I was pretty impressed back in July by the marketing coup performed by Carsonified, a Web Design startup based in the UK. In short: 4 people developed a fully functional Web application in just 4 days, when 5 others took care of PR and Marketing (!).
I thought this was a good example of New New Product Development [PDF] which involves, in the words of Takeuchi and Nonaka, “built-in instability, self-organizing teams, overlapping development phases, “multilearning”, subtle control and organizational transfer of learning.”
That’s how you do it today: develop and deliver a product quick, let the users use it and give you valuable feedback while you focus on incrementally adding new features! Just don’t wait to have the perfect product or someone else will be eating your lunch!
It’s official: since June 17th I am certified ScrumMaster.
The 2-day session took place in Munich city centre and was led by Boris Gloger, a Certified Scrum Trainer from Germany. The class was a mix a people from various industries and varying degrees of experience with Scrum.
So what happened during these 2 days?
As you would imagine, the first day was a gentle introduction to Scrum: the origins, the principles, the life cycle, the key vocable and so on. At the end of the day, I felt it was a nice but important refresh of the basics.
The second day went a lot more into details as we went through every stage of the Scrum life cycle as well as the different roles in Scrum. Being sucked in projects at work, I took this as a benchmark for the various projects I am involved in. The output is a Scrum@Ciao impediment backlog where every ScrumMasters in the company can add items that the organization needs to tackle in order to truly do Scrum.
As far as the actual content of the training is concerned, there is not much that can be said: the scope was pretty clear and I think Boris did a good job in the way he presented: the flow of the 2 days was well thought and done in a logical manner so that every participant would make connections between the different areas.
On the form of the training, there were 30 attendees that were then split into groups of 6 people. I thought the room was not suited to welcome so many and as such would either expect less participants or a bigger room. I appreciated a lot the little games that we had to play at the various stages: the Martian brochure, the Ball Points, the Scrum simulation and a couple of others. It really helped getting a feeling of the themes that were discussed.
My 2 days summarized in 3 points:
- I believe now more than ever in the power of Scrum vs. traditional methodologies in software development but also in other areas.
- I realize that we are only doing parts of Scrum and that it is my responsibility to contribute to reducing the barriers that are preventing us from adopting all Scrum practices.
- I realize we need to offer more training to the various teams about Scrum and be creative in the way we are going to do this.
Overall a very positive 2 days with only some minor things that could have made the event extraordinary. I recommend the ScrumMaster Certification to anyone involved in product development (software or not). I can assure you, you will have a completely different perspective on product development when you come out of it!
PS: The writer’s block got me for this piece… Hence the little delay! :)
That’s the ad I got presented, although Facebook has the information that I am in a relationship. Here is a little translation: “Still Single? Sign up for free and find your dream girl!” Mmh…
Could it be due to the fact that my privacy settings prevent Facebook from using this data for advertisements? I don’t know, but that seems the only logical reason to me!
Well done Facebook!
Tomorrow will be the start of my 2 day Scrum Master Certification training in Munich. As Junior IT Project Manager, I have been an actor in rolling out Scrum in my organization. Working on a daily basis with developers, analyzing the challenges of adopting the principles, practices and values - and then giving feedback to adjust the way we are working together.
It has been a continuous learning process so far and these 2 days could be a great chance to get a level further. Here is in short what expect from it:
1. Although I think I have a good theoretical knowledge of Scrum as well as practical experience, I expect this session to be a nice refresh especially focusing on the role of everyone in a Scrum team.
2. This may be a training - it is for me more of a talking opportunity: the unique chance to share ideas and experiences with others who are enthusiastic about building software differently. I expect a lot of discussion, you don’t get that reading books.
3. I don’t expect an answer to all the questions I may have, but at least some food for thought to get me started. Scrum in distributed teams is a topic I will try to bring up as it is very relevant to the environment our development teams are working in.
I am very much looking forward to it and will be sharing my thoughts here after the 2 days.