topics So why would a company call the scrum master role useless? Perhaps they are It could be generally that maybe they are crap scrum masters. Maybe Maybe it's a infertile environment Or it could be there are some questions that don't want to be answered. Maybe they are like we were doing causing a bit of disruption and themselves But it was also maybe a lack We've said this before a hundred times but lack of understanding about what they're expecting of that role The use is because they're not very maybe they're great scrum masters, but they're expecting them to be something else. Yes there's genuinely trying to do Long-term slow burning coaching of approaches, but they want fast results management driven results yeah, I think I don't have enough evidence yet but the anecdotal evidence that I'm thinking of is that the organizations that are coping well with the huge disruption they're facing are the ones that have that kind of servant leader type role that is teams that are a bunch of functional specialists pulled together by a puppeteer project manager are really really struggling right from a kind of burnout perspective You mean the just generally all because of the current situation? I think it's been exacerbated. Okay so you think what I've heard is people's days are being filled with meetings. Yeah because those people who are control freaks feel they can't see stuff. They can't see what's going on. So they want updates all the time and that that is just killing productivity. It's killing morale and that sense of they still want to do a good job and they're still being held accountable means that they're working late after the meetings are finished to try and actually do their job So I think this is exacerbated the organizations that really do believe in people and self-organizing teams and autonomy and those that don't I've only got so just from my close connections with the company that's been doing Scrum for a while and they've found the whole thing seamless in terms of they had very much of management trusted whatever needs to happen will happen and self-organized basically but it's gone very well. This is so for the benefit of the tape I changed to it. It seems like an even darker does stout, stout, water but it's got kind of an almost a metallic taste. This is a raspberry and raspberry vanilla You can smell the raspberries. It's like a metallic taste. That's like a dark raspberry. It's like a raspberry coulour. It's alright though. I can drink that. But no, I think it's what I was saying about Scrum Masters. So what's wrong? Can you talk about your complete... Yeah, so it's on really smooth. So when the output's a lot of trust in the not just Scrum Masters but the teams that will do what's right they've done what's right But even now those Scrum Masters, the good ones, I think are starting to notice that it's not quite the same. The social, the people element, the human element to the work. You can't, I don't think you can be as effective as Scrum Masters if you're not getting some face-to-face, some in-person interaction. No, I can't. It frustrates me that I can't come up with alternatives. And I think maybe even now, maybe it's the situations that are exacerbated, because you can't do that. It's harder to do the in-person stuff. If maybe it's given companies the excuse to say, well maybe we don't need a Scrum Masters because we can't get face-to-face. We can't see the benefit of being face-to-face. We don't need that element of it. Once the team have learned how to run a daily Scrum online, why do you need somewhere to conduct it? Because it's the gaps, isn't it? It's the parts between the Scrums, between the meetings, where a great Scrum Master makes their guests a credit, I think. Yeah. That's the mileage. Yeah. I mean, what I've... The things that come up in prominence that I never thought I would be promoting is asynchronous communication. You just need to do that. There isn't really another option. Otherwise, you're just going to be in meetings all day. I think from a connection perspective, I haven't really yet thought of anything that can replace it. No. Because if you're looking to get away from a Scrum, the only other option is a Scrum or a phone call without a Scrum until you can get the VR. So you can see that in the room. You can put a headset on and you feel like you're there. Someone's got to be excited about it. Maybe that will be the change in technology that will require us to be less immersed. It's really good now. Well, someone's got to be our headset. It is. It's really good. Just with iPhones, isn't it? You can do things with just phones. But even... Yeah. Yeah, you can. You can put an iPhone into a headset. Yeah. There we are. So do we get through four? Yeah. That's all right, isn't it? Back to the good old days. This is how we used to do pubcasts. Montau Jordan, this is how we do it. So if you'd like to send us questions, please do. You can find us on all good social media channels. So all we need to do now is we need to reply to that thread to let them know that these questions were covered enough. So one at one. Yes. And then maybe... We've got more traction from LinkedIn than we have from Twitter. Yeah. So that will maybe be our focus this time. Yeah. So yeah, follow me and Jeff on LinkedIn or whatever social media platform you're using. You can subscribe to the podcast, pubcast on all good podcast providers these days. They're terrible ones. Those are terrible ones. And then you'll get every single update that we do. Yep. Very good. There you go, mate. I've enjoyed my porter. I'm on my second can of porter now. Could be a changed man. Maybe I'm a porter convert. Convert. Yeah, a porter. A porter. So there we are. Cheers, mate. Cheers. See you soon.