This time last year, in November 2019, and a year after the official publication of Project to Product, the best-selling book by Tasktop founder & CEO, Dr. Mik Kersten, internal conversations began within Tasktop about launching a new podcast featuring Mik and industry leaders.
With no one on the marketing team with previous podcast experience and expertise, I found myself stepping into the shoes of a podcast producer, and spearheading this new project. After frantically googling ‘how to create a podcast’, having many internal strategy sessions, and brainstorming countless podcast names, we decided on ‘Mik + One’, and on 27 January 2020, the first episode was released.
Since then, Mik has sat down with a wide and diverse range of business and technology thought leaders and innovators on why moving from project to product is so critical for success in the Age of Software. These illuminating discussions, rich in real-life stories of success and learning from failure, are providing listeners with the inspiration they need to guide their own continuous improvement journeys.
At the time of writing, the podcast has received over 23,500 listens and has consistently received praise from within the community for the riveting debates and insights on offer, as well as the quality and variety of the guests.
As we celebrate the release of the 20th episode—a proud milestone—here are some reflections on what we’ve learned so far from Mik + One guests:
Mik + Gene Kim
Kicking off the first two episodes of Mik + One, Gene Kim talked to Mik about his journey and how it led to the Unicorn project and The Five Ideals. Listen now.
Mik + Carlota Perez
In this episode, Mik and Carlota discussed where we are in the Turning Point of the Technological Revolution, the challenges of achieving the Golden Age, what Carlota is currently working on, and more. Listen now.
Mik + Gail Murphy, Nicole Bryan & Naomi Lurie
In honor of International Women’s Day 2020, Mik was joined by three incredible women within the industry: Gail Murphy, Tasktop Co-Founder, and Professor of Computer Science and VP of Research and Innovation at the University of British Columbia, Nicole Bryan, Vice President of Product Development at Tasktop; and Naomi Lurie, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Tasktop. Listen now.
Mik + Shelley Perry
As the economic fallout triggered by COVID-19 increased, Mik and Shelley sat down and discussed advice to organizations on how they can survive and thrive at a business level during Covid-19, as well as examples of successful tech giants who understand their customers and are leveraging data to react faster to changes, and more. Listen now.
Mik + Sam Guckenheimer
In this episode, Mik and Sam Guckenheimer discussed the importance of flexibility and business agility, in order to reduce technical debt and optimize the end-to-end idea and the importance of looking at investments in terms of core versus context, to better understand where the business needs to focus. Listen now.
Mik + Dave West
This episode was all about the importance of placing small bets to apply continuous learning and feedback into the innovation cycle, what organizations can do to deliver value, and how traditional enterprises can transform to become software-driven businesses. Listen now.
Mik + Dean Leffingwell
In this episode, Mik and Dean Leffingwell covered everything from SAFe 5.0 and the importance of having business agility, to abandoning organizational hierarchies, to the importance of focusing on outcome-based metrics, and more. Listen now.
Mik + Jon Smart
Mik and Jon Smart covered a variety of topics including the value and importance of focusing on ‘Better Value, Sooner, Safer, Happier’, the importance of focusing on outcome instead of output, and team incentivisation to reduce silos across the value stream. Listen now.
Mik + Team Topologies
Covering everything from patterns and anti-patterns of how teams are structured and evolve, to how to successfully organize teams of teams, in this episode Mik is joined by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais, authors of Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow. Listen now.
Mik + Dominica DeGrandis
Getting Work in Progress (WIP) under control in order to improve flow and Leadership’s role in acknowledging employee burnout were just some of the topics included in this episode with Mik and Dominica DeGrandis. Listen now.
Mik + Don Reinertsen
A wide variety of topics were discussed in the first half of this special two-part episode including viewing product development decisions as economic tradeoffs, shifting from deterministic planning models to a stochastic perspective, and using loss of safety margin as a leading indicator of project deterioration. Listen now.
Mik + Heather Munoz
Passionate about building great teams with strong focus on trust, transparency and changing the way development and product work together, in this episode Mik and Heather discussed the importance of an effective tool network, thinking in Flow Metrics and using them to help shift to product thinking, and more. Listen now.
Mik + Adrian Cockcroft
In this episode, Mik and Adrian provided concrete advice on moving ahead in the digital world, and cover many key discussion points including product-centred innovation, feedback loops and Flow Time. Listen now.
Mik + Dr. Nicole Forsgren & Dr. Denae Ford Robinson
Mik, Nicole and Denae had an energetic and insightful conversation about many topics, including creating a company culture that embraces diversity and inclusion, breaking the stereotypes of developer personas, measuring productivity and more. Listen now.
Mik + John Willis
Joining Mik on this episode of Mik + One is John Willis, Senior Director of the Global Transformation Office at Red Hat. In this episode, Mik and John discussed embracing failure for continual learning, Flow Metrics as the next evolution of software delivery measurement, and more. Listen now.
Mik + Bryon Kroger
Discussion points between Mik and Bryon in this episode include the remarkable story of Project Kessel Run at the U.S. Airforce, adopting a “think big, start small” strategy to software transformation, avoiding the Lean trap and alignment trap, and more. Listen now.
Mik + Peter Moore
In this episode, Mik and Peter spoke about the influence of the Zone Management Model on Project to Product, the role of different cultures and leadership in specific zones, the big evolution in IT skill sets to fill the talent gap and how the Flow Framework® can be applied to all zones to balance innovation with performance. Listen now.
Mik + Justin Watts
Justin Watts, Director of Agile Change at Lloyds Banking Group joins Mik on this episode. They chatted about everything from redesigning software systems around flow to the customer instead of process, how the economies of flows outweigh the economies of scale, and more. Listen now.
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