#150: What “1 Billion” Scrum Classes Taught Us About Team Culture (and Captain America) with Cort Sharp & Laura Kendrick

Laura Kendrick and Cort Sharp hijack the mic to share what it’s really like behind the scenes at Mountain Goat. From Zoom bloopers to unexpected team bonding, they unpack how a fully remote team built a thriving, human-centered workplace.

Overview

In this special takeover episode, Laura Kendrick and Cort Sharp pull back the curtain on what goes into running hundreds of Scrum and Product Owner classes virtually—and why Mountain Goat's remote team still feels so close-knit.

With stories of early tech headaches, Slack banter, hilarious costume moments, and the quiet rituals that keep the team connected, they explore how remote work can actually foster strong relationships and top-tier collaboration. If you’ve ever wondered how to make a distributed team work (or just want a peek at some Zoom-era growing pains), this one’s for you.

References and resources mentioned in the show:

Laura Kendrick Cort Sharp #61: The Complex Factors in The Office Vs. Remote Debate with Scott Dunn #147: The Power of Quiet Influence with Casey Sinnema Run a Daily Scrum Your Team Will Love Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Join the Agile Mentors Community

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This episode’s presenters are:

Cort Sharp is the Scrum Master of the producing team and the Agile Mentors Community Manager. In addition to his love for Agile, Cort is also a serious swimmer and has been coaching swimmers for five years.

Laura Kendrick is the producer of the Agile Mentors Podcast and a seasoned Scrum Master who keeps virtual classes running smoothly. Outside the podcast, she helps clients apply Scrum techniques to their marketing and business strategy, bringing structure and momentum to big, creative ideas.

Auto-generated Transcript:

Laura Kendrick (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. As you may have noticed, I am not Brian Milner. I am Laura Kendrick, and this is Cort Sharp. And if you have taken a class with us at Mountain Goat in the last five years, there is a good chance that you have met one or actually both of us.

Cort Sharp (00:19) I think it's like 90 % chance, 95 % honestly. We've been in so many of these classes.

Laura Kendrick (00:26) Definitely, and oftentimes together too with one of us TAing, one of us producing, sometimes one of us teaching court.

Cort Sharp (00:33) once in a while, once in a while. Yeah.

Laura Kendrick (00:37) So we thought we would come on over here and hijack the podcast to share a little bit about some of the insights that we have gained from doing about a billion, maybe a little exaggeration.

Cort Sharp (00:49) Roughly. Roughly. We've done roughly a billion classes with Mountain Goat. Yes.

Laura Kendrick (00:56) We have seen a lot in the certifying of Scrum Masters and product owners and advanced product owners and Scrum Masters and all of the evolution of the classes that we have done. We actually hold quite a bit of insight into what is happening in this world. And so we thought we would come in, steal the podcast, and share a little bit of what we have seen, learned, observed, and really just kind of Honestly, some of the laughs and fun that we've had along the way.

Cort Sharp (01:25) Also, I think, I don't know, just your intro right there is talking about, hey, we've seen the evolution of these classes. That just got my brain going of like, remember the first class that we did? Way like 2020. I mean, I was in my parents' basement with really terrible internet. It was a struggle.

Laura Kendrick (01:40) Yeah.

Cort Sharp (01:49) But we were working on like Miro boards or mural. One of the two, forget which, which tool it was, but that was, yeah, that was before team home. And