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!!

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!

Student Evaluations of the course

We ran our second ScrumMaster training event. The class size was small and favored my preferred style of andragogy training (small group guided learning). Typically I start these courses with just enough instruction to strike a dialog driven process of exploration and unfolding . The small sizes are always favored since it enables a small group guided learning approach. Traditional instructional (pedagogy grounded theory) design is for larger groups >20 students who sit in a student/lecturer arrangement. This requires less responsive guidance for the lecturer and encourages an adherence to a scripted course delivery. These styles of training are to be avoided if real mastery of Scrum  / Agile is to be achieved.

Learning Agile / Scrum is not about memorization of explicit knowledge but, rather the application of that a mind set to an in-flight challenging problem. It is a learning process of using the scrum framework to move as a team to understand. Learning Scrum / Agile can be setup as such a challenge and the group present rose to the occasion to create their own learning experience as a team.

This trip was a real exposure to the varied and subtle tastes of Hawaiian culture. No where in the country have I seen “East meets West” be as pronounced as in Hawaii and that makes it all the more beautiful.

Coffee Question:

• Do you like your Kona blended or pure?

A Hui Hou

- Doug

Both events were a blast and did much to continue raising awareness of Agile / Scrum in the community.

The Certified ScrumMaster course was run by Michele Sliger and Douglas Shimp. The event was delivered on a Saturday and Sunday just before the Gathering and was a success for the students.

Feedback on the Scrum training class was great.

• read the hand written evals to see what our students had to say
• Watch the Scrum Ideas Developed During Class  

VersionOne and 3Back offered their first co-hosted Certified ScrumMaster training event in San Mateo, California. This was the first time these two companies co-hosted a joint public event. The event was nothing short of spectacular and continued to show a proven track that these two agile oriented companies are leaders in their complementary market niches. Both companies continue to raise the bar of what passes for excellence in Scrum (Agile) training, tools and implementations. Applied scrum is where the rubber meets the road and scrum coaching is how this happens.

“It was an awesome course with great feedback from the students. The explosion of energy and questions in this course clearly placed this event as one of the best courses we have ever run. This course offered a foundation in Scrum training that exceeded expectations and showed up clearly in the evaluations.” said Doug Shimp Senior Consultant

There were 11 folks in attendance and each person provided an evaluation.

See for yourself Handwritten Scanned Evaluations

The newest topic that has been emerging with increased regularity is Agile Contracts. How do we avoid the pressures of big waterfall contracting models in and increasingly aware agile client world. Our old methods of contracting and working are becoming irrelevant and clients are no longer buying into the big bang waterfall contracting model. You can’t wald in with your big in house methodology and expect clients to be amazed at how smart (overly complex) your process is.

 Thank you for a wonderful 2 days together.

- Doug

I was most happy to see everyone expand their definition of The Product to also include their own processes. Using Scrum and Agile principles to explicitly change the way the organization works — is there nothing that Agile can’t do?

A big thank-you to everyone for their participation, discussion, and engagement in the exercises.

Attendees to the course formed and demonstrated the characteristics of truly well-formed teams. By the end of the two days, many people in the room (not just the instructors) were acting as Agile coaches, leveraging the principles of Scrum and reminding each other to apply the agile “attractors” that they found most powerful:

• Let the product lead
• Make it visible
• Pay attention and adapt / feedback cycles
• “Teamlet” heads are smarter than one

The teams also invented their own catch-phrases and in-jokes, and to understand “I’ve got an Expert Sticker” and “let’s eat… food,” you would just have to ask one of the team members.

The instructors were delighted with the energy and “social intelligence” that attendees brought to class. Any additional insights, thoughts on applying your knowledge, or other comments here are greatly appreciated!