Posts Tagged ‘scrum’

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Comparison of OpenAgile with Scrum

Monday, February 1st, 2010

OpenAgile is similar to Scrum in many respects. Both are systems for delivering value to stakeholders. Both are agile methods. Both are frameworks that deliberately avoid giving all the answers. So why would we choose OpenAgile over Scrum?

The most important difference is in applicability: Scrum is designed to help organizations optimize new software product development, whereas OpenAgile is designed to help anyone learn to deliver value effectively.

OpenAgile is an improvement over Scrum in the following ways:

  1. More effective teamwork and team practices, in particular the Consultative Method of Decision Making, and
    applicability over a larger range of team sizes from a single individual on up.

  2. Recognition of the individual capacities required for effective learning, namely Truthfulness, Detachment,
    Search, Love and Courage. Scrum acknowledges a separate set of qualities, but does not show how they systematically connect with the requirements of a Scrum environment.

  3. Systematic handling of more types of work beyond just “new artifacts” and “obstacles”. In particular, OpenAgile includes calendar items, repetitive items and quality items and acknowledges their unique qualities in a work
    environment. OpenAgile also provides a framework to include additional types of work beyond these five.

  4. Improved role definitions based on extensive experience.

    1. There is only one role defined in OpenAgile (Team Member) vs. three defined in Scrum (Team Member, ScrumMaster, Product Owner).

    2. There are multiple paths of service that allow Team Members and Stakeholders to engage with an OpenAgile team or community in different ways. There are five paths of service: Process Facilitation, Growth Facilitation, Tutoring, Mentoring, and Catalyst.

    3. The Process Facilitator path of service is similar to the ScrumMaster role with the following major differences:

      • is not responsible for team development
      • is not necessarily a single person, nor is it a required role

    4. The Growth Facilitator path of service is similar to the Product Owner role with the following major differences:

      • is responsible for all aspects of growth including value (like the Product Owner), and individual and team capacity building.
      • is not necessarily a single person, nor is it a required role

  5. Integration of principles and practices from other methods. Two examples suffice:

    1. From Crystal: creating a safe work/learning environment.

    2. From Lean: build quality in, value stream mapping, root cause analysis, standard work.

  6. OpenAgile allows interruptions during the Cycle. Scrum has the concept of Sprint Safety. This makes Scrum
    unsuitable for operational work and general management.

  7. The distinction between Commitment Velocity and other uses of the term “velocity” used in Scrum. Commitment Velocity is the historical minimum slope of a team’s Cycle burndown charts and determines how much work a team plans in its Engagement Meeting.

  8. Flexibility in the length a Cycle. Scrum requires that Sprints (Cycles) be one month in duration or less.
    OpenAgile allows a Cycle to be longer than that and instead provides a guideline that there should be a minimum number of Cycles planned in the time expected to reach the overall goal.

  9. The Progress Meeting in OpenAgile does not require people to take turns or directly answer specific questions.

  10. Avoiding conflict-oriented models of staff and management (Chickens and Pigs in Scrum).

  11. Terminology changes to be more clear in meaning and applicable beyond software. A comparative glossary is
    included below.

Another major difference between OpenAgile and Scrum is how the community operates. OpenAgile is an open-source
method that has a specific structure for community involvement that allows for continuous improvement of the system. Scrum is closed. It is closely managed by it’s founders and this has led to challenges with the method becoming dogmatic. OpenAgile is meant to constantly evolve and grow.

Comparative Glossary between OpenAgile and Scrum

OpenAgile Scrum
Cycle Sprint
Cycle Planning Sprint Planning and Sprint Review
Team Member Team Member or “Pigs”
Process Facilitator ScrumMaster
Growth Facilitator Product Owner
Work Queue Product Backlog
Work Queue Item Product Backlog Item
Cycle Plan Sprint Backlog
Task Task
Work Period Day
Progress Meeting Daily Scrum
Learning Circle w/ steps “Inspect and Adapt”
Delivered Value Potentially Shippable Software
Stakeholders “Chickens”
Five Types of Work:

New, Repetitive, Obstacles, Calendar,
Quality

 - no equivalents -

User Stories, N/A, Impediments, N/A, N/A
Consultative Decision Making - no equivalents -
Sector / Community - no equivalents -

References on OpenAgile:

http://www.openagile.com/

http://wiki.openagile.org/

References on Scrum:

http://www.scrumalliance.org/

http://www.scrum.org/

“Agile Software Development with Scrum” - Schwaber and Beedle

“Agile Project Management with Scrum” - Schwaber

“Scrum and the Enterprise” – Schwaber

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Posted in OpenAgile, Reference Information, Scrum, XP and Lean, Theory of Agile, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Agile/Pervagile on Slashdot

Monday, November 16th, 2009

There is a book review of “Becoming Agile” by Smith and Sidky on Slashdot.  I haven’t read the book (yet) so I can’t comment on the book nor on the review.  However, I did want to comment on the comments of Slashdot users.  Their experience with agile methods seems to be terrible.  Either that or they are incredibly ignorant and have pre-judged agile.  Since I know that (most) Slashdot users are pretty intelligent, I’m going to assume that they have mostly just had really terrible experiences with agile.

