Thank you Card for Certified Scrum Master Training
Posted by in Scrum Training Evaluation on April 20th, 2010
Another round of Certified Scrum Master training in Minneapolis.
An awesome group of 12 attended Certified Scrum Master Training with Doug Shimp. The class went superbly well and each student went so far as to sign a thank you card which was a first.
“This made my day and left me wanting to bring more to my classes in the future. It was an honor and a 1st for me.” , said Doug
Download and read the hand written evaluations. Each scrum training evaluation was written by a student and is in their own hand writing.
Evaluations Austin Texas Certified ScrumMaster
Posted by in Coaching, Scrum Training Evaluation on February 27th, 2010
3Back completed it’s Certified ScrumMaster training workshop in Austin Texas held Feb 8-9, 2010. The evaluations for this class are attached below. This class was delivered by Doug Shimp.
Gauge the quality of this training yourself. Read the handwritten Certified ScrumMaster evaluations.
Austin-TX-ScrumMaster-Evaluations 
Find more Certified Scrum training in Texas. 
Lost in Desirements and Trying to Find Real Requirements.
Posted by in Coaching on October 14th, 2009
We often are stuck trying to figure out what the real requirments are for our system. The things which seem required and often only desired.
When is a requirement truely required?
- The development team creates a spec.
- The Product Owner says it is.
- The business asks for it.
- There is a test which actually requires it to be there and fails when it is not.
El Segundo ScrumMaster Training
Posted by in Workshop on July 24th, 2009
We did an ton of interaction
and the class took the training to the next level. At the right is a break down of the teams plan that they ran for 2 days.
The course ended with lots of energy. As one person commented “I had fun and learned a lot”.
Attached are the evaluations from the class for review.
Agile Architecture and Development Public Class 6/30-7/1/09 SeaTac, WA
Posted by david.bernstein in Feedback on July 7th, 2009
David Bernstein led the 2-day version of Agile Architecture and Development – Essential Patterns and Practices. There we 10 students; all of them loved the class. Students rated the class at 4.5 and the instructor at 4.88 (on a scale from 1-5). Read the evaluations.
Extended Mind And the Scrum Pathway
Posted by Doug Shimp in Feedback on April 22nd, 2009
This was not your typical scrummaster training course. We raised the bar by bringing the Scrum Framework home in applied context to the classroom and helping each other understand it better through simulations that encouraged participation and responses from each of us. It focused on the truely adaptive nature of great teams and how the class over the course of 2 days stared to jel and move faster. Each person became a member of a close knit team and helped each other extend our ability to think about more complex and challenging issues of Scrum. This would be the same pattern of thought for teams building product.
Simple Rules For Emerging Collaborative Behavior Focused On Complex Demanding Business Drivers

- No heads work alone
- Let the product lead
- One bite at a time
- Make it visible
- Avoid and eliminate confusion
- Start with the end in mind
What an awesome course. Each attendee recieved a free identity boost with the course and we will work to build a community to grow from. The community will be focused on Collaborative Skills for and will help each open more doors by improving our connectedness through applied effort the driven by our passion. Coaching others is a reward and a skill we all need to polish.
We will be running this course again in San Mateo and creating another extended mind.
Brillant and Informative
Read the hand written evaluations
and see if you agree!!
Agile Architecture Pilot Class Evaluations
Posted by david.bernstein in Feedback on April 16th, 2009
The pilot Agile Architecture class by David Bernstein at Techniques of Design was held on January 27-28 for a client in Boston. There were seven students in the class, all senior architects, and they loved it. Read the evaluations.
Learning Via Experience in Chicago
Posted by derek.wade in Feedback, Workshop on April 7th, 2009
Our session in Chicago focused on experiential learning.
The class elected to do 2 sprints on our “build a brochure” activity and learned by doing on each. The general consensus was that it’s all very well to ask and answer questions, but when you try to put theory into practice is when you really discover the challenges you will face with Agile.
Just to make things harder, the second sprint included some real-life waterfall challenges like budget-tracking and advance commitments. The discussion afterward focused on how these forces can easily drive us away from collaborative, visible behavior… even if “all” we are doing is building a brochure in class!
Scrum Workshop for Busy Teams – Effective Agile Development
The Scrum Workshop for Busy Teams Workshop is a jumpstart for teams or individuals in Scrum and Agile software development.
The main exercise is a team project where the teams work together to create at game to teach Scrum. This team developed a board game similar to “Candy Land” called Scrumopoly.
This course was the equivlent of a 2-day coruse delivered in four evenings. The goal was to help teams wanting to learn about scrum without impacting their schedule. Two guys actually flew up from California to Seattle to take this course. They were able to attend meetings by phone in the day and do the workshop in the evenings.
All of the students in this course had a strong background in the waterfall process on large teams. We had great discussions about how to move an orginization to be more agile. The student’s concsnsus was that the role of Product Owner is critical. I agree 100%. Without a strong and effective Product Owner to create the vision and separate the required from the incidental, teams will build the wrong thing or bild the most important thing too late.
See evals and comments from students.
1st Prize in Art for Certified Scrum Product Owner
Posted by Doug Shimp in Workshop on March 31st, 2009
This course took the cake for a 1st prize in art. Below are the images from the class and clearly this was one of the best dogie day care pictures done using sharpie pens. Wow!

This course was a Certified Scrum Product Owner as recognized by the Scrum Alliance and sponsored by 3Back LLC, VersionOne and Normandale College.
The challenges of a Product Owner is to recognize the sustainably rate of development that a team can maintain and then to use that predictable core to determine what can be successfully delivered to market. Successful Product Owners are empowered by their organizations to find a way to maximize delivery on ROI by realizing a product in complex adaptive market situations. Great Product Owners see the team as an extension of themselves and augment their ability to think creatively by leveraging that greater social intelligence to solve complex problems.
This was our 3rd time running this course and it was a successful outcome for students. Please leave comments or thoughts on our Certified Scrum Product Owner training event. If you are interested in a private or public course just contact us.
You can follow Doug’s daily thoughts as a Scrum Coach at twitter or read deeper thoughts at Advanced Topics in Scrum.
“Agile / Scrum is not about memorization of explicit knowledge but, rather the application of that knowledge to an in-flight challenging problem.” – Doug Shimp Daily Twitter Thought

