# Why Success Means Nothing If the Project Doesn't Move the Business Forward — And How Public Commitments Keep You Honest | Mukhtar Kadiri

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/scrum-master-toolbox-podcast-agile-storytelling-from-the-trenches-445588/why-success-means-nothing-if-the-project-doesn-t-move-the-business-forward-and-how-public-commitments-keep-you-honest-mukhtar-kadiri
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/scrum-master-toolbox-podcast-agile-storytelling-from-the-trenches-445588/why-success-means-nothing-if-the-project-doesn-t-move-the-business-forward-and-how-public-commitments-keep-you-honest-mukhtar-kadiri.md
Podcast: [Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches](https://stenobird.com/podcast/scrum-master-toolbox-podcast-agile-storytelling-from-the-trenches-445588)
Published: 2026-05-14T10:05:00+00:00
Episode link: https://scrummastertoolbox.libsyn.com/why-success-means-nothing-if-the-project-doesnt-move-the-business-forward-and-how-public-commitments-keep-you-honest-mukhtar-kadiri
Audio file: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/scrummastertoolbox/20260514_Mukhtar_Kadiri_Thu.mp3?dest-id=246429
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/scrum-master-toolbox-podcast-agile-storytelling-from-the-trenches-445588/episodes/why-success-means-nothing-if-the-project-doesn-t-move-the-business-forward-and-how-public-commitments-keep-you-honest-mukhtar-kadiri
Duration seconds: 998

## Resource

Mukhtar Kadiri: Why Success Means Nothing If the Project Doesn't Move the Business Forward — And How Public Commitments Keep You Honest Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes . "If you're not careful with success, you can deliver a project, but the project will really not do much for the business." - Mukhtar Kadiri For Mukhtar, success is personal — he's the kind of project leader who gets emotionally invested, who thinks about the project after hours, who needs recovery time between engagements. And that emotional investment shapes how he defines success: not as hitting deadlines or completing tasks, but as delivering real business value. He breaks success metrics into three buckets using his signature rule of three: business and product metrics (NPS, revenue, market penetration), project management metrics (velocity, burn-down, risk scores), and software and system metrics (availability, transactions per second, platform health). But the real insight is in how he holds himself accountable. Mukhtar makes public commitments at the start of every project — "Expect status updates from me every week" — because he knows that the discipline of narrating the project's story every week forces him to truly understand what's happening. A status report isn't bureaucratic busywork when you approach it as storytelling: you have to make sense of the data, surface what's relevant, and articulate where the project actually stands. If you can't tell the story, something's missing from your understanding. That weekly narrative becomes both an accountability mechanism and an early warning system. Self-reflection Question: Can you tell the story of…

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