The Agile Manifesto values “Individuals and Interactions” over “Processes and Tools”.  Many of the comments were about agile being used as a cudgel to beat teams into submission.  No matter what anyone says, this is not agile.  This is perverted agile or “Pervagile”.  Pervagile is common.  Scrumbutt is one form of Pervagile.  Waterscrum is another form of Pervagile.  Scrummerfall is yet another.  But there are many other forms as well: the Pervagile Sweatshop where teams are forced to meet arbitrary scope in one week deadlines, the Pervagile Common Room where people on many different projects are forced to work in an open space, and the Pervagile Silo Team where only developers are doing agile and everyone else is in their normal functional silos.

On Slashdot we see some interesting comments like this one:

So we’ve gone from over-designing systems to under-designing systems.

How about right-designing a system based on the complexity of the scope and the key personnel involved?

Is that crazy?

No, it’s not crazy, and that’s what agile is trying to help us to do.  Pair programming, test driven development, potentially shippable software, continuous integration, agile modeling are all agile practices that help us “right-design” a system.  So this person must have experienced a team doing Pervagile Minimum Discipline where all good practices are not just done in small bits along the way, but actually ignored.  I’m not sure why they ignored doing good incremental design – perhaps someone told them that agile doesn’t require good design skills on the team!

Here’s another interesting comment:

The attempt to write a Python implementation in Python, PyPy [codespeak.net], turned into a death march. The project has been underway since at least 2003 (when they had their first “sprint”), never produced a usable system, and the European Union pulled the plug on funding. But the project limps on. There’s a released version. It’s slower than CPython. There’s supposed to be a “just in time” compiler Real Soon Now. (This is try #2 at a JIT, not counting the schemes for outputting Java bytecode and Javascript.) Six years in on a compiler project, and no product.

The PyPy project is very “agile”. They have “sprints”. They have “flexibility”. They have nightly builds. They have mailing lists and trackers. They support multiple output back-ends. They have about 50 contributors. What they don’t have is a usable product.

Hmm.  Sounds like they’re trying to do Scrum.  But they’ve missed a pretty critical piece: potentially shippable software at the end of _every_ Sprint.  I have no idea why they aren’t able to do that, but I imagine that if they really understood Scrum, they would be in a much different place at this time.  This is a clear case of Pervagile Valueless Deliveries where the team does stuff every iteration, but they don’t worry about delivering valuable results.

So.  Pervagile is pervasive.  That’s clear.

Why is it so pervasive?  There are two parts to this: one, agile is hard and two, agile is mistaken for a silver bullet.

Agile is Hard

Okay, I’m actually being a little dis-honest.  The real truth is that doing agile is extremely, exceptionally, agonizingly difficult (for most people in most organizations).  Why?  Because agile is not just another process to roll out.  It is, as has been mentioned in numerous places, a deep cultural change.  Agile is actually a liberation movement for people involved in software development.  Like most movements, however, it has been subject to corruptive forces.

Agile is Mistaken for a Silver Bullet

Agile is Hard, and therefore it cannot possibly be a silver bullet.  Many executives and managers hear about agile and want to do it in their organization because they have heard the amazing success stories (yes, they do exist – scroll to the bottom to learn about Wildcard Systems).  But what often is not effectively communicated is how much crisis, how much effort, how much radical change went into these success stories.  Here’s a hint: if you think a large organization can become agile in less than five years, you’re fooling yourself.  Even a very small organization should expect at least two years of solid effort before the changes really take hold.  Of course, if you are lucky enough to be starting from scratch, then you might do better than this.

I’m pretty tired of people mis-understanding agile methods.  But unfortunately this is the reality of our work landscape.  I would love to work with a client where the CEO has said something to the effect of “I’ve budgeted 10% of our operations and ten years to do our agile transformation.”  Of course, that’s pretty much a laughable wish.  Unfortunately it’s the reality of the effort involved for most organizations.

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Posted in Links to Agile Info, Scrum, XP and Lean | 5 Comments »

New Certified Scrum Product Owner training in Toronto added to calendar

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Due to popular demand, we have added another Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) training to our listing of courses.  There is an overwhelming need for well trained Product Owners, and we’re happy to take up the challenge. The next CSPO will happen on January 14 & 15 at our office in Newmarket, just north of Toronto.

During this seminar, our Certified Scrum Trainer will teach participants how to do the fundamental tasks of the Product Owner in the Scrum environment.  The attendees will learn:

  • how to develop a comprehensive Product Backlog
  • competently add value to the Scrum team during the Sprint
  • fully understand how Scrum works and their role within the agile environment

With a maximum class size of five people, this seminar is designed to allow participants to dig deep into the role of the Certified Scrum Product Owner. After completing this course, attendees of this seminar will be able to create and manage a Product Backlog, work with a Scrum Team to create high-quality software, and use the Scrum framework to build and deliver the right software.  Please refer to our website for a course description and to reserve space for yourself or others on your team. http://www.berteigconsulting.com/CSPOCourseDescription

We look forward to adding value to your team!

