PMI's Agile Certified Practitioner Exam Prep

Increase productivity, improve quality, & adapt to change better

The PMI has recently announced that they will be offering a new Certification for Agile Project Managers. The certification will validate a PM’s experience and mastery of the agile principals and processes. An Agile certified practitioner will have the knowledge of both Agile and Waterfall practices and is able to lead teams on Agile projects. By holding this Agile Practitioner Certification, which is more credible than other agile certifications out there, a practitioner can verify their agile expertise to companies looking to adopt the agile methodology.

Our Agile Project Management experts want to help eligible Project Managers succeed in this certification, by creating an interactive course that prepares Project Managers for the Agile Certified Practitioner exam.

PMI Agile Certification Course Details:

Duration

Audience

Outline

http://www.agile.santeon.com/icagile_team_facilitation_certification.html?itfc=true 

PMI's Agile Certified Practitioner Exam Prep

Increase productivity, improve quality, & adapt to change better

The PMI has recently announced that they will be offering a new Certification for Agile Project Managers. The certification will validate a PM’s experience and mastery of the agile principals and processes. An Agile certified practitioner will have the knowledge of both Agile and Waterfall practices and is able to lead teams on Agile projects. By holding this Agile Practitioner Certification, which is more credible than other agile certifications out there, a practitioner can verify their agile expertise to companies looking to adopt the agile methodology.

Our Agile Project Management experts want to help eligible Project Managers succeed in this certification, by creating an interactive course that prepares Project Managers for the Agile Certified Practitioner exam.

PMI Agile Certification Course Details:

Duration

Audience

Outline

This highly interactive two day session has been designed to give you the ability to experience first-hand what it is like to be the Product Owner of a Scrum team. Arrive prepared to face the challenges every Scrum Product Owner encounters and leave with the knowledge of how to handle each situation. This course is high energy and contains numerous exercises that require attendee full participation. The instructor will help each of you whether brand new to Scrum or adapting to a Scrum implementation identify what is required within each of the Scrum team member roles, learn about Scrum backlog management & grooming, reporting and meetings, and how to return to your organization with a fresh way of approaching complex projects successfully applying the Scrum framework to achieve success. Upon successful completion of this course, and passage of the certification examination, each participant will be enrolled as a Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO). Your certification will be registered and includes a one-year Scrum Alliance membership. The Scrum Alliance is home to additional Scrum Product Owner exclusive material as well as the latest in Scrum information and course offerings.

Course Outline:

Introduction to Agile & Scrum
Scrum Core Elements
Scrum Exercises
Scrum Roles and Responsibilities
Scrum Process Details
Creating A Product Backlog
Defining Requirements
The Product Ownership Cloud
Thinking Test Driven
INVEST In Great Stories
Paint a Perfect Picture
Understanding Personas
Establishing Sound Acceptance
Defining The Sprint
Sprint Planning
Defining Backlog Items
Estimate Capacity
Estimate Tasks
Commit
Sprint!
Daily Scrum Meeting
Burndown Charts and Project Reporting
Sprint Review
Sprint Demo
Sprint Retrospective
Extended Planning
Product Vision
Product Roadmap
Release Planning
Scrum and Architecture
Scaling Scrum
Getting Started NOW with Scrum

It was originally created to train ScrumMasters, but is now used to train teams and the managers around teams.  It is particularly useful if a whole team (or team group) takes the course together.  In any case, all team roles (programmer, tester, analyst, Product Owner, ScrumMaster, etc) and managers and other interested parties can attend.  For example, CEOs have attended with benefit.

While it is a beginner level course, this course includes the practical knowledge to immediately start doing Scrum with a team.   You will also learn not just the how, but also the why.

This course is immersive and intensive, including practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussions.

Summary of the Course

Through a combination of immersive team-based learning, exercises, and real-world case studies, you will learn:

• To plan, initiate and lead a Scrum project
• To establish a shared vision for the entire team
• To generate an agile release plan utilizing user stories and story point estimation
• To lead your Scrum team through planning, review, and retrospective sessions
• To create an environment in which self-managing teams can flourish
• To identify and remove impediments
• To identify, engage and involve business stakeholders in your project
• To take most existing teams to the next level
• Practical suggestions purchased expensively from the school of hard knocks

This training provides an applied understanding of the Scrum process and helps participants begin to develop the tools, insights, and skills required to apply Scrum on their projects and across their organizations.

For more information about the course, click on the Register button. (You will not be “forced” to register.)

Additional Information: The course will run from 9am-5pm each day. A continental breakfast, breaks and lunch will be provided.

Following the course, each participant is enrolled as a Certified ScrumMaster, which includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional ScrumMaster-only material and information are available.  Participants will also get a hardcopy and a softcopy of the slide deck used (and more).

Course Leader: Joe Little is an Agile coach and Certified Scrum Trainer.  His goal is to use Lean-Agile principles and practices to help firms deliver more business value for customers, to make workers’ lives better and to benefit stakeholders.  Discovering business value is one of his passions.  And helping teams discover new avenues to greater productivity. He is proud for several people he has mentored, who now themselves are very strong in Agile.

Joe learned Scrum from Ken Schwaber and later mentored with Jeff Sutherland, with whom he continues to co-teach. He also works with several other CSTs (and friends).  He produces Lean Software training with the Poppendiecks.  His preference is to practice Agile as a combination of Scrum, XP and Lean principles and practices.  Joe was a speaker at Agile2007 and at Agile2008 and at AgileTour 2009.  He started Agile-Carolinas.

Our CSPO course offers a detailed examination of the Scrum project lifecycle and the product owner role, going beyond the basic definitions to focus on how to achieve success as a product owner with Scrum. Course delivery is varied for optimal learning, with activities ranging from case study analyses and in-depth lectures, to hands-on exercises and interactive games. Each person will leave this course empowered with practical, applicable advice and skills they can apply to their own projects and teams.

The following elements will be covered during the one day course
* Scrum in Practice: the course is designed to illustrate Scrum in action.
* Understanding of the Agile Manifesto and what it means to them.
* Essence of Scrum: values, foundations and a new way of thinking.
* Understanding how Scrum values and foundations are related to the practices.
* Get a sense of what self-organization is (and is not).
* Can draw a diagram of mechanics of Scrum: framework, roles, artifacts & flow.

About your Instructor:

Bachan Anand is an Agile Coach and the founder of Conscires Agile Practices. He brings the vision to support others building successful organizations through the empowerment of people and lightweight processes.

During the course, attendees will learn why such a seemingly simple process such as Scrum can have such profound effects on an organization. Participants gain practical experience working with Scrum tools and activities such as the product backlog, sprint backlog, daily Scrum meetings, sprint planning meeting, and burndown charts. Participants leave knowing how to apply Scrum to all sizes of projects, from a single collocated team to a large, highly distributed team.

Following successful completion of the course, you will be qualified and ready to pass the Scrum Alliance assessment exam. This multiple-choice, online test is required to become a Certified ScrumMaster, which includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional ScrumMaster-only material and information are available. For more information on the certification exam, see this page about the CSM exam.

This class is followed by a Certified Scrum Product Owner class in the same location. You can attend these classes separately or together.

PMPs: This course counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Will Learn

• Practical, project-proven practices
• The essentials of getting a project off on the right foot
• How to write user stories for the product backlog
• Why there's more to leading a self-organizing team than buying pizza and getting out of the way
• How to help both new and experienced teams be more successful
• How to successfully scale Scrum to large, multi-continent projects with team sizes in the hundreds
• Tips and tricks from the instructor's fifteen years of using Scrum in a wide variety of environments

Who Should Attend?

Whether you're a manager, programmer, tester, analyst, product manager, or someone interested in working on or with a Scrum team, this course is suited for you. You will leave with solid knowledge of how and why Scrum works. Through practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussion you will be prepared to plan your first sprint immediately after this class.

PMPs: This agile training class counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Get

• High quality training from an industry expert
• Recognition by the Scrum Alliance as a Certified ScrumMaster after passing a short certification exam
• A hot lunch buffet and afternoon biscuits
• A one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, a $50 value
• A printed and bound copy of the course materials
• Planning Poker® cards for use in estimating with your team

During the course, attendees will learn why such a seemingly simple process such as Scrum can have such profound effects on an organization. Participants gain practical experience working with Scrum tools and activities such as the product backlog, sprint backlog, daily Scrum meetings, sprint planning meeting, and burndown charts. Participants leave knowing how to apply Scrum to all sizes of projects, from a single collocated team to a large, highly distributed team.

Following successful completion of the course, you will be qualified and ready to pass the Scrum Alliance assessment exam. This multiple-choice, online test is required to become a Certified ScrumMaster, which includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional ScrumMaster-only material and information are available. For more information on the certification exam, see this page about the CSM exam.

PMPs: This course counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

This class will be followed by a Certified Scrum Product Owner class in the same location. You can attend these classes separately or together.

What You Will Learn

• Practical, project-proven practices
• The essentials of getting a project off on the right foot
• How to write user stories for the product backlog
• Why there's more to leading a self-organizing team than buying pizza and getting out of the way
• How to help both new and experienced teams be more successful
• How to successfully scale Scrum to large, multi-continent projects with team sizes in the hundreds
• Tips and tricks from the instructor's fifteen years of using Scrum in a wide variety of environments

Who Should Attend?

Whether you're a manager, programmer, tester, analyst, product manager, or someone interested in working on or with a Scrum team, this course is suited for you. You will leave with solid knowledge of how and why Scrum works. Through practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussion you will be prepared to plan your first sprint immediately after this class.

PMPs: This agile training class counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Get

• High quality training from an industry expert
• Recognition by the Scrum Alliance as a Certified ScrumMaster after passing a short certification exam
• A continental breakfast buffet, fruit, al lunch buffet including soda, an afternoon snack, and continously replenished coffee, tea and water
• A one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, a $50 value
• A printed and bound copy of the course materials
• Planning Poker® cards for use in estimating with your team

This one-day training teaches the principles and practices that make Scrum effective at managing projects. This is not a lecture-based training but rather, fully participative and experiential. Exercises, demonstrations, facilitated discussions, and more are interwoven throughout the course to illustrate the principles being taught.
The participants will also get experience through a Scrum simulation where they will practice Scrum values, principles and practices by playing the roles of ScrumMaster,Product Owner and team member.

This highly interactive one-day training will enable participants to:
* Understand the essence of Scrum; understand its values, foundations and adopt a new way of thinking.
* Understand how Scrum values and foundations are related to the practices.
* Get a sense of what self-organization is (and is not).

About your Instructor

Erin Beierwaltes has led teams from growing start-ups to multinational global companies with emphasis on improving efficiency of development groups and enhancing business processes since 2003. As an Agile Coach and Certified ScrumMaster she has transitioned groups from waterfall to scrum and has seen the positive effects Agile processes can play in a company. In an effort to improve the next generation of developers and business leaders Erin routinely acts as a guest lecturer for graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Colorado.

Looking for agile training that doesn’t assume you already know everything about sprints, stories and backlogs? Tired of webinars full of theoretical concepts that tell you why you should use agile but not how to practically apply it? Do you want to start applying agile principles in your work but don’t know where to start?

NOTE: the week of January 16th will be skipped due to the Martin Luther King Day in the US

VersionOne’s Agile eLearning series is your fast track to becoming an agile ninja.

Learn the how, not just the why

Collaborative environment

Education designed to keep you engaged

Small class size

All the benefits of being in a classroom without the headache of traveling

What’s so special about this series?

You don’t have time to waste trying to find education resources and grappling with complex theoretical diatribes. VersionOne’s Agile eLearning is designed visually for the way your brain works, not a text heavy approach that puts you to sleep.

This two-day course will begin to clear away that murkiness through short, focused lectures by a qualified Certified Scrum Trainer teaching the basics of Scrum as well as practical tools gathered while mentoring and consulting with organizations learning to apply Scrum.  An important aim of this course is to leverage the wide-ranging knowledge and experience of the participants, so expect a significant amount of this course will be spent in peer-to-peer interactions, hands-on activities and drawing connections between the classroom material and your day-to-day experience.  This course will equip the participants with the knowledge on how to facilitate Scrum in their teams and begin the process of change in their organization.

The learning objectives for this course are:

• List the five values of Scrum and the eight essential Scrum principles.
• Draw a diagram describing the Scrum framework, highlighting all meetings, roles and artifacts.
• Describe the rights and responsibilities of  each role in Scrum – Team member, Product Owner, ScrumMaster and stakeholder.
• Discuss with other participants what Scrum means to you and what it will mean to be a ScrumMaster in your organization.
• Watch Scrum in action as the framework of Scrum will be used to deliver the course material.
• Identify the main obstacles to using Scrum in your organization.
• Practice applying ScrumMaster skills to solve real life problems.
• Pass the Certified Scrum Master assessment.

In addition to the objectives listed above, your instructor will incorporate your learning objectives into the class curriculum, provide regular opportunities to reflect-and-adapt on the class direction and make adjustments to achieve your learning objective.  By the close of the training, you will have gained the confidence and understanding to begin socializing Scrum within their your organizations and support teams with improving their processes.

Who Should Attend:

Any person who is interested in learning more about Scrum or wants to make Scrum work better for their Team or organization, is encouraged to attend.  While the focus of the class is for people who want to learn how to leverage the Scrum framework to bring about change, any member of Team or the organization who is interested in how to use Scrum would find this class useful.

Typical attendees in the past have been functional managers, Team leads, analysts, architects, engineers, software developers, directors, testers and other roles that support product development.

About your Instructor:

Carlton Nettleton, is an Agile software development coach, consultant and thought-leader in San Diego County.  He provides advice, mentoring and training to teams and programs looking to better software quality, improve productivity, build great teams and apply Lean Thinking to software projects.  He has over ten years of experience with software development as a contributor, facilitator and leader.  He is a Certified Scrum Trainer and has been practicing Scrum since 2005.

14 PDUs Awarded
Scrum Alliance CSD-Eligible Course

Limited to only 16 registrations, sign-up now in order to ensure your seat is reserved.

No Prerequisites Required

Who should attend?

• Project Managers
• IT Professionals (Architects, BAs, DBAs, Developers, etc.)
• IT Leadership (Managers/Directors/VPs/CIOs/CTOs)
• Anyone interested in learning the benefits of Scrum

Course Overview:

Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) is an in-depth two day immersion into the world of Scrum. The course is full of practical, real world techniques that can be implemented immediately at your workplace. This course will allow your organization to enjoy the many advantages Scrum has to offer. Hands-on exercises demonstrate key concepts and let you experience the benefits of Scrum firsthand.

Course Learning Objectives:

• The advantages that Scrum brings to your organization
• A solid understanding of the Scrum framework
• Your role and responsibilities as the ScrumMaster
• The fundamentals of Agile Leadership (Servant Leadership)
• Facilitation skills that will help you succeed in your new role
• The importance of quickly uncovering roadblocks and clearing them for your team
• Tracking team performance with Agile Earned Value Management and burn down/up charts
• Considerations for implementing Scrum throughout your enterprise

Benefits:

• Increase customer satisfaction and time-to-market delivery
• Properly align your development efforts around building the highest business value features first
• Gain organizational trust and improve your team’s reputation for on-time and on-budget delivery, by setting them up for frequent success
• Experience higher team morale and productivity with a fundamental shift in management style
• Focus your personal efforts on the highest value tasks that will have an immediate impact on your team’s level of success
• Improve communications through transparency and “pull” versus “push” systems
• Achieve greater flexibility and bring value to your organization by adding another tool to your toolbox

Takeaways:

• Thorough understanding of Scrum
• A new outlook on the way you manage projects and lead your team
• The knowledge necessary for incorporating Scrum practices into your working environment
• A one year membership to the Scrum Alliance
• Eligibility to sit for the Certified ScrumMaster assessment 

Limited to only 16 registrations, sign-up now in order to ensure your seat is reserved.

No Prerequisites Required

Who should attend?

• Project Managers
• IT Professionals (Architects, BAs, DBAs, Developers, etc.)
• IT Leadership (Managers/Directors/VPs/CIOs/CTOs)
• Anyone interested in learning the benefits of Scrum

Course Overview:

Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) is an in-depth two day immersion into the world of Scrum. The course is full of practical, real world techniques that can be implemented immediately at your workplace. This course will allow your organization to enjoy the many advantages Scrum has to offer. Hands-on exercises demonstrate key concepts and let you experience the benefits of Scrum firsthand.

Course Learning Objectives:

• The advantages that Scrum brings to your organization
• A solid understanding of the Scrum framework
• Your role and responsibilities as the ScrumMaster
• The fundamentals of Agile Leadership (Servant Leadership)
• Facilitation skills that will help you succeed in your new role
• The importance of quickly uncovering roadblocks and clearing them for your team
• Tracking team performance with Agile Earned Value Management and burn down/up charts
• Considerations for implementing Scrum throughout your enterprise

Benefits:

• Increase customer satisfaction and time-to-market delivery
• Properly align your development efforts around building the highest business value features first
• Gain organizational trust and improve your team’s reputation for on-time and on-budget delivery, by setting them up for frequent success
• Experience higher team morale and productivity with a fundamental shift in management style
• Focus your personal efforts on the highest value tasks that will have an immediate impact on your team’s level of success
• Improve communications through transparency and “pull” versus “push” systems
• Achieve greater flexibility and bring value to your organization by adding another tool to your toolbox

Takeaways:

• Thorough understanding of Scrum
• A new outlook on the way you manage projects and lead your team
• The knowledge necessary for incorporating Scrum practices into your working environment
• A one year membership to the Scrum Alliance
• Eligibility to sit for the Certified ScrumMaster assessment 

Learn the  fundamentals of agile development, the role of the tester in the agile team, and the agile testing processes. From user stories and through development and testing, this course prepares you to be a valuable member of an agile development team. Explore the business and technology-facing tests agile projects demand and how agile testers help the project succeed. Learn about the techniques of Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD)—the cornerstones of agile testing. Practice the technical and team skills you and your fellow testers need for success in the brave new world of agile development.

Practice of Agile Testing Techniques
Explore agile testing processes in an informal and interactive workshop setting. Examples are studied through a series of small group exercises and discussions.

Who Should Attend? 
This course is appropriate for both novice and experienced software testers. Developers expected to test within agile teams will find this course extremely useful. Test and development managers also will benefit from this course. A background of basic development and testing processes is helpful.

• Definition of Scrum: Basic Scrum background and framework, principles and values which ensure the correct understanding of Scrum.
• Scrum theory:the three legs of Scrum theory (transparency, inspection and adaptation) are explanied. Resultant and fundamental values are examined in details: responsibility, self-organization and self-management, sense of urgency, commitment, technical excellence, rhythm, discipline, respect and courage.
• Scrum framework: The meetings, artifacts and roles that make up the Scrum process.
• Scrum practices: Estimation, planning, user stories, planning poker, prioritization techniques and other practices which are commonly used in Scrum.
• Agile Leadership: What is it and why is it important for a ScrumMaster? Common models of Leadership.
• Coaching and facilitation: Coaching definition, coaching scenarios, and facilitation techniques used by ScrumMasters.
• ScrumMaster’s Soft Skills: Helpful hints and techniques for building high performing teams, conflict management, practical techniques for the daily work of a ScrumMaster.
• Scrum Evolution: Applying Scrum in more than one project, Scrum with geographically distributed teams (real cases), Scrum of Scrums, Product Owner configuration, Scrum beyond software, Scrum and pre-defined techniques like PMBOK, CMMI.
• Other topics as required by the attendees.

Target audience:

Project Managers, Software Developers, Functional Managers, Operations, Sales, Marketing, Engineers and Architects, executives.

Prerequisites: Experience with project management.

• Definition of Scrum: Basic Scrum background and framework, principles and values which ensure the correct understanding of Scrum.
• Scrum theory:the three legs of Scrum theory (transparency, inspection and adaptation) are explanied. Resultant and fundamental values are examined in details: responsibility, self-organization and self-management, sense of urgency, commitment, technical excellence, rhythm, discipline, respect and courage.
• Scrum framework: The meetings, artifacts and roles that make up the Scrum process.
• Scrum practices: Estimation, planning, user stories, planning poker, prioritization techniques and other practices which are commonly used in Scrum.
• Agile Leadership: What is it and why is it important for a ScrumMaster? Common models of Leadership.
• Coaching and facilitation: Coaching definition, coaching scenarios, and facilitation techniques used by ScrumMasters.
• ScrumMaster’s Soft Skills: Helpful hints and techniques for building high performing teams, conflict management, practical techniques for the daily work of a ScrumMaster.
• Scrum Evolution: Applying Scrum in more than one project, Scrum with geographically distributed teams (real cases), Scrum of Scrums, Product Owner configuration, Scrum beyond software, Scrum and pre-defined techniques like PMBOK, CMMI.
• Other topics as required by the attendees.

