Certified ScrumMaster

3-day CSM course from Dr. Alistair Cockburn

All CSM courses are taught by Certified Scrum Trainers. Taking a CSM course, passing the CSM test, and accepting the license agreement designates you as a Certified ScrumMaster, which indicates that you have been introduced to and understand the basic concepts you need to perform as a ScrumMaster or team member on a Scrum team. This course also satisfies two elements of the CSD track: Scrum Introduction and Elective.



This unique course is a 3-day introduction to agile development by one of its inventors. The course passes requirements for the ICAgile 3-day "Agile Fundamentals" certificate, the ScrumAlliance 2-day CSM certificate (take the ScrumAlliance self-assessment in the evening or after the course), and the Project Management Institute's Professional Development Units (PDUs).
In this course, learn the history that generated the field of agile development, the roles, artifacts and ceremonies of Scrum, the role of the ScrumMaster, the importance of incremental and value-driven development, as a preamble to understanding how to create and prioritize marching orders for the development team from the viewpoint of the business (as opposed to from the viewpoint of the dev team).
You will learn how to get products to market faster and tune the product to the market more quickly. This course is designed to fit with the Scrum methodology, so that product managers who have to interface with Scrum development teams can understand what to expect from the team and what is expected of them. For those who not interfacing with Scrum teams, the same techniques and thinking will assist in your conversations with your own development teams.
What you will learn:
  • What 'agile' development is, and isn't
  • Scrum roles, artifacts, ceremonies, the role of the ScrumMaster in particular
  • How to interface with a Scrum or Agile development team at the start of each sprint
  • What it feels like to be on an agile project
  • The key properties of an agile project
  • 7 tools for the product owner, including stakeholder analysis, Kano qualities, in-out list, use cases and story mapping
This course is taught by one of the founders of Agile development, and is three days long (not just two) - Expect to learn more in these three days than in any comparable introductory agile class.
This unique 3-day course from Dr. Alistair Cockburn
introduces the student to Agile product development through a series of group activities, introspections, lecture, and practical techniques. It is based on the recommendations for Fundamentals in Agile Development created by the International Consortium for Agile. The course covers
  • Development of the basic mindset and approach for agile development
  • Application of the 4 values of the Agile Manifesto to product development
  • Basics of Scrum, including the role of the ScrumMaster and Certified ScrumMaster preparation as needed for the CSM exam
The course includes concepts, practice and theory, including Scrum, Lean and the advanced Crystal processes. The course prepares the student ScrumAlliance's Certified ScrumMaster exam or to receive the International Consortium for Agile's Associate certificate. The course includes the book Crystal Clear, which shows techniques and work products used on agile projects.
Here is the typical schedule of the class:
Day 1:
Customer-focused, timeboxed development
Teams are given a time-boxed assignment to carry out, consisting of a "customer" and a development team. At the end of the time-box, all the teams discuss what they learned and what they might do differently. Later in the day, they are given a chance to do better with a similar assignment.
Ground rules of Scrum
The class spends several hours reading and discussing the rules and roles of Scrum, in groups and in full-class discussion.
Incremental development with status tracking
Teams are given a project management assignment, present their results to the larger class, and learn some less-obvious aspects of both incremental development and status reporting.
Day 2:
Theory of software development
A class can give only the basic elements of agile. Back at the office, the team has to know how to modify the base concepts into locally efficient strategies. This section goes to understanding the theory of team design and software development, so the attendees can see /why/ agile development works as it does, and how to tune team strategies on the fly.
Communication-intensive development with reflective improvement
Teams are given several tries at a time-boxed assignment. After each round, they learn how to reflect and improve their performance. This active module anchors several lessons important to agile development, and teaches them a quick and effective way to capture lessons after each sprint.
Day 3:
Nano-incremental development
The best programmers work in 15- to 45-minute increments, but few of the rest of the world know how to do that. The best Product Owners or Business Analysts know how to slice their requests into small enough pieces to give to programmers who don't know how to do that. This activity needs about 1/3 of the class to program during the class, with 2 non-programmers per team helping in other ways. At the end of the exercise, both Product Owners and programmers alike see how to slice problems thinner, and how to sequence those slices for maximum value.
Project Planning Jam Session (Blitz planning)
Far from "not planning", the practiced agile team plans and checks it's plan often. To do this, a fast planning technique is needed. This module introduces an index-card based project-planning technique. The technique is used to surface dependencies and unknowns that often disrupt even a well-run agile project. Being quick and effective, it can be done at the end of every iteration or after each delivery, to set up for the next delivery.
Story mapping
This activity introduces Jeff Patton's "Story Mapping" technique, which is used to aggregate user stories into a 2D map of users x activities in order to get a better picture of the product being built. The story map is then sliced for use as a product backlog.
Dates:

18-20 May 2011
Location:

Salt Lake City, UT

Venue:

University Guesthouse
110 Fort Douglas Boulevard
Salt Lake City, UT 84113
http://www.guesthouse.utah.edu

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Price:

$1,900 per person

Notes:

Course Comments

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People getting started in a new role on an agile project, joining an agile project, or needing certificate-completion credits while deepening their understanding of the agile approach. This course is designed for business-side attendees, so don't feel out of it if you have never programmed. Having some programmers in the room is useful to complete the discussions.