If you would like more information contact us at sales@berteigconsulting.com

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Posted in How-To Apply Agile, Scrum, XP and Lean | No Comments »

Quick Note on Scrum Training

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

We have wrapped up our Summer Special. There are still a few classes scheduled this year that have the discount price, but others have reverted to our normal price. I encourage you to take a look at our course schedule at http://www.berteigconsulting.com/ to see what is still available.

Also, all our future Certified ScrumMaster courses will have a knowledge test as part of the certification process. Please see the Scrum Alliance website for more information at http://www.scrumalliance.org/.

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Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

50% Discount on ScrumMaster Training – Only 59 Spots Left

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

Our summer special is proving to be very popular!  We started with 100 spots at our 50% discount price of CAD 995.00.  We’re down to 59 spots.  Check out our course listing page – every CSM course we have scheduled in Canada is available at this fantastic price (Toronto, Waterloo, Edmonton, Ottawa).

Even without the discount, our course is a better value than many out there.  It’s a three day course instead of the normal two.  This gives you a chance to really dig into the concepts and practices of Scrum and Agile Project Management.  Our course is really designed for project managers, team leads and other managers, instead of being for anyone interested in Scrum.  Of course, if you are interested in a leadership role, but aren’t there yet, you are still welcome to come!

Not only that, we don’t run courses in locations where it is not easy for use to support you after you take the course.  We run our business in Canada, and our consulting and coaching work is there to help you if you want further assistance with doing agile in your organization.  Even if you aren’t in Canada, maybe your organization has a group in Canada or you have professional contacts in Canada – if so, let them know about this fantastic opportunity.

Find our list of scheduled courses here.

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Posted in Announcements | 1 Comment »

50% Discount on ScrumMaster Training – Only 76 Spots Left

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Our summer special is proving to be very popular!  We started with 100 spots at our 50% discount price of CAD995.00.  We’re down to 76 spots.  Check out our course listing page – every CSM course we have scheduled in Canada is available at this fantastic price (Toronto, Waterloo, Edmonton, Ottawa).

Even without the discount, our course is a better value than many out there.  It’s a three day course instead of the normal two.  This gives you a chance to really dig into the concepts and practices of Scrum and Agile Project Management.  Our course is really designed for project managers, team leads and other managers, instead of being for anyone interested in Scrum.  Of course, if you are interested in a leadership role, but aren’t there yet, you are still welcome to come!

Not only that, we don’t run courses in locations where it is not easy for use to support you after you take the course.  We run our business in Canada, and our consulting and coaching work is there to help you if you want further assistance with doing agile in your organization.  Even if you aren’t in Canada, maybe your organization has a group in Canada or you have professional contacts in Canada – if so, let them know about this fantastic opportunity.

Find our list of scheduled courses here.

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Posted in Announcements | No Comments »

Growth Facilitator role on an OpenAgile team

Friday, June 5th, 2009

This is my first post on the Agile Advice blog.  In fact, it’s my first blog post ever.  Before joining the Berteig Consulting team, I had never even heard the words Agile, Scrum, Lean, or OpenAgile.  After all, my background is marketing, community relations, and sustainability!  Needless to say, I’ve gone through some intense learning about the role of the Growth Facilitator.

The responsibility of the Growth Facilitator is about more than simply prioritizing New Work goals and tasks. I see the role as contributing to the organizational culture, and helping to build the business in a sustainable way. “Sustainability” is an important concept at BCI. It means that we are committed to conducting business in a way that is respectful of the environment, society, and the economy. At the same time, it means that the BCI team operates at a sustainable pace, finding ways to balance our work and life so that we don’t burn out.

As Growth Facilitator, I am also responsible for guiding the team toward delivering greater value for our stakeholders. At Berteig Consulting, our stakeholders don’t just include the company’s owners. Our stakeholders include a wide range of groups, including customers, suppliers, employees, and our families, all without whose support nothing we do would be possible. Delivering value to our stakeholders requires that we keep them in mind when we commit to our tasks each week.

One of the important lessons I learned was to give the team S.M.A.R.T. – Simple, Measureable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timebound – goals and give them space to come up with the tasks to meet the goal. When I first started, I made goals that were broad, saying for example “to take care of our clients” or “to work at a sustainable pace.” Rather than stating goals, I realized that I was making statements of the team’s shared values. And while the team integrated these thoughts into our behavior, it was nonetheless challenging to spin off specific tasks that we could work on. Now, I try to ensure the goals I create conform to a user story format and meet S.M.A.R.T. criteria. For example “Berteig Consulting can update the Certified ScrumMaster course content so that all CSM course participants receive the best value in the market.” As soon as I made the direction clear, the team self-organized and generated tasks required to achieve each goal.