Target audience:

Project Managers, Software Developers, Functional Managers, Operations, Sales, Marketing, Engineers and Architects, executives.

Prerequisites: Experience with project management.

This two-day course will begin to clear away that murkiness through short, focused lectures by a qualified Certified Scrum Trainer teaching the basics of Scrum as well as practical tools gathered while mentoring and consulting with organizations learning to apply Scrum.  An important aim of this course is to leverage the wide-ranging knowledge and experience of the participants, so expect a significant amount of this course will be spent in peer-to-peer interactions, hands-on activities and drawing connections between the classroom material and your day-to-day experience.  This course will equip the participants with the knowledge on how to facilitate Scrum in their teams and begin the process of change in their organization.

The learning objectives for this course are:

• List the five values of Scrum and the eight essential Scrum principles.
• Draw a diagram describing the Scrum framework, highlighting all meetings, roles and artifacts.
• Describe the rights and responsibilities of  each role in Scrum – Team member, Product Owner, ScrumMaster and stakeholder.
• Discuss with other participants what Scrum means to you and what it will mean to be a ScrumMaster in your organization.
• Watch Scrum in action as the framework of Scrum will be used to deliver the course material.
• Identify the main obstacles to using Scrum in your organization.
• Practice applying ScrumMaster skills to solve real life problems.
• Pass the Certified Scrum Master assessment.

In addition to the objectives listed above, your instructor will incorporate your learning objectives into the class curriculum, provide regular opportunities to reflect-and-adapt on the class direction and make adjustments to achieve your learning objective.  By the close of the training, you will have gained the confidence and understanding to begin socializing Scrum within their your organizations and support teams with improving their processes.

Who Should Attend:

Any person who is interested in learning more about Scrum or wants to make Scrum work better for their Team or organization, is encouraged to attend.  While the focus of the class is for people who want to learn how to leverage the Scrum framework to bring about change, any member of Team or the organization who is interested in how to use Scrum would find this class useful.

Typical attendees in the past have been functional managers, Team leads, analysts, architects, engineers, software developers, directors, testers and other roles that support product development.

About your Instructor:

Carlton Nettleton, is an Agile software development coach, consultant and thought-leader in San Diego County.  He provides advice, mentoring and training to teams and programs looking to better software quality, improve productivity, build great teams and apply Lean Thinking to software projects.  He has over ten years of experience with software development as a contributor, facilitator and leader.  He is a Certified Scrum Trainer and has been practicing Scrum since 2005.

• “I’ve worked with Agile in the past, but after this training I can see what was missing and why it was not successfully applied”
• “A lot of interaction with instructor which helped a lot”
• “The labs were a great asset to learning the material”

Agile Scrum Boot Camp Toronto Course Description

The course will provide you with everything needed to be part of an agile managed software development project and give you the skills to become a high producing agile team.

In this 2 day course you will use a software development scenario to develop user stories for the product backlog, create a release plan for stakeholders, execute a sprint, including sprint planning, facilitate daily scrum meetings, track team progress on a burn-down chart and participate in demonstration and retrospective meetings.

Our course instructors are Certified ScrumMasters and software architects who have spent their time in the trenches.

Certified Scrum Product Owner Training teaches you, the product owner, how to use the product backlog as a tool for success. As you watch the product take shape, iteration after iteration, you can restructure the Product Backlog to incorporate your insights or respond to changes in business conditions. You can also identify and cancel unsuccessful projects early, often within the first several months. The Certified Scrum Product Owner; course equips you with what you need to achieve success with Scrum.

Intuitive and lightweight, the Scrum process delivers completed increments of the product at rapid, regular intervals, usually from every two weeks to a month. Rather than the traditional system of turning a project over to a project manager while you then wait and hope for the best, Scrum offers an effective alternative, made even more attractive when considering the statistics of traditional product approaches in which over 50% of all projects fail and those that succeed deliver products in which 64% of the functionality is rarely or never used.

Let us help you avoid becoming one of these statistics.

Following successful completion of the course, each participant will be designated a Certified Scrum Product Owner. This certification includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional member-only material and information are available.

PMPs: This course counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Will Learn

• Practical, project-proven practices
• How to write user stories for the product backlog
• Proven techniques for prioritizing the product backlog
• How to predict the delivery date of a project (or the features that will be complete by a given date) using velocity
• Tips for managing the key variables influencing project success
• Tips and tricks from the instructor's fifteen years of using Scrum in a wide variety of environments

Who Should Attend?

This course is ideal for product managers, analysts, testers, and others who represent and are expected to understand the desires of users and customers on agile projects. You will leave with solid knowledge of how and why Scrum works and of your role on the project. Through practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussion you will leave prepared to guide a Scrum team to success.

PMPs: This course counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Get

• High quality training from an industry expert
• Recognition by the Scrum Alliance as a Certified Scrum Product Owner after passing a short certification exam
• A continental breakfast buffet, a hot lunch buffet, an afternoon snack, and continuously replenished drinks
• A 4 GB USB drive containing a PDF of the course materials, relevant articles by Mike Cohn and others, sample chapters from Mike's books, and other information
• A one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, a $50 value
• A printed, color copy of the course materials
• Planning Poker® cards for use in estimating with your team

Instructor: Heitor Roriz Filho

During the course, attendees will learn why such a seemingly simple process such as Scrum can have such profound effects on an organization. Participants gain practical experience working with Scrum tools and activities such as the product backlog, sprint backlog, daily Scrum meetings, sprint planning meeting, and burndown charts. Participants leave knowing how to apply Scrum to all sizes of projects, from a single collocated team to a large, highly distributed team.

Following successful completion of the course, you will be qualified and ready to pass the Scrum Alliance assessment exam. This multiple-choice, online test is required to become a Certified ScrumMaster, which includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional ScrumMaster-only material and information are available. For more information on the certification exam, see this page about the CSM exam.

This class is preceded by an Effective User Stories course and is followed by an Agile Estimating and Planning class in the same location. You can attend these classes separately or together.

PMPs: This course counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Will Learn

• Practical, project-proven practices
• The essentials of getting a project off on the right foot
• How to write user stories for the product backlog
• Why there's more to leading a self-organizing team than buying pizza and getting out of the way
• How to help both new and experienced teams be more successful
• How to successfully scale Scrum to large, multi-continent projects with team sizes in the hundreds
• Tips and tricks from the instructor's fifteen years of using Scrum in a wide variety of environments

Who Should Attend?

Whether you're a manager, programmer, tester, analyst, product manager, or someone interested in working on or with a Scrum team, this course is suited for you. You will leave with solid knowledge of how and why Scrum works. Through practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussion you will be prepared to plan your first sprint immediately after this class.

PMPs: This agile training class counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Get

• High quality training from an industry expert
• Recognition by the Scrum Alliance as a Certified ScrumMaster after passing a short certification exam
• A hot lunch buffet and afternoon biscuits
• A one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, a $50 value
• A printed and bound copy of the course materials
• Planning Poker® cards for use in estimating with your team

This highly interactive one-day training will enable participants to:
* Understand the essence of Agile; understand its values, foundations and adopt a new way of thinking .
* Understand how Scrum values and foundations are related to the practices.
* Get a sense of what self-organization is (and is not).
* How to support a new or transitioning Agile team and business .

About your Instructor

Erin Beierwaltes has led teams from growing start-ups to multinational global companies with emphasis on improving efficiency of development groups and enhancing business processes since 2003. As an Agile Coach and Certified ScrumMaster she has transitioned groups from waterfall to scrum and has seen the positive effects Agile processes can play in a company. In an effort to improve the next generation of developers and business leaders Erin routinely acts as a guest lecturer for graduate and undergraduate students at many universities and colleges nationally.

14 PDUs Awarded
Scrum Alliance CSD-Eligible Course

Limited to only 16 registrations, sign-up now in order to ensure your seat is reserved.

No Prerequisites Required

Who should attend?

• Project Managers
• IT Professionals (Architects, BAs, DBAs, Developers, etc.)
• IT Leadership (Managers/Directors/VPs/CIOs/CTOs)
• Anyone interested in learning the benefits of Scrum

Course Overview:

Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) is an in-depth two day immersion into the world of Scrum. The course is full of practical, real world techniques that can be implemented immediately at your workplace. This course will allow your organization to enjoy the many advantages Scrum has to offer. Hands-on exercises demonstrate key concepts and let you experience the benefits of Scrum firsthand.

Course Learning Objectives:

• The advantages that Scrum brings to your organization
• A solid understanding of the Scrum framework
• Your role and responsibilities as the ScrumMaster
• The fundamentals of Agile Leadership (Servant Leadership)
• Facilitation skills that will help you succeed in your new role
• The importance of quickly uncovering roadblocks and clearing them for your team
• Tracking team performance with Agile Earned Value Management and burn down/up charts
• Considerations for implementing Scrum throughout your enterprise

Benefits:

• Increase customer satisfaction and time-to-market delivery
• Properly align your development efforts around building the highest business value features first
• Gain organizational trust and improve your team’s reputation for on-time and on-budget delivery, by setting them up for frequent success
• Experience higher team morale and productivity with a fundamental shift in management style
• Focus your personal efforts on the highest value tasks that will have an immediate impact on your team’s level of success
• Improve communications through transparency and “pull” versus “push” systems
• Achieve greater flexibility and bring value to your organization by adding another tool to your toolbox 

The following elements will be covered during the one day course
* Scrum in Practice: the course is designed to illustrate Scrum in action.
* Understanding of the Agile Manifesto and what it means to them.
* Essence of Scrum: values, foundations and a new way of thinking.
* Understanding how Scrum values and foundations are related to the practices.
* Get a sense of what self-organization is (and is not).
* Can draw a diagram of mechanics of Scrum: framework, roles, artifacts & flow.

About your Instructor:

Lisa Montaño, MBA, CSM. has over 15 years experience in start-up and entrepreneurial companies working as a business analyst and functional lead. Lisa’s experience includes leading cross-functional teams to implement customized web interfaces, e-commerce capability, and workflow automation projects. Lisa has experience as the Scrum Product Owner and Scrum Master, and is a trainer and Scrum coach with Conscires Agile Practices.

The following elements will be covered during the one day course
* Scrum in Practice: the course is designed to illustrate Scrum in action.
* Understanding of the Agile Manifesto and what it means to them.
* Essence of Scrum: values, foundations and a new way of thinking.
* Understanding how Scrum values and foundations are related to the practices.
* Get a sense of what self-organization is (and is not).
* Can draw a diagram of mechanics of Scrum: framework, roles, artifacts & flow.

   About your Instructor: 

About your Instructor: 

Bachan Anand is an Agile Coach and the founder of Conscires Agile Practices. He brings the vision to support others building successful organizations through the empowerment of people and lightweight processes.

Projects start with their requirements. How those requirements are documented or expressed has a tremendous influence on the rest of the project. A great way to build software that meets real users’ real needs and gets the project off on the right foot is to begin with user stories.

User stories are simple, clear, brief descriptions of functionality told from the perspective of a user. User stories in agile and Scrum development can be useful to either a user of the software or the customer of the software. These user stories can then become the product backlog of an agile or Scrum project.

The technique of expressing requirements as user stories is one of the most broadly applicable techniques introduced by the agile processes; and user stories can also be an effective approach on all time-constrained projects.

This course provides you with the knowledge and tools needed to identify and write effective and helpful user stories. You’ll learn the six attributes all good stories must exhibit and thirteen guidelines for writing a better user story. The class explores how user role modeling can help when gathering a project's initial stories. During this hands-on course, all participants will have the opportunity to practice identifying user roles and writing stories on a case study.

This class will be followed by a Certified ScrumMaster class and an Agile Estimating and Planning class in the same location. You can attend each class separately or with this class.

This course counts for 7.5 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Will Learn

• A useful template for writing user stories
• The six attributes of a good story and how to achieve them
• How to write non-functional requirements as user stories
• How much work to do up-front and how much to do just-in-time
• How to conduct a story-writing workshop
• Practical examples from real-world projects

Who Should Attend

This course is equally suited for programmers, testers, managers, analysts and even customers and product owners who are interested in applying these agile techniques to their projects.

PMPs: This agile training class counts for 7.5 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Get

• High quality training from an industry expert
• A hot lunch buffet and afternoon biscuits
• A printed and bound copy of the course materials

The BigVisible Certified Scrum Product Owner course is a 2-day, hands-on workshop, filled with practical advice and time-tested techniques designed to give students the foundation they need to succeed with Scrum. Our Certified Scrum Trainers are coaches first, which means that long after your course is over, we have the experience and expertise to provide ongoing support and assist you in implementing what you’ve learned.

Our CSPO course offers a detailed examination of the Scrum project lifecycle and the product owner role, going beyond the basic definitions to focus on how to achieve success as a product owner with Scrum. Course delivery is varied for optimal learning, with activities ranging from case study analyses and in-depth lectures, to hands-on exercises and interactive games. Each person will leave this course empowered with practical, applicable advice and skills they can apply to their own projects and teams.

Participants will learn advanced teamwork techniques, including ways to subtly guide a self-organizing team and how to ensure that all team members (including designers, architects, and testers) are busy on each day of the sprint. They will discover ways to effectively scale Scrum, in one location or on a globally distributed team. The course will explore what it means to be agile while meeting regulatory compliance requirements, how to overcome common problems, and tools for measuring the benefits of agile.

Agile isn't a final destination; it's something you grow towards each day. Learn how to iterate towards a higher level of agility, no matter where you are on your journey.  

PMPs: This course counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Will Learn

• How the same process used during transition can help spread agile or Scrum across the enterprise.
• How the roles of project managers, functional managers, programmers, testers, data professionals, architects, analysts, and others change in an agile process
• Ways in which a leader can influence a self-organizing team
• How to incorporate technical design, interaction design, and architecture into agile projects
• How improvement communities can drive the hard work of organizational change.
• How to effectively structure teams, including how to make proper use of specialists.

Who Should Attend?

This advanced course is suited for anyone who has previously attended an introductory agile or Scrum training course, such as a Certified ScrumMaster or Certified Scrum Product Owner class. It is also appropriate for anyone with prior agile experience who is looking for answers to the hundreds of questions that arise during any agile adoption.

PMPs: This agile training class counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Get

• High quality training from an industry expert
• A hot lunch buffet and afternoon biscuits
• A 4 GB USB drive containing a PDF of the course materials, relevant articles by Mike Cohn and others, sample chapters from Mike's books, and other information
• A printed and bound copy of the course materials

Course Description

66% of software features are rarely or never used. Making the right product decisions, building the right features, and incorporating feedback is the difference between building products that satisfy customers and building products that delight and engage them.

As one of the largest and fastest-growing agile frameworks, Scrum is a simple, yet powerful way to manage product requirements, elevate quality, and accelerate project delivery. One of the key roles in Scrum is that of Product Owner, the person tasked with setting and communicating the product vision, the one who ultimately determines what gets built.

The BigVisible Certified Scrum Product Owner course is a 2-day, hands-on workshop, filled with practical advice and time-tested techniques designed to give students the foundation they need to succeed with Scrum. Our Certified Scrum Trainers are coaches first, which means that long after your course is over, we have the experience and expertise to provide ongoing support and assist you in implementing what you've learned.

Our CSPO course offers a detailed examination of the Scrum project lifecycle and the product owner role, going beyond the basic definitions to focus on how to achieve success as a product owner with Scrum. Course delivery is varied for optimal learning, with activities ranging from case study analyses and in-depth lectures, to hands-on exercises and interactive games. Each person will leave this course empowered with practical, applicable advice and skills they can apply to their own projects and teams.

Agenda & Learning Objectives

Our CSPO course covers a broad range of topics, including:

• How Scrum helps organizations cope with change, budget constraints, quality issues, and more
• The product owner role and how it differs from traditional roles, such as business analyst
• Ways to manage the product backlog and write effective user stories
• Pragmatic practices for managing and communicating the scope and vision of a product
• How to partner effectively with a development team
• Strategies for delivering faster by taking advantage of the iterative, incremental nature of Scrum

Courses typically run from 8:30am to 5pm, though the exact hours may vary. Continental breakfast and lunch are provided and are included in the course price. These informal breaks are outstanding opportunities to visit and network with your trainer and classmates.

Intended Audience

This course is appropriate for stakeholders, business analysts, managers, product owners, and anyone who wants to understand what agile and Scrum are all about from the product-owner perspective. Though no agile experience is required, some experience managing projects is helpful.

Course Benefits

Upon completion of the course, students will be eligible for the following benefits:

• Eligibility for the CSPO
• Ability to apply for 1 PDU per contact hour with the Project Management Institute
• Satisfaction of two-thirds of the 21 required training contact hours for the PMI-ACP^SM (Agile Certified Practitioner) as well as a strong foundation for the associated certifying exam

Why a BigVisible Course?

BigVisible focuses on one thing: enabling organizational agility. As coaches, we understand the challenges organizations face at all phases of their agile implementations: from team-level execution and delivery, to higher-level strategy, governance, and leadership. We know that for an organization to achieve agility, people at all levels must understand agile principles and be educated about agile processes like Scrum.

Our foundational training courses are firmly rooted in the core agile principles and practices you need to achieve success, regardless of your ultimate role in the organization. In addition to this quality training, BigVisible offers comprehensive coaching services, so if you get stuck or find that you need more help applying what you’ve learned, you can call on us.

Find out more about us, our point of view, and our approach to transformation and organizational agility by visiting our blog and website. There you will find in-depth discussions, blogs, videos, and resources to help you get a sense of who we are, what we’ve done for others, and how we can help you.

• Definition of Scrum: Basic Scrum background and framework, principles and values which ensure the correct understanding of Scrum.
• Scrum theory:the three legs of Scrum theory (transparency, inspection and adaptation) are explanied. Resultant and fundamental values are examined in details: responsibility, self-organization and self-management, sense of urgency, commitment, technical excellence, rhythm, discipline, respect and courage.
• Scrum framework: The meetings, artifacts and roles that make up the Scrum process.
• Scrum practices: Estimation, planning, user stories, planning poker, prioritization techniques and other practices which are commonly used in Scrum.
• Agile Leadership: What is it and why is it important for a ScrumMaster? Common models of Leadership.
• Coaching and facilitation: Coaching definition, coaching scenarios, and facilitation techniques used by ScrumMasters.
• ScrumMaster’s Soft Skills: Helpful hints and techniques for building high performing teams, conflict management, practical techniques for the daily work of a ScrumMaster.
• Scrum Evolution: Applying Scrum in more than one project, Scrum with geographically distributed teams (real cases), Scrum of Scrums, Product Owner configuration, Scrum beyond software, Scrum and pre-defined techniques like PMBOK, CMMI.
• Other topics as required by the attendees.

Target audience:

Project Managers, Software Developers, Functional Managers, Operations, Sales, Marketing, Engineers and Architects, executives.

Prerequisites: Experience with project management.

This two-day course will begin to clear away that murkiness through short, focused lectures by a qualified Certified Scrum Trainer teaching the basics of Scrum as well as practical tools gathered while mentoring and consulting with organizations learning to apply Scrum.  An important aim of this course is to leverage the wide-ranging knowledge and experience of the participants, so expect a significant amount of this course will be spent in peer-to-peer interactions, hands-on activities and drawing connections between the classroom material and your day-to-day experience.  This course will equip the participants with the knowledge on how to facilitate Scrum in their teams and begin the process of change in their organization.

The learning objectives for this course are:

• List the five values of Scrum and the eight essential Scrum principles.
• Draw a diagram describing the Scrum framework, highlighting all meetings, roles and artifacts.
• Describe the rights and responsibilities of  each role in Scrum – Team member, Product Owner, ScrumMaster and stakeholder.
• Discuss with other participants what Scrum means to you and what it will mean to be a ScrumMaster in your organization.
• Watch Scrum in action as the framework of Scrum will be used to deliver the course material.
• Identify the main obstacles to using Scrum in your organization.
• Practice applying ScrumMaster skills to solve real life problems.
• Pass the Certified Scrum Master assessment.

In addition to the objectives listed above, your instructor will incorporate your learning objectives into the class curriculum, provide regular opportunities to reflect-and-adapt on the class direction and make adjustments to achieve your learning objective.  By the close of the training, you will have gained the confidence and understanding to begin socializing Scrum within their your organizations and support teams with improving their processes.

Who Should Attend:

Any person who is interested in learning more about Scrum or wants to make Scrum work better for their Team or organization, is encouraged to attend.  While the focus of the class is for people who want to learn how to leverage the Scrum framework to bring about change, any member of Team or the organization who is interested in how to use Scrum would find this class useful.

Typical attendees in the past have been functional managers, Team leads, analysts, architects, engineers, software developers, directors, testers and other roles that support product development.

