Agile Training CT, Scrum Training CT, Scrum Coaching CT

6:00 PM: Trip Report on this class PART 01—key takeaways per bullets below.
6:45 PM: Break and Informal Networking
7:00 PM: Trip Report on this class PART 02—NOKIA TEST in detail. Dr. Sutherland presented a 'balanced scorecard' to rate your NOKIA TEST compliance. Come to this meeting to take it and walk away knowing how you-- and your Scrum implementation-- ACTUALLY rate !

7:30 PM: Exercise (The XP game). This is an excellent, FUN group-level game for learning Agile. This highly interactive group-game is very close to actual Agile/Scrum practice and experience, and comes directly from the course. It takes about 1/2 an hour and is enormously fun and entertaining. See the XP game described here. Believe when I tell you, this is a very FUN group-level Agile game.

8:00 PM: Summary and Conclusion

Dr. Jeff Sutherland taught this class. He is the co-creator of Scrum and continues to strongly advance the work. One area is the NOKIA TEST: a simple test and scorecard that tells you if you are doing Scrum. Learn more about THE NOKIA TEST here:

THE NOKIA TEST VIDEO WITH DR. JEFF SUTHERLAND

Presenter: Dan Mezick

I recently attended an advanced 2-day Scrum class taught by Dr. Jeff Sutherland, the co-creator of Scrum. The course was attended by 10 very experienced Scrum-practitioners.

The class answered every advanced, practical question I had about running Scrums, and generated many NEW questions. This class also had some FANTASTIC exercises.

Here is the link to the actual class description:
Agile 201: A Practicum for those who want to win with Scrum

For the August 12 2008 meeting of the APLN Connecticut, I am providing a trip report review and reiteration of my key content takeaways from this excellent class taught by the co-creator of Scrum.

I'll be working from some of the actual slides from the class.

This presentation, at the APLN Connecticut Chapter, includes a subset of the following topics from that class, in a 1.5 hour summary format:

Scrum adoption: phases, players and levers
The goals of Scrum
Starting a Scrum Team
Building the Product Backlog and initial Estimating and Planning
Developing better Product Owners and better Business collaboration
Review of values and first principles
First Few Iterations -- best practices in Release Planning, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Work, Sprint Review, Retrospectives
Developing better team flow; moving the definition of Done
Use of Release and Sprint Burndown Charts
Other metrics related to Scrum Teams
Release Planning during the life of the effort
Impediments Management: Identifying, prioritizing and acting on Impediments (again and again)
When Push comes to Shove
Better Engineering Practices
Business Value and the integration of Scrum with the Business side of the firm
The problem of getting the coder to know what the end-customers really want, and only provide the top value features
"Ba": Why, what and how?
More Useful Information Radiators
The winning spirit of a Scrum Team
Developing better Teams and better ScrumMasters and better Product Owners
How much is a ScrumMaster worth? How much is a Product Owner worth?
Selling Scrum: Why, when, where, and how
Better applications of the Scrum of Scrums concept
Where do Managers and Stakeholders fit in?
Moving from 2x improvement to 10x improvement
Spreading Scrum throughout the organization
Scrum center: why it matters and how to return there
Leadership and "Making It Happen Now"; Patience
Scaling Scrum
Scrum and legacy systems
The problems of Success
Success stories from imperfect companies
Scrum and... (Six Sigma, CMMI, XP, RUP, Lean, ITIL, COBIT, SARBOX, Offshoring, Distributed Teams, etc.)
Addressing risk (in its several flavors) and risk management
Scrum: Riding your Character and Emotions to victory
When will I be done learning Scrum?

Presenter: Dan Mezick

Meeting Agenda:

6:00 PM: Trip Report on this class PART 01—key takeaways per bullets below.
6:45 PM: Break and Informal Networking
7:00 PM: Trip Report on this class PART 02—NOKIA TEST in detail

7:30 PM: Exercise (The XP game). This is an excellent, FUN group-level game for learning Agile. This highly interactive group-game is very close to actual Agile/Scrum practice and experience, and comes directly from the course. It takes about 1/2 an hour and is enormously fun and entertaining. See the XP game described here. Believe when I tell you, this is a very FUN group-level Agile game.

8:00 PM: Summary and Conclusion

Dr. Jeff Sutherland taught this class. He is the co-creator of Scrum and continues to strongly advance the work. One area is the NOKIA TEST: a simple test and scorecard that tells you if you are doing Scrum. Learn more about THE NOKIA TEST here:

THE NOKIA TEST VIDEO WITH DR. JEFF SUTHERLAND

About the Speaker- Dan Mezick
A Scrum Coach and a certified Scrum Master, Dan is the leader of the APLN Connecticut Chapter. He is an invited speaker at Agile2007 and Agile2008 and is currently delivering Scrum coaching to some of the largest insurance companies in the world. In addition to Scrum coaching and education, his company New Technology Solutions delivers hands-on Visual Studio, C#, and ASP.NET training. Learn more at Dan's Scrum Coaching page. Contact Dan at dan.mezick[at]newtechusa(.com)