Agile / Scrum Training?

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Gawd
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Jul 20, 2002
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The company I work for is in dire need a more effective software development process. I understand the gist of agile and scrum and that is very popular. Anything would be much better than what we have now (mostly nothing). I work for a small company, with 3-4 software developers. They are always open to suggestions for classes or training that would be beneficial to the company.

Do you guys know of any place in the states (I live in the SE), that provides good training for agile and scrum? I'm thinking it could be something I could suggest to the owners.
 
Not sure where in the SE you are located, but PMI Atlanta has a very active Agile Forum, and frequently offers Agile training. PMI Global, the certifying body for Project Management, also has an Agile Community of Practice, which offers webinars and provides a forum for individuals to obtain Agile information as well.

Let me know if you have any other ?s, I'm happy to help.
 
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All you have to know is that the devs/etc under you will despise you for agile/scrum.

That being said, i see the value in it being at a company that makes heavy use of agile/scrum. Helps keep out the bullshit and projects on track.
 
I'd say before you go looking to spend money on agile training, talk to a friend/contact in an agile shop about how well it works for them and how your shop does business and what it needs. Contrary to popular belief, agile isn't right for everybody. You should talk to someone you trust who really knows their way around agile and see what worked for them and what didn't, and what things might or might not work well on a team like yours.

The other thing to remember is that Agile doesn't have to be all or nothing. Some agile/scrum evangilists may make it sound like you need to be doing everything agile, and that just isn't true. For most shops, in fact, doing agile by the book for every single aspect of your development life cycle just isn't right for your needs. Most places do well by taking bits and pieces of agile that work well for you, and skipping the stuff that doesn't add value. For example, if you only have 3 developers, it may not be worth your time to bother with having a designated scrum master. If you only have 3 developers, it might not make sense to have scheduled stand-ups, since you probably already all sit together and talk about the work regularly throughout the day anways. On the other hand, that doesn't mean you can't do sprints, use burndown charts, etc, and it certainly doesn't mean you can't use continuous integration.
 
Dogs said:
I'd say before you go looking to spend money on agile training, talk to a friend/contact in an agile shop about how well it works for them and how your shop does business and what it needs. Contrary to popular belief, agile isn't right for everybody. You should talk to someone you trust who really knows their way around agile and see what worked for them and what didn't, and what things might or might not work well on a team like yours.

The other thing to remember is that Agile doesn't have to be all or nothing. Some agile/scrum evangilists may make it sound like you need to be doing everything agile, and that just isn't true. For most shops, in fact, doing agile by the book for every single aspect of your development life cycle just isn't right for your needs. Most places do well by taking bits and pieces of agile that work well for you, and skipping the stuff that doesn't add value. For example, if you only have 3 developers, it may not be worth your time to bother with having a designated scrum master. If you only have 3 developers, it might not make sense to have scheduled stand-ups, since you probably already all sit together and talk about the work regularly throughout the day anways. On the other hand, that doesn't mean you can't do sprints, use burndown charts, etc, and it certainly doesn't mean you can't use continuous integration.
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I completely agree with this. I would not be looking to impose some rigid software process that wasn't a good fit. The agile method with flexibility to handle changing requirements, stories and tasks, time estimates.. those sound like noble goals. There are parts of it that won't work for us, because we basically have no test engineers, and only 2 people working on a project at most.

Unfortunately, I'm not a manager here and our manager is the manager of the entire engineering department of about 10-12 engineers. No management in the company has software experience and there is a host of problems associated with this.
 
I've been doing agile/scrum for 8 years..you honestly do not need training..read up Ina book or online, then gain experience by doing..
 
jfnirvana292 said:
I've been doing agile/scrum for 8 years..you honestly do not need training..read up Ina book or online, then gain experience by doing..
Click to expand...

I don't know what kind of job you're doing and what kind of responsability you have to assume.

But tbh, do what most ppl tell you, online course or book reading will be more than enought for you unless you're a manager or dev lead.
 
I agree with all of the above. The biggest component for agile to work is management and stake holder buy in. If either of these party don't want to change their process, agile is pretty much screwed. It takes a very good PM to run agile projects and lead through scrums. I've seen a lot of shop fail to adopt because of devs and stake holders going on tangent where meetings are to be short.

For me, I'm a dev that's been around the block for over a decade. I personally see agile as a fad and really just see it as another form of the water fall model where the cycles are just cut down to the bare minimum of a feature implementation.

Hope this helps!
 
You really just need someone who understand process. These are rare in most instances, so a trainer can help.

No one methodology fits every org/resource pool.
 
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