About your Instructor:

Carlton Nettleton, is an Agile software development coach, consultant and thought-leader in San Diego County.  He provides advice, mentoring and training to teams and programs looking to better software quality, improve productivity, build great teams and apply Lean Thinking to software projects.  He has over ten years of experience with software development as a contributor, facilitator and leader.  He is a Certified Scrum Trainer and has been practicing Scrum since 2005.

During the course, attendees will learn why such a seemingly simple process such as Scrum can have such profound effects on an organization. Participants gain practical experience working with Scrum tools and activities such as the product backlog, sprint backlog, daily Scrum meetings, sprint planning meeting, and burndown charts. Participants leave knowing how to apply Scrum to all sizes of projects, from a single collocated team to a large, highly distributed team.

Following successful completion of the course, you will be qualified and ready to pass the Scrum Alliance assessment exam. This multiple-choice, online test is required to become a Certified ScrumMaster, which includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional ScrumMaster-only material and information are available. For more information on the certification exam, see this page about the CSM exam.

PMPs: This course counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Will Learn

• Practical, project-proven practices
• The essentials of getting a project off on the right foot
• How to write user stories for the product backlog
• Why there's more to leading a self-organizing team than buying pizza and getting out of the way
• How to help both new and experienced teams be more successful
• How to successfully scale Scrum to large, multi-continent projects with team sizes in the hundreds
• Tips and tricks from the instructor's fifteen years of using Scrum in a wide variety of environments

Who Should Attend?

Whether you're a manager, programmer, tester, analyst, product manager, or someone interested in working on or with a Scrum team, this course is suited for you. You will leave with solid knowledge of how and why Scrum works. Through practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussion you will be prepared to plan your first sprint immediately after this class.

PMPs: This agile training class counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Get

• High quality training from an industry expert
• Recognition by the Scrum Alliance as a Certified ScrumMaster after passing a short certification exam
• A continental breakfast buffet, a hot lunch buffet, an afternoon snack, and continuously replenished drinks
• A 4 GB USB drive containing a PDF of the course materials, relevant articles by Mike Cohn and others, sample chapters from Mike's books, and other information
• A one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, a $50 value
• A printed, color copy of the course materials
• Planning Poker® cards for use in estimating with your team

PMI's Agile Certified Practitioner Exam Prep

Increase productivity, improve quality, & adapt to change better

The PMI has recently announced that they will be offering a new Certification for Agile Project Managers. The certification will validate a PM’s experience and mastery of the agile principals and processes. An Agile certified practitioner will have the knowledge of both Agile and Waterfall practices and is able to lead teams on Agile projects. By holding this Agile Practitioner Certification, which is more credible than other agile certifications out there, a practitioner can verify their agile expertise to companies looking to adopt the agile methodology.

Our Agile Project Management experts want to help eligible Project Managers succeed in this certification, by creating an interactive course that prepares Project Managers for the Agile Certified Practitioner exam.

PMI Agile Certification Course Details:

Duration

Audience

Outline

• Definition of Scrum: Basic Scrum background and framework, principles and values which ensure the correct understanding of Scrum.
• Scrum theory:the three legs of Scrum theory (transparency, inspection and adaptation) are explanied. Resultant and fundamental values are examined in details: responsibility, self-organization and self-management, sense of urgency, commitment, technical excellence, rhythm, discipline, respect and courage.
• Scrum framework: The meetings, artifacts and roles that make up the Scrum process.
• Scrum practices: Estimation, planning, user stories, planning poker, prioritization techniques and other practices which are commonly used in Scrum.
• Agile Leadership: What is it and why is it important for a ScrumMaster? Common models of Leadership.
• Coaching and facilitation: Coaching definition, coaching scenarios, and facilitation techniques used by ScrumMasters.
• ScrumMaster’s Soft Skills: Helpful hints and techniques for building high performing teams, conflict management, practical techniques for the daily work of a ScrumMaster.
• Scrum Evolution: Applying Scrum in more than one project, Scrum with geographically distributed teams (real cases), Scrum of Scrums, Product Owner configuration, Scrum beyond software, Scrum and pre-defined techniques like PMBOK, CMMI.
• Other topics as required by the attendees.

Target audience:

Project Managers, Software Developers, Functional Managers, Operations, Sales, Marketing, Engineers and Architects, executives.

Prerequisites: Experience with project management.

Looking for agile training that doesn’t assume you already know everything about sprints, stories and backlogs? Tired of webinars full of theoretical concepts that tell you why you should use agile but not how to practically apply it? Do you want to start applying agile principles in your work but don’t know where to start?

Choose from 5 classes, only $99 each, or take the whole series for just $396:

VersionOne’s Agile eLearning series is your fast track to becoming an agile ninja.

Entertaining, experienced agile practitioners

Learn the how, not just the why

Collaborative environment

Education designed to keep you engaged

Small class size

All the benefits of being in a classroom without the headache of traveling

 

What’s so special about this series?

You don’t have time to waste trying to find education resources and grappling with complex theoretical diatribes. VersionOne’s Agile eLearning is designed visually for the way your brain works, not a text heavy approach that puts you to sleep.

The following elements will be covered during the one day course
* Scrum in Practice: the course is designed to illustrate Scrum in action.
* Understanding of the Agile Manifesto and what it means to them.
* Essence of Scrum: values, foundations and a new way of thinking.
* Understanding how Scrum values and foundations are related to the practices.
* Get a sense of what self-organization is (and is not).
* Can draw a diagram of mechanics of Scrum: framework, roles, artifacts & flow.

About your Instructor:

Lisa Montaño, MBA, CSM. has over 15 years experience in start-up and entrepreneurial companies working as a business analyst and functional lead. Lisa’s experience includes leading cross-functional teams to implement customized web interfaces, e-commerce capability, and workflow automation projects. Lisa has experience as the Scrum Product Owner and Scrum Master, and is a trainer and Scrum coach with Conscires Agile Practices.
 

It was originally created to train ScrumMasters, but is now used to train teams and the managers around teams.  It is particularly useful if a whole team (or team group) takes the course together.  In any case, all team roles (programmer, tester, analyst, Product Owner, ScrumMaster, etc) and managers and other interested parties can attend.  For example, CEOs have attended with benefit.

While it is a beginner level course, this course includes the practical knowledge to immediately start doing Scrum with a team.   You will also learn not just the how, but also the why.

This course is immersive and intensive, including practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussions.

Summary of the Course

Through a combination of immersive team-based learning, exercises, and real-world case studies, you will learn:

• To plan, initiate and lead a Scrum project
• To establish a shared vision for the entire team
• To generate an agile release plan utilizing user stories and story point estimation
• To lead your Scrum team through planning, review, and retrospective sessions
• To create an environment in which self-managing teams can flourish
• To identify and remove impediments
• To identify, engage and involve business stakeholders in your project
• To take most existing teams to the next level
• Practical suggestions purchased expensively from the school of hard knocks

This training provides an applied understanding of the Scrum process and helps participants begin to develop the tools, insights, and skills required to apply Scrum on their projects and across their organizations.

For more information about the course, click on the Register button. (You will not be “forced” to register.)

Additional Information: The course will run from 9am-5pm each day. A continental breakfast, breaks and lunch will be provided.

Following the course, each participant is enrolled as a Certified ScrumMaster, which includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional ScrumMaster-only material and information are available.  Participants will also get a hardcopy and a softcopy of the slide deck used (and more).

Course Leader: Joe Little is an Agile coach and Certified Scrum Trainer.  His goal is to use Lean-Agile principles and practices to help firms deliver more business value for customers, to make workers’ lives better and to benefit stakeholders.  Discovering business value is one of his passions.  And helping teams discover new avenues to greater productivity. He is proud for several people he has mentored, who now themselves are very strong in Agile.

Joe learned Scrum from Ken Schwaber and later mentored with Jeff Sutherland, with whom he continues to co-teach. He also works with several other CSTs (and friends).  He produces Lean Software training with the Poppendiecks.  His preference is to practice Agile as a combination of Scrum, XP and Lean principles and practices.  Joe was a speaker at Agile2007 and at Agile2008 and at AgileTour 2009.  He started Agile-Carolinas.

Course Description

66% of software features are rarely or never used. Making the right product decisions, building the right features, and incorporating feedback is the difference between building products that satisfy customers and building products that delight and engage them.

As one of the largest and fastest-growing agile frameworks, Scrum is a simple, yet powerful way to manage product requirements, elevate quality, and accelerate project delivery. One of the key roles in Scrum is that of Product Owner, the person tasked with setting and communicating the product vision, the one who ultimately determines what gets built.

The BigVisible Certified Scrum Product Owner course is a 2-day, hands-on workshop, filled with practical advice and time-tested techniques designed to give students the foundation they need to succeed with Scrum. Our Certified Scrum Trainers are coaches first, which means that long after your course is over, we have the experience and expertise to provide ongoing support and assist you in implementing what you've learned.

Our CSPO course offers a detailed examination of the Scrum project lifecycle and the product owner role, going beyond the basic definitions to focus on how to achieve success as a product owner with Scrum. Course delivery is varied for optimal learning, with activities ranging from case study analyses and in-depth lectures, to hands-on exercises and interactive games. Each person will leave this course empowered with practical, applicable advice and skills they can apply to their own projects and teams.

About your Instructor:

Bachan Anand is an Agile Coach and the founder of Conscires Agile Practices. He brings the vision to support others building successful organizations through the empowerment of people and lightweight processes.

14 PDUs Awarded
The Braintrust Consulting Group is a Scrum Alliance Registered Education Provider (REP)

Limited to only 16 registrations, sign-up now in order to ensure your seat is reserved.

No Prerequisites Required

Who should attend?

• Product Managers/Business Analysts
• Functional/Operational Managers
• Project Sponsors
• IT Leadership (Managers/Directors/VPs/CIOs/CTOs)
• Anyone interested in learning the benefits of Scrum

Course Overview:

Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) is an in-depth two day immersion into the world of Agile Product Management. The course is full of practical, real world techniques, which can be implemented immediately at your workplace. This course will allow your organization to enjoy the many advantages Scrum has to offer. Hands-on exercises demonstrate key concepts and let you experience the benefits of Scrum firsthand.

Course Learning Objectives:

• The advantages that Agile Product Management brings to your organization
• A solid understanding of the Scrum framework
• Your role and responsibilities as the Product Owner
• Developing a vision that serves as a guiding light for the product and the project team
• Predicting delivery dates and determining release plans
• Grooming the product backlog; how to effectively gather and document Agile requirements
• Establishing an effective measure of business value so that the right features can be implemented
• Embracing continuous planning throughout the project lifecycle

Benefits:

• Properly align your development efforts around delivering the highest business value features first
• Ensure that the right features are being implemented for the right reasons at the right time
• Effectively and efficiently incorporate new insights into the product during the project lifecycle
• Rapidly respond to changing market conditions
• Increase customer satisfaction and time-to-market delivery
• Gain organizational trust and improve your team's reputation for on-time and on-budget delivery by setting them up for frequent successes
• Achieve greater flexibility and value to your organization by adding another tool to your toolbox

Takeaways:

• Thorough understanding about Agile Product Management using Scrum
• A new outlook on the way you develop and prioritize features
• The knowledge necessary for incorporating Scrum practices into your working environment
• A one year membership to the Scrum Alliance
• The Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) designation 

This two-day course will begin to clear away that murkiness through short, focused lectures by a qualified Certified Scrum Trainer teaching the basics of Scrum as well as practical tools gathered while mentoring and consulting with organizations learning to apply Scrum.  An important aim of this course is to leverage the wide-ranging knowledge and experience of the participants, so expect a significant amount of this course will be spent in peer-to-peer interactions, hands-on activities and drawing connections between the classroom material and your day-to-day experience.  This course will equip the participants with the knowledge on how to facilitate Scrum in their teams and begin the process of change in their organization.

The learning objectives for this course are:

• List the five values of Scrum and the eight essential Scrum principles.
• Draw a diagram describing the Scrum framework, highlighting all meetings, roles and artifacts.
• Describe the rights and responsibilities of  each role in Scrum – Team member, Product Owner, ScrumMaster and stakeholder.
• Discuss with other participants what Scrum means to you and what it will mean to be a ScrumMaster in your organization.
• Watch Scrum in action as the framework of Scrum will be used to deliver the course material.
• Identify the main obstacles to using Scrum in your organization.
• Practice applying ScrumMaster skills to solve real life problems.
• Pass the Certified Scrum Master assessment.

In addition to the objectives listed above, your instructor will incorporate your learning objectives into the class curriculum, provide regular opportunities to reflect-and-adapt on the class direction and make adjustments to achieve your learning objective.  By the close of the training, you will have gained the confidence and understanding to begin socializing Scrum within their your organizations and support teams with improving their processes.

Who Should Attend:

Any person who is interested in learning more about Scrum or wants to make Scrum work better for their Team or organization, is encouraged to attend.  While the focus of the class is for people who want to learn how to leverage the Scrum framework to bring about change, any member of Team or the organization who is interested in how to use Scrum would find this class useful.

Typical attendees in the past have been functional managers, Team leads, analysts, architects, engineers, software developers, directors, testers and other roles that support product development.

About your Instructor:

Carlton Nettleton, is an Agile software development coach, consultant and thought-leader in San Diego County.  He provides advice, mentoring and training to teams and programs looking to better software quality, improve productivity, build great teams and apply Lean Thinking to software projects.  He has over ten years of experience with software development as a contributor, facilitator and leader.  He is a Certified Scrum Trainer and has been practicing Scrum since 2005.

Certified Scrum Product Owner Training teaches you, the product owner, how to use the product backlog as a tool for success. As you watch the product take shape, iteration after iteration, you can restructure the Product Backlog to incorporate your insights or respond to changes in business conditions. You can also identify and cancel unsuccessful projects early, often within the first several months. The Certified Scrum Product Owner; course equips you with what you need to achieve success with Scrum.

Intuitive and lightweight, the Scrum process delivers completed increments of the product at rapid, regular intervals, usually from every two weeks to a month. Rather than the traditional system of turning a project over to a project manager while you then wait and hope for the best, Scrum offers an effective alternative, made even more attractive when considering the statistics of traditional product approaches in which over 50% of all projects fail and those that succeed deliver products in which 64% of the functionality is rarely or never used.

Let us help you avoid becoming one of these statistics.

Following successful completion of the course, each participant will be designated a Certified Scrum Product Owner. This certification includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional member-only material and information are available.

This class will be preceded by a Certified ScrumMaster class in the same location. You can attend these classes separately or together.

This course counts for 15 professional development units.

What You Will Learn

• Practical, project-proven practices
• How to write user stories for the product backlog
• Proven techniques for prioritizing the product backlog
• How to predict the delivery date of a project (or the features that will be complete by a given date) using velocity
• Tips for managing the key variables influencing project success
• Tips and tricks from the instructor's fifteen years of using Scrum in a wide variety of environments

Who Should Attend

This course is ideal for product managers, analysts, testers, and others who represent and are expected to understand the desires of users and customers on agile projects. You will leave with solid knowledge of how and why Scrum works and of your role on the project. Through practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussion you will leave prepared to guide a Scrum team to success.

PMPs: This course counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Get

• High quality training from an industry expert
• Recognition by the Scrum Alliance as a Certified Scrum Product Owner after passing a short certification exam
• A continental breakfast buffet, fruit, a lunch buffet including soda, an afternoon snack, and continuously replenished coffee, tea, water
• A 2 GB USB drive containing a PDF of the course materials, relevant articles by Mike Cohn and others, sample chapters from Mike's books, and other information
• A one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, a $50 value
• A printed and bound copy of the course materials
• Planning Poker® cards for use in estimating with your team

Looking for agile training that doesn’t assume you already know everything about sprints, stories and backlogs? Tired of webinars full of theoretical concepts that tell you why you should use agile but not how to practically apply it? Do you want to start applying agile principles in your work but don’t know where to start?

This is a special EXPRESS version of Agile eLearning. All 5 classes will be delivered in one week, series sign up only.

VersionOne’s Agile eLearning series is your fast track to becoming an agile ninja.

Learn the how, not just the why

Collaborative environment

Education designed to keep you engaged

Small class size

All the benefits of being in a classroom without the headache of traveling

What’s so special about this series?

You don’t have time to waste trying to find education resources and grappling with complex theoretical diatribes. VersionOne’s Agile eLearning is designed visually for the way your brain works, not a text heavy approach that puts you to sleep.

Looking for agile training that doesn’t assume you already know everything about sprints, stories and backlogs? Tired of webinars full of theoretical concepts that tell you why you should use agile but not how to practically apply it? Do you want to start applying agile principles in your work but don’t know where to start?

Choose from 5 classes, only $99 each, or take the whole series for just $396:

VersionOne’s Agile eLearning series is your fast track to becoming an agile ninja.

Entertaining, experienced agile practitioners

Learn the how, not just the why

Collaborative environment

Education designed to keep you engaged

Small class size

All the benefits of being in a classroom without the headache of traveling

 

What’s so special about this series?

You don’t have time to waste trying to find education resources and grappling with complex theoretical diatribes. VersionOne’s Agile eLearning is designed visually for the way your brain works, not a text heavy approach that puts you to sleep.

Learn the  fundamentals of agile development, the role of the tester in the agile team, and the agile testing processes. From user stories and through development and testing, this course prepares you to be a valuable member of an agile development team. Explore the business and technology-facing tests agile projects demand and how agile testers help the project succeed. Learn about the techniques of Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD)—the cornerstones of agile testing. Practice the technical and team skills you and your fellow testers need for success in the brave new world of agile development.

Practice of Agile Testing Techniques
Explore agile testing processes in an informal and interactive workshop setting. Examples are studied through a series of small group exercises and discussions.

Who Should Attend? 
This course is appropriate for both novice and experienced software testers. Developers expected to test within agile teams will find this course extremely useful. Test and development managers also will benefit from this course. A background of basic development and testing processes is helpful.

Our CSPO course offers a detailed examination of the Scrum project lifecycle and the product owner role, going beyond the basic definitions to focus on how to achieve success as a product owner with Scrum. Course delivery is varied for optimal learning, with activities ranging from case study analyses and in-depth lectures, to hands-on exercises and interactive games. Each person will leave this course empowered with practical, applicable advice and skills they can apply to their own projects and teams.

Course Description

66% of software features are rarely or never used. Making the right product decisions, building the right features, and incorporating feedback is the difference between building products that satisfy customers and building products that delight and engage them.

As one of the largest and fastest-growing agile frameworks, Scrum is a simple, yet powerful way to manage product requirements, elevate quality, and accelerate project delivery. One of the key roles in Scrum is that of Product Owner, the person tasked with setting and communicating the product vision, the one who ultimately determines what gets built.

The BigVisible Certified Scrum Product Owner course is a 2-day, hands-on workshop, filled with practical advice and time-tested techniques designed to give students the foundation they need to succeed with Scrum. Our Certified Scrum Trainers are coaches first, which means that long after your course is over, we have the experience and expertise to provide ongoing support and assist you in implementing what you've learned.

Our CSPO course offers a detailed examination of the Scrum project lifecycle and the product owner role, going beyond the basic definitions to focus on how to achieve success as a product owner with Scrum. Course delivery is varied for optimal learning, with activities ranging from case study analyses and in-depth lectures, to hands-on exercises and interactive games. Each person will leave this course empowered with practical, applicable advice and skills they can apply to their own projects and teams.

Agenda & Learning Objectives

Our CSPO course covers a broad range of topics, including:

• How Scrum helps organizations cope with change, budget constraints, quality issues, and more
• The product owner role and how it differs from traditional roles, such as business analyst
• Ways to manage the product backlog and write effective user stories
• Pragmatic practices for managing and communicating the scope and vision of a product
• How to partner effectively with a development team
• Strategies for delivering faster by taking advantage of the iterative, incremental nature of Scrum

Courses typically run from 8:30am to 5pm, though the exact hours may vary. Continental breakfast and lunch are provided and are included in the course price. These informal breaks are outstanding opportunities to visit and network with your trainer and classmates.

Intended Audience

This course is appropriate for stakeholders, business analysts, managers, product owners, and anyone who wants to understand what agile and Scrum are all about from the product-owner perspective. Though no agile experience is required, some experience managing projects is helpful.

Course Benefits

Upon completion of the course, students will be eligible for the following benefits:

• Eligibility for the CSPO
• Ability to apply for 1 PDU per contact hour with the Project Management Institute
• Satisfaction of two-thirds of the 21 required training contact hours for the PMI-ACP^SM (Agile Certified Practitioner) as well as a strong foundation for the associated certifying exam

Why a BigVisible Course?

BigVisible focuses on one thing: enabling organizational agility. As coaches, we understand the challenges organizations face at all phases of their agile implementations: from team-level execution and delivery, to higher-level strategy, governance, and leadership. We know that for an organization to achieve agility, people at all levels must understand agile principles and be educated about agile processes like Scrum.

