Corporate Training By Zack Academy - Certified Scrum Master Workshop

Why Should You Attend This Certified Scrum Master Workshop?

In this Certified Scrum Master Workshop you will learn, understand and execute on the three overarching principles behind Scrum: iterative development, self-management, and visibility. This 2–day Scrum certification training course is suitable for those practicing or looking to practice the art of the Scrum Master, but is highly valuable for anyone involved in Scrum (Managers, Team Members, Product Managers, etc.).

Even projects that have solid, well–defined project plans encounter some degree of change and waste. Shifting market conditions, budget cuts, staff restructuring, or any number of influences will disrupt the best plan while contributing to customer dissatisfaction and staff discouragement. Moreover, projects that begin with changing or unclear requirements make it difficult to even establish project expectations. Scrum is the agile development process that allows teams to deliver usable software periodically throughout the life of the project, absorbing change and new requirements as the project proceeds.

The Scrum Alliance®

The Scrum Alliance® is a nonprofit organization committed to delivering articles, resources, courses, and events that will help Scrum users be successful. The Scrum Alliance's mission is to promote increased awareness and understanding of Scrum, provide resources to individuals and organizations using Scrum, and support the iterative improvement of the software development profession.

The Scrum Alliance® has recently transformed the Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) certification into a more rigorous certificate program with updated content, increased difficulty and a pass/fail outcome. Previously all candidates were initially granted Scrum certification regardless of score, but this is no longer the case. To help ensure candidates' success, the Certified ScrumMaster Workshop provides participants with all the information required to take the new evaluation and become Scrum certified. You will gain a comprehensive understanding of the Scrum methodology while specifically reviewing the behaviors expected of a ScrumMaster through class interaction, case studies, group exercises and workshops. The evaluation is completed online at the end of training, and consists of 35 questions. 

Who Should Take This Certified Scrum Master Workshop?

Syllabus

1. Agile Thinking

In order for us to understand the benefits of Scrum and the nuances behind its framework, we begin with the history of agile methods and how relatively new thoughts in software development have brought us to Scrum.

1. How manufacturing has influenced software development
2. The origins of agile thinking
3. The Agile Manifesto
4. The complexity of projects
5. Theoretical Vs. Empirical processes overview
6. The "Iron Triangle" of Project Management

EXERCISE: The "Art of the Possible." This is an opportunity to understand how small changes in behavior can have a large impact on productivity. This also turns our thinking towards new ideas and a willingness to change for the better.

2. The Scrum Framework

Here we"ll ensure that we"re all working from the same foundational concepts that make up the Scrum Framework.

1. The different Scrum roles
2. Chickens and Pigs
3. Iterative Development vs. Waterfall
4. Self Management concepts
5. Full disclosure and visibility
6. The Scrum Framework Overview

3. Implementation Considerations

Moving beyond Scrum"s foundational concepts, we"ll use this time to dig deeper into the reasons for pursuing Scrum. We"ll also use this time to begin a discussion of integrity in the marketplace and how this relates to software quality.

1. Traditional vs. Agile methods overview
2. Scrum: The Silver Bullet
3. The Agile Skeleton
4. A Scrum launch checklist

EXERCISE: Integrity at a fast-food restaurant. During this exercise we"ll review various options regarding an employee faced with a difficult situation. The importance of providing high quality products to our customers will be explored.

EXERCISE: understanding customer expectations. This exercise is the beginning of an extended exercise involving agile estimating and planning. During this first portion of the exercise, we"ll work with a fictional customer who has a very demanding schedule and understand how our assessment of project work plays a significant role in customer satisfaction.

EXERCISE: : The 59-minute Scrum Simulation. This popular exposure to Scrum asks us to work on a short project that lasts for just 59 minutes! We"ll walk through all of the key steps under the Scrum framework as we work in project teams to deliver a new product.

4. Scrum Roles

Who are the different players in the Scrum game? We"ll review checklists of role expectations in preparation for further detail later in our session.

1. The Team Member
2. The Product Owner
3. The Scrum Master

5. The Scrum Team Explored

Since the ScrumMaster is looking to protect the productivity of the team, we must investigate team behaviors so we can be prepared for the various behaviors exhibited by teams of different compositions. We"ll also take a look at some Scrum Team variants.

1. The Agile Heart
2. Bruce Tuckman"s team life cycle
3. Patrick Lencioni"s Five Dysfunctions of a Team
4. Team ground rules
5. Getting Human Resources involved
6. The impact of project switching
7. The MetaScrum
8. The Scrum of Scrums
9. The importance of knowing when software is "done"
• "Done" for multiple team integrations divided by function
• "Done" for multiple team integrations divided by skill
• "Done" for unsynchronized technologies
10. Internal Outsourcing

6. Agile Estimating and Planning

Although agile estimating and planning is an art unto itself, the concepts behind this method fit very well with the Scrum methodology an agile alternative to traditional estimating and planning. We"ll break into project teams that will work through decomposition and estimation of project work, and then plan out the project through delivery.

1. Product Backlog Features
2. Relative Weighted Prioritization
3. Prioritizing Our Time
4. User Stories
5. Relative Effort
6. Velocity
7. Planning Poker and Story Points
8. Ideal Team Days
9. Team Capacity
10. Projecting a Schedule
11. Why Plan in an Agile Environment?

7. The Product Owner: Extracting Value

The driving force behind implementing Scrum is to obtain results, usually measured in terms of return on investment or value. How can we help ensure that we allow for project work to provide the best value for our customers and our organization? We"ll take a look at different factors that impact our ability to maximize returns.

1. The Priority Guide
2. Product Backlog Refactoring
3. Productivity Drag Factors
4. Fixed Price/Date Contracts
5. Release Management
6. Earned Value Management

8. The ScrumMaster Explored

It"s easy to read about the role of the ScrumMaster and gain a better understanding of their responsibilities. The difficulty comes in the actual implementation. Being a ScrumMaster is a hard job, and we"ll talk about the characteristics of a good ScrumMaster that go beyond a simple job description.

1. The ScrumMaster Aura
2. Characteristics of a ScrumMaster Candidate
3. The Difficulties of Being a ScrumMaster
4. A Day in the Life of a ScrumMaster
5. The Importance of Listening
6. Common Sense

9. Meetings and Artifacts Reference Material

While most of this material was discussed in previous portions of class, more detailed documentation is included here for future reference.

1. A Chart of Scrum Meetings
2. The Product Backlog
3. Sprint Planning
4. The Sprint Backlog
5. The Sprint
6. The Daily Scrum
7. The Sprint Demo/Review
8. Why Plan?
9. The Ideal Team Day
10. Scrum Tools

10. Advanced Considerations and Reference Material

This section is reserved for reference material. Particular interests from the class may warrant discussion during our class time together.

1. Conflict Management
2. Different Types of Sprints
3. The ScrumMaster of the Scrum-of-Scrums
4. Metrics
5. Dispersed Teams
6. Scaling
7. Developing Architecture
8. Stage Gate/Milestone Driven Development
9. Inter- and Intra-Project Dependencies
10. Task Boards, Project Boards
11. Scrum and CMM, "Traditional" XP