[00:00:00] Scrum still matters in the edge of AI, and Customery Academy is free.

There's a quiet narrative circulating in the Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 community right now, and it goes something like this: Copilot or Claude or Codex, or whatever your favourite AI tool the day is, writes your code. Power Platform builds apps from prompts. AI scaffolds systems integrations. User stories can be generated by your LLM in seconds.

So the thinking goes, maybe we don't need all that agile stuff anymore. Maybe we don't need scrum masters. Maybe we don't need sprint planning. Maybe if we don't need estimation. Maybe we can just vibe it.

I think that's a mistake.

G'day, I'm Neil Benson. Welcome to Amazing Apps.

It's been a while since the last episode, so if you've remained a podcast [00:01:00] subscriber and the episode has popped up unexpectedly in your feed, well, it's good to be back with you. Thanks for joining me again. I'm on a mission to help you master agile practises and build amazing apps on the Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365. Amazing Apps is the result of my own curiosity and experiments with new ways of building amazing apps and high performing application development teams. It's full of advice from my guests and examples from some of my work over the last few years building and leading business applications teams and practises. In this episode, I'm gonna discuss whether Agile is still relevant in the AI age and I've got some exciting news about my Customery Academy courses that I hope you'll like too.

AI accelerates delivery, but acceleration without alignment, is just faster chaos. A lot more awful shittier apps faster.

If you work in Dynamics 365 or Power Platform, you probably already know this. We're not building personal productivity apps or games. We're building enterprise applications that [00:02:00] organisations rely on to run.

My teams have built apps for governments, banks, investment funds, universities, manufacturers, and customers in dozens of other industries.

Our apps get audited. Sometimes, they're politically visible, they're integrated into other critical systems in our customers organisations, and if they go down, the organisation can barely function.

AI doesn't solve competing stakeholder priorities, conflicting definitions of business value, poor backlog hygiene, governance requirements, security design, integration complexity, or misaligned expectations.

It can expand requirements, it can assist with basic designs. It can write lots of code faster and create test cases. It's awesome for accelerating delivery, but speed without structure isn't progress.

I've been building Microsoft Business Apps since 2006. Initially with CRM 3.0. My first scrum project was back in 2008. Back then, most people in the Microsoft CRM world had never [00:03:00] heard of Scrum. I went to Scrum training with legendary agile author and trainer, Mike Cohn, and he'd never heard of Microsoft Dynamics.

I was early at the intersection of those two worlds, and what I saw then and what I've seen pretty consistently since then for almost two decades now, which is pretty frightening to consider, uh, you know, how young I am, is that when teams use a disciplined agile approach, the quality of their work improves.

The collaboration improves, the stakeholder relationships improve, and for the team members, their careers often improve too. It's because of clarity, not because of sticky notes, although for lots of Scrum teams, sticky notes are still useful too. It's because of feedback loops and experiments and transparency.

Over the years, more than 6,000 Microsoft professionals have taken one of my courses through the online school, Customery Academy.

More than 200 teams from Microsoft Partners and customers have joined, and over 200 students have achieved their Scrum.org professional scrum certification [00:04:00] after completing my successful Scrum from Microsoft Business Apps Course and using my PSM1 practice exam.

Most students take a few weeks, but I've had students message me 48 hours after starting the course to say they've passed their PSM1 certification.

I've had others tell me they were promoted months later because they understood how to lead delivery properly.

And I've had members of my own Scrum teams that say that the first Scrum project they worked on with me was the best of their career.

And I've seen Scrum work in large enterprises, in public sector, and not-for-profits, in highly regulated industries, and traditional corporate cultures where my agile team was the only agile team in the whole organisation.

I've also seen a lot of resistance too. ERP consultants, especially telling me Agile doesn't work for them. I've had project managers insist that the Gantt chart is the only thing that really matters, and stakeholders are afraid of losing control if they don't know exactly what's going to be delivered before they start.

And then, quietly, the same people [00:05:00] later, appreciating that iterative delivery gives them better outcomes than the way they were used to deploying software before.

Scrum was never about fashion, it was about discipline, and within the framework we have freedom.

Now let's talk about the current moment that we're in today.

Demand for Agile training has softened, I think it's fair to say. Scrum master recruitment seems to have cooled. At least that's what I'm hearing from Scrum Masters in the US.

There's a sense that in some organisations with AI Copilots, and low code tooling, we can skip the framework. That discipline is optional today.

That's the part that I reject.