Another key lesson of developing the direction for the team was allowing the Team Members time to review the next Cycle’s goals in advance of the Cycle Planning Meeting so that they could provide feedback and seek clarification. This became particularly important when one team member jumped on a business opportunity that created a significant amount of New Work. We simply could not overlook this great opportunity, and we moved it to the top of the New Work priority list and put it in the next Cycle Plan.

Last, I learned that the Growth Facilitator and Process Facilitator have a complimentary relationship that requires frequent consultation. As the Process Facilitator goes about helping the team overcome obstacles, it can become clear that the team needs to address a systemic challenge during one of the upcoming Cycles. The Growth Facilitator then states the need as a Cycle goal in a S.M.A.R.T. format, allows the team time to give feedback, and prioritizes the goal in the New Work list. When the goal is brought to a future Cycle Planning Meeting, the team breaks the goal into tasks and solves the systemic obstacle that the Process Facilitator identified.

These lessons have helped me understand how the Growth Facilitator role extends beyond prioritizing New Work and guiding the team’s value delivery. The role also fosters the culture in which the work gets done – working at a sustainable pace, taking care of our customers, and maintaining unity of vision.

I would love to hear your thoughts about anything I’ve expressed here. Berteig Consulting is a deep-learning environment, and your feedback is invaluable.

David D. Parker
VP Marketing and Sustainability
Growth Facilitator

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Posted in Agile Case Studies, Agile Management, How-To Apply Agile, OpenAgile, Reference Information | No Comments »

Agile and Product Management – Some Links

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

I met Saeed Khan at a TPMA meeting where I was a memeber of the panel discussion on agile and product management.  Saeed and I disagreed about a few things, particularly around the importance of the distinction between releases and patches to software products.  He forwarded me a few links from his blog which I found very interesting.  Again, I don’t completely agree, but I think it is worth while for people to see these ideas and judge for themselves:

http://onproductmanagement.net/2008/11/09/5th-element-to-agile/
http://onproductmanagement.net/2008/10/30/agile-pm/
http://onproductmanagement.net/2008/10/16/the-value-of-scrum/
http://onproductmanagement.net/2008/09/28/agilescrum-reality-check/

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Using Agile to Run a Small Business – Five Types of Work

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

At Berteig Consulting, we used Scrum to run our business for quite a while – about one year.  Over that time we struggled with a few different concepts and practices.  As a Certified Scrum Trainer, I am very aware that Scrum requires us to use the framework itself to expose obstacles, rather than modifying Scrum to accommodate obstacles.  However, over the course of that year, it became more and more obvious that there is something fundamentally different between writing software products (where Scrum is fantastic) and running a business.  Scrum, the framework, just wasn’t good enough.

The main problem we had was with the types of work we encounter in running a business.  We noticed patterns in the types of tasks we had every Cycle (Sprint).  In this article I will look carefully at two of those types of work and then briefly describe the other three types of work.

We discovered that calendar items such as meetings, scheduled public events, and even personal appointments didn’t fit anywhere in Scrum’s Product Backlog or Sprint Backlog.  At first, we tried to think of this as an obstacle and force-fit these into the Product Backlog.  That didn’t work because that meant we couldn’t always prioritize by value.  Even if the Product Backlog had something more valuable in it than the scheduled meeting, we sometimes couldn’t change the dates of the meeting to accomodate the more valuable work.  So Calendar Items became a new category of work in addition to the new “features” that were in the Product Backlog.  (I say “features” in quotes because we were running a business not writing software.)

We also noticed that we were struggling with applying the concept of the Definition of Done.  This led us to explore the concept of Repetitive Work.  For example, we need to clean our office on a regular basis – vacuum, water plants, take out trash, etc.  If we left that until it became more valuable than anything else on our Product Backlog we would have ended up with a disgusting work environment.  So we thought that this should be part of our Definition of Done.  The problem then became a more conceptual one: what were we doing that needed cleaning so that it would be considered done?  Well of course, it’s simply part of business operations.  Cleaning is not independently valuable.  We did decide that it was most cost-effective to outsource it, but it didn’t match the concept of Definition of Done as applied to the work in the Product Backlog.  That led to an insight: actually, we were looking at a new category of work: Repetitive Items.  These are those activities that we need to do to sustain our business and which should become habits, or which should be automated or outsourced.

After identifying Calendar Items and Repetitive Items as types of work, we decided that we needed to look at the Product Backlog more carefully.  We decided that we needed to separate features, or as we called it “New Work”, from defects or Quality Items.  We also formalized the concept of a queue of Obstacles, which is mentioned in Scrum, but about which is given very little guidance.

So after over a three years of trying to use agile methods to run our business, we have finally come up with a stable and seemingly sufficient set of types of work:

  • Calendar Items
  • Repetitive Items
  • Quality Items
  • Obstacles
  • New Work

We have written more about our experiences and their results in our e-book: The OpenAgile Primer.  If you are trying to use agile methods to run a business or any other kind of organization, please check it out and let us know about your experiences.  We hope that OpenAgile will become an Open-Source method that we can contribute back to the world of work and life.

