KatAnu Connect Podcast
Kate Megaw, Ryan Smith & Anu Smalley host a variety of discussions on Leadership & Agility!
Episodes
196 episodes
Kanban Back to Basics: Stop Starting, Start Finishing
Last week was Scrum. This week Kate Megaw, Anu Smalley and Ryan Smith turn to Kanban, the framework most teams think they already know because they have a board. They trace it back to Toyota and just in time manufacturing, then walk through the...
Scrum Back to Basics: Think Big, Do Small, Iterate Often
Last week was frameworks for agility in general. This week Kate Megaw, Anu Smalley and Ryan Smith put the best known one under the microscope. They walk through where Scrum came from, why Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland waited fifteen years to...
Scrum, Kanban or Something Else? How to Choose a Framework for Agility
The last three weeks were the mindset: the Agile Manifesto and its 12 principles. This week Kate Megaw, Anu Smalley and Ryan Smith move on to the frameworks that help you live it. Anu starts with the difference between a mindset, a framew...
Agile Principles Part 2: Deliver Value, Keep the Pace, Don't Skip the Retro
Last time it was the WHO: customers, businesspeople, face to face. This time it is the HOW. @Kate Megaw, @Anu Smalley and @Ryan Smith finish the Back-to-Basics run through the 12 Agile Principles with numbers 7 through 12, asking th...
Agile Principles Part 1: Make the Principles Speak Your Language
The 12 principles behind the Agile Manifesto are the most skipped page in agile. Plenty of people can quote the four values. Far fewer know there are 12 principles sitting underneath, and fewer still could name one. Kate Megaw, Anu Smalle...
Back to Basics: What the Agile Manifesto Still Gets Right in the Age of AI
Many Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches have been cut loose, organizations are changing how they deliver products and services, and AI has landed on top of both. Kate Megaw, Anu Smalley and Ryan Smith open a new Back to Basics series with the docu...
Stop Doing More With Less. Start Doing Less, Better.
Every month when we teach the Certified Agile Leader class it opens with the same question: what is your biggest challenge right now? In 2025 the answer was “leading multi generational teams”. This year it is “doing more with less”, and Kate Me...
Why Transformations Stall: The Change Readiness Gap
Earlier this year the PMI and Agile Alliance introduced the Manifesto for Enterprise Agility. Then came the harder question: why do organizations with great strategies still struggle to execute them? Their answer is a report called ...
The Age of Perpetual Transformation: Takeaways from Agile 2026
This year's Agile 2026 theme was “shaping the future with agility,” and that is exactly where Kate Megaw and Anu Smalley found the industry: mid-shift, still deciding what comes next. Back from the conference, they sit down with Ryan Smith for ...
The Sound of Silence: Why Your Meetings Go Quiet and What to Do About It
You schedule the meeting, you ask for input, and the room goes quiet. Then the real conversation happens in the hallway afterward. Kate Megaw and Ryan Smith dig into why people stay silent, and what facilitators can actually do about it. Silenc...
Scrum Master or Change Agent? Has the Role Outgrown Its Name?
The Scrum Master role has quietly evolved, and the industry has not caught up. Kate Megaw and Ryan Smith unpack how the role calcified into a person who runs the events and works through a checklist, when the real job was always to be a change ...
Velocity Is Vanity, Outcomes Are Reality
Velocity feels like proof. Fifty story points done, a bigger number than last sprint, a box checked. But velocity measures how busy a team is, not whether anything valuable reached the customer. Kate Megaw and Ryan Smith take ...
Big A, Little a: Making agility Part of Your Company's DNA
There is “Big A” Agility, the frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, and SAFe, and there is “little a” agility, the plain human ability to change direction when the world shifts under your feet. Kate Megaw and Ryan Smith make the case that the second o...
Communication: Your Anchor in an Unstable World
Communication used to be filed away as a soft skill. Kate Megaw and Ryan Smith make the case that it has become central to everything we do. In a VUCA environment that is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, communication is...
Paths to Agility: A Developer's Journey to Scrum Master
Kate and Ryan come at agility from opposite ends of the org chart. Kate arrived through training, operations, and project management on the leadership side. Ryan started as a front-end developer who built a Kanban board before he knew it had a ...
Role Clarity: Roles vs. Accountabilities and Why It Matters
“We have twelve scrum masters. Why is nothing working?” If you have ever asked some version of that question, this episode is for you.Kate Megaw, Anu Smalley and Ryan Smith dig into the challenge they hear in almost every class th...
Stop the Whiplash: Why Constant Reprioritizing Is Quietly Killing Your Team
Everything is a fire. Everything is priority number one. And by tomorrow, the number one priority has changed again. Sound familiar?In this episode, Kate Megaw, Anu Smalley, and Ryan Smith dig into the challenge they hear at almost...
Just Because AI Can, Doesn’t Mean It Should: The Human in the Loop and Why AI Transformations Fail
AI can generate an answer in seconds. The harder question is whether it is the right answer to the right question, and what you actually do with it.In this episode, Kate Megaw, Anu Smalley, and Ryan Smith dig into what “human in the loo...
You Don't Have an Empowerment Problem. You Have an Ownership Problem.
Leaders say their teams are empowered. The teams won't make a decision. Somewhere between those two sentences sits the real problem.This episode tackles the gap between the rhetoric of empowerment and the reality of approval-bottlenecke...
AI Stopped Being an Afterthought: Finding Calm in the Overwhelm and the Pivot Ahead
event. Kate and Anu just wrapped a wild month on the road, and the message from both conferences was loud and clear: AI is no longer a bolt-on, it's the operating system!Fresh off Global Scrum Gathering Vancouver and Canvas 26 (Miro's us...
Over-Talkers, Under-Talkers, and the Meetings Nobody Enjoys
Every team has them. The teammate who turns a one-word answer into a five-minute monologue. The developer who has not said a word in three retrospectives. The Product Owner who "adds context" to every user story before anyone gets a chance to r...
Drop the Framework Theater. Deliver the Work.
Organizations are still struggling to deliver what their customers want, when they want it, and the loudest question in delivery right now is whether agile and traditional project management are stronger together.Some Scrum practitioners...
Call It What You Want. Can You Deliver?
The framework wars are over, and the only question that still matters is whether the work is landing in your customers' hands.This episode dives into the great convergence of project management and agility. Job titles are blending, PMI i...
You Don’t Have a Strategy Problem: You Have an Execution Problem
High-performing organizations don’t just plan better: They shorten the distance between decision, action, and learning.This episode closes out the deep dive into the Manifesto for Enterprise Agility. This week covers the three prin...
Org Design for Agility: Guardrails, Flexible Funding, and Building for Adaptability
Most organizations don't need more frameworks: they need fewer constraints.This episode continues the deep dive into the Manifesto for Enterprise Agility, this week tackling the three principles of organizational design. From guard...