Agile trainings and coaching @EPAM Czech Republic

Prague, ‘the City of 100 Spires’. I and Bogi were invited to deliver Agile related trainings and coaching for EPAM Czech Republic. ‘Agile thinking’, ‘Self-organizing teams’ and ‘Product Owner basics’ trainings, along with coaching on different topics were requested. Unfortunately, our stay in Prague clashed with the coldest Jan days and the freezing wind, impeding any tourist-wanna-be attempts. Nevertheless, the experience with the Czech Agile enthusiasts was great enough to compensate for the impolite weather.

(photos courtesy of EPAM)

Agile thinking

Our opening show was ‘Agile thinking’ delivered in two consecutive days. It covers all the stuff needed to adopt the mindset, the values and the principles. We went through all the advantages of being adaptable, nimble and improvements hungry. Covered the difference between vision and goal. Experienced setting a goal, understanding the context and delivering in iterations to get continuous feedback as soon as possible. In the end we briefly covered Scrum and the incorrect implementation when the thinking & beliefs (mindset and values) are missing or not adopted

Self-organizing teams

Designed as a half-a-day experience we let the audience self-organize and self-manage ‘in order to save the Earth’. It was a brilliant-gamified event in which the participants went through different stages, experiencing the depth and dynamics of self-organization, and created efficient and performing team(s). The journey, I am certain, none of the participants will ever forget - the common goal, the consistent endeavor, the stages, the challenges, the learning and the overall performance. The audience was mesmerized and totally engaged from the first minute until the very end.

Product Owner basics

It was the cherry on the cake. We concluded our ‘trainings sprint’, delivering for the current and future ‘business folks’, who would like to challenge themselves and become great product owners. Covering the role, the mindset, and the skill set, the participants took part in consistent gamified events, and practiced ‘gathering info from the stakeholders’, ‘creating artifacts’, ‘presenting to and refining the backlog items with the development team,’ and ‘reviewing the completed/incomplete work over a comprehensive review with multiple scenarios’.

During our visit, we were dragged into interesting conversations and coached the fellow colleagues into topics like ‘advanced Scrum-mastering’, ‘how to adopt Agile with Waterfall mindset clients’, ‘what is the role of the manager in Agile environment’, etc…

Exhausted, and happy we landed at SOF airport at the last day of our trip, recalling the amazing moments and feeling grateful for the whole experience. Thank you EPAM Prague!

'Agile thinking' training

It's been an amazing year. Myself and Bogi prepared, polished and delivered a great number of talks, trainings and events @EPAM. We ran sessions on Agile, Scrum, Public speaking, Creative thinking, Soft skills and more. Over December we ran a couple of sessions of the revamped 'Agile thinking' training. A group of young and motivated enthusiasts practiced their skills and learned about: setting up vision & goals, understanding the context, delivering in iterations, getting feedback, teams collaboration, reducing waste, kaizen, and Scrum. It was great, we had a lot of fun and enjoyed every minute of talking and doing with the awesome trainees.

Let me share the experience and spirit, using a couple of photos (courtesy of EPAM Bulgaria)

Agile and Scrum training for the future generation

Renovated building, infrastructure, completely refurnished and equipped with modern hardware. Welcome to the new Professional High School for Computer Programming and Innovations in Burgas.

Myself and Smilen were commissioned to deliver Agile and Scrum training for 120 fresh students.

It was intensive, but engaging and we all had a lot of fun. We presented very little, mainly about Scrum values and how we use them @EPAM and our teams. The main event was a workshop to encourage the students to use the Scrum framework and produce real value and products in a couple of short sprints.

Let the pictures speak

Begin with the end in mind… shall we?

So, we’ve been reviewing the ‘Agile thinking’ training, together with my friend and lead trainer Jonathan Moss and we jumped into a short philosophical discussion.

At the beginning the training itself teaches that in Agile thinking we should:
1. ‘Begin with the end in mind’ (a well know ‘habit of highly effective people’)
2. ‘Understand the context’

My challenge to Jonathan was, that both of those could be wrongly interpreted by the trainees. The point is - when we adopt Agile mindset and values, we rarely think about the end, I would even argue that there is no end at all. The beauty of our mindset is that we only need a vision and short-term goals in order to deliver value, again, and again, and again. We start seeing our products, services, achievements, even our life goals as a journey, and not as a destination anymore... gotcha, there is no end anymore. Yes, we agree we have a long-term vision. And that’s it – more we see as a waste, as a subject to a change in the future anyway… so why bother?

On the opposite we have the visualization techniques and principles, which are indeed extremely powerful.

First you need to imagine your dream -> (then) visualize it in details -> believe in it -> work your a** off – in order to achieve it

Conor McGregor’s achievements are great example of how far such thinking & believing could lead you in life:

Bending the reality, objecting the facts, trying to tame the Universe so it obeys and supports us in achieving our dreams in details are indeed amazing, extraordinary and powerful tools and mindset…  But those could also lead to a life dedicated to chasing illusions…

And as Agile-thinking-monkeys, most of us are a little bit more practical. We know that ‘Only the ladder is real… the climb is all there is :)’ (by Petyr Baelish's Chaos is a ladder)… And so often we are fine, to bend our dreams, our products, even change our vision in order to deliver value and satisfy our users and clients – here and now. And it is something to be clearly communicated over the ‘Agile thinking’ training. We don’t expect to visualize/understand/know ‘the end’ in our mind in order to start delivering value and get feedback…

Pretty much the same goes to the ‘understanding the context’ principle. We do not expect to understand everything, or even the majority of the surrounding area (the context). We only need to understand the context for the next iteration (step), to work our way through the darkness, just to illuminate more and more of the context with each delivery and feedback.