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Posted in Agile Case Studies, How-To Apply Agile | 4 Comments »

Scrum Gathering – Orlando Florida – PMP? ScrumMaster?

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

PLEASE NOTE: This stream of notes does not reflect everything said in this session which was very discussion-heavy.

50k+ registered agilists – what about the unregistered?

Project Managers are the largest segment (18%) of agilists

CSM is a distinguishing designation for PMPs

How to mature the certifications – team members, etc.

Everyone wants it

PMI is responding to this because it has to.  Richmond chapter signed a collaborative agreement with the APLN, this is happening in other places as well.

People asking lots of questions.

IT Telecomm PMI Chapter playing a large role in building bridges.

PMI Global Congress in 2008 had 5 agile presentations that were all very popular.

PMI Agile group.

What gaps are there?

Shu-Ha-Ri progression:
Study under a master the “one true way”.  Then try many variations.  Then understand the principles and “the Way”.

Tension for agilists – transition.

Project/Product/Program manager vs. ScrumMaster and Product Owner – no set definitions.

Worried about hiding behind process…
Project Management is a scapegoat
Agile is a scapegoat
Both are because of human dysfunction
Mac vs. PC = Agile vs. PMI – camps based on labels
Moves us away from pragmatism to fundamentalism

Certifications:

CSM -> Scrum -> Agile Thinking

The CSM is the gateway to agile thinking

PMP -> Project Management -> Tools

How do we move people between PM and Agile?

Fundamentalism in Scrum – wrongness of not doing agile.

Not adapting Scrum to reality.

Agile is about truth-telling – different flavors of agile do this a little differently.

The Project manager often has multiple roles – this hides the truth.

The truth is necessary to successful projects.

Scrum focuses around an objective – e.g. making money.

Would it help if the PMBoK had explicity added an agile component?

PMI like IBM – when the IBM launched a PC, then it was okay for the corporate environment to use PCs.

Differences b/w PMBoK and Scrum are more about who, how and why, but not so much about what.

In most organizations, there is a customized “one way” and it is this that is difficult to change, not so much the PMBoK.

Some fundamentalism in Scrum: if you aren’t doing it right, then you are hiding dysfunction – not because Scrum is the one true way to do delivery, but because it is a way to do learning.

Keep my job!

Get agreement around values and principles. – do no harm -

How do we save the world?  Top down?  Grassroots?  Viral?  Not forced!  Building on success!

Attraction vs. promotion.

Not enough of us!  Lots of cultural inertia, crossing the chasm.

Not transforming people despite themselves.  You can’t transform someone else!

False dichotomy b/w execution and transformation.

Learning vs. dysfunction.  Example of Toyota making 1000s of improvements every day.

PMI is about advancing the profession of the project managers.  Therefore it is incumbent on the PMI to bring Scrum in because it works!!!

It needs to get it into the PMBoK

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Posted in Scrum, XP and Lean | 1 Comment »

Scrum Gathering – Orlando Florida – Beta CSM Exam

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

This afternoon I took the Beta version of the knowledge exam for the Certified ScrumMaster credential.  I’m not allowed to provide any details on the questions, but I will provide my impressions.

I’ll start with a story.

Microsoft Certified Application Developer

About six years ago, near the end of my career as a technical contributor, the company I was working for, Solution Architects (who still have my profile on their “people” page), decided that I should become a Microsoft Certified Application Developer.  At the time, I was doing .NET development and I had a long background in Java and Objective-C development.  The approach we decided on was for me to go to a “Boot Camp” where I would be immersed in all things .NET and after nine days of solid training, write the Microsoft exam.

I arrived at the Boot Camp (which was very much a outdoorsy camp environment) quite excited.  I got a room for myself, and it looked like I would be treated very well.  One the first day of classes, the instructor gave us some strong advice: come to class, and then in all your spare time, do the practice exams and study them hard.  I was a bit baffled by this.  We were also given the huge Microsoft Press books to study for the exam (I kept them for a few years, but recently got rid of them).  My first night I studied the books and my notes from class.  To be frank, the instructor spent most of the time going over exactly what was in the books and giving us all a little time on computers to do the “exercises” in the books.  Instruction was really limited to rote recital of the book content.  Any time someone would ask a question that was in any way deep, the instructor would simply redirect with another reminder to study the practice exams.

The second night I decided I would try the practice exam since the first of three real exams was in the afternoon of the third day.  It was fairly simple multiple choice test questions.  I went through all the questions, made sure I found the answers for ones I didn’t know in the books or in my notes, and then after I had done a once-through, I did a quick second pass.

And then, the next day, I took the real exam.  I was utterly, completely shocked.  The real exam was exactly like the sample exam.  The only difference was that the word problems change the names of the fictional people and companies used in the problems.  The structure of the questions was identical.  The answers – including the ordering of the multiple choice answers – were exactly the same.  And of course, it was a breeze.  Anyone could have passed.  In fact, it was completely unnecessary to attend the classroom training part.  I was extremely dis-illusioned.