Our foundational training courses are firmly rooted in the core agile principles and practices you need to achieve success, regardless of your ultimate role in the organization. In addition to this quality training, BigVisible offers comprehensive coaching services, so if you get stuck or find that you need more help applying what you’ve learned, you can call on us.

Find out more about us, our point of view, and our approach to transformation and organizational agility by visiting our blog and website. There you will find in-depth discussions, blogs, videos, and resources to help you get a sense of who we are, what we’ve done for others, and how we can help you.

Our CSPO course offers a detailed examination of the Scrum project lifecycle and the product owner role, going beyond the basic definitions to focus on how to achieve success as a product owner with Scrum. Course delivery is varied for optimal learning, with activities ranging from case study analyses and in-depth lectures, to hands-on exercises and interactive games. Each person will leave this course empowered with practical, applicable advice and skills they can apply to their own projects and teams.

During the course, attendees will learn why such a seemingly simple process such as Scrum can have such profound effects on an organization. Participants gain practical experience working with Scrum tools and activities such as the product backlog, sprint backlog, daily Scrum meetings, sprint planning meeting, and burndown charts. Participants leave knowing how to apply Scrum to all sizes of projects, from a single collocated team to a large, highly distributed team.

Following successful completion of the course, you will be qualified and ready to pass the Scrum Alliance assessment exam. This multiple-choice, online test is required to become a Certified ScrumMaster, which includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional ScrumMaster-only material and information are available. For more information on the certification exam, see this page about the CSM exam.

PMPs: This course counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Will Learn

• Practical, project-proven practices
• The essentials of getting a project off on the right foot
• How to write user stories for the product backlog
• Why there's more to leading a self-organizing team than buying pizza and getting out of the way
• How to help both new and experienced teams be more successful
• How to successfully scale Scrum to large, multi-continent projects with team sizes in the hundreds
• Tips and tricks from the instructor's fifteen years of using Scrum in a wide variety of environments

Who Should Attend?

Whether you're a manager, programmer, tester, analyst, product manager, or someone interested in working on or with a Scrum team, this course is suited for you. You will leave with solid knowledge of how and why Scrum works. Through practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussion you will be prepared to plan your first sprint immediately after this class.

PMPs: This agile training class counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Get

• High quality training from an industry expert
• Recognition by the Scrum Alliance as a Certified ScrumMaster after passing a short certification exam
• A hot lunch buffet and afternoon biscuits
• A one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, a $50 value
• A printed and bound copy of the course materials
• Planning Poker® cards for use in estimating with your team

Our CSPO course offers a detailed examination of the Scrum project lifecycle and the product owner role, going beyond the basic definitions to focus on how to achieve success as a product owner with Scrum. Course delivery is varied for optimal learning, with activities ranging from case study analyses and in-depth lectures, to hands-on exercises and interactive games. Each person will leave this course empowered with practical, applicable advice and skills they can apply to their own projects and teams.

Our CSPO course offers a detailed examination of the Scrum project lifecycle and the product owner role, going beyond the basic definitions to focus on how to achieve success as a product owner with Scrum. Course delivery is varied for optimal learning, with activities ranging from case study analyses and in-depth lectures, to hands-on exercises and interactive games. Each person will leave this course empowered with practical, applicable advice and skills they can apply to their own projects and teams.

• Definition of Scrum: Basic Scrum background and framework, principles and values which ensure the correct understanding of Scrum.
• Scrum theory:the three legs of Scrum theory (transparency, inspection and adaptation) are explanied. Resultant and fundamental values are examined in details: responsibility, self-organization and self-management, sense of urgency, commitment, technical excellence, rhythm, discipline, respect and courage.
• Scrum framework: The meetings, artifacts and roles that make up the Scrum process.
• Scrum practices: Estimation, planning, user stories, planning poker, prioritization techniques and other practices which are commonly used in Scrum.
• Agile Leadership: What is it and why is it important for a ScrumMaster? Common models of Leadership.
• Coaching and facilitation: Coaching definition, coaching scenarios, and facilitation techniques used by ScrumMasters.
• ScrumMaster’s Soft Skills: Helpful hints and techniques for building high performing teams, conflict management, practical techniques for the daily work of a ScrumMaster.
• Scrum Evolution: Applying Scrum in more than one project, Scrum with geographically distributed teams (real cases), Scrum of Scrums, Product Owner configuration, Scrum beyond software, Scrum and pre-defined techniques like PMBOK, CMMI.
• Other topics as required by the attendees.

Target audience:

Project Managers, Software Developers, Functional Managers, Operations, Sales, Marketing, Engineers and Architects, executives.

Prerequisites: Experience with project management.

The following elements will be covered during the one day course
* Scrum in Practice: the course is designed to illustrate Scrum in action.
* Understanding of the Agile Manifesto and what it means to them.
* Essence of Scrum: values, foundations and a new way of thinking.
* Understanding how Scrum values and foundations are related to the practices.
* Get a sense of what self-organization is (and is not).
* Can draw a diagram of mechanics of Scrum: framework, roles, artifacts & flow.

About your Instructor:

Bachan Anand is an Agile Coach and the founder of Conscires Agile Practices. He brings the vision to support others building successful organizations through the empowerment of people and lightweight processes.

Course Description

66% of software features are rarely or never used. Making the right product decisions, building the right features, and incorporating feedback is the difference between building products that satisfy customers and building products that delight and engage them.

As one of the largest and fastest-growing agile frameworks, Scrum is a simple, yet powerful way to manage product requirements, elevate quality, and accelerate project delivery. One of the key roles in Scrum is that of Product Owner, the person tasked with setting and communicating the product vision, the one who ultimately determines what gets built.

The BigVisible Certified Scrum Product Owner course is a 2-day, hands-on workshop, filled with practical advice and time-tested techniques designed to give students the foundation they need to succeed with Scrum. Our Certified Scrum Trainers are coaches first, which means that long after your course is over, we have the experience and expertise to provide ongoing support and assist you in implementing what you've learned.

Our CSPO course offers a detailed examination of the Scrum project lifecycle and the product owner role, going beyond the basic definitions to focus on how to achieve success as a product owner with Scrum. Course delivery is varied for optimal learning, with activities ranging from case study analyses and in-depth lectures, to hands-on exercises and interactive games. Each person will leave this course empowered with practical, applicable advice and skills they can apply to their own projects and teams.

Agenda & Learning Objectives

Our CSPO course covers a broad range of topics, including:

• How Scrum helps organizations cope with change, budget constraints, quality issues, and more
• The product owner role and how it differs from traditional roles, such as business analyst
• Ways to manage the product backlog and write effective user stories
• Pragmatic practices for managing and communicating the scope and vision of a product
• How to partner effectively with a development team
• Strategies for delivering faster by taking advantage of the iterative, incremental nature of Scrum

Courses typically run from 8:30am to 5pm, though the exact hours may vary. Continental breakfast and lunch are provided and are included in the course price. These informal breaks are outstanding opportunities to visit and network with your trainer and classmates.

Intended Audience

This course is appropriate for stakeholders, business analysts, managers, product owners, and anyone who wants to understand what agile and Scrum are all about from the product-owner perspective. Though no agile experience is required, some experience managing projects is helpful.

Course Benefits

Upon completion of the course, students will be eligible for the following benefits:

• Eligibility for the CSPO
• Ability to apply for 1 PDU per contact hour with the Project Management Institute
• Satisfaction of two-thirds of the 21 required training contact hours for the PMI-ACP^SM (Agile Certified Practitioner) as well as a strong foundation for the associated certifying exam

Why a BigVisible Course?

BigVisible focuses on one thing: enabling organizational agility. As coaches, we understand the challenges organizations face at all phases of their agile implementations: from team-level execution and delivery, to higher-level strategy, governance, and leadership. We know that for an organization to achieve agility, people at all levels must understand agile principles and be educated about agile processes like Scrum.

Our foundational training courses are firmly rooted in the core agile principles and practices you need to achieve success, regardless of your ultimate role in the organization. In addition to this quality training, BigVisible offers comprehensive coaching services, so if you get stuck or find that you need more help applying what you’ve learned, you can call on us.

Find out more about us, our point of view, and our approach to transformation and organizational agility by visiting our blog and website. There you will find in-depth discussions, blogs, videos, and resources to help you get a sense of who we are, what we’ve done for others, and how we can help you.

About the Instructor

Scott Dunn is an Agile Coach with BigVisible. He is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and ScrumMaster (CSM) with more than 15 years of experience in management, project management (PMP), engagement management, and software development (MCSD).

Scott has experience in social media, systems integration, mortgage banking, healthcare, entertainment, defense, staffing, e-commerce, and public sector while working with Fortune 500, Inc 500, and start-up companies. He has helped coach and train dozens of organizations transitioning to an Agile approach using Scrum. Scott is also the founder of the Orange County APLN.

Scott lives in Yorba Linda, CA with his wife, Jill, and four children, Katie, Ally, Mary, and Ian.

The following elements will be covered during the one day course
* Scrum in Practice: the course is designed to illustrate Scrum in action.
* Understanding of the Agile Manifesto and what it means to them.
* Essence of Scrum: values, foundations and a new way of thinking.
* Understanding how Scrum values and foundations are related to the practices.
* Get a sense of what self-organization is (and is not).
* Can draw a diagram of mechanics of Scrum: framework, roles, artifacts & flow.

About your Instructor:

Bachan Anand is an Agile Coach and the founder of Conscires Agile Practices. He brings the vision to support others building successful organizations through the empowerment of people and lightweight processes.

PMI's Agile Certified Practitioner Exam Prep

Increase productivity, improve quality, & adapt to change better

The PMI has recently announced that they will be offering a new Certification for Agile Project Managers. The certification will validate a PM’s experience and mastery of the agile principals and processes. An Agile certified practitioner will have the knowledge of both Agile and Waterfall practices and is able to lead teams on Agile projects. By holding this Agile Practitioner Certification, which is more credible than other agile certifications out there, a practitioner can verify their agile expertise to companies looking to adopt the agile methodology.

Our Agile Project Management experts want to help eligible Project Managers succeed in this certification, by creating an interactive course that prepares Project Managers for the Agile Certified Practitioner exam.

PMI Agile Certification Course Details:

Duration

Audience

Outline

The following elements will be covered during the one day course
* Scrum in Practice: the course is designed to illustrate Scrum in action.
* Understanding of the Agile Manifesto and what it means to them.
* Essence of Scrum: values, foundations and a new way of thinking.
* Understanding how Scrum values and foundations are related to the practices.
* Get a sense of what self-organization is (and is not).
* Can draw a diagram of mechanics of Scrum: framework, roles, artifacts & flow.

About your Instructor:

Lisa Montaño, MBA, CSM. has over 15 years experience in start-up and entrepreneurial companies working as a business analyst and functional lead. Lisa’s experience includes leading cross-functional teams to implement customized web interfaces, e-commerce capability, and workflow automation projects. Lisa has experience as the Scrum Product Owner and Scrum Master, and is a trainer and Scrum coach with Conscires Agile Practices.
 

This highly interactive one-day training will enable participants to:
* Understand the essence of Scrum; understand its values, foundations and adopt a new way of thinking.
* Understand how Scrum values and foundations are related to the practices.
* Get a sense of what self-organization is (and is not).

About your Instructor:

Manoj Vadakkan, is an Agile Coach, Trainer, and Consultant in the DC Metro area. He has about 20 years of experience in Software Development and Project Management. He is very active as a Leadership Team Member in the Agile Leadership Network DC Chapter and as a Co-founder and Organizer of the premier DC-area Agile conference: Agile DC. He teaches classes on Agile and Scrum in the United States and other parts of the world. He frequently presents at national and international conferences.

Our CSM course covers a broad range of topics, including:

• How Scrum helps organizations cope with change, budget constraints, quality issues, and more
• The ScrumMaster role and how it differs from a traditional project manager
• Pragmatic practices for planning, project execution, and progress reporting
• How agile documentation differs from traditional documentation
• Strategies for succeeding with Scrum on your own project

.

This two-day course will begin to clear away that murkiness through short, focused lectures by a qualified Certified Scrum Trainer teaching the basics of Scrum as well as practical tools gathered while mentoring and consulting with organizations learning to apply Scrum.  An important aim of this course is to leverage the wide-ranging knowledge and experience of the participants, so expect a significant amount of this course will be spent in peer-to-peer interactions, hands-on activities and drawing connections between the classroom material and your day-to-day experience.  This course will equip the participants with the knowledge on how to facilitate Scrum in their teams and begin the process of change in their organization.

The learning objectives for this course are:

• List the five values of Scrum and the eight essential Scrum principles.
• Draw a diagram describing the Scrum framework, highlighting all meetings, roles and artifacts.
• Describe the rights and responsibilities of  each role in Scrum – Team member, Product Owner, ScrumMaster and stakeholder.
• Discuss with other participants what Scrum means to you and what it will mean to be a ScrumMaster in your organization.
• Watch Scrum in action as the framework of Scrum will be used to deliver the course material.
• Identify the main obstacles to using Scrum in your organization.
• Practice applying ScrumMaster skills to solve real life problems.
• Pass the Certified Scrum Master assessment.

In addition to the objectives listed above, your instructor will incorporate your learning objectives into the class curriculum, provide regular opportunities to reflect-and-adapt on the class direction and make adjustments to achieve your learning objective.  By the close of the training, you will have gained the confidence and understanding to begin socializing Scrum within their your organizations and support teams with improving their processes.

Who Should Attend:

Any person who is interested in learning more about Scrum or wants to make Scrum work better for their Team or organization, is encouraged to attend.  While the focus of the class is for people who want to learn how to leverage the Scrum framework to bring about change, any member of Team or the organization who is interested in how to use Scrum would find this class useful.

Typical attendees in the past have been functional managers, Team leads, analysts, architects, engineers, software developers, directors, testers and other roles that support product development.

About your Instructor:

Carlton Nettleton is an Agile software development coach, consultant and thought-leader in San Diego County.  He provides advice, mentoring and training to teams and programs looking to better software quality, improve productivity, build great teams and apply Lean Thinking to software projects.  He has over ten years of experience with software development as a contributor, facilitator and leader.  He is a Certified Scrum Trainer and has been practicing Scrum since 2005.

Our CSPO course offers a detailed examination of the Scrum project lifecycle and the product owner role, going beyond the basic definitions to focus on how to achieve success as a product owner with Scrum. Course delivery is varied for optimal learning, with activities ranging from case study analyses and in-depth lectures, to hands-on exercises and interactive games. Each person will leave this course empowered with practical, applicable advice and skills they can apply to their own projects and teams.

Certified Scrum Product Owner Training teaches you, the product owner, how to use the product backlog as a tool for success. As you watch the product take shape, iteration after iteration, you can restructure the Product Backlog to incorporate your insights or respond to changes in business conditions. You can also identify and cancel unsuccessful projects early, often within the first several months. The Certified Scrum Product Owner; course equips you with what you need to achieve success with Scrum.

Intuitive and lightweight, the Scrum process delivers completed increments of the product at rapid, regular intervals, usually from every two weeks to a month. Rather than the traditional system of turning a project over to a project manager while you then wait and hope for the best, Scrum offers an effective alternative, made even more attractive when considering the statistics of traditional product approaches in which over 50% of all projects fail and those that succeed deliver products in which 64% of the functionality is rarely or never used.

Let us help you avoid becoming one of these statistics.

Following successful completion of the course, each participant will be designated a Certified Scrum Product Owner. This certification includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional member-only material and information are available.

PMPs: This course counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Will Learn

• Practical, project-proven practices
• How to write user stories for the product backlog
• Proven techniques for prioritizing the product backlog
• How to predict the delivery date of a project (or the features that will be complete by a given date) using velocity
• Tips for managing the key variables influencing project success
• Tips and tricks from the instructor's fifteen years of using Scrum in a wide variety of environments

Who Should Attend?

This course is ideal for product managers, analysts, testers, and others who represent and are expected to understand the desires of users and customers on agile projects. You will leave with solid knowledge of how and why Scrum works and of your role on the project. Through practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussion you will leave prepared to guide a Scrum team to success.

PMPs: This course counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Get

• High quality training from an industry expert
• Recognition by the Scrum Alliance as a Certified Scrum Product Owner after passing a short certification exam
• A continental breakfast buffet, a hot lunch buffet, an afternoon snack, and continuously replenished drinks
• A 4 GB USB drive containing a PDF of the course materials, relevant articles by Mike Cohn and others, sample chapters from Mike's books, and other information
• A one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, a $50 value
• A printed, color copy of the course materials
• Planning Poker® cards for use in estimating with your team

You will go beyond the basics of Agile development to learn the practices expert developers employ to write code faster and solve a range of software problems. You’ll discover simple, yet powerful techniques for analysis and design, refactoring to patterns, and leveraging test-driven development to emerge solutions. You’ll identify code qualities that make software easier to build and test, and learn a common vocabulary for evaluating and communicating designs that will enable you to collaborate more effectively with your customer, as well as your teammates.

Anyone who develops software will find value in the techniques covered in this training, regardless of your coding proficiency or current skill level. By the end of class you will have gained an in-depth understanding of how Agile development practices improve software construction, and you will have become a more valuable contributor on any development team.

Course Benefits

Completing this training will give you a deeper understanding of software development using the Agile methodology, and enable you to:

• Employ expert techniques for analysis and design
• Read and write the most useful UML diagrams
• Review and evaluate effective design alternatives
• Estimate development tasks more accurately
• Deliver valuable software in short iterations
• Apply simple strategies for refactoring legacy code
• Create designs that can be easily changed
• Identify key code qualities that improve maintainability
• Recognize pathologies of poor code and know how to fix them
• Use object-oriented techniques to write more-extensible software
• Understand the importance of continuous integration and versioning
• Support collaboration and pair programming, and work effectively with teammates
• Write software that supports an iterative process without excessive rework
• Define classes based on responsibilities, and model their relationships
• Learn a common vocabulary for evaluating and communicating designs
• Refactor to design patterns just-in-time to avoid upfront overdesign
• Use test-driven development practices to build higher-quality software
• Master iterative development techniques for emerging designs

Who Should Take This Course:

This training will benefit all software-development team members, including architects; business analysts; DBAs; designers, developers and development managers; directors; documentation specialists; operations and support staff; product and project managers; software engineers/ programmers; testers; technical analysts, leads and writers; and QA engineers. Familiarity with basic Object-Oriented (OO) concepts and terminology is recommended.

Agenda

Session 1—Agile Fundamentals: Introduction, Agile Principles, Agile Practices, Development Essentials Session 2—Agile Analysis: CREATE Software Quality, Paradigms and Wisdom, Principles and Perspectives, Software Patterns Session 3—Agile Design: Encapsulating Varying Behavior, Encapsulating Foreignness, Group Exercise, Exercise Debrief Session 4—Agile Development: Exercise Review, Encapsulating Sequence and Cardinality, Encapsulating Construction, Development Practices Session 5—Agile Testing: Review, Test First Development, Testing Techniques, Refactoring and Emerging Systems

Your Instructor

David Bernstein’s continuing passion for software design and construction has led him to train more than 7,500 developers in the last 23 years for clients that have included Fortune 500 firms such as Microsoft, IBM, Yahoo!, Boeing, AT&T, Sprint, Medtronic, SunGard, State Farm, MetLife and Weyerhaeuser. As a longtime IBM consultant, David trained software engineers around the globe, giving them the skills to write the next generation of applications and operating-system software while earning one of the highest satisfaction ratings in the history of IBM education. Since 2006, he has devoted his consulting practice to providing organizations with training and coaching for software developers and teams transitioning to Agile and Scrum.

Praise for this Training

“This class renewed my enthusiasm for the love of software development…[David’s] enthusiasm is infectious, and you might find that you start thinking better about software development practices.” – Mark Walsen, Owner/Developer, Notation Software “If you want to know a better and more effective way of thinking and working with software, then don’t miss this class.” – Javier Espana, Designer/Developer, Velocity Partners, Argentina “This class is absolutely essential for a modern software developer.” – Arkadiy Tseytlin, Software Developer, ShareBuilder.com

Become a more proficient developer—contact us to arrange a private, on-site session of this training for your team.

View a pdf version of this course description.

See our full training schedule of public classes and webinars.

