 Hi, I'm Geoff Watts and welcome to another top 10 tips video. This one's a little bit different. But I was asked recently about my top podcasts that I like. Now some of you are probably aware that I have my own podcast that I run with Paul Goddard. It's called The Agile Pubcast and every time we get together we'll generally find a new pub, grab a pint of something and just have a completely unscripted conversation about something related to Agile. And it's gone down quite well. We've got quite a few listeners now and feel free to subscribe and join us on there. But somebody was asking me about the podcast, how it came about and also what podcasts I like. So I thought well let's do a top 10 tips video about my top 10 favourite podcasts. Now this is quite difficult to do actually. I didn't think it would be that difficult but it turns out there are quite a lot of podcasts out there that I like and actually I know quite a lot of the people that put their time and effort into making these podcasts. And given my involvement, although Paul does most of the work to be honest I know how difficult it is to keep this going. So I feel bad for anybody that can't quite make it into the top 10. So well I give it a go. Don't hate me. And here we go. At 10 I've got Jez Smith's Why Do Agile Transformations Fail? I like the fact that this one's quite a good length. So there are about 30 minutes in episode. Generally a guest show so he's got somebody on there who's got some experience with Agile Transformations and they're talking about failure modes, failure patterns. Which is cool. You know it's always nice to hear about other people's failures. Makes you feel a little bit better about your own. Jez is a nice guy. So he's not one of these Jeremy Paxman type interviewers. When you go back to those old fashioned values how are they consonant with your party taking money from a pornographer? Not sure how well that'll go down with our foreign viewers. But even though he's a nice guy he's not scared to go beneath the surface level answers that some of his guests give which is good. He really tries to find out what's going on there. And he's actually done pretty well with the audio. I know how difficult it is with these YouTube videos to get the audio right. But Jez has done a pretty good job. So it's definitely worth a lesson. That's my number ten. At number nine is the podcast called Agile Amped. Now this has gone undergone a little bit of a change recently because the person who used to host Agile Amped Howard Sublett's taken on a new role as chief produt owner at the Scrum Alliance. But Agile Amped is quite a long running podcast. It's done by Solutions IQ which is now an Accenture company. And it's very professional so they use some really good kit. They're often at conferences with big stand. They interview people who've been speaking at the conference and ask them to share their message. It's good to get to hear the stories of people that you wouldn't normally hear. They'll often put people on that I haven't heard of and they've always got interesting stories to tell. But you're getting guests on there for free. So they're a little bit nice to their guests. Or else I'd like them to just be perhaps a little bit more Jeremy Paxman style. But really nice, really good. That would be my number nine. At number eight I'm going to put the Scrum Master Toolbox by Vasco Duarte. Now one of the really impressive things about this one is that this is daily. Now Paul and I have managed to go almost a year putting out a podcast every two weeks. And that takes quite a bit of effort. Even though we've got an excuse of going to the pub whenever we do one. But daily. Now what I notice is that actually they'll do an interview with one person and they might split that across five days. So these episodes are actually quite short and they're quite focused. So each day you might have one particular question that gets answered and the next day they'll focus on another question. I actually quite like that because they're bite-sized. So maybe 10, 15 minutes at an episode, something like that. This is a guest show. And it seems like the guests have been given a bit of a script in advance. So a little bit scripted. And it is very much focused on the Scrum Master Role. Hence the name of the podcast. But I quite like the fact that the audio is a little bit dodgy as well. I quite like that from our point of view when we're hosting our podcast in a pub. You've got the noise and the ambiance in the background. And I think that adds a little bit of reality to it. A really overly smooth production. I like that. So that's my number eight. Now coming in at number seven isn't actually an agile-related podcast at all. It's the TED Talks daily. And if you know me now, you'll know that I'm a big fan of TED Talks. So being able to get a podcast of a TED Talk every day delivered to my phone is really cool. And obviously sometimes it's not going to be directly relevant to what I'm interested in. But that's kind of the point of these TED Talks. They're a little bit abstract. And it's very rare that I listen to one of these podcasts from TED and find nothing that's relevant to my context. So it's just a good way of keeping myself interested in new things that are going on rather than actually just taking stuff that I would naturally look towards. So I recommend that. And in a similar vein at number six, I'd put Dan Pink's 1-3-20 podcast. Now it's not as frequent as I would like it to be. It's a little bit ad hoc. Dan often starts off with really good intentions and he gets a bit of rhythm going and then he seems to get distracted by another TV project over there. But the idea behind it is he has one guest. He asks them three questions and it takes 20 minutes. So quite structured, you know what you're going to get. These guests, they're usually people that I haven't heard of but they've all got really good, interesting topics to talk about. Now it turns out that most of these people, if not all of them, have a book to hook. So they're talking about their book. So it can get a little bit salesy in a way but those books are usually quite interesting to what we do in Agile circles and leadership circles. It's worth checking out. Just put the advertising in the salesy thing to one side a bit. It's very slick, very professional. Dan Pink's a very good sort of presenter and he's very easy to listen to. At five, I'm putting Agile Uprising. This has got a mixture of presenters and hosts. It's quite amateur but sort of cute and vulnerably so. It doesn't pretend to be polished and professional. The audio is a bit sketchy now and again but again I quite like that, not everybody will. It can be quite long, some of the episodes but they generally keep them energetic. So I don't tend to find myself really losing interest very often. It's sort of a mix of panel shows, guests and a little bit of a sort of