Why do I mention this experience with a certification exam?  Simple: it has made me extremely sceptical of exams.  They simply cannot measure any level of competency.  They simple measure people’s ability to pass exams.  And since there are many fair and unfair ways to do that, exams are not relevent.

Now I will say that I have changed my mind just a wee bit about this… but that’s a topic for a completely different blog post.

So, when I heard that the Scrum Alliance was going to add an exam to the CSM certification, I felt that it was a waste of time, and probably would encourage all sorts of bad behaviors.  I still think that.

The Beta CSM Exam

Okay.  A few facts about the exam.  It was administered in a room in the convention center here in Orlando.  There was a registration desk and when you sign in you are given a password.  You then go to a workstation which has Internet Explorer running pointed at the exam site.  The exam has bookends: at the start an experience self-assessment that is used to help interpret the exam results, and at the end a satisfaction survey.  Throughout the course of the exam, you are able to comment on the questions.  These bookends and the feedback along the way are a great way to help improve the exam and I really like that.

As I mentioned, I am not allowed to discuss the details of the questions.  I will make some general comments about the questions.  Some questions are about Agile, some are about Scrum principles and some are about Scrum practices.  Some are fairly standard fact-based kinds of question like: what are the roles in Scrum, while others are more scenario-based question like: you are the ScrumMaster and X-bad-behavior is happening… what do you do?

There were 99 questions in total and I was told that it would take approximately one hour to go through the questions.  Now, just so you know, I normally do _really_ _really_ well on multiple choice exams, and I normally complete them extremely quickly.  I read fast, and my mind seems to be able to eliminate incorrect options almost subconsciously.  So, for this exam, I completed it in 35 minutes including the time it took me to comment on about a third of the questions.  If I hadn’t been commenting as I went, I estimate it would have taken me about 20 minutes.

How Did I Score?

Well, I got 84%.  Not bad.  The summary page of the exam said this was a “mastery” level.  I should explain why I didn’t score higher (after all, Certified Scrum Trainer (TM) Mishkin Berteig should be able to do 100%!!!).

I decided before I even started, that I would answer the questions as if I was a “perfect” student of my own training.  In other words, I would deliberately get things wrong if I taught them differently than the “right way” that the question implied.  As well, if I didn’t cover a topic in my training, I would do a best guess putting myself in the shoes of someone who had attended my class.  There were two broad topic areas that I don’t teach about that showed up: Product Vision and Release Planning.  As well, there were a few topics that I teach slightly differently: Scrum Team membership, burndown charts, and Sprint Planning/Sprint Backlog Tasks.

Apparently, despite these differences, a student of my class would do pretty well on the exam.

The Problem

When I first became a Certified Scrum Trainer (no TM, this was before the existance of the Scrum Alliance), Ken Schwaber had a clear policy that as a trainer I was encouraged to integrate into my training materials and approach things that I had discovered through actual practice about Scrum.  I loved this.  It meant that Scrum was not a Canonized Body of Knowledge, but rather a living framework for doing excellent work.  When we put in place an exam like this, it changes the nature of Scrum.  Is this good or bad?  I think it has aspects of both.  The clear down side is that it will have the tendency of freezing Scrum which might make it less relevent.

Another problem is more personal: as a trainer, there will be clear pressure for me to teach to the exam.  If a student of mine goes and does the exam, and fails because (in part) I have taught things differently than what is on the exam, then does that mean this person can blame me?  Sure!  Why not?!  So then I am faced with a problem: do I teach what I know works or do I teach what I know will be tested?

Solution

There is a simple way to avoid this second problem and in fact to mitigate the first problem at the same time: the exam should be taken before taking the CSM course.  The exam is clearly based on the reading materials: Agile Software Development with Scrum and Agile Project Management with Scrum.  Then, if people don’t pass the exam, they can blame only themselves for not studying these excellent books deeply enough.  And, it will simplify training since as trainers we will know that people coming into the class are already _knowledgeable_ about Scrum.  We can then teach our variations, see the dynamic of people in the class, and offer Certification based on that.

This solves the trainer’s dilema easily and obviously.  What is not so obvious is that it also helps prevent Scrum from ossifying.  The Certification becomes based on living interaction with an experienced Scrum trainer rather than an exam.  The long term effect of this is that people will place less importance on the exam (rightly) and more importance on making a good showing in the course (rightly) and then we have a relationship-based Certification.  Since it is based on a relationship, it can live more easily as an organically changing framework rather than a defined (simple) methodology.

After all: Individuals and Interations are valued over Processes and Tools (Agile Manifesto).

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Scrum Gathering – Orlando Florida – Open Space Discussions

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

All the Open Space sessions will be recorded and posted to a web site… to be determined, but I will add the links once they are ready.

