So now I\u2019m a Cer\u00adti\u00adfied Scrum Mas\u00adter, or at least I will be once the paper\u00adwork is sub\u00admit\u00adted and checked. Right now it\u2019s a fairly pain\u00adless pro\u00adcess, you show up to a sem\u00adin\u00adar, take part in an act\u00adive way, and emerge at the end cer\u00adti\u00adfied by the instruct\u00ador. In a few months people will have to do an exam as well, which may or may not be an improve\u00adment in prac\u00adtic\u00adal terms.<\/p>\n
The two-day course was intense and I was glad I\u2019d read up on Scrum first. The book I read was Ken Schwaber\u00ad\u2019s Agile Pro\u00adject Man\u00adage\u00adment with Scrum<\/a>; the one recom\u00admen\u00added in class (run by Danube\u2019s Jimi Fos\u00addick) was his Agile Soft\u00adware Devel\u00adop\u00adment with Scrum<\/a>. After a brief intro\u00adduc\u00adtion to the prin\u00adciples of scrum, we went to work on an immer\u00adsion assign\u00adment using those prin\u00adciples. The energy level was high giv\u00aden the com\u00adpressed time frames, all the teams came up with some\u00adthing worth\u00adwhile, and I for one left with a reas\u00adon\u00adable under\u00adstand\u00ading of how scrum works when it\u2019s in an ideal setting. <\/p>\n Which, of course, is the issue. Scrum is not a sil\u00adver bul\u00adlet, and won\u2019t make up for prob\u00adlems in the organ\u00adisa\u00adtion. Mr Fos\u00addick was care\u00adful to point out that imple\u00adment\u00ading scrum is risky, it tends to uncov\u00ader prob\u00adlems in the organ\u00adisa\u00adtion, and it often fails to give the res\u00adults com\u00adpan\u00adies want for those reasons.<\/p>\n On the pos\u00adit\u00adive side, the Scrum Mas\u00adter role is very sim\u00adil\u00adar to what I\u2019ve always under\u00adstood the role of the pro\u00adject man\u00adager to be \u2014 keep the team mov\u00ading, get rid of obstacles for them, keep med\u00addling man\u00adagers or sales people out of the way. It form\u00adal\u00adises those aspects of the role, and I like the idea of the sprint being a defined length of time, so you can always say to a man\u00adager or sales per\u00adson that their import\u00adant item will be taken into account at the next pri\u00ador\u00adity-set\u00adting meet\u00ading on a defined date. One issue that came up in the dis\u00adcus\u00adsions was wheth\u00ader the Scrum Mas\u00adter should also be a pro\u00adgram\u00admer. Mr Fos\u00addick\u00ad\u2019s opin\u00adion was that no, in prac\u00adtice a team with a ded\u00adic\u00adated Scrum Mas\u00adter is, as a whole, much more effect\u00adive than a team with a Scrum Mas\u00adter who also codes. The main reas\u00adon\u00ading was that the Scrum Mas\u00adter who does\u00adn\u2019t code con\u00adcen\u00adtrates on get\u00adting imped\u00adi\u00adments out of the way of the team, keep\u00ading track of pro\u00adgress, and think\u00ading of ways in which the team per\u00adform\u00adance can be improved while the Scrum Mas\u00adter who codes is also think\u00ading about the code to be writ\u00adten, how much s\/he can com\u00admit to doing on any giv\u00aden day, etc. This makes sense to me, though I know a lot of com\u00adpan\u00adies who insist on the pro\u00adject man\u00adager also being one of (per\u00adhaps the lead) developer on the team. If that con\u00adfla\u00adtion of roles works, there\u2019s no reas\u00adon to change it. If it does\u00adn\u2019t, it\u2019s some\u00adthing to think about. I know in my work as a pro\u00adject man\u00adager, I\u2019ve always found there is lots to do without also being respons\u00adible for deliv\u00ader\u00ading qual\u00adity code as well. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So now I\u2019m a Cer\u00adti\u00adfied Scrum Mas\u00adter, or at least I will be once the paper\u00adwork is sub\u00admit\u00adted and checked. Right now it\u2019s a fairly pain\u00adless pro\u00adcess, you show up to a sem\u00adin\u00adar, take part in an act\u00adive way, and emerge at the end cer\u00adti\u00adfied by the instruct\u00ador. In a few months people will have \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cScrum\u00adming\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-project-management"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":708,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696\/revisions\/708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}