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CodeLean Continues Its Success Streak with Its Eighth ScrumMaster Training
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
CodeLean Inc. hosted another successful Certified ScrumMaster training course last April 11–12, 2011, at the Diamond Hotel in Manila. A total of thirty individuals participated, with representatives from various companies including Hewlett-Packard, Sunbelt Software, Procter & Gamble, Emerson, and NV Besix SA.
The two-day course, the eighth conducted by CodeLean, was once more under the expert guidance of Bas Vodde, a certified ScrumMaster and ScrumAlliance.org coach who founded Singapore-based consulting company Odd-e, which specializes in Agile and Lean development training and coaching. With Vodde this time around was Alan Atlas, a certified ScrumMaster and Agile coach at Rally Software. Atlas is also credited as the first Scrum trainer/coach at Amazon.com.
The course was a fusion of lecture, activities, and interaction between the participants and the ScrumMasters, wherein the Scrum framework for the development of products was comprehensively discussed. Topics included the foundation and details of Scrum; the waterfall process; the Agile Manifesto; Agile development model, product life cycle, and planning; ScrumMaster as a change agent; product backlog; sprint planning, review, and retrospective; release planning; ScrumMaster responsibilities, skills, and traits; and Scrum values.
The Scrum meeting method was also on the agenda. These meetings are brief daily gatherings intended to keep teams and projects on track, help members complete their work, identify problems early on, and increase productivity. Regarding this, Joseph Pelias of Sunbelt Software had this to say: “Potentially shippable software at the end of every iteration is beneficial to our operations.”
Prior the training, many of the participants believed they were already practicing Scrum based on the books and manuals they’ve read. However, after the back-and-forth and exercises with the trainers, they realized the case was otherwise. Ian Pacaña, a development manager of a software company, revealed, “At first, I thought that the training was going to be trivial since I’ve been doing Scrum since 2007. I was blown away to realize that there was more to Scrum than what I thought I understood it to be. I learned that what I’ve been doing was probably only half of what a real Scrum team should be doing.”
Other participants enrolled in the course on their own. When asked what the best thing taken from the course was, first-timer Sheila Nambatac answered, “I guess it would be the real-life stories on how Scrum failed and succeeded in projects.”
Meanwhile, Carmen Luz Cueto-Pacaña, information systems chairperson of De La Salle–College of Saint Benilde, felt the best part of the training was the Q&A portion, which “can’t be read in books.” She said that Agile is challenging to adopt, incorporate, and teach to students, especially since, admittedly, most institutions are still practicing the waterfall model (the traditional method). Thus, it was great, she considered, to have two qualified trainers answer both the practical and complicated questions regarding Scrum.
Some felt that the two days wasn’t enough. According to Jonathan Christopher Rivera of Emerson, although the course “defined well” how a ScrumMaster should perform, “I wish it’s a three-day training.” Rivera also hoped for more case studies concerning various companies to be included in the course.
Remaining participants, like Mr. Pacaña, were generally satisfied with the event’s outcome. “The training was really worth the investment. I would recommend the training to both Scrum beginners and experienced individuals who are serious about Scrum. The greatest teachers were the experiences shared by the CST facilitators. They answered a lot of my questions and doubts about Scrum which I’ve had for years . . . Now I am more confident that Scrum is really the right direction to go.”
Every one of the participants who completed the course was presented with an official certificate dubbing them as Certified ScrumMasters (CSMs), which indicates that they have been introduced to Scrum’s basic concepts needed to be a ScrumMaster or a Scrum team member. Their names are now included in the CSM registry of the Scrum Alliance, an organization of well-known Scrum experts worldwide.
To register or to learn more about the next ScrumMaster training course this July 25–26, 2011, please visit www.codelean.com.