Agile Tour 2009 Open Jam Part 2

Once again Agile Tour was an exciting event in the Philadelphia area. There was lots of energy around as beginners and practitioners could find an avenue to increase their agile knowledge.

The OpenJam gave people an opportunity to have open honest dialog around topics that they were passionate about. My blog first entry on the OpenJam covered the great topic of certifications.

This time I want to provide the session "Scum is Evil???" This was a great talk, where people could discuss the benefits of scrum over something like waterfall. It also got into issues where scrum just didn't go far enough.

I'll start with the list of cards from Scrum is Good, it is a much shorter list.

Scrum is Good:

Team Building

Burn Down Chart

Gave Agile Legs

Feedback Cycle

Regular Deliver of Software

Make Crap Visible

Failures have pushed evolution of Agile

Fail Faster then Waterfall

Customer Interaction

Scrum failure is visibility to Failure

Alternative to PMI
Works for Waterfall Executive Organizations

Scrum Tackles People Problems

Proven Process Documented

Generates Excitement about Development

Scrum is Evil:

Makes You Believe it Works

Failure is Delayed

Not Agile Revolution

$$$ For Certification

The Scrum Black Book
Outlived Initial Fame

Easy to be Evil

Scrum is the only Solution

TDD was not part until 2008

Separate from AgileAliance

No Change New Word

Product Manager on a Team

No Development Practices

Title of Scrum Master

Deceptive Marketing

Control

Burn Down Chart

Intentions are Wrong

Scrum Master is not a Coach

People play the wrong role

Scrum Failure is not Agile Failure

People do not Venture out of Scrum

Certification is Evil

Feedback has no Solution

Chicken Pig is divisive

Micro Manage and Oppress People

No Tools for Solving Problems

Leaves Staff Out

Is a Buffet of Practices

Agile Tour 2009 Open Jam Part 1

Agile 2009 came to Philadelphia and had some great sessions. It provided information for people new to Agile as well as experienced.

One of the three options available included an Open Jam. We had 3 topics that covered Certification, Scrum is Evil?, and Agile in a ERP. I want to thank all of the people who attended Open Jam. The discussion was great. For those who missed the sessions consider joining an open space discussion in the future.

The notes I have are based on index cards that were captured as part of the discussion. This blog entry will only cover the Certification topic that took place during session one. Look for the next entries in the coming days.

There were three main topics that came around our starting point of Scrum Certified Developers and scrum.org.

Certification:

Certified Developer

Training $4,000

Who can pay for training

3 day scrum training

Can't teach in 40 hr course

Language Specific certification is Bad

What skills should Agile developer have

Agility assessment

scrum.org scrum assessment online test

Who's plan is best for training?

Tom Mellor is the new Pres of Scrum Alliance

World Scrum board

Agile

What is Agile?

Distributes agile

Dev in one area, QA elsewhere

Lean vs Scrum, XP is Dead?

XP, pairing, TDD

Tracer bullet

Product people/QA Agile training is challenge

Team easy to work with

TDD is not QA

Use Manifesto to help push Agile

Buffet of practices

New AgilePhilly site, no feedback

General feedback people do not give

Start up XP/Scrum problem with no customer

Customer quick iterations

Feedback to create new stories

Improvement

Who tries to learn Agile

Incremental learning

Practices of an Agile Developer - Book

Read books

Participate in an Open Source project

Warcraft Quests to level up in Agile

Technology is always changing

Everyone is a social Web expert

Acknowledge flaws and improve

Blame/ownership CoCO

Egoless developer

Awaken developers abound Ego hold back

Discussion groups help learn

Hire for behavior not knowledge

Able to adapt to new environment

Teach other to learn

Learn from others