I am very excited about this post because it represents a new direction and a deeper understanding of what I want to do with my business.  As many of you may be aware, the process to become a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) has been undergoing some change lately.  It has been interesting to watch the process evolve and I wanted to make my intentions public after completing two of the five co-trainings suggested by the process.  It has been a great honor to co-train with Tobias Mayer and Lyssa Adkins and I have learned a great deal about training, communicating effectively, improvisation and being authentic.  Thank you very much for your mentoring, time and sharing.

In 2007, as an internal coach for a large biotech company in San Diego, I was asked to create two-day ScrumMaster training modeled off the Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) curriculum.  In this class, I covered the basics of the Scrum framework and some common tools\add-ons used by Agile teams like user stories, estimating and release planning.  Over the course of eighteen months, I trained over forty people on the Scrum framework and coached a number of Scrum internal teams.  While I was able to teach the rituals, roles and artifacts of Scrum, I felt something was missing.  For the longest time I was puzzled why many of the students were just not embracing Scrum in their day-to-day work.  Clearly they had a problem, but it was just not obvious where it originated from.

Recently, I have come to a new understanding of what Scrum means to me and reevaluate what I had considered valuable in the past.  After some reflection I have come to realize the problem did not lie with the students, but with the information the instructor provided them and how they were instructed.  At the time, I had thought Scrum was simply an effective framework for getting things done, just another another bag of tricks for good project management and it was taught as such.  Today, I understand that Scrum is about cultural change and establishing new values in an organization.  If Scrum is about values, then the focus of the education should be about the values and principles of Scrum.

This has been a profound change in my thinking about Scrum and has altered the way I interact with Teams.  In the context of the CSM class, I have revamped the curriculum away from the standard Powerpoint presentation describing the Scrum rituals, artifacts, roles with me as the center of the course to a participatory, collaborative exploration of the Scrum values and principles, making connections to the Scrum framework with the learners at the center.  The result of this change is a CSM course that concentrates on the Scrum values of respect, openness, courage, commitment and focus, generates discussion of how those values are important to the learners and assists the students in making connections of these values to their lives and Scrum.  When the conversation shifts to instruction about the Scrum framework, roles and commonly used Agile tools, they are explained in the context of the Scrum values and as further illustrations of the values in action so they become real and tangible for the participants.

In my opinion, the role of the CST in CSM, or Certified Product Owner, class is to guide the learners through a series of collaborative exercises and discussions to examine what the Scrum principles and values mean to them, why they are important to the framework and begin to connect the participants to the meaning of Scrum.  I feel the students bring with them a great deal of knowledge and life experience to each class and my job as a CST would be to create an environment where they can self-organize around their own knowledge and then guide them into a fuller understanding of how Scrum works based on their needs.  The peer-to-peer learning environment I am trying to create provides students the opportunity to learn from each other, respects and draws upon their years of professional and personal experience and turns them into active participants in their learning.  Essentially, I see myself as the participants’s ScrumMaster in learning.  I feel this learning experience better equips the students with the ability to facilitate and improvise Scrum in their organizations because they operate from a definition of Scrum that matches their own life experience, not the instructor’s.  In addition, this instructional model where the instructor leaves the center and allows the learners to take this space, allows the participants to observe how the role of ScrumMaster is done well.

Passing on some good summer reading.

1. Core of Agile and Scrum – essential principles of Agile and Scrum that transcend the software development.
2. Three Legs to an Agile Transition – George Dinwiddie looks at how teamwork, visible progress and continuous improvement are key to change organizational culture.
3. Why Multiple Product Owners is a Bad Idea – read the article to find out how having multiple people setting priorities short circuits the role.
4. Nobody Can Do Agile – Simon Bennett explains why Agile is about thinking, not doing.
5. Agile Requires Cross-Functional Teams – Johanna Rothman discusses why cross-functional teams are essential for Scrum and other Agile processes.
6. Sir, Please Step Away From the Team – common the changes in management style for managers when Agile teams start in your organization.
7. Story Time! The hidden Scrum meeting – ever wonder when the requirements and the analysis happens on a Scrum Team?
8. How Does a PM and SM Coexisit? – a reader asks Michelle Sliger how the role of the project manager changes with the introduction of ScrumMasters.
9. Truly Agile CMMI – a short blog and video about a company that gets both Agile and CMMI.
10. Millennials and Scrum, Made for Each Other – Lyssa Adkins talks about how the Scrum values and principles align with a new cohort entering  the workforce.

Just wanted to share a bit of my personal Scrum journey for those who might be interested and why I find Scrum to be very compelling.

I became a CSM during 2005 after attending an early CSM course provided by Ken Schwaber, Paul Hodgetts and Tobias Mayer.  Before that experience, I had been using Extreme Programming (XP) to write and deliver software for three years.  Ken’s CSM class helped me understand that while interesting, XP is mostly an internal conversation among developers about how to build great software.  Scrum, on the other hand, is about creating cross-functional, collaborative Teams to deliver astonishing results to the business.  What most impressed me about Ken’s description of Scrum was the importance of providing transparency and the role Scrum can play in raising the professionalism of our community.  It was with that vision that I became more interested in how I could practice Scrum and I was on the lookout for experiences that would allow me to see Scrum in action.

New stuff to read and learn before the holiday

1. The Zen of Scrum – Jurgen Appelo provides a 70-minute video overview of Scrum, roles and philosophy.
2. The Difference Between Waterfall, Iterative Waterfall, Scrum & Lean (in pictures) – Visual representations of these various processes.
3. Company Culture Affects Your Code – A short examination of influence of Conway’s Law and culture on your software projects.
4. Explosion of Agile Practices – A list of 50 or so common practices used on Agile teams.
5. My Progression Toward Kanban – Brian Doll provides a good overview of Lean software development techniques and his personal journey there.
6. Post Agile Companies – Cory Foy looks at three Agile organizations and explains why understanding the Agile principles and values is more important than doing the Agile practices.
7. How Great Leaders Inspire Action – Simon Sinek describes a simple model to inspire others in this 18-minute video from TED.
8. Iterative and Incremental Development – Explanation of the difference between incremental vs. iterative software development (IID) and the history of IID.
9. Why Estimate Twice? – Good overview on the common practice of estimating the size of features, while estimating the duration of tasks.

A few month back, we applied for a stadium pack of tickets during the upcoming Rugby World Cup in New Zealand.  This week we learned that our Eden Park application was accepted.  We’re going to New Zealand, baby!!

Our pack includes tickets for the opening match of New Zealand vs Tonga, Australia vs. Ireland, New Zealand vs. France, Fiji vs. Samoa and England vs. Scotland.  Now we have to figure out what matches we want to see.