AI increases your capacity to experiment and experiment really quickly, which means you need better mechanisms for inspection and adaptation. AI lowers the cost of building features, which means prioritisation becomes more important, not less. AI speeds up development, which means that stakeholder alignment must be tighter, not looser.

Scrum gives you a container for all of that. It's not a [00:06:00] prescriptive methodology. It's not bureaucratic. It's just a, a framework, a container. And within that container, tools and practises evolve.

In 2008, we weren't talking about Codex or AI generated code pages, and now we are. The tools change, but the principles don't.

Transparency, inspection, adaptation, collaboration, accountability.

AI can't attend a sprint review, and manage executive expectations. AI can't facilitate a difficult backlog negotiation among your stakeholders. AI can't decide what's most valuable to build next.

That's your job as a business apps professional.

Which brings me back to the Customery Academy.

My career is heading in a slightly different direction. Uh, it's gonna be announced on LinkedIn probably later today.

Instead of quietly shutting down the Customery Academy, I've decided to do something a little different. Until the end of this year, 2026, I've made all the courses available for free.

Agile Foundations for Microsoft Business apps has always been free. It's an introductory mini course. If you're new to Agile and [00:07:00] Scrum and want to quickly discover the basics and the benefits of adopting an agile approach for your Dynamics 365 or Power Platform apps.

Successful Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps was, or used to be $300 for the Learning plan and $400 for the Certification plan, which included my PSM1 practice exam and a $200 voucher for Scrum.org's PSM1 certification. Now the Certification plan is free and there's no exam voucher included.

The PSM1 practise exam is just $10 per attempt, and hopefully if enough people take the practise exam, I'd love to be able to continue covering the running costs of Customery Academy and keep it going indefinitely.

Estimating Business Apps used to be a freemium course. The first three modules were free, and the last two modules four and five were $200. Now it's all completely free.

Why make the courses free? Because I still believe that agile matters that your teams will deliver better business apps when you adopt an agile approach, even if you're using AI capabilities to deliver faster. And you should be using AI [00:08:00] capabilities to deliver faster.

And if Agile still matters to you and others in the community, hopefully enough people will join and enough if you join and use the material and bring it into your teams, and maybe even take my PSM1 practise exam, Customery Academy gets to stay open another year.

Who are the courses for then?

So Agile Foundations is for anyone new to Agile consultants, analysts, developers, architects, system admins, anyone who wants to understand the mindset behind iterative delivery. It's also really useful for your stakeholders as well, your product owner, and anybody else who's got a say in running your project.

Successful Scrum is a deep dive into Scrum, specifically for Microsoft Business Apps not generic software development theory. It's not startup fluff. It's grounded in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, with lots of examples from my team's proven practices and some case studies.

Over 200 students have achieved their PSM1 certification after joining it.

Estimating Business Apps is about collaborative, confident estimation, not wild guesses. No defensive [00:09:00] over padding. No single person estimates that fall apart halfway through your project.

These are the only Agile courses built specifically for you, for Microsoft Business Apps professionals.

I created content that isn't generic or abstract or theoretical. It's built from my experience on real projects and real teams with real customers.

If you're watching or we're listening to this and thinking we're fine, you know, Copilot or Claude will take care of it, I'd encourage you to look closely at your last few projects.

Were your stakeholders really aligned? Was your backlog genuinely prioritised? Did you deliver the most valuable features first? And did your team feel energised or exhausted? Yeah, did you build something your users actually love?

AI can help you build faster, but it can't help you answer those questions. Scrum still can, maybe now more than ever.

So here's my invitation to you and your team. Join one or more of the courses, Agile Foundations, if you're new, Successful Scrum, if you wanna deepen your team's expertise and get [00:10:00] Certified, Estimating, if you wanna stop guessing and start collaborating.

Do it before the end of the year.

If our business apps ecosystem believes that discipline, agile collaboration still matters, get involved. And if you've ever worked on a Scrum project, that felt different, better, more aligned, more you know, human rather than AI, you already know why this matters.

Share this episode with others you will think will appreciate the opportunity.

AI can generate code in seconds, but it still takes professionals like us to build systems that organisations trust, and that's what we do.

I'll see you on the inside.

And finally, if you're one of the 6,000 people who has ever taken a Customery Academy course, thank you. I've received so many messages of support and gratitude since I, uh, launched the course in 2017 or so. It's been really humbling and extremely energising. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

And remember, [00:11:00] keep experimenting.