I was reviewing the youthful Scrum, and found this course description for the very first course. Some comments from students are at the end:
ScrumMaster Certification Course Description
Why? Agile project management is as radically different from traditional project management as agile processes are different from traditional methodologies. Rather than plan, instruct and direct, the agile project manager facilitates, coaches and leads. This person is called a ScrumMaster in the Scrum agile process to denote the difference and remind the person filling this role of the new responsibilities. Accepted participants learn how to be a ScrumMaster and how to make a development team, a project, or an organization agile. Exercises, case studies, and examples used to bring home the realization of how to be a ScrumMaster instead of a project manager.
Goal: Each individual is trained to be able to assume the following responsibilities: 1. Remove the barriers between development and the customer so the customer directly drives development; 2. Teach the customer how to maximize ROI and meet their objectives through Scrum; 3. Improve the lives of the development team by facilitating creativity and empowerment; 4. Improve the productivity of the development team in any way possible; and, 5. Improve the engineering practices and tools so each increment of functionality is potentially shippable
Taught by: Ken Schwaber, one of the co-developers of the Scrum process, or – if specified in the course description – another equally qualified Level 2 Certified ScrumMaster. Using anecdotes and experiences, Ken teaches the class the Scrum methodology and how to use it to be effective as an agile project manager – the ScrumMaster.
Pedigree: The Certification program was started in April, 2003. There are already over 50 Certified ScrumMasters.
Upon Graduation: As a result of their successful completion of the program, each participant received an individual license and copy of the Scrum methodology, Scrum training materials, and Scrum software. In addition, Certified ScrumMasters are authorized to participate in “open” development of the Scrum methodology and software, ensuring a growing body of knowledge from a qualified, competent group of certified professionals. They are also listed as Certified ScrumMasters at CertifiedScrum.
Topics: Fundamentals of agile and Scrum, running Scrum projects, planning and scaling Scrum projects, offshore development using Scrum, bidding on fixed price/date contracts, and ensuing the adequacy of engineering practices. The agenda for the class is: 1.Teach – Agile and Scrum Overview 2.Provide – Project overview 3.Teach – Scrum 4.Teach – Sprint Planning Meeting 5.Conduct – Sprint Planning Meeting 6.Teach – Sprint 7.Start – Sprint 8.Teach – Daily Scrum 9.Conduct – Daily Scrum 10.Teach – Sprint Review Meeting 11.Conduct – Sprint Review 12.Teach – Planning 13.Teach – Scaling
How To Register: Individuals wishig to attend the certification session should email certifiedScrumMaster@controlchaos.com to make reservations, indicating the course that they wish to attend. A fee of approximately $500 USD is required for attendance, payable by check to “ADM” or in cash at the course. Although not available currently, efforts are being made to accomodate credit cards at a future date.
Course Material: Approximately one week prior to the course, all materials, methodology and training materials will be made available to confirmed attendees. An individual license to use these materials will be issued to those attendees who successfully complete the certification program.
Quotes from attendees include:
“1) We went through the Scrum practices in great depth. We asked several questions and scenarios and worked through many issues on implementation and problem points we had in our interpretation of Scrum. I think most people only had read the book and not the printed manual. The book being a cut in time is good but the manual fills in a few blanks and adds some more information into the interaction of engineering practices. It’s an excellent volume of evolving material. For those going on the course I suggest killing the tree and reading it before coming to the class. 2) We discussed ROI (return on investment) and ROE (return on expectations). A focus was on how to properly talk to the customer and relate these things back. It was not easy, and for many people in the group, they might never have been in front of the customer. At the end, although the verbiage was poor in some circumstances (sorry guys, I was not any better though) I know we all understand the idea better and the important of its presentation. 3) We went through discussions and exercises on how to talk to the customer. 4) We presented a lot of scenarios that Ken filled in the blanks helping us better understand how to implement Scrum.”
Bryan Zarnett, Certified ScrumMaster, Toronto, Canada
“For anyone who wasn’t fortunate enough to be in Ken’s ScrumMaster class last week, you really missed a great class. I think there were 30 or so of us in the class, which was great because it was small enough but large enough that we could learn from each other. The ObjectMentor facilities were great and they did a great job of hosting the class. Ken had a ton of material prepared for the class and provided even more material that I’ve been reading since the class ended. He also told a lot of insightful anecdotes about his experiences with Scrum. At first I wasn’t sure how much I could learn in a two-day Scrum class-after all, Scrum is so “simple”: have a daily meeting, let the team self organize, do 30-day sprints, track the backlog, keep changes out of the sprint, and not much more. However, perhaps it’s because Scrum is so “simple” that a class like this was beneficial. There are so few hard and fast rules in Scrum, and so much of it is a way of thinking about the project, that a class like this-where I learned by listening to examples-is probably the best way to learn it. We discussed many great topics-for example, how to send part of a project offshore to perhaps India or Russia, how to scale up to hundreds of developers, how to estimate even in the earliest iterations. Ken gave an exercise where we planned some new software for the Major League Baseball owners and that was a lot of fun, even though our customer, George Steinbrenner, was a bit hard to work with at times! “
Mike Cohn, Certified ScrumMaster from Denver, Colorado
“Like Bryan, I would also highly recommend this course. I’ve been interested in scrum for about a year so I’d already been exposed to much of the raw material. This course took my understanding well beyond that and really helped me understand how everything flows together. It also helped identify places where I need to improve my own skills.”
Mike Bowler, Certified ScrumMaster from Chicago, Illinois
Ken Schwaber's Blog: Telling It Like It Is 