Badass Agile
A place for elite leaders and teams.
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A place for elite leaders and teams.
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Ever work on a team where there was one, maybe two people who could be counted on to drag a project across the finish line just before the stroke of 12:00? That’s what happens when you work at scale. People work hard, but the last thing they have time for is proper orchestration to help them land safely under pressure. Cutting people with an appropriate dialing back of scope makes the problem even worse. Dave Borzillo is a graduate of my Forge Genesis program. In the time we spent together, he advanced a business idea (or two), but he also conceived and wrote his latest book – “Sanity At Scale
No amount of tooling makes an organization go faster or do better. AI has made that clearer than anything else I’ve watched in nine years of doing this. What it has produced instead is what people are now calling the human wreckage of AI. How I Met Angela Dugan So one day I’m cruising around LinkedIn, in a market where nobody can get hired and companies swear they can’t find anyone, and here’s someone doing something simple. She posted about a role she wasn’t hiring for. Didn’t have the requisition, and said so right in the post. It felt awkward, it felt vulnerable…and she put it up anyway, Be
Ripe for Disruption In an environment begging for disruption, Agile lost its reputation. It wasn’t because the 12 Principles were ineffective. It’s because we let it fall prey to comfortable, common thinking. Slow it down, make it safe. Don’t shake the floor; just go faster. When we want calm and predictable, we choose patterns. Copy something that works and repeat it. But patterns get stuck, and stuck patterns are hard to break. The disruptor doesn’t wait for permission. They act. They see a future that promises better, and they march toward it. They are fearless and determined authentic. Tha
The Rise of The Authentic Agile Leader I’m obsessed with voice. If you look carefully at history….THERE IS NO politician, writer, performer, or business leader who got the attention and results they’re famous for WITHOUT BEING BOLD. Like the revolutionary voices of our culture, the authentic Agile leader has the potential to create a new future. It doesn’t matter WHAT future, only that it is different than status quo. An evolution from what we have done for the past quarter century. After all…aren’t we supposed to be about iteration and innovation? If you like this episode you might also like:
The current moment feels like 'the end'. If you're truly Agile, the opportunities are everywhere. Tech feels like mayhem right now, but that creates MORE opportunity to envision the future, and place a bet on an experiment that could change everything. Isn't that what we're supposed to be good at?
The Forge Programs: Navigating the End of the Agile Era Nine years of Badass Agile has led to this exact moment. The ground under the industry has shifted. The comfortable era of easily landed roles and endless demand for generic agile support is gone. If you are watching your position disappear or feeling the walls close in on your career, know this: the panic you feel is a signal, not a failure. Fight-or-flight is the natural response when a career path stops providing security, but reacting with fear is a guarantee of becoming obsolete. The Forge, Forge Lightning, and Forge Genesis are the
AI Agile promises easier work, but it creates a leadership trap for anyone trying to stand out. When leaders turn to AI Agile for content, resumes, or pitches, the output becomes uniform and robotic, blending into the surrounding noise. Distinction requires consistent effort in uncomfortable areas: making direct outreach, stating difficult positions, and drawing connections others overlook. AI Agile excels with patterns and averages, while humans provide the vision, novel combinations, and genuine attention that drive results. AI Agile Comfort Takes Hold Comfort has taken hold. AI Agile accele
The Evolving Role Of The Agile Coach Being an Agile Coach is no longer about staying buried in frameworks or cheerleading teams. It’s about getting out of the team room, talking to the business, and understanding what people are measured on, what they fear, and what they need to move faster and create value. Why It Matters When we build regular conversations with the business, we stay closer to real priorities, spot changes sooner, and become more useful to the organization. You also make your value visible, which matters when most people still don’t fully understand what an Agile Coach does.