Scrum Beyond Software

I arrived late for this one and only caught the final 20 minutes.  It seemed like it was a good discussion.  One person was interested in using Scrum for doing process documentation.  Another person was interested in Scrum for software maintenance.  Of course, I talked about what we are doing with our business using OpenAgile.

Scrum Must Die

Great discussion!  Main concepts seemed to be: Scrum is fuzzy, it is not well-defined, and can we find an abstraction of Scrum that then is applied to many different situations.  The discussion included many specific examples: is the Product Owner on or off the team, is the Product Owner always 1-to-1 with teams, is the Product Owner always a single person, is the sprint burndown done on the basis of hours or points, is the daily Scrum necessary, is the retrospective necessary (yes), is release planning necessary?

Anti-PMI

Vigorous discussion – a little unfocused, but really really interesting.  People making claims and counter-claims about Scrum and PMI (actually PMBoK).  Some interesting distinctions: Scrum as a framework that allows imperfection and encourages improvement vs. PMBoK as a framework that tries to give all the tools (best practices, processes) to avoid mistakes and do things “right”.  I enjoyed this discussion a lot!!!

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Scrum Gathering – Orlando Florida – Day 1 Summary

Monday, March 16th, 2009

The first day of the Scrum Gathering in Orlando is finished.  I had a great day all-in-all.  I went to 3 and a half sessions, took a nice sun break in the afternoon, and then mingled at the evening reception.

Some observations:

More People Using Agile and Scrum for Non-Software

This was interesting.  When I actually spent time talking with people I heard several times that people were using agile approaches in non-software environments.  One person is working with an oil company to apply agile methods to all project work.  Another two people are extending agile / Scrum into marketing departments.  And one other person was applying agile into the whole organization.

Of course, with OpenAgile, I’m very interested in all this.  I’m hoping that I can organize some sort of group / institute / organization for people using agile methods outside of software development.  If you’re interested, please contact me on LinkedIn or Facebook or any other method you wish.  People seemed to be in general agreement that this is still new stuff, and that they are having to make adaptations to make agile work in these other environments.  After all, not all work is purely creative or problem-solving!

Economic and Recession Fears

Gregory Balestrero gave a talk about the relationship between the PMI and the Scrum Alliance.  I felt that his talk was much more 30000 foot level and that it probably wasn’t quite right for the audience.  The questions people asked at the end seemed much more appropriate for someone who was an author of the PMBoK rather than the CEO of the PMI.  There was a mis-match between presenter and audience.  At any rate, Gregory spoke quite a bit about the economy and the fears people have about it.  He emphasized that this time actually represents a real opportunity for organizations to get better at doing projects by focusing on value.  I couldn’t agree more!

As well, in my discussions with several other individuals who are coaches or run agile coaching businesses, I heard quite frequently that the past few months have been hard on business here in the United States.  One company has actually laid off some coaches.  This is in line with our experience at Berteig Consulting… up to a point.  December and January were slow, and in fact slower than “normal”, but we still did very well in the Dec. to Feb. quarter.  Clearly the Canadian market is still moving well, and there is a recognition that agile and Scrum are a means to help organizations get through these tough times.

One a related note, the resort we are staying in and in which the conference is being held is the Gaylord Palms.  Apparently, bookings are way down at the hotel to the point where they have temporarily closed some of the restaurants in the resort.  Likewise, when my family went to a water park during the day today, some of the rides were closed because there were so few people.  Please remember: this is Spring Break!!!  Clearly tourism is _way_ down.

Reconnecting with Friends and Collegues

I’ve met up with (in no particular order): Tobias Mayer, Alistair Cockburn, Catherine Louis (from Nortel), Sanjiv Augustine, Mike Vizdos, Carole Marks, Mitch Lacey, Jim Cundiff, Gabby Benefield, and probably others that I can’t remember.

I also met for the first time several people.  I hope I can keep in touch with everyone!

Highlight of the Day

Mike Cohn gave a presentation on Leading Self-Organizing Teams.  It was fantastic.  My favorite part of it was his introducing the CDE (Containers, Differences and transforming Exchanges) model.  In this model, self-organization is positively influenced by appropriate constraints on the containers, differences and transforming exchanges among the people who are asked to self-organize.  To explain: containers define in-ness vs. out-ness for participation, scope of work, environment of the group that is self-organizing.  Differences are the variations in the skills, qualities, attitudes, knowledge etc. of group members.  And transforming exchanges are the interactions between group members both amongst each other and with outside groups, where such interactions cause a transformation of some sort: creation of value, sharing of knowledge, new activities, etc.

By using the CDE model, we can diagnose challenges facing an agile team.  Mike Cohn included a number of scenarios for us to use to practice the application of this model.

Looking Forward to Day 2

Hopefully Day 2, which is primarily and Open Space event, will be even more interesting that Day 1.  I will continue to post frequent articles about the events of the day!  Please feel free to ask for more details in the comments… or to suggest that I connect with someone, or to bring up a topic for the Open Space portion.

