Agile Advice - Working With Agile Methods (Scrum, XP, Lean)

Time for an experiment! I have heard from many people that I have trained (ScrumMasters primarily), that there is a need for the members of the teams they are working with to have some systematic training as well. So, I’m announcing a new team member training course designed to cover some of the same material as the Certified ScrumMaster course, but focused more towards the needs of a team member who might be new to Scrum or struggling with Scrum, or just wants to get a more in-depth understanding of “ideal” Scrum. Now here’s the experiment part: I’m accepting pre-registration on FaceBook only! Because this is the first time this course will be offered, I need to get a sense of actual interest in the course. Here is the event url for FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=5901567765. If you are interested, please go to the event page and indicate your interest in attending. If you know anyone who might be interested, please share the event with them! If you aren’t on FaceBook, I highly recommend it for both personal and professional networking, and I would encourage you to sign up. The FaceBook event page has more details about the course, but here are a few: it’s 2 days long, its going to be in Toronto in late January, and it’s only $800 (Canadian, which is an introductory price).

Just in case there is anyone out there in China who is looking for a community of people doing agile, this Yahoo group, Scrum China, might be a good place to sign up! Make yourself visible, and find other people. Also, for what it’s worth, I’m running a course in Beijing in February: check the course listing for Scrum Training in Beijing.

Hi everyone! I’m currently extremely busy with a Scrum-related writing project. The lack of new articles here is mostly due to that fact. I should be done with the project in a few weeks, but it might take me to the end of the year. I will try to continue to post interesting links or small articles until the new year, but I won’t be posting substantial articles until I am done this other writing project. Sorry for the lighter content, but I hope you will all be patient. I will, of course, make an announcement about my other writing project once it is ready! Thanks!

I don’t often write non-agile entries on this blog. Nevertheless, I thought this would be an appropriate change. A couple days ago I invited all 454 of my LinkedIn contacts to re-connect with me on FaceBook. I’m going to stop using LinkedIn after over two years of building up my network there. Here are my reasons:

(more…)

A sister site to Agile Advice has been moved into “pre-official-launch” stage: Agile-Support.com. This is a site for individuals to discuss agile methods, for downloads of various resources, and, if you register, to host blogs and other content development by individuals wishing to do so in an online community setting. Think of this as the “beta” launch: there are probably still many kinks to be worked out.

The Toronto class coming up in one week still has spots, the Ottawa class in November is nearly full, and the Beijing course pre-registration discount is almost over! Please sign up for a course today!

I’m organizing a 3-day ScrumMaster Certification course in Beijing to occur on the 19th-21st of December. I need several more people to express interest in the course before I can confirm it. For those who “Save a Spot” early, there is a 20% discount available. This discount is only available until Oct. 20th. At that time, I will see if the required number of people have signed up and then make the final decision if the course should go ahead. If you or someone you know is interested and would like to receive this training in Beijing, please “Save a Spot” right away so that I can count you towards ensuring that the course does go ahead! Please sign up here!

This looks interesting: Agile Daily. This is an aggregator site like technorati or Agile Planet (seemingly defunct now), but with some interesting twists described in more detail at SocialRank.com. Apparently, SocialRank.com is setting up aggregator sites that are meant to also be community sites… maybe a little like InfoQ? Interesting experiment: it’s quite new so we’ll see what happens.

The 15% discount offered by Berteig Consulting Inc. on its fall courses is almost expired. If you “Save a Spot” or “Register” for a class on or before Sep. 15th, you will still get the discount. Courses are filling up quickly! Courses are being offered in Toronto, Beijing, Fort McMurray and Ottawa. (UPDATED: guess I missed that link when I first posted this… probably most of you figured it out anyway, but still DOH!!!)

Joe Little has created a yahoo! group called agile-ann. It will be used for all types of announcements for agile events, conferences, meet-ups, courses, seminars, calls for papers, etc. etc. It will probably become fairly high volume with all the agile stuff that goes on! I strongly encourage everyone reading this site to sign up for the list.

The fall schedule is up for Agile/Scrum training. For Canadian training, prices are currently discounted and will be raised on Sept. 15th. For Beijing, the course date is tentative based on pre-registrations up to Oct. 15th. Pre-registrants for the Beijing course will get the pre-registration price of 8000 RMB and after Oct. 15th, the price will go up to 10000 RMB.

I’m pleased to see that Agile 2008 conference is in Toronto! I’ll be there the whole time… The web site doesn’t have any information yet except the hotel.

I apologize to everyone for the lack of articles over the last few months. I’ve been traveling like crazy including India, England, the US and China! I _think_ life is settling down a little so I plan to start writing again.

Thanks for your patience!

This is a “last call” for people to register for the ScrumMaster certification course I am holding in Beijing on June 7th and 8th. At this time, I need only a few more people to be able to confirm the course (it is tentative at this time). If you are interested please save yourself a spot. If you know someone else who might be interested, please send along this link:

http://www.berteigconsulting.com/secure/a.php?h=042

I will be making my final decision on the course on April 22nd.

Thanks! - Mishkin.

Sorry folks… over the past day and a half, and expected for the next day or so Agile Advice and other web sites hosted on the Berteig Consulting Inc. servers are experiencing intermittent and poor internet connectivity. If things are very slow or fail part way through a page load, this is why. Hopefully we’ll be back up at full steam soon.