The Real State of Agile in 2026 It’s been nine years since I started this show, and I can tell you this. Agile isn’t going anywhere. But man, has it ever changed shape. Agile in 2026 is barely recognizable from when I started. Our resumes are no longer welcome in recruiter inboxes. Funny, because what we were hired FOR has never changed. Businesses need to move the needle on metrics that count. I can’t offer you a new framework for doing that. I’m still doing amazing stuff that inspires me and exposes me to new challenges and people. What underpins my daily work are those agile principles that
Meet Kevin Sutherland of SI Delivery Consulting Kevin Sutherland is doing bold things to bring agile methods to large-scale government. He went from early days with Accenture, through first-hand experience with waterfall and the pitfalls of massive system delivery, to founding his own company focused on state-level innovation. Kevin isn’t just theorizing about agile transformation, he’s in the trenches, dealing with resistance, bureaucratic inertia, and public stakeholder pushback. Kevin discusses what makes public sector agile so distinct and challenging. What are the unique obstacles in gove
What’s the Real AI Opportunity? You know me. I think the AI thing is a bit of a sandstorm. A gold rush. There’s no question its useful (I use it for a ton of stuff actually) and there’s no question its only going to get better. But in the early stages of any new tech, there’s a lot of hype, a lot of bandwagon-joining, and a lot of waste. (Y2K? NFT’s? Anyone…?) What I can say for sure is there’s not a ton of benefit in building Custom GPT’s that will ‘replace what we do’. First of all…why would we hasten our own exit? But also, where’s the consistency of knowledge going to come from? The intern
Welcome back Adam Smith, founder of Tension, a Toronto-based user experience firm. It’s been about a year since our last conversation, and Adam Smith’s journey through the rise of AI, the shifting value of UX/UI, and the broader changes across creative and knowledge industries made us reflect more deeply on what we actually do—and how we define ourselves. Adam describes how AI has drastically reduced the manual “effort hours” that once drove the bottom line in UX/UI work. Yet he insists that the real differentiator comes from human experience, intuition, and the scars earned from tackling mess
It’s not just an ideal time to create a movement, it’s essential now. Agile isn’t going to rebound to its original shape. Corporate work isn’t going to get less stressful. Jobs aren’t going to become more abundant. And AI isn’t going to save you from anything. It’s not that things are crumbling. They’re shifting. And if you build the courage and skill, you can create a movement that will let you capitalize. A movement, like this podcast itself, starts when you can see something isn’t working. When a better way is obvious to everyone, except the people who sign your checks, and their unquestion
You chose this tribe. You opted in, because you’re a Badass Agile Leader. This is the call. Time to raise your voice. You have experience, you have something to say. Your wisdom is worth something. Rather than chill on social media and bark about how bad things suck…why not DO something with that passion? With that point of view? Before we start, I want to shine a light on someone who’s actually out there delivering on the promise of Agile. Kevin Sutherland works in perhaps the most challenging environment. Public Services, or government, are complex, siloed, and mired in legacy. Kevin is hold
Time To Stand For Something It’s our season to carve out an authentic place as leaders in the new universe of Agile. Following the crowd isn’t enough. In this environment, flooded with process trainers and framework enforcers, there’s an absence of meaningful leadership. We’re encouraged to focus on the steps and systems, but how are we developing the leaders we actually become, or what values we fiercely defend? We wander the halls of organizations spouting the same textbook answers, rarely asking if these practices serve our teams, or make a lasting impact on business outcomes. I challenge y
Time to Stop Doing and Start Leveraging Agile Let’s get real about the current state of Agile in our industry and what it means for your career. I get the fear and uncertainty many of us are feeling. We’re seeing pay cuts, shrinking opportunities, and the sense that the “glory days” of Agile might be over. But it’s not the end. Agile as a mindset and practice isn’t going away anytime soon. Companies still value Agile, even if it’s not feeding hype and dollars into it the way they once were. We’re now at the mature end of adoption curve. Like any other tech trend, the “new frontier” phase might