• Definition of Scrum: Basic Scrum background and framework, principles and values which ensure the correct understanding of Scrum.
• Scrum theory:the three legs of Scrum theory (transparency, inspection and adaptation) are explanied. Resultant and fundamental values are examined in details: responsibility, self-organization and self-management, sense of urgency, commitment, technical excellence, rhythm, discipline, respect and courage.
• Scrum framework: The meetings, artifacts and roles that make up the Scrum process.
• Scrum practices: Estimation, planning, user stories, planning poker, prioritization techniques and other practices which are commonly used in Scrum.
• Agile Leadership: What is it and why is it important for a ScrumMaster? Common models of Leadership.
• Coaching and facilitation: Coaching definition, coaching scenarios, and facilitation techniques used by ScrumMasters.
• ScrumMaster’s Soft Skills: Helpful hints and techniques for building high performing teams, conflict management, practical techniques for the daily work of a ScrumMaster.
• Scrum Evolution: Applying Scrum in more than one project, Scrum with geographically distributed teams (real cases), Scrum of Scrums, Product Owner configuration, Scrum beyond software, Scrum and pre-defined techniques like PMBOK, CMMI.
• Other topics as required by the attendees.

Target audience:

Project Managers, Software Developers, Functional Managers, Operations, Sales, Marketing, Engineers and Architects, executives.

Prerequisites: Experience with project management.

Course Description:

In the T3 training you learn to design, facilitate, your own workshops with the LSP concept, based on tools, techniques and applications developed by the LEGO® Group and the Association of Master Trainers over a 10 year period. The training covers all relevant practices and concepts, and extends them with the essence of our experiences and knowledge – by incorporating current research, best practice and many practical tools and techniques.

The LEGO SERIOUS PLAY approach is a facilitated thinking, communications and problem solving technique for organizations, teams and individuals. LSP draws on extensive research from the fields of business, organization development, psychology and learning. It is based on the concept of “hand knowledge,” i.e. the research that shows the hands are connected to 70-80% of our brain cells. Our brains can only handle so much information at once, and through using our hands to explore ideas we can surface a lot more information, understanding and real synergy at any given moment than we ever thought possible.

Walk away with:

Certification for designing and facilitating with the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY approach, Hands-on experiences, theory, facilitation and design manuals, application examples. Access to workshop design and facilitation support.

The Training Session Itself:
The training session runs over 4 days. The training is highly experiential (limited to 12 participants), and uses a format that is directly transferable to real workshop situations. The training is delivered by Robert Rasmussen, co-founder of the Association of Master Trainers in the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY approach.

During the course, attendees will learn why such a seemingly simple process such as Scrum can have such profound effects on an organization. Participants gain practical experience working with Scrum tools and activities such as the product backlog, sprint backlog, daily Scrum meetings, sprint planning meeting, and burndown charts. Participants leave knowing how to apply Scrum to all sizes of projects, from a single collocated team to a large, highly distributed team.

Following successful completion of the course, you will be qualified and ready to pass the Scrum Alliance assessment exam. This multiple-choice, online test is required to become a Certified ScrumMaster, which includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional ScrumMaster-only material and information are available. For more information on the certification exam, see this page about the CSM exam.

PMPs: This course counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

This class will be followed by a Certified Scrum Product Owner class in the same location. You can attend these classes separately or together.

What You Will Learn

• Practical, project-proven practices
• The essentials of getting a project off on the right foot
• How to write user stories for the product backlog
• Why there's more to leading a self-organizing team than buying pizza and getting out of the way
• How to help both new and experienced teams be more successful
• How to successfully scale Scrum to large, multi-continent projects with team sizes in the hundreds
• Tips and tricks from the instructor's fifteen years of using Scrum in a wide variety of environments

Who Should Attend?

Whether you're a manager, programmer, tester, analyst, product manager, or someone interested in working on or with a Scrum team, this course is suited for you. You will leave with solid knowledge of how and why Scrum works. Through practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussion you will be prepared to plan your first sprint immediately after this class.

PMPs: This agile training class counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Get

• High quality training from an industry expert
• Recognition by the Scrum Alliance as a Certified ScrumMaster after passing a short certification exam
• A continental breakfast buffet, fruit, al lunch buffet including soda, an afternoon snack, and continously replenished coffee, tea and water
• A one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, a $50 value
• A printed and bound copy of the course materials
• Planning Poker® cards for use in estimating with your team

It was originally created to train ScrumMasters, but is now used to train teams and the managers around teams.  It is particularly useful if a whole team (or team group) takes the course together.  In any case, all team roles (programmer, tester, analyst, Product Owner, ScrumMaster, etc) and managers and other interested parties can attend.  For example, CEOs have attended with benefit.

While it is a beginner level course, this course includes the practical knowledge to immediately start doing Scrum with a team.   You will also learn not just the how, but also the why.

This course is immersive and intensive, including practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussions.

Summary of the Course

Through a combination of immersive team-based learning, exercises, and real-world case studies, you will learn:

• To plan, initiate and lead a Scrum project
• To establish a shared vision for the entire team
• To generate an agile release plan utilizing user stories and story point estimation
• To lead your Scrum team through planning, review, and retrospective sessions
• To create an environment in which self-managing teams can flourish
• To identify and remove impediments
• To identify, engage and involve business stakeholders in your project
• To take most existing teams to the next level
• Practical suggestions purchased expensively from the school of hard knocks

This training provides an applied understanding of the Scrum process and helps participants begin to develop the tools, insights, and skills required to apply Scrum on their projects and across their organizations.

For more information about the course, click on the Register button. (You will not be “forced” to register.)

Additional Information: The course will run from 9am-5pm each day. A continental breakfast, breaks and lunch will be provided.

Following the course, each participant is enrolled as a Certified ScrumMaster, which includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional ScrumMaster-only material and information are available.  Participants will also get a hardcopy and a softcopy of the slide deck used (and more).

Course Leader: Joe Little is an Agile coach and Certified Scrum Trainer.  His goal is to use Lean-Agile principles and practices to help firms deliver more business value for customers, to make workers’ lives better and to benefit stakeholders.  Discovering business value is one of his passions.  And helping teams discover new avenues to greater productivity. He is proud for several people he has mentored, who now themselves are very strong in Agile.

Joe learned Scrum from Ken Schwaber and later mentored with Jeff Sutherland, with whom he continues to co-teach. He also works with several other CSTs (and friends).  He produces Lean Software training with the Poppendiecks.  His preference is to practice Agile as a combination of Scrum, XP and Lean principles and practices.  Joe was a speaker at Agile2007 and at Agile2008 and at AgileTour 2009.  He started Agile-Carolinas.

The following elements will be covered during the one day course
* Scrum in Practice: the course is designed to illustrate Scrum in action.
* Understanding of the Agile Manifesto and what it means to them.
* Essence of Scrum: values, foundations and a new way of thinking.
* Understanding how Scrum values and foundations are related to the practices.
* Get a sense of what self-organization is (and is not).
* Can draw a diagram of mechanics of Scrum: framework, roles, artifacts & flow.

About your Instructor:

Bachan Anand is an Agile Coach and the founder of Conscires Agile Practices. He brings the vision to support others building successful organizations through the empowerment of people and lightweight processes.

• Definition of Scrum: Basic Scrum background and framework, principles and values which ensure the correct understanding of Scrum.
• Scrum theory:the three legs of Scrum theory (transparency, inspection and adaptation) are explanied. Resultant and fundamental values are examined in details: responsibility, self-organization and self-management, sense of urgency, commitment, technical excellence, rhythm, discipline, respect and courage.
• Scrum framework: The meetings, artifacts and roles that make up the Scrum process.
• Scrum practices: Estimation, planning, user stories, planning poker, prioritization techniques and other practices which are commonly used in Scrum.
• Agile Leadership: What is it and why is it important for a ScrumMaster? Common models of Leadership.
• Coaching and facilitation: Coaching definition, coaching scenarios, and facilitation techniques used by ScrumMasters.
• ScrumMaster’s Soft Skills: Helpful hints and techniques for building high performing teams, conflict management, practical techniques for the daily work of a ScrumMaster.
• Scrum Evolution: Applying Scrum in more than one project, Scrum with geographically distributed teams (real cases), Scrum of Scrums, Product Owner configuration, Scrum beyond software, Scrum and pre-defined techniques like PMBOK, CMMI.
• Other topics as required by the attendees.

Target audience:

Project Managers, Software Developers, Functional Managers, Operations, Sales, Marketing, Engineers and Architects, executives.

Prerequisites: Experience with project management.

14 PDUs Awarded
Scrum Alliance CSD-Eligible Course

Limited to only 16 registrations, sign-up now in order to ensure your seat is reserved.

No Prerequisites Required

Who should attend?

• Project Managers
• IT Professionals (Architects, BAs, DBAs, Developers, etc.)
• IT Leadership (Managers/Directors/VPs/CIOs/CTOs)
• Anyone interested in learning the benefits of Scrum

Course Overview:

Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) is an in-depth two day immersion into the world of Scrum. The course is full of practical, real world techniques that can be implemented immediately at your workplace. This course will allow your organization to enjoy the many advantages Scrum has to offer. Hands-on exercises demonstrate key concepts and let you experience the benefits of Scrum firsthand.

Course Learning Objectives:

• The advantages that Scrum brings to your organization
• A solid understanding of the Scrum framework
• Your role and responsibilities as the ScrumMaster
• The fundamentals of Agile Leadership (Servant Leadership)
• Facilitation skills that will help you succeed in your new role
• The importance of quickly uncovering roadblocks and clearing them for your team
• Tracking team performance with Agile Earned Value Management and burn down/up charts
• Considerations for implementing Scrum throughout your enterprise

Benefits:

• Increase customer satisfaction and time-to-market delivery
• Properly align your development efforts around building the highest business value features first
• Gain organizational trust and improve your team’s reputation for on-time and on-budget delivery, by setting them up for frequent success
• Experience higher team morale and productivity with a fundamental shift in management style
• Focus your personal efforts on the highest value tasks that will have an immediate impact on your team’s level of success
• Improve communications through transparency and “pull” versus “push” systems
• Achieve greater flexibility and bring value to your organization by adding another tool to your toolbox

Takeaways:

• Thorough understanding of Scrum
• A new outlook on the way you manage projects and lead your team
• The knowledge necessary for incorporating Scrum practices into your working environment
• A one year membership to the Scrum Alliance
• Eligibility to sit for the Certified ScrumMaster assessment

About The Instructor: Brian M. Rabon, CST, PMP

Brian is the President of The Braintrust Consulting Group, He holds a BS in computer science from Auburn University and a MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is an avid author, blogger and speaker at conferences, professional organizations, and user groups around the globe. Brian is an Adjunct Instructor for UAB’s Information Engineering and Management Program, a contract instructor for ASPE, New Horizons, Rally, Version One, and many other quality organizations. Brian is a Certified Scrum Trainer® through the Scrum Alliance and The Braintrust Consulting Group is a Registered Education Provider® for the Scrum Alliance.

Visit Brian's testimonial page at - http://www.yourpmpartner.com/testimonials.html

Cancellation Policy:

In order to receive a refund of your tuition for this course you must notify us no later than 5 days prior to the course start date. Cancellation requests received after the 5 day window will be issued a credit that can be applied towards a future class.

We may on some occasions share your email address with a limited number of our trusted partners. We do not sell your personal information and we treat your privacy with the utmost regard. Please contact us at info@your-pm-partner.com if you have any concerns. 

Our CSPO course offers a detailed examination of the Scrum project lifecycle and the product owner role, going beyond the basic definitions to focus on how to achieve success as a product owner with Scrum. Course delivery is varied for optimal learning, with activities ranging from case study analyses and in-depth lectures, to hands-on exercises and interactive games. Each person will leave this course empowered with practical, applicable advice and skills they can apply to their own projects and teams.

The following elements will be covered during the one day course
* Scrum in Practice: the course is designed to illustrate Scrum in action.
* Understanding of the Agile Manifesto and what it means to them.
* Essence of Scrum: values, foundations and a new way of thinking.
* Understanding how Scrum values and foundations are related to the practices.
* Get a sense of what self-organization is (and is not).
* Can draw a diagram of mechanics of Scrum: framework, roles, artifacts & flow.

About your Instructor:

Bachan Anand is an Agile Coach and the founder of Conscires Agile Practices. He brings the vision to support others building successful organizations through the empowerment of people and lightweight processes.

14 PDUs Awarded
Scrum Alliance CSD-Eligible Course

Limited to only 16 registrations, sign-up now in order to ensure your seat is reserved.

No Prerequisites Required

Who should attend?

• Project Managers
• IT Professionals (Architects, BAs, DBAs, Developers, etc.)
• IT Leadership (Managers/Directors/VPs/CIOs/CTOs)
• Anyone interested in learning the benefits of Scrum

Course Overview:

Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) is an in-depth two day immersion into the world of Scrum. The course is full of practical, real world techniques that can be implemented immediately at your workplace. This course will allow your organization to enjoy the many advantages Scrum has to offer. Hands-on exercises demonstrate key concepts and let you experience the benefits of Scrum firsthand.

Course Learning Objectives:

• The advantages that Scrum brings to your organization
• A solid understanding of the Scrum framework
• Your role and responsibilities as the ScrumMaster
• The fundamentals of Agile Leadership (Servant Leadership)
• Facilitation skills that will help you succeed in your new role
• The importance of quickly uncovering roadblocks and clearing them for your team
• Tracking team performance with Agile Earned Value Management and burn down/up charts
• Considerations for implementing Scrum throughout your enterprise

Benefits:

• Increase customer satisfaction and time-to-market delivery
• Properly align your development efforts around building the highest business value features first
• Gain organizational trust and improve your team’s reputation for on-time and on-budget delivery, by setting them up for frequent success
• Experience higher team morale and productivity with a fundamental shift in management style
• Focus your personal efforts on the highest value tasks that will have an immediate impact on your team’s level of success
• Improve communications through transparency and “pull” versus “push” systems
• Achieve greater flexibility and bring value to your organization by adding another tool to your toolbox

Takeaways:

• Thorough understanding of Scrum
• A new outlook on the way you manage projects and lead your team
• The knowledge necessary for incorporating Scrum practices into your working environment
• A one year membership to the Scrum Alliance
• Eligibility to sit for the Certified ScrumMaster assessment

About The Instructor: Brian M. Rabon, CST, PMP

Brian is the President of The Braintrust Consulting Group, He holds a BS in computer science from Auburn University and a MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is an avid author, blogger and speaker at conferences, professional organizations, and user groups around the globe. Brian is an Adjunct Instructor for UAB’s Information Engineering and Management Program, a contract instructor for ASPE, New Horizons, Rally, Version One, and many other quality organizations. Brian is a Certified Scrum Trainer® through the Scrum Alliance and The Braintrust Consulting Group is a Registered Education Provider® for the Scrum Alliance.

Visit Brian's testimonial page at - http://www.yourpmpartner.com/testimonials.html

Cancellation Policy:

In order to receive a refund of your tuition for this course you must notify us no later than 5 days prior to the course start date. Cancellation requests received after the 5 day window will be issued a credit that can be applied towards a future class.

We may on some occasions share your email address with a limited number of our trusted partners. We do not sell your personal information and we treat your privacy with the utmost regard. Please contact us at info@your-pm-partner.com if you have any concerns. 

Looking for agile training that doesn’t assume you already know everything about sprints, stories and backlogs? Tired of webinars full of theoretical concepts that tell you why you should use agile but not how to practically apply it? Do you want to start applying agile principles in your work but don’t know where to start?

NOTE: the week of January 16th will be skipped due to the Martin Luther King Day in the US

VersionOne’s Agile eLearning series is your fast track to becoming an agile ninja.

Learn the how, not just the why

Collaborative environment

Education designed to keep you engaged

Small class size

All the benefits of being in a classroom without the headache of traveling

What’s so special about this series?

You don’t have time to waste trying to find education resources and grappling with complex theoretical diatribes. VersionOne’s Agile eLearning is designed visually for the way your brain works, not a text heavy approach that puts you to sleep.

The following elements will be covered during the one day course
* Scrum in Practice: the course is designed to illustrate Scrum in action.
* Understanding of the Agile Manifesto and what it means to them.
* Essence of Scrum: values, foundations and a new way of thinking.
* Understanding how Scrum values and foundations are related to the practices.
* Get a sense of what self-organization is (and is not).
* Can draw a diagram of mechanics of Scrum: framework, roles, artifacts & flow.

About your Instructor:

Bachan Anand is an Agile Coach and the founder of Conscires Agile Practices. He brings the vision to support others building successful organizations through the empowerment of people and lightweight processes.

This two-day course will begin to clear away that murkiness through short, focused lectures by a qualified Certified Scrum Trainer teaching the basics of Scrum as well as practical tools gathered while mentoring and consulting with organizations learning to apply Scrum.  An important aim of this course is to leverage the wide-ranging knowledge and experience of the participants, so expect a significant amount of this course will be spent in peer-to-peer interactions, hands-on activities and drawing connections between the classroom material and your day-to-day experience.  This course will equip the participants with the knowledge on how to facilitate Scrum in their teams and begin the process of change in their organization.

The learning objectives for this course are:

• List the five values of Scrum and the eight essential Scrum principles.
• Draw a diagram describing the Scrum framework, highlighting all meetings, roles and artifacts.
• Describe the rights and responsibilities of  each role in Scrum – Team member, Product Owner, ScrumMaster and stakeholder.
• Discuss with other participants what Scrum means to you and what it will mean to be a ScrumMaster in your organization.
• Watch Scrum in action as the framework of Scrum will be used to deliver the course material.
• Identify the main obstacles to using Scrum in your organization.
• Practice applying ScrumMaster skills to solve real life problems.
• Pass the Certified Scrum Master assessment.

In addition to the objectives listed above, your instructor will incorporate your learning objectives into the class curriculum, provide regular opportunities to reflect-and-adapt on the class direction and make adjustments to achieve your learning objective.  By the close of the training, you will have gained the confidence and understanding to begin socializing Scrum within their your organizations and support teams with improving their processes.

Who Should Attend:

Any person who is interested in learning more about Scrum or wants to make Scrum work better for their Team or organization, is encouraged to attend.  While the focus of the class is for people who want to learn how to leverage the Scrum framework to bring about change, any member of Team or the organization who is interested in how to use Scrum would find this class useful.

Typical attendees in the past have been functional managers, Team leads, analysts, architects, engineers, software developers, directors, testers and other roles that support product development.

About your Instructor:

Carlton Nettleton, is an Agile software development coach, consultant and thought-leader in San Diego County.  He provides advice, mentoring and training to teams and programs looking to better software quality, improve productivity, build great teams and apply Lean Thinking to software projects.  He has over ten years of experience with software development as a contributor, facilitator and leader.  He is a Certified Scrum Trainer and has been practicing Scrum since 2005.

14 PDUs Awarded
Scrum Alliance CSD-Eligible Course

Limited to only 16 registrations, sign-up now in order to ensure your seat is reserved.

No Prerequisites Required

Who should attend?

• Project Managers
• IT Professionals (Architects, BAs, DBAs, Developers, etc.)
• IT Leadership (Managers/Directors/VPs/CIOs/CTOs)
• Anyone interested in learning the benefits of Scrum

Course Overview:

Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) is an in-depth two day immersion into the world of Scrum. The course is full of practical, real world techniques that can be implemented immediately at your workplace. This course will allow your organization to enjoy the many advantages Scrum has to offer. Hands-on exercises demonstrate key concepts and let you experience the benefits of Scrum firsthand.

Course Learning Objectives:

• The advantages that Scrum brings to your organization
• A solid understanding of the Scrum framework
• Your role and responsibilities as the ScrumMaster
• The fundamentals of Agile Leadership (Servant Leadership)
• Facilitation skills that will help you succeed in your new role
• The importance of quickly uncovering roadblocks and clearing them for your team
• Tracking team performance with Agile Earned Value Management and burn down/up charts
• Considerations for implementing Scrum throughout your enterprise

Benefits:

• Increase customer satisfaction and time-to-market delivery
• Properly align your development efforts around building the highest business value features first
• Gain organizational trust and improve your team’s reputation for on-time and on-budget delivery, by setting them up for frequent success
• Experience higher team morale and productivity with a fundamental shift in management style
• Focus your personal efforts on the highest value tasks that will have an immediate impact on your team’s level of success
• Improve communications through transparency and “pull” versus “push” systems
• Achieve greater flexibility and bring value to your organization by adding another tool to your toolbox

Takeaways:

• Thorough understanding of Scrum
• A new outlook on the way you manage projects and lead your team
• The knowledge necessary for incorporating Scrum practices into your working environment
• A one year membership to the Scrum Alliance
• Eligibility to sit for the Certified ScrumMaster assessment 

This two-day course will begin to clear away that murkiness through short, focused lectures by a qualified Certified Scrum Trainer teaching the basics of Scrum as well as practical tools gathered while mentoring and consulting with organizations learning to apply Scrum.  An important aim of this course is to leverage the wide-ranging knowledge and experience of the participants, so expect a significant amount of this course will be spent in peer-to-peer interactions, hands-on activities and drawing connections between the classroom material and your day-to-day experience.  This course will equip the participants with the knowledge on how to facilitate Scrum in their teams and begin the process of change in their organization.