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Scrum Gathering – Orlando Florida – Ken Schwaber and Alistair Cockburn – You Thought You Knew Scrum

Monday, March 16th, 2009

PLEASE NOTE: these are my own notes based on the presentation – any errors or omissions are my own.

TOPIC: Treat People as Adults

- “we need to X first”… e.g. X=architecture
- – this is a parent-child approach – need to tell someone how to do something
- – does this mean we are not adults?
- – only through direction and planning will we do intelligent things
- Story from “Scrum in the Enterprise” about a “team” of 17 people
- vs. treating people as “resources”
- — banter –
- “Maverick” book

TOPIC: Teach “ask the team” by actually asking the team (in the class).

- teaching by example!  Using the adults in the class to help answer the question

EDITOR’S NOTE: okay.  this is very interesting, but I’m having so much trouble hearing that I’m going to bail on this one.  Instead, I believe that Mike Vizdos at implementingscrum.com is also blogging this session.  I’m sure his notes will be up soon :-)

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Scrum Gathering – Orlando Florida – Greg from the PMI

Monday, March 16th, 2009

Gregory Balestrero

PLEASE NOTE: this article is based on my own notes from the talk given by Gregory Balestrero.  Any errors or omissions are my own.

Note: Tobias Mayer has written a nice analysis of this talk.

Worry about transformation of industry to become results focused

Economy
- fear and uncertainty
- in many countries optimism has turned to fear
- leaders and everyone else!
- many governments struggling because they can’t get assistance from private sector
- move government to understand portfolio management of 800 billion dollars
- example article here
- 55% of PMI members are saying projects cut back or terminated
- NYT saying these economic hardships are an opportunity

EDITOR’S NOTE:

Sound here is difficult: it’s muddy, and it’s not compressed enough.  I’m having a hard time hearing Gregory speak.

BACK TO THE TALK:

Economic challenges are a great opportunity to manage well

PMI 1/2 million members – double digit growth
Scrum 50k members

PMI undergoing change for a long time
- break down the myths on both sides
- I’m a barrier breaker
- transformation in the development of standards
- joke about PMBoK – Demons
- recognized iterative

“We don’t recognize and brand anything” – literal quote

Credentials are changing
- PMP
- PGMP (program management)
- Risk and Schedule credentials
- knowledge vs. competency based credentials
- building communities (Specific Interest Groups – vertical communities)
- – 31 discrete bodies of knowledge
- – difficult to navigate
- taken 5 years, reinvigorated governance
- first new community of practice: agile community
- – EDITOR’S NOTE: this is actually pretty cool
- organizational focus – shifting to include helping organizations, not just practicing project managers
- – EDITOR’S NOTE: it took them 40 years to figure out this was needed
- we have legacy
- started by people from a particular background
- here out of respect
- Questions about PMI, Demons, Collaboration

QUESTIONS:

1) Problems with economy – unable to react to changes in demand. This is more about Product management, not Project management.  how can we help Product managers do a better job?

- integration of Product and Project management is important.  Change in demand – telecomm moving towards a six-month lifecycle. E.g. one org going from 8-9 month lifecycle to halve that.  Project mgmt. can help with this.
- laying off people is causing long-term problems
- quarterly earnings is the wrong focus

2) Greg Smith with Thoughtworks.  Open to collaboration between PMI and ScrumAlliance.  Could you encourage PMP’s to seek CSM certifications?

- already happening that people are doing this
- as far as encouraging… figure out the fit – does it make sense to use a particular approach?  Will PMPs or CSM’s be automatically be accepted?
- org won’t necessarily allow the use of these principles
- what will best meet needs of these two
- collaboration on credentials? where is the common ground… share knowledge… then see where credentials

3)  From State Farm, CSM and PMP.  Research that PMI is conducting?  Independently or partnering with ScrumAlliance in risk management or quality management.

- no collaboration at this time
- just recently created a risk management standard and credential
- great deal of research that went into this
- standard on risk is available to members
- this cuts across methods

EDITOR’S NOTE: Gregory seems to be too high up to address many of the questions satisfactorily.  I wish someone would ask a question about the organization of the PMI, rather than the details of Scrum or PMBoK.

4) Mark from Renewtech. Questions about labelling – “project manager” vs. “agile project manager”.

- people can call themselves whatever they want
- credentials from an organization are different
- critical in hiring (body of knowledge, competency)
- “Agile Project Manager” – nice branding but what does it mean?

5) Product Owner, previously PM with PMP.  PM responsibilities divided between PO and SM.

- didn’t answer directly – claimed only personal experience not enough to answer
- “fit”

6) Can agile/scrum events be used as Continuing education units?

- basically, yes… submit forms to request PDUs

Ken Schwaber asked for show of hands for PMPs in the audience.  I’d guess about 1/5 to 1/4 raised their hands.

EDITOR’S NOTE:
Honestly, I think this guy probably has a lot of valuable stuff to contribute.  Most executives do.  But I think that this audience did not see the opportunity.

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