Doug Shimp – Agile Scrum Coach

Two posts caught my eye today. In sumamry these posts were about scrum user groups and how / if they benefit from Scrum Alliance marks to help the build credibility. My response is YES and here is why.

1.) http://friendfeed.com/dailyscrum/a57c3474/scrum-users-group-controversy-agile

2.) http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/04/scrum-alliance-user-group

Context

“As discussed here previously, the Scrum Alliance plays an important role in helping to preserve the Scrum framework through its certification process. Because it has standardized the experience required for various “certified” positions in Scrum, the terminology used to describe Scrum, and, of course, the framework itself, the Alliance has armed thousands of software professionals with the practical knowledge they need to advance in a career in Scrum. I’ve always considered their work to be obviously valuable for individuals seeking training, but also an important reason why Scrum has flourished in recent years.”

Why

Scrum user groups, Agile user groups, XP users groups many of these I have seen come and go. I have tried and been unsuccessful at sustaining these groups and have seen similar patterns from others. However, I have followed others who were experienced and they have taught me.

It is my experience that these groups are driven by people who are not use to some necessary deliberate (self included) structure. Deliberate structure includes officers, organizing boards, keeping it interesting, volunteering, stimulating vibrancy and “marks (like SCRUMUSERGROUP)” from International organizations that help with credibility. These structures help groups sustain their existence. SPIN Groups have years of history, PMI groups have years of history, APLN has better success (different make up of people on average)Agile groups often seem to pop and die like grapes on the vine.

The Scrum Alliance is offering help by holding these marks and building brand value. Structure / value so that the group adopts some deliberate structure to stay organized enough to sustain it’s existence. We (agile community) need to learn from other groups that have a history and stop being so scared when something looks restrictive.

Doug Shimp
http://www.3back.com

So, I found a new tool to play with and it is pretty slick. The tool is free and allows you to make some interesting word art for little to no effort. Here is what you do.

1. Visit Wordle
2. Navigate to the create tab
3. Enter an Url ( For example, I used an atom feed from an upcoming Scrum Training Class)
   • http://milwaukee-scrum-agile.eventbrite.com/
4. Submit and then modify to taste.

Here is the sample I produced in about 5 minutes.

 You can adjust colors, fonts, remove words, increase words etc. The picture is a pleasing refresher when graphics are burning out your tastes. And it looks a lot better than classic tag clouds. 

Please drop me a comment if you use it,  like it and why.

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Remote coaching or distributed coaching can be done through numerous mechanisms.  You can connect with me via phone, Various Online Meetings, Skype, ooVoo, or high definition video. You can connect with me directly on my Contact. Follow my micro blog on Daily Scrum on Twitter or ping me via Skype.

We are becoming increasingly adept at connecting our organizations together in ways that make them much smarter than they were 5, 10 or more years ago. The use technology  for social networking continues to transform the work world of today into a new place.  Connectivity tools, like IM, Blogs, eMail, Twitter, SMS Text Messaging, Cell Phones and the like are rapidly shrinking both distance and time. Connectivity tools allow us to stay connected and build complex thought far more rapidly than ever before. Although we are distributed through time, geography, culture, and language we are more connected now than ever. This new era of prolific connectivity is being commonly called social media and social networking. For the Internet geeks these tools have been around for over a decade. The difference now is that these tools are easy, cheap and readily available.

So, Are Organizations Really Benefiting Social Networking

 Often the answer is “NO“.

Web Of Technical and Social Patterns

Why?

We commonly find organizations adopting technologies and building processes with needless structures at a rate that is chewing away at the benefit social networking technology brings.  For example, we continue to see rampant signs of multitasking, despite a large amount of evidence that shows people do not multi task well, especially on demanding deep thought. Of course we can always walk and chew gum but, how many people can read a novel, play a game a of chess and carry a conversation all the same time? multitasking is an opiate of the lazy minded who want a quick fix for productivity.  Too often, we become forced into bad behaviors and frenetically driven pattens that force us to make the wrong decisions. These bad decisions chew away any gains we make.