The learning objectives for this course are:

• List the five values of Scrum and the eight essential Scrum principles.
• Draw a diagram describing the Scrum framework, highlighting all meetings, roles and artifacts.
• Describe the rights and responsibilities of  each role in Scrum – Team member, Product Owner, ScrumMaster and stakeholder.
• Discuss with other participants what Scrum means to you and what it will mean to be a ScrumMaster in your organization.
• Watch Scrum in action as the framework of Scrum will be used to deliver the course material.
• Identify the main obstacles to using Scrum in your organization.
• Practice applying ScrumMaster skills to solve real life problems.
• Pass the Certified Scrum Master assessment.

In addition to the objectives listed above, your instructor will incorporate your learning objectives into the class curriculum, provide regular opportunities to reflect-and-adapt on the class direction and make adjustments to achieve your learning objective.  By the close of the training, you will have gained the confidence and understanding to begin socializing Scrum within their your organizations and support teams with improving their processes.

Who Should Attend:

Any person who is interested in learning more about Scrum or wants to make Scrum work better for their Team or organization, is encouraged to attend.  While the focus of the class is for people who want to learn how to leverage the Scrum framework to bring about change, any member of Team or the organization who is interested in how to use Scrum would find this class useful.

Typical attendees in the past have been functional managers, Team leads, analysts, architects, engineers, software developers, directors, testers and other roles that support product development.

About your Instructor:

Carlton Nettleton, is an Agile software development coach, consultant and thought-leader in San Diego County.  He provides advice, mentoring and training to teams and programs looking to better software quality, improve productivity, build great teams and apply Lean Thinking to software projects.  He has over ten years of experience with software development as a contributor, facilitator and leader.  He is a Certified Scrum Trainer and has been practicing Scrum since 2005.

Register for our Certified ScrumMaster Course!

What You Will Get From This Course:

• 2-day Scrum Alliance Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) course earns 14 PDUs
• Interactive curriculum from our experienced Certified Scrum Trainer (CST™)
• Flexible schedules and convenient locations
• 2-year membership in the Scrum Alliance ($50 value)
• Increased productivity, faster ROI, and improved value to your end customers through Scrum

Instructor Info:

Roger Brown is a Certified Agile Coach who provides training, consulting and coaching services in Agile software development areas including Scrum project management, enterprise agile adoption. Roger also does training and mentoring in agile engineering practices such as Test-Driven Development, automated acceptance testing and continuous integration. Roger is focused on helping companies and individuals find their own best approaches to the use of agile methods.

Roger is one of four people in the world to hold all certifications granted by the Scrum Alliance including Certified Scrum Trainer and Certified Scrum Coach. He is a member of the Scrum Alliance, the Agile Alliance and the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN). Roger is a founding member and certification board member for the Certified Scrum Coach program. 

Roger is an experienced software engineer, technical project manager and staff manager. He has experience working with both large and small companies in many industries. His work experience includes Dartmouth College, Vicinity Corporation, Microsoft and TeleAtlas.

Register for our Certified ScrumMaster Course!

Register for our Certified Scrum Product Owner Course!

• 2-day Scrum Alliance Certified Product Owner (CSPO) course earns 14 PDUs
• Interactive curriculum from our experienced Certified Scrum Trainer (CST™)
• Flexible schedules and convenient locations
• Fully catered classes including breakfast & lunch!
• 2-year membership in the Scrum Alliance ($50 value)
• Increased productivity, faster ROI, and improved value to your end customers through Scrum

Register for our Certified Scrum Product Owner Course!

14 PDUs Awarded
Scrum Alliance CSD-Eligible Course

Limited to only 16 registrations, sign-up now in order to ensure your seat is reserved.

No Prerequisites Required

Who should attend?

• Project Managers
• IT Professionals (Architects, BAs, DBAs, Developers, etc.)
• IT Leadership (Managers/Directors/VPs/CIOs/CTOs)
• Anyone interested in learning the benefits of Scrum

Course Overview:

Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) is an in-depth two day immersion into the world of Scrum. The course is full of practical, real world techniques that can be implemented immediately at your workplace. This course will allow your organization to enjoy the many advantages Scrum has to offer. Hands-on exercises demonstrate key concepts and let you experience the benefits of Scrum firsthand. 

Course Learning Objectives:

• The advantages that Scrum brings to your organization
• A solid understanding of the Scrum framework
• Your role and responsibilities as the ScrumMaster
• The fundamentals of Agile Leadership (Servant Leadership)
• Facilitation skills that will help you succeed in your new role
• The importance of quickly uncovering roadblocks and clearing them for your team
• Tracking team performance with Agile Earned Value Management and burn down/up charts
• Considerations for implementing Scrum throughout your enterprise

 Benefits:

• Increase customer satisfaction and time-to-market delivery
• Properly align your development efforts around building the highest business value features first
• Gain organizational trust and improve your team’s reputation for on-time and on-budget delivery, by setting them up for frequent success
• Experience higher team morale and productivity with a fundamental shift in management style
• Focus your personal efforts on the highest value tasks that will have an immediate impact on your team’s level of success
• Improve communications through transparency and “pull” versus “push” systems
• Achieve greater flexibility and bring value to your organization by adding another tool to your toolbox

Takeaways:

• Thorough understanding of Scrum
• A new outlook on the way you manage projects and lead your team
• The knowledge necessary for incorporating Scrum practices into your working environment
• A one year membership to the Scrum Alliance
•  Eligibility to sit for the Certified ScrumMaster assessment

14 PDUs Awarded
The Braintrust Consulting Group is a Scrum Alliance Registered Education Provider (REP)

No Prerequisites Required

An in-depth two-day immersion into the world of Agile Product Management

• Properly align your development efforts around building the highest business value features first

• Allow your organization to enjoy the many advantages Scrum has to offer

• Ensure that the right features are being implemented for the right reasons at the right time

• Effectively and efficiently incorporate new insights into the product during the project lifecycle

• Rapidly respond to changing market conditions

• Increase customer satisfaction and time-to-market delivery

• Gain organizational trust and improve your team’s reputation for on-time and on-budget delivery by setting them up for frequent successes

• Achieve greater flexibility and bring value to your organization by adding another tool to your toolbox

• Learn about and use applications for the iPad that support Agile

Arguably the most challenging role on the Scrum team is that of the product owner (PO). The PO is responsible for the product’s return on investment while providing direction and priority on the product’s features. In order to be effective in the role of the PO, a new skill set is necessary to teach the tools of the trade for agile product management.

In this course you will learn how to play Innovation Games™ to understand the desires of your customers for your product. Determine and prioritize features based on both subjective and objective (defensible) strategies, and properly interact and work with your team, ScrumMaster, and stakeholders within the Scrum framework.This course is full of practical, real-world techniques that you can implement immediately at your workplace.

Who Should Attend
Technical professionals associated with the specification, design, development and testing of products will benefit from this two-day program. Some of the professionals this will benefit include:

• Product Managers

• Business Analysts

• Functional/Operational Managers/Directors

• Project Sponsors

• IT Leadership (Managers/Directors/VPs/CIOs/CTOs)

• Anyone interested in learning the benefits of Scrum for Product Management

Hands-on exercises demonstrate key concepts and let you experience the benefits of Scrum firsthand.

1. Buy a feature

2. Agile principles

3. List types of defined and empirical work

4. Agile and scrum concepts

5. Product owner deep dive

6. Fact or crap

7. Scrum simulation instructions

8. Create a product vision statement

9. Identifying user roles

10. Develop a persona

11. Seed the product backlog

12. Chinese zodiac points

13. Prioritize your product backlog

14. User story writing workshop

15. Re-prioritize the product backlog

16. Ball points

17. Create a product road-map

18. Create a release plan

19. Product box

20. The Scrum café or Open Space Technologies

About The Instructor: Brian M. Rabon, CST, PMP

Brian is the President of The Braintrust Consulting Group, He holds a BS in computer science from Auburn University and a MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is an avid author, blogger and speaker at conferences, professional organizations, and user groups around the globe. Brian is an Adjunct Instructor for UAB’s Information Engineering and Management Program, a contract instructor for ASPE, New Horizons, Rally, Version One, and many other quality organizations. Brian is a Certified Scrum Trainer® through the Scrum Alliance and The Braintrust Consulting Group is a Registered Education Provider® for the Scrum Alliance.

Visit Brian's testimonial page at - http://www.yourpmpartner.com/testimonials.html

Cancellation Policy:

In order to receive a refund of your tuition for this course you must notify us no later than 5 days prior to the course start date. Cancellation requests received after the 5 day window will be issued a credit that can be applied towards a future class.

We may on some occasions share your email address with a limited number of our trusted partners. We do not sell your personal information and we treat your privacy with the utmost regard. Please contact us at info@your-pm-partner.com if you have any concerns. 

14 PDUs Awarded
Scrum Alliance CSD-Eligible Course

Limited to only 16 registrations, sign-up now in order to ensure your seat is reserved.

No Prerequisites Required

Who should attend?

• Project Managers
• IT Professionals (Architects, BAs, DBAs, Developers, etc.)
• IT Leadership (Managers/Directors/VPs/CIOs/CTOs)
• Anyone interested in learning the benefits of Scrum

Course Overview:

Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) is an in-depth two day immersion into the world of Scrum. The course is full of practical, real world techniques that can be implemented immediately at your workplace. This course will allow your organization to enjoy the many advantages Scrum has to offer. Hands-on exercises demonstrate key concepts and let you experience the benefits of Scrum firsthand.

Course Learning Objectives:

• The advantages that Scrum brings to your organization
• A solid understanding of the Scrum framework
• Your role and responsibilities as the ScrumMaster
• The fundamentals of Agile Leadership (Servant Leadership)
• Facilitation skills that will help you succeed in your new role
• The importance of quickly uncovering roadblocks and clearing them for your team
• Tracking team performance with Agile Earned Value Management and burn down/up charts
• Considerations for implementing Scrum throughout your enterprise

Benefits:

• Increase customer satisfaction and time-to-market delivery
• Properly align your development efforts around building the highest business value features first
• Gain organizational trust and improve your team’s reputation for on-time and on-budget delivery, by setting them up for frequent success
• Experience higher team morale and productivity with a fundamental shift in management style
• Focus your personal efforts on the highest value tasks that will have an immediate impact on your team’s level of success
• Improve communications through transparency and “pull” versus “push” systems
• Achieve greater flexibility and bring value to your organization by adding another tool to your toolbox

Takeaways:

• Thorough understanding of Scrum
• A new outlook on the way you manage projects and lead your team
• The knowledge necessary for incorporating Scrum practices into your working environment
• A one year membership to the Scrum Alliance
• Eligibility to sit for the Certified ScrumMaster assessment 

We think the key benefit of this workshop is clear:  the creation of an action plan to increase the BV delivered by each team, without having the team work harder.

We will group into teams of 4-6 at tables and do the following:

•Develop a definition of business value for a specific project
•Develop a BV model (a way of calculating expected business value)
•Map out the current BVE process (see below)
•Identify the theories and assumptions underlying the current BVE process
•Make a plan or Business Case to improve the current BVE process

With feedback between the teams and additional discussions, those exercises will fill the 2 day workshop.

By BVE process, we mean those explicit or tacit things that you or your firm does to address the following kinds of questions.

• How do we:
  • determine what the customers want?
  • innovate?
  • focus on 'the vital few'? (the Pareto Rule)
  • communicate requirements to the development team?
  • allocate people to work?
  • manage the projects?
  • deliver a 'finished' product to the customer? (Frequency, delay, quality level, test harness, training, etc etc)
  • integrate other things with the Product to form the Solution?
  • determine if we were successful?
  • learn?
  • adapt to change in all its dimensions?
• Do we have feedback loops?
• Is there a P-D-C-A cycle in there?
• The attempt is to get as close to an end-to-end 'flow' as we can. (We do not wish to locally optimize, and then hurt the overall  flow.)

The workshop and BVE is about things that happen outside the Scrum team. (We generally assume you have one or more Scrum teams, but that is not an essential assumption, we find.)

For the "product owner" of each team in the Workshop, we must be working on his real situation.  For others in each team, this should ideally also be a real situation (be similar to something in their real world), but may not be.

We will also get questions and issues from the group, prioritize them, and cover them as much as possible. 

Who Should Attend:

This Workshop is for Product Owners, managers, analysts, product managers, Business Stakeholders, business analysts, and ScrumMasters. And many project managers.  ScrumMasters need this workshop, because they must coach Product Owners in these skills.

PMPs: You can receive 14 Professional Development Units (PDUs) for this workshop. 

Course Material :

Participants will receive course materials (not books) at the course.  Of course, there will be updated material and training exercises in the course which you cannot get from books.

Additional Information :

The workshop will run from 8:30am-5:10pm each day. A continental breakfast, breaks and lunch will be provided.

The course fee is $1,300, covering both days, lunch, breaks, etc.  You may attend both the CSPO and the BVE workshop for a reduced fee of $1900.  Please contact us directly for this option at info@leanagiletraining.com.

14 PDUs Awarded
The Braintrust Consulting Group is a Scrum Alliance Registered Education Provider (REP)

Limited to only 16 registrations, sign-up now in order to ensure your seat is reserved.

No Prerequisites Required

Who should attend?

• Product Managers/Business Analysts
• Functional/Operational Managers
• Project Sponsors
• IT Leadership (Managers/Directors/VPs/CIOs/CTOs)
• Anyone interested in learning the benefits of Scrum

Course Overview:

Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) is an in-depth two day immersion into the world of Agile Product Management. The course is full of practical, real world techniques, which can be implemented immediately at your workplace. This course will allow your organization to enjoy the many advantages Scrum has to offer. Hands-on exercises demonstrate key concepts and let you experience the benefits of Scrum firsthand.

Course Learning Objectives:

• The advantages that Agile Product Management brings to your organization
• A solid understanding of the Scrum framework
• Your role and responsibilities as the Product Owner
• Developing a vision that serves as a guiding light for the product and the project team
• Predicting delivery dates and determining release plans
• Grooming the product backlog; how to effectively gather and document Agile requirements
• Establishing an effective measure of business value so that the right features can be implemented
• Embracing continuous planning throughout the project lifecycle

 Benefits:

• Properly align your development efforts around delivering the highest business value features first
• Ensure that the right features are being implemented for the right reasons at the right time
• Effectively and efficiently incorporate new insights into the product during the project lifecycle
• Rapidly respond to changing market conditions
• Increase customer satisfaction and time-to-market delivery
• Gain organizational trust and improve your team's reputation for on-time and on-budget delivery by setting them up for frequent successes
• Achieve greater flexibility and value to your organization by adding another tool to your toolbox

Takeaways:

• Thorough understanding about Agile Product Management using Scrum
• A new outlook on the way you develop and prioritize features 
• The knowledge necessary for incorporating Scrum practices into your working environment
• A one year membership to the Scrum Alliance
• The Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) designation

About The Instructor: Brian M. Rabon, CST, PMP

 Brian is the President of The Braintrust Consulting Group, He holds a BS in computer science from Auburn University and a MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is an avid author, blogger and speaker at conferences, professional organizations, and user groups around the globe. Brian is an Adjunct Instructor for UAB’s Information Engineering and Management Program, a contract instructor for ASPE, New Horizons, Rally, Version One, and many other quality organizations. Brian is a Certified Scrum Trainer® through the Scrum Alliance and The Braintrust Consulting Group is a Registered Education Provider® for the Scrum Alliance.

Visit Brian's testimonial page at - http://www.yourpmpartner.com/testimonials.html

Cancellation Policy:

In order to receive a refund of your tuition for this course you must notify us no later than 5 days prior to the course start date. Cancellation requests received after the 5 day window will be issued a credit that can be applied towards a future class.

We may on some occasions share your email address with a limited number of our trusted partners. We do not sell your personal information and we treat your privacy with the utmost regard. Please contact us at info@your-pm-partner.com if you have any concerns. 

14 PDUs Awarded
The Braintrust Consulting Group is a Scrum Alliance Registered Education Provider (REP)

Limited to only 16 registrations, sign-up now in order to ensure your seat is reserved.

No Prerequisites Required

Who should attend?

• Product Managers/Business Analysts
• Functional/Operational Managers
• Project Sponsors
• IT Leadership (Managers/Directors/VPs/CIOs/CTOs)
• Anyone interested in learning the benefits of Scrum

Course Overview:

Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) is an in-depth two day immersion into the world of Agile Product Management. The course is full of practical, real world techniques, which can be implemented immediately at your workplace. This course will allow your organization to enjoy the many advantages Scrum has to offer. Hands-on exercises demonstrate key concepts and let you experience the benefits of Scrum firsthand.

Course Learning Objectives:

• The advantages that Agile Product Management brings to your organization
• A solid understanding of the Scrum framework
• Your role and responsibilities as the Product Owner
• Developing a vision that serves as a guiding light for the product and the project team
• Predicting delivery dates and determining release plans
• Grooming the product backlog; how to effectively gather and document Agile requirements
• Establishing an effective measure of business value so that the right features can be implemented
• Embracing continuous planning throughout the project lifecycle

Benefits:

• Properly align your development efforts around delivering the highest business value features first
• Ensure that the right features are being implemented for the right reasons at the right time
• Effectively and efficiently incorporate new insights into the product during the project lifecycle
• Rapidly respond to changing market conditions
• Increase customer satisfaction and time-to-market delivery
• Gain organizational trust and improve your team's reputation for on-time and on-budget delivery by setting them up for frequent successes
• Achieve greater flexibility and value to your organization by adding another tool to your toolbox

Takeaways:

• Thorough understanding about Agile Product Management using Scrum
• A new outlook on the way you develop and prioritize features
• The knowledge necessary for incorporating Scrum practices into your working environment
• A one year membership to the Scrum Alliance
• The Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) designation

About The Instructor: Brian M. Rabon, CST, PMP

Brian is the President of The Braintrust Consulting Group, He holds a BS in computer science from Auburn University and a MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is an avid author, blogger and speaker at conferences, professional organizations, and user groups around the globe. Brian is an Adjunct Instructor for UAB’s Information Engineering and Management Program, a contract instructor for ASPE, New Horizons, Rally, Version One, and many other quality organizations. Brian is a Certified Scrum Trainer® through the Scrum Alliance and The Braintrust Consulting Group is a Registered Education Provider® for the Scrum Alliance.

Visit Brian's testimonial page at - http://www.yourpmpartner.com/testimonials.html

Cancellation Policy:

In order to receive a refund of your tuition for this course you must notify us no later than 5 days prior to the course start date. Cancellation requests received after the 5 day window will be issued a credit that can be applied towards a future class.

We may on some occasions share your email address with a limited number of our trusted partners. We do not sell your personal information and we treat your privacy with the utmost regard. Please contact us at info@your-pm-partner.com if you have any concerns. 

You will go beyond the basics of Agile development to learn the practices expert developers employ to write code faster and solve a range of software problems. You’ll discover simple, yet powerful techniques for analysis and design, refactoring to patterns, and leveraging test-driven development to emerge solutions. You’ll identify code qualities that make software easier to build and test, and learn a common vocabulary for evaluating and communicating designs that will enable you to collaborate more effectively with your customer, as well as your teammates.

Anyone who develops software will find value in the techniques covered in this training, regardless of your coding proficiency or current skill level. By the end of class you will have gained an in-depth understanding of how Agile development practices improve software construction, and you will have become a more valuable contributor on any development team.

Course Benefits

Completing this training will give you a deeper understanding of software development using the Agile methodology, and enable you to:

• Employ expert techniques for analysis and design
• Read and write the most useful UML diagrams
• Review and evaluate effective design alternatives
• Estimate development tasks more accurately
• Deliver valuable software in short iterations
• Apply simple strategies for refactoring legacy code
• Create designs that can be easily changed
• Identify key code qualities that improve maintainability
• Recognize pathologies of poor code and know how to fix them
• Use object-oriented techniques to write more-extensible software
• Understand the importance of continuous integration and versioning
• Support collaboration and pair programming, and work effectively with teammates
• Write software that supports an iterative process without excessive rework
• Define classes based on responsibilities, and model their relationships
• Learn a common vocabulary for evaluating and communicating designs
• Refactor to design patterns just-in-time to avoid upfront overdesign
• Use test-driven development practices to build higher-quality software
• Master iterative development techniques for emerging designs

Who Should Take This Course:

This training will benefit all software-development team members, including architects; business analysts; DBAs; designers, developers and development managers; directors; documentation specialists; operations and support staff; product and project managers; software engineers/ programmers; testers; technical analysts, leads and writers; and QA engineers. Familiarity with basic Object-Oriented (OO) concepts and terminology is recommended.