musing amongst colleagues. It's quite debating, which I quite like. The people involved are often quite happy to... they're not just backing each other up and they will have a bit of a disagreement if there is a disagreement to be had which sort of seems like it's honest and interesting. It's quite informative every week at Agile Uprising. Number four is Metacast. Metacast is hosted by John Anderson and Bob Galen. Both big names in the States in the Agile community. This one's quite informal, very informal really. You can tell it's definitely not scripted and I like that. It can be a little bit rambling at times and the jingle's a bit long but it's really funny and the two presenters work really well together. It's quite focused so they'll have an episode on a particular topic so one of the last ones is around fear I think. So you really get to spend a good 45-50 minutes looking at a particular topic and the different angles of that from an Agile perspective. They're happy to share their anecdotes and they've got a lot of experience to share. Personal anecdotes, professional anecdotes to get real insight into them as well as well as some of the theory behind it. So Metacast, number four. Number three, I was quite surprised that I put this that high actually because it's a really niche podcast so it's called 21st Century Work Life. So it's not really about Agile specifically so one of its main themes really is about distributed teams so their theme is virtual, not distant. So as you'll remember from one of my previous talks about distributed teams, I have the belief now that all teams are distributed to some degree so this is relevant to almost anybody in the Agile space. It's a mix, so there's some structured, focused podcasts but there's also what the presenter, Pilar Auti is her name, calls Fickle Fridays which is a little bit more of an ad hoc musing based on something that's just come to mind and she'll just talk about. She's happy in her own voice, talking to herself as well as introducing other people. She's got a great voice, a real proper radio presenter style voice really easy to listen to. Not preachy, a good mix of sort of authority and humility. She's got a purpose, she's got a focus and basically you know what you're going to get you can look at the title and think that's obviously what that episode's about and she's got nearly 200 episodes now so there's a wealth of content there and she also puts a lot of time into editing the episodes nicely and I know from the amount of grief that I get from Paul when he asked her I did some of our episodes that it's a lot of work and we're not as professional at doing it as Pilar is so even though it's a really niche podcast just the quality and everything that it's got going for it meant that I put it in a number three so well done 21st century world life. My second favourite podcast is called Deliver It and this is hosted by Corey Bryant in the States really high quality professional production so I've been on this podcast so I know the amount of effort that goes into making this one and how meticulous he is about the production get another really great radio voice wealth of experience but equally comes across really humble when he's talking to his guests he's really got a good balance there his episodes are very focused so quite often they'll be interviewing an author of a book or focusing on a particular topic to do with product management or product development it's sort of a mix of Corey's musings and guest input which I quite like sometimes because Corey's a nice guy the guest can end up driving the show so you often hear a couple of episodes where Corey won't hardly get a word in edge ways and I kind of wish he'd take a bit of more of a grasp of it because he knows what's going on and he knows what the listener wants to hear but it's quite just tempting to let that guest go a little bit but all in all it's a really good podcast in an area such as agile product management that just doesn't really get a lot of coverage so check it out, deliver it and my personal favourite agile podcast is called Troubleshooting Agile and this is hosted by Geoffrey and Squirrel yup, there you go really professional, I've been doing it obviously for a long time they know what they're doing it's really, it's focused and I like a focused podcast I know that I like being able to look at a podcast and think, yup, I really want to know about that and I'll invest 45-50 minutes of my time listening to that it's really quite, you know, it's conversational they've got a good, almost a good cop bad cop riff going on you know, there's a lot of back and forth two different styles but they actually play well together and again, I think that's sort of years of just working together the part, it's not contrived at all quite a lot of these partnerships you think, yeah, that's a bit too saccharine sweet but these two, they really do hit it off against each other which is good and it's not too long so it's just about the right length you're looking at about 30-40 minutes, something like that and they're really meticulous in their show notes so when they mention something, there'll be a link to it there'll be more information so you can follow it up which in a show that long is really good especially when I'm travelling and perhaps I'm driving and I've got these podcasts I don't have the opportunity to write down and make notes so having those show notes is really useful so there you go, I was a bit surprised by the question because I thought podcasts were a little bit dying out but it turns out, those are people who are interested in podcasts the idea of having something bite-sized and informative on your short commute to work is still really valuable it's a good way of making use of that time if you've got any of the podcasts out there that you like that I haven't mentioned, please just add them in the comments it could be that I haven't even come across them yet and if you've got anything you would like me to run a Top 10 tips video on again, put it in the comments as long as you've liked it and you've subscribed to the channel then there's a good chance I'll put a Top 10 tips video on for you alright, until next time, take care Hi, a quick post script you would probably be surprised that I didn't have agile for humans in my Top 10 list there's nothing malicious about that I just genuinely left it at my list by accident I could say something clever something like everyone's heard of agile for humans so there's no need for me to give them any publicity but it wasn't anything clever like that sorry Ryan, so Ryan Ripley has got probably the most long running, well established, most listened to most famous agile podcast it's not a podcast yet, Ryan out there if you haven't heard it, check it out it's brilliant again, sorry for leaving you out Ryan you're going to be an honorary 11th member of the Top 10 list cheers