We are dealing with the need to nurture and grow complex systems. This transcends traditional ways of thinking and requires a respectful shift and appreciation for how to work with complexity. Devloping a complex system requires a the development of an smart adaptive approach to planning and dealing with new information.

Smarter Social Organizations Are Possible Now

Enabling these smarter organizations is a matter of freeing up the intellectual capacity you already have. The tools and technology available now can bring about a vastly smarter organizations to emerge than we have previously seen. With a smarter organization, patterns of practices will emerge that defy one mind’s limited capacity to understand and digest.  However, a team who’s focus is to help the organization become better can see these things and tune the environment.  Collaboration tools and outcomes need to be applied and adapted by the people using them. A collaborative tools and outcomes enabler team needs to support and nurture a base level of knowledge for that to occur. 

Work From A Know Center

A team who’s job it is to nurture smarter social organizations needs to focus on a simple rules based applied practice. Simple rules are clearly being shown to be the key lever to emerging complex adaptive patterns of behavior. The team will need to continuously adjust and tune the organizations social structure and it’s interaction.

Transforming organization to work smarter needs to be adopted and done in an empirical way. A team that is dedicated to stimulating the environment so that adaptive patterns of practice emerge is necessary. The team that stimulates the environment should be comprised of people who have skin in the game and should be driven by an evidence based decision making process.  These experts should have a passion for becoming adept to leveraging social media as a source of vibrant rapid feedback. Expertise should be developed locally and nurtured through applied collaborative practice. 

Great leadership of tomorrow will  be recognized by it’s ability to bring people together through the use of technology and do not suppress their identity.

Great leaders must allow for individual recognition inside/outside the corporate walls and reward  success through collaborative effort. For individuals this means pursuing professional development through collaborative exchange. This is the promise of social media and the benefit it can bring to organizations both large and small. 

Well I started following the WhiteHouse on Twitter.

This is another step forward for the Obama Adminstration. I hope they can keep the posts real, timely  and authentic.  There is no doubt that this was a brillant move during his campaign.

Do you think this is a good idea? Will this change the way we run our country?

The purpose of this post is to consider Four Pillars of Software Development and Simpley Rules

• Project Management is mainly about “managing the work” or stimulating the environment so the work gets done with minimal telling people how / what to do.
• Source Control if it’s only one file then, I don’t need it of course it is always more than that as soon as it goes over 100 files it becomes a necessity.
• Build automation (and repeatable automated configurations as a whole) shows up after source control and becomes a necessity around 500(pick a number that you think you will go crazy at) items or so. It is a number thing but, I can get by longer without repeatable automated configurations than I can without Source Control.
• Test Automation this shows up as needed after 1000 plus code files. Test automation is all about feedback. When I say feedback it assumes people are already thinking in terms of interface design “start with the end in mind” if not then TDD/Unit must be purused because people are missing critical thinking skills.

Well looks like I just became a Professional Recognition trainer. My background in team training and agile dynamics has made me suited to becoming a trainer coach for their new course delivered to working professioanls. I am excited.

Well now I have added Facebook. What does this mean? How will it be beneficial? 

It will take a lot of time to explore and deepen my use of this tool. Facebook is the most populare of the publish, share and network social media sites on the planet.

Scrum is framework for managing complex product development. It is a management wrapper around that can be used for developing any product or managing any work. With Scrum, teams can regularly deliver a potentially shippable (releasable) set of functionality every sprint (iteration). Scrum uses a strategy of iterative and incremental delivery to provide the agility needed to respond to rapidly changing requirements and business drivers.The Scrum uses a retrospective to constantly challenge its users to focus on improvement. Each Sprint provides the stability to address the ever changing needs of complex product development that occur in any project. Scrum is rapidly asserting itself as the most popular method in the world of agile product development. You can follow up on my experiences and daily thoughts of scrum as a coach and glean an understanding of adopting, tuning and transforming how organizations are changing the way they work.

Are you ready to frame scrum in your organization? – Read Promises to Frame Scrum