Scrum.org Community Podcast

Most Agile coaches build their careers inside large organizations — but what happens when a new opportunity calls from an unexpected direction? Scrum.org CEO, Dave West, sits down with Marina Alex, an AI & modern management expert and Founder of The SWAY Academy, who answered that call. After the enterprise market shifted in 2022, Marina pivoted her practice toward small and medium-sized businesses in Knoxville, Tennessee — and discovered what she describes as a blue ocean: many companies that have never heard of a Sprint, but are ready for one.
Along the way, Marina found that AI has become a natural entry point into these conversations. With most small businesses neither tech-heavy nor equipped with an IT department, the excitement and anxiety around AI opens the door to deeper work around team culture, structure, and customer focus. Rather than leading with frameworks, she leads with outcomes — helping business owners understand that strong teams and clear processes are what make any new technology actually stick.
Marina walks Dave through the mindset shifts, networking strategies, and practical adaptations — from one-week Sprints to sticky-note Retrospectives — that have allowed her to build a thriving practice doing work she loves, serving the local business communities that need her most.
Free Guide from Sway Systems with tips to find new clients
Connect with Marina

In this episode, Eric Naiburg and Darrell Fernandes of Scrum.org tackle a pressing question: How do you measure the impact of AI on your team? from a recent webinar focused on AI as a teammate.
They explore how AI’s role differs across organizations—from ideation and analysis to stakeholder engagement—and why its productivity gains are still evolving. The conversation highlights the importance of combining qualitative insights with quantitative metrics, including flow-based measures like velocity, to assess real impact.
They also discuss the growing responsibility of hiring managers to define AI roles clearly, set expectations, and ensure AI contributes value without disrupting team dynamics. Plus, they share how AI itself can be leveraged to help define roles, recommend metrics, and improve performance measurement.

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Dave West sits down with Tomasz Maj, Head of Product Ops at Odevo, to explore how a rapidly growing property management giant is navigating the AI revolution. Odevo faces a unique challenge: managing a massive, diverse portfolio across the northern hemisphere while balancing centralized scale with local autonomy.

Tomasz pulls back the curtain on "vibe coding"—the democratization of development that allows non-technical staff to build functional tools—and how Odevo balances this "wild west" of innovation with rigorous security and GitHub-backed governance.

Key topics include:
The Operating Model of Diversity: Why Odevo chooses not to have a single "master platform" and how that fuels speed.
Vibe Coding in the Wild: How accountants and maintenance teams are using AI to solve their own data problems.
The 5-Step AI Engineer: Inside Odevo’s comprehensive training program, from prompting to agentic development.
Governance vs. Innovation: How to implement "Module Zero" (legal, GDPR, and security) without killing the creative spirit.

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Eric Naiburg, COO at Scrum.org  and Darrell Fernandes, Executive Advisor at Scrum.org continue to dive into how to make AI a true teammate in product development while answering questions from a recent webinar on the topic. They explore the importance of creating a context library to store domain-specific knowledge, enabling AI to provide accurate, efficient answers. Learn how consistent definitions, thoughtful prompt engineering, and regular updates to your AI context can improve team collaboration, reduce costs, and empower Scrum Masters to guide effective AI usage.

If you are a Scrum Master, Agile Coach or in a related role and have questions about how to use AI as a tool to better support your job, teams and organization, this episode is for you!
AI has become a core capability in product delivery and is transforming every role. Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches have a key part to play in the use of AI and introducing AI to teams, products and organizations, acting as a catalyst for change. Through the proper use of AI tools, Scrum Masters, their teams and organization become more effective. But in what ways can you reap the benefits?
In this Ask a PST session hosted by Patricia Kong, PSTs Miriam Blommers and Said Azarfane took listener questions on how to leverage AI to be more successful as a Scrum Master! Whether you are looking to find ways to improve facilitation, collaboration or solve more challenges, get great advice in this episode on how to make AI a helpful and important part of your toolbox!