Agenda

Session 1—Agile Fundamentals: Introduction, Agile Principles, Agile Practices, Development Essentials Session 2—Agile Analysis: CREATE Software Quality, Paradigms and Wisdom, Principles and Perspectives, Software Patterns Session 3—Agile Design: Encapsulating Varying Behavior, Encapsulating Foreignness, Group Exercise, Exercise Debrief Session 4—Agile Development: Exercise Review, Encapsulating Sequence and Cardinality, Encapsulating Construction, Development Practices Session 5—Agile Testing: Review, Test First Development, Testing Techniques, Refactoring and Emerging Systems

Your Instructor

David Bernstein’s continuing passion for software design and construction has led him to train more than 7,500 developers in the last 23 years for clients that have included Fortune 500 firms such as Microsoft, IBM, Yahoo!, Boeing, AT&T, Sprint, Medtronic, SunGard, State Farm, MetLife and Weyerhaeuser. As a longtime IBM consultant, David trained software engineers around the globe, giving them the skills to write the next generation of applications and operating-system software while earning one of the highest satisfaction ratings in the history of IBM education. Since 2006, he has devoted his consulting practice to providing organizations with training and coaching for software developers and teams transitioning to Agile and Scrum.

Praise for this Training

“This class renewed my enthusiasm for the love of software development…[David’s] enthusiasm is infectious, and you might find that you start thinking better about software development practices.” – Mark Walsen, Owner/Developer, Notation Software “If you want to know a better and more effective way of thinking and working with software, then don’t miss this class.” – Javier Espana, Designer/Developer, Velocity Partners, Argentina “This class is absolutely essential for a modern software developer.” – Arkadiy Tseytlin, Software Developer, ShareBuilder.com

Become a more proficient developer—contact us to arrange a private, on-site session of this training for your team.

View a pdf version of this course description.

See our full training schedule of public classes and webinars.

Course Description

When you’re ready to learn the fundamentals of agile and Scrum, choose a BigVisible Certified ScrumMaster course. Our two-day, hands-on workshop is filled with practical advice and time-tested techniques designed to give students the foundation they need to succeed with Scrum. Our Certified Scrum Trainers are coaches first, which means that long after your course is over, we have the experience and expertise to provide ongoing support and assist you in implementing what you've learned.

As one of the largest and fastest-growing agile frameworks, Scrum is a simple, yet powerful way to boost team productivity, elevate quality, and accelerate project delivery. Our CSM course offers a detailed examination of the Scrum project lifecycle and the ScrumMaster role, going beyond the basic definitions to focus on how to achieve success as a ScrumMaster and with Scrum. Each person will leave the class with practical, applicable changes and improvements they can apply to their own projects and teams. Course delivery is varied for optimal learning, with activities ranging from case study analyses and in-depth lectures to hands-on exercises and interactive games.

Agenda & Learning Objectives

Our CSM course covers a broad range of topics, including:

• How Scrum helps organizations cope with change, budget constraints, quality issues, and more
• The ScrumMaster role and how it differs from a traditional project manager
• Pragmatic practices for planning, project execution, and progress reporting
• How agile documentation differs from traditional documentation
• Strategies for succeeding with Scrum on your own project

Courses typically run from 9am to 5pm, though the exact hours may vary. Continental breakfast and lunch are provided and are included in the course price. These informal breaks are outstanding opportunities to visit and network with your trainer and classmates.

Intended Audience

This course is appropriate for team members, stakeholders, ScrumMasters, managers, product owners, and anyone who wants to understand what agile and Scrum are all about. Though no agile experience is required, some experience managing projects is helpful.

Course Benefits

Upon completion of the course, students will be eligible for the following benefits:

• Eligibility to test and apply for the CSM.
• Ability to apply for 1 PDU per contact hour with the Project Management Institute
• Satisfaction of two-thirds of the 21 required training contact hours for the PMI-ACP^SM (Agile Certified Practitioner) as well as a strong foundation for the associated certifying exam

Why a BigVisible Course?

BigVisible focuses on one thing: enabling organizational agility. As coaches, we understand the challenges organizations face at all phases of their agile implementations: from team-level execution and delivery, to higher-level strategy, governance, and leadership. We know that for an organization to achieve agility, people at all levels must understand agile principles and be educated about agile processes like Scrum.

Our foundational training courses are firmly rooted in the core agile principles and practices you need to achieve success, regardless of your ultimate role in the organization. In addition to this quality training, BigVisible offers comprehensive coaching services, so if you get stuck or find that you need more help applying what you’ve learned, you can call on us.

Find out more about us, our point of view, and our approach to transformation and organizational agility by visiting our blog and website. There you will find in-depth discussions, blogs, videos, and resources to help you get a sense of who we are, what we’ve done for others, and how we can help you.

This two-day course will begin to clear away that murkiness through short, focused lectures by a qualified Certified Scrum Trainer teaching the basics of Scrum as well as practical tools gathered while mentoring and consulting with organizations learning to apply Scrum.  An important aim of this course is to leverage the wide-ranging knowledge and experience of the participants, so expect a significant amount of this course will be spent in peer-to-peer interactions, hands-on activities and drawing connections between the classroom material and your day-to-day experience.  This course will equip the participants with the knowledge on how to facilitate Scrum in their teams and begin the process of change in their organization.

The learning objectives for this course are:

• List the five values of Scrum and the eight essential Scrum principles.
• Draw a diagram describing the Scrum framework, highlighting all meetings, roles and artifacts.
• Describe the rights and responsibilities of  each role in Scrum – Team member, Product Owner, ScrumMaster and stakeholder.
• Discuss with other participants what Scrum means to you and what it will mean to be a ScrumMaster in your organization.
• Watch Scrum in action as the framework of Scrum will be used to deliver the course material.
• Identify the main obstacles to using Scrum in your organization.
• Practice applying ScrumMaster skills to solve real life problems.
• Pass the Certified Scrum Master assessment.

In addition to the objectives listed above, your instructor will incorporate your learning objectives into the class curriculum, provide regular opportunities to reflect-and-adapt on the class direction and make adjustments to achieve your learning objective.  By the close of the training, you will have gained the confidence and understanding to begin socializing Scrum within their your organizations and support teams with improving their processes.

Who Should Attend:

Any person who is interested in learning more about Scrum or wants to make Scrum work better for their Team or organization, is encouraged to attend.  While the focus of the class is for people who want to learn how to leverage the Scrum framework to bring about change, any member of Team or the organization who is interested in how to use Scrum would find this class useful.

Typical attendees in the past have been functional managers, Team leads, analysts, architects, engineers, software developers, directors, testers and other roles that support product development.

About your Instructor:

Carlton Nettleton, is an Agile software development coach, consultant and thought-leader in San Diego County.  He provides advice, mentoring and training to teams and programs looking to better software quality, improve productivity, build great teams and apply Lean Thinking to software projects.  He has over ten years of experience with software development as a contributor, facilitator and leader.  He is a Certified Scrum Trainer and has been practicing Scrum since 2005.

During the course, attendees will learn why such a seemingly simple process such as Scrum can have such profound effects on an organization. Participants gain practical experience working with Scrum tools and activities such as the product backlog, sprint backlog, daily Scrum meetings, sprint planning meeting, and burndown charts. Participants leave knowing how to apply Scrum to all sizes of projects, from a single collocated team to a large, highly distributed team.

Following successful completion of the course, you will be qualified and ready to pass the Scrum Alliance assessment exam. This multiple-choice, online test is required to become a Certified ScrumMaster, which includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional ScrumMaster-only material and information are available. For more information on the certification exam, see this page about the CSM exam.

PMPs: This course counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Will Learn

• Practical, project-proven practices
• The essentials of getting a project off on the right foot
• How to write user stories for the product backlog
• Why there's more to leading a self-organizing team than buying pizza and getting out of the way
• How to help both new and experienced teams be more successful
• How to successfully scale Scrum to large, multi-continent projects with team sizes in the hundreds
• Tips and tricks from the instructor's fifteen years of using Scrum in a wide variety of environments

Who Should Attend?

Whether you're a manager, programmer, tester, analyst, product manager, or someone interested in working on or with a Scrum team, this course is suited for you. You will leave with solid knowledge of how and why Scrum works. Through practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussion you will be prepared to plan your first sprint immediately after this class.

PMPs: This agile training class counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Get

• High quality training from an industry expert
• Recognition by the Scrum Alliance as a Certified ScrumMaster after passing a short certification exam
• A continental breakfast buffet, a hot lunch buffet, an afternoon snack, and continuously replenished drinks
• A 4 GB USB drive containing a PDF of the course materials, relevant articles by Mike Cohn and others, sample chapters from Mike's books, and other information
• A one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, a $50 value
• A printed, color copy of the course materials
• Planning Poker® cards for use in estimating with your team

• Per Gartner’s prediction 80% of all Software projects will be using Agile in the next couple of years.
• Your knowledge of both Agile and Traditional practices increase the value you bring to your organization.
• The certification covers all the Agile methods including Scrum, Extreme Programming XP, Lean, Kanban and has more eligibility rigor compared to existing entry level certifications.
• Be among the first to acquire this popular and industry recognized certification by PMI!
• The PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)^SM Certification exam is open to all Agile practitioner team roles who meet the eligibility requirements!

Learning outcome

• Learn the 10 Tools and Techniques and 43 Knowledge and Skills areas needed to pass the PMI-ACP Exam!
• Learn Real World Agile techniques used successfully by real teams!
• Learn real world techniques for planning, estimating and prioritizing requirements in an Agile way.
• Learn how to engage your business customers and delight them through early and frequent delivery of value

Why this Course?

• 100% PASS GUARANTEE! Free access to AgileExams.com
• Learn the entire Agile Lifecycle with real-world practical techniques!
• Covers the key PMI Learning Objectives needed to pass the PMI-ACP ^SM certification exam.
• Designed with 60% interactive group workshops!
• Designed to walk you through the Agile Lifecycle activities end to end.

Who should attend? Project Managers, Product Managers, Business Analysts, Developers, QA/Testers, IT Leaders, Project Stakeholders, existing PMI professionals, ScrumMaster’s, Product Owners, and other Team Members and Managers interested in passing the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner certification exam. 

• Definition of Scrum: Basic Scrum background and framework, principles and values which ensure the correct understanding of Scrum.
• Scrum theory:the three legs of Scrum theory (transparency, inspection and adaptation) are explanied. Resultant and fundamental values are examined in details: responsibility, self-organization and self-management, sense of urgency, commitment, technical excellence, rhythm, discipline, respect and courage.
• Scrum framework: The meetings, artifacts and roles that make up the Scrum process.
• Scrum practices: Estimation, planning, user stories, planning poker, prioritization techniques and other practices which are commonly used in Scrum.
• Agile Leadership: What is it and why is it important for a ScrumMaster? Common models of Leadership.
• Coaching and facilitation: Coaching definition, coaching scenarios, and facilitation techniques used by ScrumMasters.
• ScrumMaster’s Soft Skills: Helpful hints and techniques for building high performing teams, conflict management, practical techniques for the daily work of a ScrumMaster.
• Scrum Evolution: Applying Scrum in more than one project, Scrum with geographically distributed teams (real cases), Scrum of Scrums, Product Owner configuration, Scrum beyond software, Scrum and pre-defined techniques like PMBOK, CMMI.
• Other topics as required by the attendees.

Target audience:

Project Managers, Software Developers, Functional Managers, Operations, Sales, Marketing, Engineers and Architects, executives.

Prerequisites: Experience with project management.

• Definition of Scrum: Basic Scrum background and framework, principles and values which ensure the correct understanding of Scrum.
• Scrum theory:the three legs of Scrum theory (transparency, inspection and adaptation) are explanied. Resultant and fundamental values are examined in details: responsibility, self-organization and self-management, sense of urgency, commitment, technical excellence, rhythm, discipline, respect and courage.
• Scrum framework: The meetings, artifacts and roles that make up the Scrum process.
• Scrum practices: Estimation, planning, user stories, planning poker, prioritization techniques and other practices which are commonly used in Scrum.
• Agile Leadership: What is it and why is it important for a ScrumMaster? Common models of Leadership.
• Coaching and facilitation: Coaching definition, coaching scenarios, and facilitation techniques used by ScrumMasters.
• ScrumMaster’s Soft Skills: Helpful hints and techniques for building high performing teams, conflict management, practical techniques for the daily work of a ScrumMaster.
• Scrum Evolution: Applying Scrum in more than one project, Scrum with geographically distributed teams (real cases), Scrum of Scrums, Product Owner configuration, Scrum beyond software, Scrum and pre-defined techniques like PMBOK, CMMI.
• Other topics as required by the attendees.

Target audience:

Project Managers, Software Developers, Functional Managers, Operations, Sales, Marketing, Engineers and Architects, executives.

Prerequisites: Experience with project management.

• Definition of Scrum: Basic Scrum background and framework, principles and values which ensure the correct understanding of Scrum.
• Scrum theory:the three legs of Scrum theory (transparency, inspection and adaptation) are explanied. Resultant and fundamental values are examined in details: responsibility, self-organization and self-management, sense of urgency, commitment, technical excellence, rhythm, discipline, respect and courage.
• Scrum framework: The meetings, artifacts and roles that make up the Scrum process.
• Scrum practices: Estimation, planning, user stories, planning poker, prioritization techniques and other practices which are commonly used in Scrum.
• Agile Leadership: What is it and why is it important for a ScrumMaster? Common models of Leadership.
• Coaching and facilitation: Coaching definition, coaching scenarios, and facilitation techniques used by ScrumMasters.
• ScrumMaster’s Soft Skills: Helpful hints and techniques for building high performing teams, conflict management, practical techniques for the daily work of a ScrumMaster.
• Scrum Evolution: Applying Scrum in more than one project, Scrum with geographically distributed teams (real cases), Scrum of Scrums, Product Owner configuration, Scrum beyond software, Scrum and pre-defined techniques like PMBOK, CMMI.
• Other topics as required by the attendees.

Target audience:

Project Managers, Software Developers, Functional Managers, Operations, Sales, Marketing, Engineers and Architects, executives.

Prerequisites: Experience with project management.

It was originally created to train ScrumMasters, but is now used to train teams and the managers around teams.  It is particularly useful if a whole team (or team group) takes the course together.  In any case, all team roles (programmer, tester, analyst, Product Owner, ScrumMaster, etc) and managers and other interested parties can attend.  For example, CEOs have attended with benefit.

While it is a beginner level course, this course includes the practical knowledge to immediately start doing Scrum with a team.   You will also learn not just the how, but also the why.

This course is immersive and intensive, including practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussions.

Summary of the Course

Through a combination of immersive team-based learning, exercises, and real-world case studies, you will learn:

• To plan, initiate and lead a Scrum project
• To establish a shared vision for the entire team
• To generate an agile release plan utilizing user stories and story point estimation
• To lead your Scrum team through planning, review, and retrospective sessions
• To create an environment in which self-managing teams can flourish
• To identify and remove impediments
• To identify, engage and involve business stakeholders in your project
• To take most existing teams to the next level
• Practical suggestions purchased expensively from the school of hard knocks

This training provides an applied understanding of the Scrum process and helps participants begin to develop the tools, insights, and skills required to apply Scrum on their projects and across their organizations.

For more information about the course, click on the Register button. (You will not be “forced” to register.)

Additional Information: The course will run from 9am-5pm each day. A continental breakfast, breaks and lunch will be provided.

Following the course, each participant is enrolled as a Certified ScrumMaster, which includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional ScrumMaster-only material and information are available.  Participants will also get a hardcopy and a softcopy of the slide deck used (and more).

Course Leader: Joe Little is an Agile coach and Certified Scrum Trainer.  His goal is to use Lean-Agile principles and practices to help firms deliver more business value for customers, to make workers’ lives better and to benefit stakeholders.  Discovering business value is one of his passions.  And helping teams discover new avenues to greater productivity. He is proud for several people he has mentored, who now themselves are very strong in Agile.

Joe learned Scrum from Ken Schwaber and later mentored with Jeff Sutherland, with whom he continues to co-teach. He also works with several other CSTs (and friends).  He produces Lean Software training with the Poppendiecks.  His preference is to practice Agile as a combination of Scrum, XP and Lean principles and practices.  Joe was a speaker at Agile2007 and at Agile2008 and at AgileTour 2009.  He started Agile-Carolinas.

This course is based on Luke Hohmann’s book Innovation Games®: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play, and the techniques have been used by such companies as HP, Adobe, Cisco, SAP, Qualcomm, Emerson Climate Technologies and many others.

What you'll learn:

Modern product development practices, especially those that focus on innovative products and services, place great emphasis working directly with customers. But how do you elicit what your customers truly want from your product or service? This course tackles this challenge by revealing how a variety of serious games can help you develop the understanding that forms the foundation of innovation.

During the two days, you’ll learn what each Innovation Game will accomplish, why it works, and how to play it with customers. Then, we'll show you how to integrate the results into your product development processes, helping you focus your efforts, reduce your costs, accelerate time to market and deliver the right solutions, right from the start.

What Past Attendees Are Saying

Still on the fence? Here’s what some of our clients and students have said about Innovation Games:

“Playing [Innovation Games] gave us insight into how different people look at problems, the different kinds of thought processes in play. We saw this thanks to the debrief process; the act of presenting the game results to the larger group meant other participants got to see how others thought. With other methods, it’s hard to get to the true story.”

--Francis Tang, Senior Director of Globalization, Adobe

"Innovation Games® are great tools for engaging customers, both internal and external, in the development process. 
The Innovation Games Company has done a fantastic job in training and supporting people in our organization to use the games in driving truly customer-centric innovation."

--Jeff Honious, VP, Innovation, Reed Elsevier

"Innovation Games deliver such rich insight! Every organization that considers itself ‘customer-
centric’ or wants to become more so should make Innovation Games part of its standard tool kit."

--Linda Merrick, CPM, P5 Group, Inc. and Pivotal Product Management

Who should attend?

This training is indispensable for anyone who wants to drive more successful, customer-focused product development: product and R&D managers, CTOs and development leaders, marketers and senior business executives alike.

Details:

Date: Mar 22 - 23, 2012

Timing: 8:00 AM - 5:30 PM 

Location: Mountain View, CA

Cost: $895 Early Bird, $1195 General Admission

Register:

For more details and to register at this reduced price, please go to http://innovgamesmar2012.eventbrite.com/

The following elements will be covered during the one day course
* Scrum in Practice: the course is designed to illustrate Scrum in action.
* Understanding of the Agile Manifesto and what it means to them.
* Essence of Scrum: values, foundations and a new way of thinking.
* Understanding how Scrum values and foundations are related to the practices.
* Get a sense of what self-organization is (and is not).
* Can draw a diagram of mechanics of Scrum: framework, roles, artifacts & flow.

About your Instructor:

Lisa Montaño, MBA, CSM. has over 15 years experience in start-up and entrepreneurial companies working as a business analyst and functional lead. Lisa’s experience includes leading cross-functional teams to implement customized web interfaces, e-commerce capability, and workflow automation projects. Lisa has experience as the Scrum Product Owner and Scrum Master, and is a trainer and Scrum coach with Conscires Agile Practices.

Our CSM course covers a broad range of topics, including:

• How Scrum helps organizations cope with change, budget constraints, quality issues, and more
• The ScrumMaster role and how it differs from a traditional project manager
• Pragmatic practices for planning, project execution, and progress reporting
• How agile documentation differs from traditional documentation
• Strategies for succeeding with Scrum on your own project

.

Register for our Certified ScrumMaster Course!

What You Will Get From This Course:

• 2-day Scrum Alliance Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) course earns 14 PDUs
• Interactive curriculum from our experienced Certified Scrum Trainer (CST™)
• Flexible schedules and convenient locations
• 2-year membership in the Scrum Alliance ($50 value)
• Increased productivity, faster ROI, and improved value to your end customers through Scrum

Instructor Info:

Roger Brown is a Certified Agile Coach who provides training, consulting and coaching services in Agile software development areas including Scrum project management, enterprise agile adoption. Roger also does training and mentoring in agile engineering practices such as Test-Driven Development, automated acceptance testing and continuous integration. Roger is focused on helping companies and individuals find their own best approaches to the use of agile methods.

Roger is one of four people in the world to hold all certifications granted by the Scrum Alliance including Certified Scrum Trainer and Certified Scrum Coach. He is a member of the Scrum Alliance, the Agile Alliance and the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN). Roger is a founding member and certification board member for the Certified Scrum Coach program. 

Roger is an experienced software engineer, technical project manager and staff manager. He has experience working with both large and small companies in many industries. His work experience includes Dartmouth College, Vicinity Corporation, Microsoft and TeleAtlas.

Register for our Certified ScrumMaster Course!

14 PDUs Awarded
Scrum Alliance CSD-Eligible Course

Limited to only 16 registrations, sign-up now in order to ensure your seat is reserved.

No Prerequisites Required

Who should attend?

