Scrum deep dive

“We need an Advanced Scrum training” - it has been requested for years, and I have always responded with arguments why such an extensive training doesn't make sense to be delivered, and provided a questionnaire to prepare more focused training-agenda for my employers and clients. After all, there are too many 'advanced' Agile and Scrum related topics to be covered in just a single training, e.g. product ownership and product development; Scrum team and personalities; Scrum roles, events and artifacts; the countless number of good practices, tips and tricks related to the different context and situations, etc…

It seems the first quarter of 2020 was a magical time for me, as I finally decided - 'now is the time'... and managed to prepare and conduct the so-long-waited comprehensive Scrum training, proudly naming it: "Scrum deep dive"

The vision of "Scrum Deep Dive" is to educate, inspire and guide enthusiast in mastering the application of Scrum and make the most of it in order to fully reap the benefits of being Agile, while using the Scrum framework. Every step of the training answers the questions "Why is Scrum difficult to master?... and what would help you improve?" by providing insights on how to get closer to the "awesome state" with any Scrum team.

After the training the participants are able to:

• Identify the root cause of their Scrum-related pain points
• Be prepared to lead positive change in their teams and organization
• Understand the meaning and importance of the Scrum values
• Be able to easily recognize the availability or absence of Scrum values in team members
• Do the "Big 5 personality test" with their teams in order to influence improvements
• Fight team dysfunctions and lead the team to greatness
• Experience and learn from real case studies related to Scrum teams, Scrum events, artifacts and practices
• Learn from the extensive journey of a lousy-to-great Scrum team
• Learn when being Agile and using Scrum framework is not beneficial
• Plan the steps in applying the learning in their respective teams

After conducting the training, the feedback was extremely positive, and the participants shared "Scrum deep dive" helped them to:

• Improve their knowledge of SCRUM, and were able to discuss many real situations from different perspective, reevaluate them and understanding the gain in different approaches
• Understand their team’s weaknesses and how to address them
• Learn how to improve all the aspects of the Scrum events, and how to benefit the most out of the Scrum artifacts
• Understand the importance of the culture, the mindset and how to influence them
• Learn from the different experience, mistakes and bad practices in implementing Scrum
• Support their teams on the path to “mastering Scrum” and experience all the benefits by doing so

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

Mastering ScrumMastering

‘I am playing a bear attacking ‘poor Tsanko’ (while he is pretending scared), Georgi is a hunter to hunt the bear. The rest of the trainees improvise on different roles: a pickpocketer is trying to rob Tsanko at the same time and another tourist is taking photo of us to complete the picture… It’s all part of the improv ‘Still picture’ game, included in the ‘Thinking outside of the box module’… and we had so much fun, creating scene after scene, after scene…’

It’s been amazing six weeks. Together with Bogoy Bogdanov we delivered ‘Mastering ScrumMastering’ training @EPAM BG

The training (in workshop format only) is complete focused on improving the skills of the participants and consists of 95% practice to 5% theory. No lectures, no ppts, no long and boring talks – just gamified challenges to improve skills in the following areas:

• Communication
• Coaching & Mentoring
• Agile team dynamics
• Delivering talks

Our main goal was to innovate a training encouraging everybody to practice:

• Body language & paraverbal communication
• Soft skills, building emotional connection & rapport
• Coaching and mentoring
• Organizing Scrum events and ensure they run smoothly + facilitation skills
• Removing impediments efficiently
• Influencing decisions
• Presentation skills + teaching techniques (engage the audience)
• Creativity and thinking outside of the box

Each training day, a different topic was covered:

• Starting a new team & persuasion
• Coaching. One-to-One coaching
• Team level coaching & mentoring (Daily standup)
• Team level coaching & mentoring (Scrum events)
• Talks: deliver to engage
• Improvisation in Agile (Thinking outside the box)

And it worked amazingly well. The participants outdone themselves, had a lot of fun, and performed on top of their abilities in each session.

The feedback was also very positive (hopefully we would be able to share the video feedback too):

• 'Fun, engaging, different points of view, a lot of practice'       
• 'Very interactive, full of funny moments, very dynamic & interesting approach'
• 'We covered different topics but not strictly following a traditional way of training. We were put into different situations, where we had the chance to challenge ourselves and improvise'

To enjoy more pictures check the EPAM post.