After a few months off from client related work, I’m ready to get back into the swing of things. A few years ago, I did a tour of Europe which was a fantastic experience. This year I’ll be doing a tour of Australia, and quite possibly New Zealand later in the year.
This is exciting because I haven’t been in this part of the world for nearly 5 years. I’ll be interested to see the difference in work habits and behaviours with the US … and it’ll give me an opportunity to reflect upon how I’ve personally changed.
Here are the dates of my training courses for the first half of the year:
- Brisbane February 25th & 26th. Register here.
- Sydney: March 25th & 26th. Register here.
- Melbourne: April 22nd & 23rd. Register here.
- Canberra May 27th & 28th. Register here.
- Melbourne June 24th & 25th. Register here.
Filed under: Agile Software Development, Project Management, Training , Certified Scrum, CSM, Scrum, Training
Update: Since writing this post, I’ve become aware of two other descriptions of Affinity Estimating. Jukka Lindström posted his experiences on ScrumDevelopment, and Chris Sterling has written a great Step-by-step description.
Update: part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4.
The last session that I’d like to report on is Lowell’s “Affinity Estimating.” Affinity Estimating is a technique many teams use to quickly and easily estimate (in Story Points) a large number of user stories. This is a great technique if you’re just starting a project and have a backlog that hasn’t been estimated yet.
Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: Agile Software Development, Scrum, Training
Update: part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4.
This is a continuation of my report from the Trainers gathering. In part 1 I gave an overview of some of the topics discussed and in part 2 I presented Boris’ Ball Point game. In this post I’d like to discuss anther exercise that was presented by Jens Østergaard . His exercise is designed to demonstrate the difficulties encountered when trying to interpret a written specification.
In this team-based exercise, each team is divided into “Developers” and “Spec-writers.” The “Developers” are separated from the “Spec-writers” and only allowed to communicate using written specifications. “Spec-writers” are then presented with a diagram that they need to communicate to the “Developers,” who, in turn, must interpret the written specifications and reproduce the diagram. The exercise is run twice with two different diagrams and a retrospective is held at the end of each run.
Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: Agile Games, Agile Software Development, Scrum, Training
Update: part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4.
In part 1 of my report on the Trainers Gathering I gave an gave a summary of the events that occurred. In this post I’d like to discuss one of the exercises that was discussed. Boris‘ Ball Point game is a fun and exciting way to explore process flow. The rules are quite simple and the more people you have, the more exiting it can be. We played with about 25 people, but it would be an excellent game for large groups up to approximately 50 people.
Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: Agile Games, Agile Software Development, Scrum, Training
Update: part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4.
About two weeks ago, a Scrum Trainers’ Gathering was held in Boston. About 25 Certified Scrum Trainers (CSTs) from all over the world gathered for a great two-day event, discussing training exercises, different approaches to training, and other related issues. There were a number of sessions that I found to be of particular interest and in the next few weeks I will write about three of these sessions including Boris’ Ball Point Game (part 2), Jens’ Written Specification exercise (part 3), and Lowell’s Affinity Estimating (part 4).
Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: Agile Software Development, Scrum, Training
The Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) course that I run involves a simulation of a Scrum team. It has changed over time so where I originally played the XP game [1], I’m now doing a fully Scrum immersion that involves every part of the Scrum process. During the immersion I ask the team to create a product. Typically, this is one of several different types of brochure, but if the team wants a more difficult exercise they may choose to create a board game.
Apart from advice on the Scrum process, the team need to determine all other aspects of the game. They need to determine the the goal of the game, rules, flow, layout, game pieces and even how to win … and they need to do this in about 1 hour 30 minutes. That’s a lot of work in a very short period of time! The results are often unpolished but contain all the elements necessary for a complete game.
My intention is to share some of the creative, funny and ingenious ideas that teams come up with. To start this off, here’s a board game from my last public training in Bellevue.
Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: Board Games, Scrum, Training
It’s been a busy few months with clients, training and the occasional blog posting. To add to all this activity, I’ve agree to do a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) training tour of Europe. This is going to be exciting because I haven’t been to Europe for over 10 years. It’ll be an interesting contrast after having spent the last 7 years in the US.
I hope to have an opportunity to blog-on-the-road, and will (hopefully) include photos of some of the training courses. Here’s my training schedule:
New York – 7th & 8th March, 2007
Helsinki – 14th & 15th March, 2007
Stockholm – 21st & 22nd March, 2007
Oslo – 28th & 29th March, 2007
Copenhagen – 4th & 5th April, 2007
Vienna – 11th & 12th April, 2007
Munich – 18th & 19th April, 2007
Paris – 2nd & 3rd May, 2007
London – 9th & 10th May, 2007
Edinburgh – 17th & 18th May, 2007
Details on these courses can be found here. Alternatively, if you’re reading this and would like to meet up at any of these locations, I’d love to hear from you. If you leave a comment [to this post], I’ll reply as soon as I can.
Wishing you a Happy New Year!
Kane.
Filed under: About Me, Agile Software Development, Project Management, Scrum, Training
Recent Comments