"Don't underestimate how much fear is in the room"

Ali Hajou

In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, Mark Richards, Stephan Neck, Ali Hajou, and Nikolaos Kaintantzis bring their collective experience to one of the most pivotal—and high-risk—moments in a SAFe transformation: the Value Stream an...

“Good flow is invisible, but it takes a lot of work to get there”

Nikolaos Kaintantzis

In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, Mark Richards, Ali Hajou, Nikolaos Kaintantzis, and Stephan Neck take you behind the scenes of their virtual facilitation setups. It’s a follow-up to their earlier ha...

“It’s weeding time, right? Sometimes you have to weed out stuff that doesn’t work. Dead wood is not good on a tree.”
Stephan Neck

Is Agile really “dead,” or just misunderstood and badly applied? In this lively podcast episode, Mark, Stephan, and Niko challenge the buzz about Agile’s demise ...

“A cheap writing tablet can transform your PowerPoint into a shared canvas.”

Ali Hajou

Remote facilitation has come a long way since the early days of clunky video calls. In this lively episode, four experienced facilitators—Mark, Ali, Stephan, and Niko—swap stories about how they transfo...

“Leaders have to do more than simply say ‘we have two systems.’ They have to actively steer the organization so it’s both robust and free to innovate.”

Stephan Neck

What happens when an organization outgrows the myth that “all you need is cross-functional teams”? In this episode of SPCs U...

“If you do no pre-work, the first 20 minutes are lost—someone can’t open Miro, doesn’t have the password, so you lose that time sorting out technical difficulties.”

Mark Richards

Remote facilitation may feel like juggling blindfolded—especially when every participant has a muted mic and a...

“If you ask questions about the past, it’s always about going to a corpse and opening it up... If you ask questions about the future, it’s always about values.”

Nikolaos Kaintantzis

“Are you all dumb?”—when a senior stakeholder dropped that bombshell mid-retro, chaos threatened to derail...

“If you do it right, if you have the right people, and if you have some nerds and lots of engineering DNA, it really works on the tool side"

Stephan Neck

If you’ve ever believed that failing once in remote PI Planning means catastrophe, this episode of SPCs Unleashed proves otherwise. Mar...

Effective dashboards and ART insights are crucial to navigating the complexities of Agile Release Trains (ARTs) and organizational alignment.

In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, Mark Richards, Stephan Neck, Niko Kaintantzis, and Ali Hajou delve into the strategic role of dashboards in improving...

“Shi(f)t happens: Either guided or becoming a loose cannon”

Stephan Neck.

This episode explores change management in the context of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), which refers to the process of planning, implementing, and managing changes within an organization as it adopts SAFe pract...

"PI Planning is where the framework meets reality—it’s a test of alignment, collaboration, and leadership."
Stephan Neck

In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, hosts Stephan Neck, Niko Kaintantzis, and Ali Hajou explore one of SAFe's cornerstone activities: PI Planning. The trio leads an engagi...

"A facilitator lights the spark of collaboration, then steps back to let the fire grow"
Stephan Neck

In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, hosts Mark Richards, Niko Kaintantzis, and Stephan Neck delve into the art and science of facilitation—a skill often confused with coaching yet distinct in...