Extreme Tayside

Hey! A new Scottish agile group - Extreme Tayside.

ScrumMaster training in Edinburgh - 24th and 25th of November, 2005

Hi everyone,

 

It was a only a few years ago, while researching Agile methods for my MBA dissertation, that I stumbled across the Scrum agile development methodology.  By pure luck I was just in time - by a few days - to join one of Ken Schwaber's early Scrum Master training sessions, held right here in Edinburgh.  I remember thinking at the time that I learnt more about managing projects and leading people during those 2 days than I learnt during the first 2 years of MBA - and for less than 10% of the cost.  A couple of years later I'm still hooked on Scrum and I still think it will change the world, but I struggle to recall much of use from the MBA.

 

So ... I'm delighted to announce, on behalf of AgileScotland, that Boris Gloger and Jens Ostergaard will facilitate Scrum Master Certification Training on the 24th to 25th November in the Abby Business Centre on Princes Street in Edinburgh.  They will also be running an open Scrum-related evening session.

 

Boris and Jens are two of only a few certified ScrumMaster Trainers in the world, both having been trained by Scrum co-founder Ken Schwaber.  They have been using Scrum in various projects and teams and have facilitated Scrum Master Certification Training sessions in Europe, Australia and the USA.  During the course they will share their experiences about estimating, planning, running cross-functional teams, scalling scrum, implementing Scrum in hostile environments ... and a whole lot more.

You can find more details about the course and booking instructions at: http://www.scrumeducation.com/scrumedu/Class/id~10.    The 2 day course costs 1000 euros (about £690).

 

If you are interested in attending the course then please send me a quick note - with absolutley no obligation - just to give us an idea of numbers and make planning easier. 

 

Clarke Ching

AgileScotland

www.clarkeching.com

October 10th meeting: Introducing DSDM by Alan Airth

I'm pleased to announce that the next AgileScotland meeting will be an introduction to Britian's very own agile method, DSDM, by Alan Airth, on the 10th of October at 7:30 in Currie and Brown's offices.

I discovered DSDM in 2000 when I borrowed a colleages training manual for something to read in my lunch break. It was a revelation: the book was suggesting we do all sorts of clever things that I'd heard about at university (iterative development, prioritised requirements, timeboxes) but I didn't realise people actually did in real life. It seemed like I'd just joined a very switched on company. Of course, it was an illussion: lots of people had done the DSDM training but no teams were practicing it. I asked around my colleagues and they told me that although the ideas sounded good in theory, were too hard in practice.

Sound familiar? We hear a lot of the same thing about XP and Scrum from our less enlightened "Waterfall" colleagues. But sadly, our own Agile community is quite fragmented and tribal, despite having more in common points than differences. I've noticed that a lot of (but not all) XPers don't like DSDM - some even say it isn't agile - so I've asked Alan to spend some time contrasting DSDM and XP. In fact, he's given me a thought-provoking paper from a recent conference that does just this and I'd encourage you all to read it before the meeting. It's a very quick 2 pages.

I hope we might all learn something from this meeting.