Look Forward Consulting » Certified ScrumMaster

Best Links of the Week – July 30th 2010

Carlton — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:15:22 +0000

More great writings gathered from far and wide.

Scrum at Mind Candy – brief video of a task board in action over a three month period.
Confessions of an Agile Project Manager – PMI sponsored a video contest among PMP using Agile – check out the results on YouTube!
Thoughts on two months pairing - Sarah Mei reflects on her experience pair programming and the benefits it has provided her professional & personal life.
Can Agile Learn Anything from PMBOK? - Dennis Stevens looks at how the PMBOK supports, compliments and impedes Agile and proposes some solutions to make the two synchronize better.
Multitasking Gets You There Later - Roger Brown discusses a common paradigm in project management when dealing with too many projects and too few people.
Waterfall, Lean\Kanban and Scrum – Ken Schwaber, co-creator of Scrum, discusses why Scrum relies on empirical process control theory and why they did not choose Lean or a defined process.
The Role of Middle Management in Toyota or a Lean System – special post on the new focus of management in Agile organizations.
Team Room – want to get increased focus, quality and retention from your Team? Check out this team room article by Martin Fowler.
Agile + UX: six strategies for more agile user experience – how Comcast is combining good user experience (UX) practices with Scrum.
June 2010 CSM class – very cool visualization of a Certified ScrumMaster class taught by Tobias Mayer and Bachan Anand.

Welfare CSM 021 – June 7th & June 8th in San Diego

Carlton — Sat, 15 May 2010 16:51:49 +0000

In order to succeed with Scrum, one needs to know, understand and experience the essential principles which are the foundation for all the practices, rituals and tools of the Scrum framework. Unfortunately, most training today focuses on the mechanics of the process, excluding the essential conversation of why these principles are important and how each element infuses the day-to-day activities of Scrum teams. As a result, most students are only able to mimic what their instructors do and are unable to improvise and adapt Scrum to the unique constraints of their environment. Ultimately, they become frustrated by their inability to drive change in their organizations and Scrum is abandoned without producing any lasting effects.

In this two-day class, Carlton Nettleton and Tobias Mayer will examine, illustrate and play with the essential principles of Scrum – commitment, collaboration, visibility, respect, focus and accountability – in a series of exercises, games and creative activities. When you leave this course, you will come to know and understand the Spirit of Scrum and how this spirit of collaboration and change embodies each and every activity in Scrum. Most importantly, you will have learned how to facilitate Scrum among your peers and be successful with this new way of working. Scrum is not a bag of programmer and management tricks to increase productivity, but it is a transformative re-imagining of our relationship with our work and our peers.

Come join us on the journey. It is going to be a lot of fun!

Welfare CSM – June 7th & June 8th (date change)

Carlton — Tue, 04 May 2010 14:32:42 +0000

There has a been a bit of a date change for the Welfare CSM class I am co-teaching with Tobias Mayer. We still have plenty of openings in the class, so please sign-up today.

Welfare CSM – June 7th & June 8th

Carlton — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 20:41:38 +0000

I am pleased to announce a new and exciting Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) class I created with Tobias Mayer being held in San Diego on June 7th and 8th. This class will be operating under the Welfare CSM model. I am very honored to take part in this effort and help people who want to learn about Scrum but their organizations will not pay for the training, individuals who are unemployed and want to use this time to add to their skills or for people outside the software industry.

For me, this CSM class is a significant departure from previous (uncertified) ScrumMaster classes I offered in 2007-2008. At the time, I was not satisfied with the results, but could not put my finger on what was bothering me about the curriculum I was teaching. The men and women I was training were competently trained on the pieces of Scrum, but were struggling with applying it to their environment. In 2009, I came across this interview from Tobias and was both intrigued and inspired by Tobias’s model. After reflecting on his interview and my experience, what was missing from my trainings became visible.

In order to succeed with Scrum, one needs to know, understand and experience the essential principles of Scrum which are the foundation for all the practices, rituals and tools of the framework. Unfortunately, the training I provided (which mirrored most of today’s commercial CSM offerings) focused on the mechanics of Scrum, excluding the essential conversation of why these principles are important and how each element infuses the day-to-day activities of Scrum teams. As a result, most students were only able to mimic what I was teaching and were unable to improvise and adapt Scrum to the unique constraints of their environment. Ultimately, they become frustrated by their inability to drive change in their organizations and Scrum was abandoned without producing any lasting effects.

In this two-day CSM class, Tobias and I will examine, illustrate and play with the essential principles of Scrum – commitment, collaboration, visibility, respect, focus and accountability – through a series of exercises, games and creative activities. When you leave this course, you will come to know and understand the Spirit of Scrum and how this spirit of collaboration and change embodies each and every activity in Scrum. Most importantly, you will have learned how to facilitate Scrum among your peers and be successful with this new way of working.

Scrum is not a bag of programmer and management tricks to increase productivity, but it is a transformative re-imagining of our relationship with our work and our peers. Come join us on the journey. It is going to be a lot of fun!