Professional Scrum (CSP) Course + Workshop

Who Should Attend/Prerequisites

This course is for experienced Scrum people (usually CSMs or CSPOs) who want to go to the next level with Scrum.  Probably including the Certified Scrum Professional designation.

This Scrum Professional course + Workshop is for CSMs, CSPOs, managers and others experienced in Scrum who are looking for an intermeduate Scrum course. The following people may find it useful: Product Owners, managers, analysts, product managers, Business Stakeholders, business analysts, coders, testers, and ScrumMasters. And many project managers.

Class Size Limit: 30 (Minimum 0)

Course Overview

Frankly we are strong advocates of playing Scrum professionally.   And our finding is that easily 80% of teams that have only had the CSM course will not be at the intermediate level yet. We think too many people are playing Scrum at what could be called an amateur level.  With good intentions, but not with enough training. Often, for a variety of reasons, they lack the requisite discipline and vigor.  Being an amateur in certain situations is a good thing, but not in playing Scrum.

Part of the purpose of the course is to prepare you to earn the CSP certification.  In addition to the course, other conditions apply to become a CSP.

We think Scrum offers huge benefits if played professionally with vigor.

What is the basic problem?  What do I need to take Scrum to the next level?

Our way of describing the problem is this:

• Attitudinal: People don’t believe that the benefits are out there, and, for a variety of reasons, do not play as vigorously as they should.
• Practical: People have misunderstood some of the basic steps of Scrum. Or bad habits have seeped in.  This is universally common in any sport. And clearly true in Scrum.
• Understanding: People either did not learn or have forgotten the underlying purposes of each part of Scrum and each part of the agile mix. In our opinion, this is the key reason for so much Scrum-Butt. (Ex: “We do Scrum, BUT we don’t have a good product owner…”)
• Combinational: People have not made as good a combination of Scrum and other things to make it work as effectively as possible. (Other things always  must be added to Scrum. Of course, the other things should be agile-friendly.)

So, the goal of the course is to deal with these problems.

And to unleash, to a much higher level, the benefits of Scrum. For each person, for the Team, and for your customers.

Agenda

There is plenty of content for the course.  In fact, too much.  So, part of the work will be to prioritize what the specific attendees want to learn. Or need to learn, to be more successful.

Content areas will include:

• The basics of Scrum and how to present them.  (aka, addressing ScrumButt) One might expect that these were well-known.  But frankly it is remarkable how helpful it is to review the basics.  Of course, this is true in any sport.  For those who understand the basics well, we still find one always needs more practice explaining the basics to others.  It is said that must games in sports are won through a keen appreciation for, and a vigorous execution of, the basics (“basic blocking and tackling”).
• The underlying principles. Why Scrum works, and all the reasons why each practice is useful.
• The roundedness of a good ScrumMaster
• Removing impediments more aggressively; making better business cases
• Improving the product owner
• Business Value Engineering
• Better release planning
• The agile contract (fixed-price issues)
• Patterns of ‘implementer’ (doer) evolution (and related issues from the attendees)
• Advocating for the agile team
• Advocating for the Agile Transformation
• Patterns for the agile transformation
• What does the broader Agile Transformation look like?
• Scaling
• Distributed Agile
• Too many projects at once
• Focus on one project at a time
• Kanban and Scrum (aka Scrumban)
• Other problems or impediments, as identified by the attendees
• Taking the Scrum meetings to the next level
• Taking the artifacts to the next level
• Managers and Metrics
• Knowledge workers and motivation
• Hyper-productivity
• Everything is not agile yet; what do we do?
• What is the secret sauce?

As you read a list like this, you notice that each topic could be dealt with at great length. Some could even be stand-alone courses.  So, part of the effort is to balance the attendees’ needs in all these areas.

Part of the learning approach will include you teaching others.  (It is remarkable what you learn when you must teach others.)
Part of the learning approach will include exercises. Some will directly include the 'real world' of at least one person in the team for that exercise.

Workshop:

We strongly suggest you include the workshop (the third day).

The workshop would take a team, select a product owner, and do the release planning for a real 4-6 month project.  In one day. This takes many of the ideas discussed, and makes them real and concrete, in the form on one real project.

The ideal situation is where the real whole team (or 5 members of the team) have come to the course. Alternately, we form a temporary team from the people who come to the course. In either case, it is one product owner’s real project.

Cost:

1900 per attendee.

Early Bird Registration - By 2 weeks prior to course start 1700 per attendee