For 17 years, the Give Thanks for Scrum (GTFS) event in Boston has reflected the evolution of Scrum itself, from early education and experience reports to scaling, business agility, and now AI integration.

In this episode, Dave West sits down with GTFS founder and Managing Director of Improving Agility, Daniel Mezick to explore how the event began, sparked by bringing Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber together during Thanksgiving week in Boston, and how its themes have evolved alongside the Agile movement.

The 2025 event returned to an in-person format and centered on three critical themes:

• Delivering tangible results
• Incorporating AI into Scrum practice
• The evolving role of the Scrum Master

Daniel and Dave discuss why empiricism matters more than ever, how Scrum Masters must understand executive psychology, and what socio-technical design means in an AI-enabled world. They also explore whether large agile frameworks may give way to more focused, empirical approaches.

Looking further into the future, the conversation turns to AI’s expanding role, practical application over hype, and a blended in-person/online format to grow the global community.

If you care about the future of Scrum, stakeholder delight, and navigating uncertainty with empiricism, this episode is for you.

Dave West sits down with Mik Kersten, author of Project to Product and the upcoming Output to Outcome, to explore why AI amplification is exposing the real bottlenecks in how organizations work. Mik shares data from over 3,600 value streams showing that development teams account for just 8% of end-to-end delivery time which means making those teams faster with AI doesn't move the needle if the constraints are upstream and downstream.

The conversation digs into why most organizations are measuring the wrong things (hint: token consumption is not a productivity metric), why overlay agile structures have largely failed, and why the answer isn't fewer teams it's more empowered ones. Mik introduces the core models from his new book: the outcome loop, the outcome tree, and seven organizational shifts that together make up a new operating model designed for the age of AI.

Key Takeaways:

• The bottleneck has moved from software delivery to planning, governance, and innovation and most organizations haven't caught up
• Making development teams faster with AI delivers little value if the surrounding system isn't designed around outcomes
• Agile as an overlay structure doesn't work it has to become the primary operating model and the actual org chart
• Empowered, autonomous teams are not optional in an AI-driven world the speed of feedback loops makes half-measures unsustainable
• Leadership roles need to be redefined and incentive structures realigned to match the way teams are actually working
• The theory of constraints still applies in the age of AI the constraint just keeps moving, and finding it is now the critical management skill

Links

http://outputtooutcome.org/

Neste webcast “Conversa com PSTs: Scrum, o dia a dia e a IA”, dois Professional Scrum Trainers (PSTs) respondem às perguntas da comunidade e exploram como os pilares do empirismo em Scrum: transparência, inspeção e adaptação, são aplicados ao desenvolvimento de produtos, e nas situações do quotidiano, profissionais e também pessoais.

Durante a conversa, dois PSTs, Daniel Carrilho e Matheus Reis, irão refletir sobre como a Inteligência Artificial está a transformar a forma como as equipas trabalham, como pode apoiar a tomada de decisões baseada em evidência e de que forma líderes e profissionais podem tirar partido do Scrum para navegar num mundo cada vez mais complexo e assistido por AI.