Certainty In Uncertain Times A turbulent world has an impact on our industry and our personal sense of purpose. Unrest, confusion, and uncertainty not only shapes markets, it bleeds into our daily work and our identities as Agile practitioners. We don’t shy away from admitting how tough things feel right now: many of us are tired, a little lost, and wondering if all the skills and experience we’ve built still matter in a climate that doesn’t seem to value what we bring. This crisis of purpose is widely shared, and it’s okay to feel frustrated. The Agile community, once hailed for its energy an
Outcomes, not Outputs We wonder why Agile is dying. Should we be so surprised? You’re probably watching your wallet these days. Prices are up, the economy is slow and uncertain. Your employers are no different. In 2026, story points, velocity, lead time and throughput might matter to YOU, but they don’t matter to THEM. Not to say that those measures aren’t important. Heck, you can’t tune your development, testing and deployment operations if you’re not looking at them. But if you were called to the mat tomorrow, if you were asked to prove the ROI of what you do, those metrics don’t tell a comp
Pivot your career by becoming an Agile Business Outcomes Partner. Help companies get what they’re begging for – real, measurable business value from their Agile investments. Buy the audio+PDF playbook here. The State Of Agile Report Finally Dropped For a bit there, I thought I’d missed it. I’m not 100% sure if there ever was a 2025 report, but for no good reason, I checked this week, and voila! There it was. The 2026 edition. I don’t exactly set my watch to the annual State Of Agile report, but it IS very very good. What I like most about it is the data focus. We’re not hearing from pundits or
Fighting the word “Accountability” Whether or not you like the word, you can’t run a high-performing team without accountability. I recently read a post that blamed accountability and commitment for all of Agile’s failures. One commenter went so far as to suggest that accountability was an affront; an assault. If you’re on a team, or even if you’re being paid to do a job, you’re accountable for something. Someone, somewhere needs you to sign up for a result. They need you to do a certain thing by a certain date. That’s a commitment. That’s accountability. Changing The Word Won’t Help Sure, we
Solving the Agile Executive Support Problem There is a statistic in the Agile community: the number one reason Agile initiatives fail is a lack of executive support. We see this stat, we nod our heads, and then we proceed to complain that leadership just “doesn’t get it.” But CEOs and executives aren’t sitting around wondering how to make YOU and your team more effective. They are worried about revenue, market share, and survival. If you don’t have executive support for your initiative, it’s not because they don’t care; it’s because you haven’t given them a compelling reason to care. Executive
I figured it was about time I addressed this one. You can’t breathe without taking in some serious AI hype right now. How much is fluff and smoke, and how much is real? AND…how will this apply to Agile? Will AI Save Agile? Great question. I have a few gut-level reactions to this. First, I think there’s a gold-rush feel to what’s going on right now. With any new technology, especially the monumental ones, there’s always speculation that this ‘changes the game forever’. But that can’t always be true. On the one hand, AI has a lot of issues. But its early stages. I think the biggest threat is the
I’m launching new cohorts for The Forge Lightning and The Forge Genesis. Go to https://learning.fusechamber.com to find out more and register today. What’s The Latest in Badass Leadership? Something is definitely up. People are angrier, meaner, less fulfilled, less patient and more intolerant. Manners and decorum are taking a back seat to ego and impulse. I won’t get into where I think this is all coming from, but I do know one thing. If you want to make things better, the fastest way is to set an example with Badass Leadership. For a leader to set a powerful example, they have to be in contro
Paul Lepage, Foundation BTS On this episode, I sit down with Paul LePage, founder of Foundation BTS, a managed IT services and threat management company, in his office in Newmarket, Ontario. Paul shares his path from corporate IT manager to successful entrepreneur, revealing how embracing agile principles and learning from failure played a pivotal role in building his business. He shared real-world stories about risk-taking, adapting to rapid changes in technology, including the growing impact of AI, and figuring out what it truly means to lead and serve in today’s market. Whether you’re an Ag
How Important are The Agile Principles? To me, the 12 Agile Principles are everything you need to build and guide your practice. Rather than memorizing a ton of frameworks, rules and regulations, the Agile Principles allow us to hold in memory a few simple, yet elegant, virtues that can be adapted to any industry, client or context. It’s easy to recite the twelve Agile principles, but living them is a whole different story, and we aren’t always honest about the ways we fall short. This episode focuses on which of the original Agile principles we tend to violate most often: We like to tell ours
