Certified ScrumMaster

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.

If you have questions on registration or the course, please call Mitch Lacey at (425) 679.0858.

In this course, participants will learn how to stop thrashing and start executing along with everything necessary for getting started with Scrum. There are very few rules to Scrum so it is important to learn its fundamental principles by experiencing them directly from those who have implemented the best Scrums in the software industry.Successful participants will become Certified ScrumMasters, a first step in the journey towards this more adaptive form of project leadership.  Successful participants will be listed as Certified ScrumMasters on the Scrum Alliance website and will receive a one year membership to the Scrum Alliance. Participants gain hands-on practice through exercises including:

• How to plan and run Sprint Planning Meetings
• Daily Scrum Meetings
• Sprint Reviews
• Sprint Retrospectives
• And more.   

The course format consists of multiple lecture topics, group exercises and group discussion.  Ample time will be devoted to analysis of the “real-world” industry experiences of the ScrumMaster Course instructors based on case study examples and experiences managing Agile projects and coaching Scrum teams.

About the Instructors

Jeff Sutherland, PhD

Jeff Sutherland started the first Scrum at Easel Corporation in 1993. He worked with Ken Schwaber to emerge Scrum as a formal process at OOPSLA '95. Together, they extended and enhanced Scrum at many software companies and IT organizations and helped write the Agile Manifesto.

Jeff is the CEO of Scrum, Inc. powered by OpenView Venture Partners and he is an Agile coach to over 20 portfolio companies and to the OpenView venture group which runs all its operation with Scrum.As Senior Advisor to OpenView and CTO of PatientKeeper, he focuses on using Scrum to transform companies as well as empower software developers. 

Jeff is an expert on distributed/outsourced Scrum and on implementing Scrum in a CMMI Level 5 company (see his publications in the IEEE Digital Library). He has has scaled and distributed Scrum using his last five companies as laboratories.

Mitch Lacey, PMP

Mitch Lacey is an agile practitioner and the agile practice manager with Ascentium Corporation in Bellevue, WA. Mitch has been managing projects for over ten years and has numerous plan-driven and Agile projects under his belt.

Mitch honed his Agile skills at Microsoft Corporation, where he successfully released core enterprise services for Windows Live. While at Microsoft, he transitioned from Program Manager to Agile Coach, working hand-in-hand with groups throughout their transition to Agile practices. Mitch continues to grow and refine his skills on the Agile projects he runs every day.

As a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and a registered Project Management Professional (PMP), Mitch shares his experience in project and client management through Certified ScrumMaster courses, Agile coaching engagements, conference presentations, blogs and white papers. He is the author of “Adventures in Promiscuous Pairing” presented and published at the Agile 2006 conference, “Transitioning to Agile: Key Lessons Learned in the Field” presented and published at the Fall 2007 PMI Global Congress in Atlanta, Georgia and "The Impacts of Poor Estimating - and How to Fix It" presented and published at the winter 2007 SQE Agile development conference in Orlando, Florida.

Mitch is currently under contract with Addison Wesley to publish a book titled "Adopting Agile: 101 Tips for Surviving Your First Year"

The course format consists of multiple lecture topics, group exercises and group discussion.  Ample time will be devoted to analysis of the “real-world” industry experiences of the ScrumMaster Course instructors based on case study examples and experiences managing Agile projects and coaching Scrum teams.

Overview of Agile & Scrum

• What is Agile
• What is Scrum
• Origins

Roles: The ScrumMaster

• Description and responsibilities
• What makes a good ScrumMaster
• ScrumMaster as team member

Roles: The Product Owner

• Description and responsibilities
• Vision & the Product backlog
• User stories on the product backlog
• INVEST in your backlog

Roles: The team

• Description and responsibilities
• Composition and cross-functionality
• Organizing

Meetings & Artifacts

• Planning
• The daily scrum
• Sprint review
• Sprint retrospective

Sprints

• What is potentially shippable?
• How does architecture fit?
• Sprint length and release sprints
• Abnormal terminations

Sprint planning

• Prioritization and the sprint goal
• Sprint planning meeting

Release planning and Progress tracking

• Estimating the product backlog
• Release planning meeting
• Burndown charts & task boards

Scaling

• The scrum of scrums
• Shared vs. specific product backlogs
• Getting started & common pitfalls
  

This hands-on certification course is appropriate for all software team members, including:

• Project Managers
• Team Leads
• Development Managers
• Product Managers
• Software Architects
• Systems Architects
• Testers
• CIO
• CTO