• Project Managers
• IT Professionals (Architects, BAs, DBAs, Developers, etc.)
• IT Leadership (Managers/Directors/VPs/CIOs/CTOs)
• Anyone interested in learning the benefits of Scrum

Course Overview:

Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) is an in-depth two day immersion into the world of Scrum. The course is full of practical, real world techniques that can be implemented immediately at your workplace. This course will allow your organization to enjoy the many advantages Scrum has to offer. Hands-on exercises demonstrate key concepts and let you experience the benefits of Scrum firsthand.

Course Learning Objectives:

• The advantages that Scrum brings to your organization
• A solid understanding of the Scrum framework
• Your role and responsibilities as the ScrumMaster
• The fundamentals of Agile Leadership (Servant Leadership)
• Facilitation skills that will help you succeed in your new role
• The importance of quickly uncovering roadblocks and clearing them for your team
• Tracking team performance with Agile Earned Value Management and burn down/up charts
• Considerations for implementing Scrum throughout your enterprise

Benefits:

• Increase customer satisfaction and time-to-market delivery
• Properly align your development efforts around building the highest business value features first
• Gain organizational trust and improve your team’s reputation for on-time and on-budget delivery, by setting them up for frequent success
• Experience higher team morale and productivity with a fundamental shift in management style
• Focus your personal efforts on the highest value tasks that will have an immediate impact on your team’s level of success
• Improve communications through transparency and “pull” versus “push” systems
• Achieve greater flexibility and bring value to your organization by adding another tool to your toolbox 

The following elements will be covered during the one day course
* Scrum in Practice: the course is designed to illustrate Scrum in action.
* Understanding of the Agile Manifesto and what it means to them.
* Essence of Scrum: values, foundations and a new way of thinking.
* Understanding how Scrum values and foundations are related to the practices.
* Get a sense of what self-organization is (and is not).
* Can draw a diagram of mechanics of Scrum: framework, roles, artifacts & flow.

About your Instructor:

Bachan Anand is an Agile Coach and the founder of Conscires Agile Practices. He brings the vision to support others building successful organizations through the empowerment of people and lightweight processes.

Course Description

66% of software features are rarely or never used. Making the right product decisions, building the right features, and incorporating feedback is the difference between building products that satisfy customers and building products that delight and engage them.

As one of the largest and fastest-growing agile frameworks, Scrum is a simple, yet powerful way to manage product requirements, elevate quality, and accelerate project delivery. One of the key roles in Scrum is that of Product Owner, the person tasked with setting and communicating the product vision, the one who ultimately determines what gets built.

The BigVisible Certified Scrum Product Owner course is a 2-day, hands-on workshop, filled with practical advice and time-tested techniques designed to give students the foundation they need to succeed with Scrum. Our Certified Scrum Trainers are coaches first, which means that long after your course is over, we have the experience and expertise to provide ongoing support and assist you in implementing what you've learned.

Our CSPO course offers a detailed examination of the Scrum project lifecycle and the product owner role, going beyond the basic definitions to focus on how to achieve success as a product owner with Scrum. Course delivery is varied for optimal learning, with activities ranging from case study analyses and in-depth lectures, to hands-on exercises and interactive games. Each person will leave this course empowered with practical, applicable advice and skills they can apply to their own projects and teams.

During the course, attendees will learn why such a seemingly simple process such as Scrum can have such profound effects on an organization. Participants gain practical experience working with Scrum tools and activities such as the product backlog, sprint backlog, daily Scrum meetings, sprint planning meeting, and burndown charts. Participants leave knowing how to apply Scrum to all sizes of projects, from a single collocated team to a large, highly distributed team.

Following successful completion of the course, you will be qualified and ready to pass the Scrum Alliance assessment exam. This multiple-choice, online test is required to become a Certified ScrumMaster, which includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional ScrumMaster-only material and information are available. For more information on the certification exam, see this page about the CSM exam.

PMPs: This course counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Will Learn

• Practical, project-proven practices
• The essentials of getting a project off on the right foot
• How to write user stories for the product backlog
• Why there's more to leading a self-organizing team than buying pizza and getting out of the way
• How to help both new and experienced teams be more successful
• How to successfully scale Scrum to large, multi-continent projects with team sizes in the hundreds
• Tips and tricks from the instructor's fifteen years of using Scrum in a wide variety of environments

Who Should Attend?

Whether you're a manager, programmer, tester, analyst, product manager, or someone interested in working on or with a Scrum team, this course is suited for you. You will leave with solid knowledge of how and why Scrum works. Through practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussion you will be prepared to plan your first sprint immediately after this class.

PMPs: This agile training class counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Get

• High quality training from an industry expert
• Recognition by the Scrum Alliance as a Certified ScrumMaster after passing a short certification exam
• A continental breakfast buffet, a hot lunch buffet, an afternoon snack, and continuously replenished drinks
• A 4 GB USB drive containing a PDF of the course materials, relevant articles by Mike Cohn and others, sample chapters from Mike's books, and other information
• A one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, a $50 value
• A printed, color copy of the course materials
• Planning Poker® cards for use in estimating with your team

• Definition of Scrum: Basic Scrum background and framework, principles and values which ensure the correct understanding of Scrum.
• Scrum theory:the three legs of Scrum theory (transparency, inspection and adaptation) are explanied. Resultant and fundamental values are examined in details: responsibility, self-organization and self-management, sense of urgency, commitment, technical excellence, rhythm, discipline, respect and courage.
• Scrum framework: The meetings, artifacts and roles that make up the Scrum process.
• Scrum practices: Estimation, planning, user stories, planning poker, prioritization techniques and other practices which are commonly used in Scrum.
• Agile Leadership: What is it and why is it important for a ScrumMaster? Common models of Leadership.
• Coaching and facilitation: Coaching definition, coaching scenarios, and facilitation techniques used by ScrumMasters.
• ScrumMaster’s Soft Skills: Helpful hints and techniques for building high performing teams, conflict management, practical techniques for the daily work of a ScrumMaster.
• Scrum Evolution: Applying Scrum in more than one project, Scrum with geographically distributed teams (real cases), Scrum of Scrums, Product Owner configuration, Scrum beyond software, Scrum and pre-defined techniques like PMBOK, CMMI.
• Other topics as required by the attendees.

Target audience:

Project Managers, Software Developers, Functional Managers, Operations, Sales, Marketing, Engineers and Architects, executives.

Prerequisites: Experience with project management.

Scrum increases the emphasis on assessing and driving business value through close collaboration with the delivery team. The Scrum Product Owner establishes the interaction between the business and the delivery team that is so essential to increasing productivity within an Agile organization. Product Owners who assume this crucial role have the ability to guide the team and the process to gain the full benefit of Agile delivery.

SolutionsIQ Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) Training is interactive and highly experiential. Participants gain practical tools and techniques for engaging with software delivery teams.

This training includes the following:

• Scrum overview
• Roles and responsibilities
• The Product Backlog
• User stories
• Estimation and prioritization
• Acceptance criteria
• Working with teams
• Scaling
• Release planning and tracking
• External relationships
• Metrics and reporting

Download the course description here.

One of the most important aspects of agile development training is estimating and planning. Yes, these are important, even for agile software development. Although agile is a fluid and iterative process, that doesn’t mean that planning doesn’t have a place in its programming and project management.

Despite the many worthless plans that we’ve all seen—which may make us want to skip planning altogether—this Agile Estimating and Planning Training will demonstrate that it’s possible to create accurate project plans useful for programming testing—and projecting forward from 6-9 months. Our Agile Estimating and Planning Training will teach you how to create practical, useful and reliable plans for your software development projects.

If your teams view planning as something to be avoided, or your organization uses plans as something to hold against development teams, this popular estimating and planning course can help your company break both of those attitudes and cycles.

Attendees will leave with a solid understanding and experience of agile release and iteration planning. The course also looks at various approaches to estimating including unit-less points and ideal time. The class will present four specific techniques for deriving reliable estimates, including how to use the popular Planning Poker® technique and other techniques that dramatically improve a project's chances of on-time completion.

By using this approach to estimating, teams learn to answer the ever-challenging questions that plague every development team: “When will we be done?” and “How soon can we have all of these features?”

This class is preceded by an Effective User Stories for Agile Requirements and a Certified ScrumMaster class in the same location. You can attend these classes separately or together.

PMPs: This course counts for 7.5 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Will Learn

• How to create an accurate and useful project plan
• The importance of estimating size and deriving duration
• The differences between story points and ideal time
• The advantages of an abstract measure of size
• Techniques for creating estimates
• When and how to re-estimate
• How and when to perform release and iteration planning
• Tips for communicating about estimates and plans

Who Should Attend

This course is equally suited for managers, programmers, testers, or anyone involved in estimating or planning a software development project. Participants will return to their jobs with specific recommendations and actions they can perform to improve their current plans and projects.

PMPs: This agile training class counts for 7.5 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Get

• High quality training from an industry expert
• A continental breakfast buffet, a hot lunch buffet, an afternoon snack, and continuously replenished drinks
• A printed, color copy of the course materials
• Planning Poker® cards for use in estimating with your team

It was originally created to train ScrumMasters, but is now used to train teams and the managers around teams.  It is particularly useful if a whole team (or team group) takes the course together.  In any case, all team roles (programmer, tester, analyst, Product Owner, ScrumMaster, etc) and managers and other interested parties can attend.  For example, CEOs have attended with benefit.

While it is a beginner level course, this course includes the practical knowledge to immediately start doing Scrum with a team.   You will also learn not just the how, but also the why.

This course is immersive and intensive, including practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussions.

Summary of the Course

Through a combination of immersive team-based learning, exercises, and real-world case studies, you will learn:

• To plan, initiate and lead a Scrum project
• To establish a shared vision for the entire team
• To generate an agile release plan utilizing user stories and story point estimation
• To lead your Scrum team through planning, review, and retrospective sessions
• To create an environment in which self-managing teams can flourish
• To identify and remove impediments
• To identify, engage and involve business stakeholders in your project
• To take most existing teams to the next level
• Practical suggestions purchased expensively from the school of hard knocks

This training provides an applied understanding of the Scrum process and helps participants begin to develop the tools, insights, and skills required to apply Scrum on their projects and across their organizations.

For more information about the course, click on the Register button. (You will not be “forced” to register.)

Additional Information: The course will run from 9am-5pm each day. A continental breakfast, breaks and lunch will be provided.

Following the course, each participant is enrolled as a Certified ScrumMaster, which includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional ScrumMaster-only material and information are available.  Participants will also get a hardcopy and a softcopy of the slide deck used (and more).

Course Leader: Joe Little is an Agile coach and Certified Scrum Trainer.  His goal is to use Lean-Agile principles and practices to help firms deliver more business value for customers, to make workers’ lives better and to benefit stakeholders.  Discovering business value is one of his passions.  And helping teams discover new avenues to greater productivity. He is proud for several people he has mentored, who now themselves are very strong in Agile.

Joe learned Scrum from Ken Schwaber and later mentored with Jeff Sutherland, with whom he continues to co-teach. He also works with several other CSTs (and friends).  He produces Lean Software training with the Poppendiecks.  His preference is to practice Agile as a combination of Scrum, XP and Lean principles and practices.  Joe was a speaker at Agile2007 and at Agile2008 and at AgileTour 2009.  He started Agile-Carolinas.

Register for our Certified ScrumMaster Course!

What You Will Get From This Course:

• 2-day Scrum Alliance Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) course earns 14 PDUs
• Interactive curriculum from our experienced Certified Scrum Trainer (CST™)
• Flexible schedules and convenient locations
• 2-year membership in the Scrum Alliance ($50 value)
• Increased productivity, faster ROI, and improved value to your end customers through Scrum

Instructor Info:

Roger Brown is a Certified Agile Coach who provides training, consulting and coaching services in Agile software development areas including Scrum project management, enterprise agile adoption. Roger also does training and mentoring in agile engineering practices such as Test-Driven Development, automated acceptance testing and continuous integration. Roger is focused on helping companies and individuals find their own best approaches to the use of agile methods.

Roger is one of four people in the world to hold all certifications granted by the Scrum Alliance including Certified Scrum Trainer and Certified Scrum Coach. He is a member of the Scrum Alliance, the Agile Alliance and the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN). Roger is a founding member and certification board member for the Certified Scrum Coach program. 

Roger is an experienced software engineer, technical project manager and staff manager. He has experience working with both large and small companies in many industries. His work experience includes Dartmouth College, Vicinity Corporation, Microsoft and TeleAtlas.

Register for our Certified ScrumMaster Course!

Who Should Attend/Prerequisites

“This course is essential to anyone looking to implement agile for their organization.” - PMO Director

“One of the best classes I have attended in over 12 years as an IT Professional" - Sr. System Analyst & Team lead

This class is great for:

• Project Manager
• ProjectLeads
• Team members
• Testers
• Business Analysts
• Group managers
• Executives (CEO, CIO)

Get Agile in 2012

The most exciting workshop in project management, is coming to your City. Get your introduction to Agile project management in 2 days, add one more day to make it a complete PMI-ACP Exam prep course.

The learning is non-stop in this high intensity, highly interactive workshop that will stretch your idea of what it means to manage projects. Come laugh, learn, and Get Agile in 2012!

Two Classes in One

New to agile?

Attend the 2-day Introduction to Agile.

Want to get ready for the PMI-ACP(SM) Exam?

Attend the full 3-day class (Introduction to Agile + PMI-ACP(SM) Exam Prep)

The Most Fun you will have Learning Project Management

Learn the most cutting edge approaches to project management, and why what you (and I) have been doing for years, NEVER WORKED IN THE FIRST PLACE!  You will learn: 

• Why Waterfall DOESN’T work
• Current approaches to Agile
• Common pitfalls and how to avoid them
• The difference between Push and Pull Project Management
• What project controls are available with agile
• Why agile estimation is the most accurate approach available
• And much, much more!

Agenda

You will learn to:

• Apply agile principles and practices on current your projects (even ones that are not identified as agile)
• Explain the science behind how and why agile works to management and executives
• Apply Agile methods to your project requirements and schedules
• Recognize ways to increase team performance through better communication and close involvement of customers
• Recognize the benefits of agile to delivering Enterprise software development projects
• Use Agile estimating techniques to plan your Enterprise project more accurately
• Identify and prevent common pitfalls Enterprise Organizations run into when adopting Agile

PMI-ACP Exam Prep!

The PMI-ACP Exam is ready

Are you ready? You could study the 11 books recommended by PMI for the exam and guess what material is covered from those books and hope for the best…

OR

You can study with one of the few internationally known instructors who has taken the exam!  

 Here are a few of the things people say about the course:

1. Fast Paced, Content Loaded, Highly Interactive
2. This class is essential for any organization wanting to be successful in agile project management
3. Grasp of Agile project management is through and makes learning the course easy.
4. Appropriate for new and advanced Agile practitioners alike
5. Great for teams looking for clarification and tuning
6. Challenging to advanced teams, throwing ‘challenge cards’ during exercises and asking experience teams to share their learning and delve into the ‘root cause’

Why should you take this course?

Practice with Interactive Classroom Exercises

1. Whitewater Projects is made up of professionals who have worked and continue to work in agile project management, not just in training. Enterprise agile is nothing new to these seasoned instructors.
2. Whitewater Projects’ instructors are experienced PMP Project Managers who have taught PMP Prep classes. They know PMI Exams and how to prepare for them.
3. Agile is taught by project managers from a project manager’s perspective.
4. You will practice agile techniques in a safe, controlled classroom environment. Classes are filled with exercises.
5. Understand WHY agile works not just HOW.  So you can be successful using agile in any circumstance.
6. Learn to recognize and avoid many common mistakes in agile implementation.
7. Whitewater Projects has an outstanding reputation in the Agile  industry.
8. In three days you will receive a solid foundation in agile and Whitewater Projects guarantees  you will pass the PMI ACP exam (see our Money back Guarantee)
9. There is more to agile than just Scrum. Learn the current trending ideas and topics in agile delivery
10. Whitewater Projects is active in the PMI Agile Community of Practice, so we are in touch with PMI Agile thought leaders and direction
11.  We spend time in class not only learning the book knowledge of agile but with extensive Q&A, applying agile to YOUR specific situation.

This highly interactive two day session has been designed to give you the ability to experience first-hand what it is like to be part of a Scrum team. Arrive prepared to face the challenges every ScrumMaster encounters and leave with the knowledge of how to handle each situation. This course is high energy and contains numerous exercises that require attendee full participation. The instructor will help each of you whether brand new to Scrum or adapting to a Scrum implementation identify what is required within each Scrum team member role, learn about Scrum reporting and meetings, and how to return to your organization with a fresh way of approaching complex projects successfully applying the Scrum framework to achieve success.

Upon successful completion of this course, and passage of the certification examination, each participant will be enrolled as a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM). Your certification will be registered and includes a one-year Scrum Alliance membership. The Scrum Alliance is home to additional ScrumMaster-only material as well as the latest in Scrum information and course offerings.

Course Content:

I. Agile Foundations

II. Scrum Foundations

III.Scrum Roles
a. Overview of Scrum roles
b. ScrumMaster
c. Product Owner
d. The Team

IV. Scrum Meetings
a. Sprint Planning meeting 1
b. Sprint Planning meeting 2
c. Daily Scrum meeting
d. Sprint Review meeting
e. Sprint Retrospective meeting
f. Release Planning meeting

V. Scrum Artifacts
a. Product Backlog
b. Product Increment and the Definition of Done
c. Sprint Backlog
d. Burndown Charts
e. Other Artifacts

VI. Scaling Scrum
a. Working with multiple Scrum teams
b. Working with distributed Scrum teams

The following elements will be covered during the one day course
* Scrum in Practice: the course is designed to illustrate Scrum in action.
* Understanding of the Agile Manifesto and what it means to them.
* Essence of Scrum: values, foundations and a new way of thinking.
* Understanding how Scrum values and foundations are related to the practices.
* Get a sense of what self-organization is (and is not).
* Can draw a diagram of mechanics of Scrum: framework, roles, artifacts & flow.

About your Instructor:

Bachan Anand is an Agile Coach and the founder of Conscires Agile Practices. He brings the vision to support others building successful organizations through the empowerment of people and lightweight processes.

14 PDUs Awarded
Scrum Alliance CSD-Eligible Course

Limited to only 16 registrations, sign-up now in order to ensure your seat is reserved.

No Prerequisites Required

Who should attend?

• Project Managers
• IT Professionals (Architects, BAs, DBAs, Developers, etc.)
• IT Leadership (Managers/Directors/VPs/CIOs/CTOs)
• Anyone interested in learning the benefits of Scrum

Course Overview:

Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) is an in-depth two day immersion into the world of Scrum. The course is full of practical, real world techniques that can be implemented immediately at your workplace. This course will allow your organization to enjoy the many advantages Scrum has to offer. Hands-on exercises demonstrate key concepts and let you experience the benefits of Scrum firsthand.

Course Learning Objectives:

• The advantages that Scrum brings to your organization
• A solid understanding of the Scrum framework
• Your role and responsibilities as the ScrumMaster
• The fundamentals of Agile Leadership (Servant Leadership)
• Facilitation skills that will help you succeed in your new role
• The importance of quickly uncovering roadblocks and clearing them for your team
• Tracking team performance with Agile Earned Value Management and burn down/up charts
• Considerations for implementing Scrum throughout your enterprise

Benefits:

• Increase customer satisfaction and time-to-market delivery
• Properly align your development efforts around building the highest business value features first
• Gain organizational trust and improve your team’s reputation for on-time and on-budget delivery, by setting them up for frequent success
• Experience higher team morale and productivity with a fundamental shift in management style
• Focus your personal efforts on the highest value tasks that will have an immediate impact on your team’s level of success
• Improve communications through transparency and “pull” versus “push” systems
• Achieve greater flexibility and bring value to your organization by adding another tool to your toolbox

Takeaways:

• Thorough understanding of Scrum
• A new outlook on the way you manage projects and lead your team
• The knowledge necessary for incorporating Scrum practices into your working environment
• A one year membership to the Scrum Alliance
• Eligibility to sit for the Certified ScrumMaster assessment 

• have an excellent understanding of the Scrum Basics (principles, roles and meetings)
• know how to go from Release Planning to Project Completion using Scrum
• know the value of User Stories and Relative Estimation
• understand how to build a high performance team
• know how to reduce time to market and increase quality
• know how to create a culture of learning and continuous improvement
• fulfill the requirements of the Certified ScrumMaster Program including preparation for the CSM Exam

Finally this is one of the few CSM courses where you’re likely to discuss the neuroscience and psychology of teams.

It was originally created to train ScrumMasters, but is now used to train teams and the managers around teams.  It is particularly useful if a whole team (or team group) takes the course together.  In any case, all team roles (programmer, tester, analyst, Product Owner, ScrumMaster, etc) and managers and other interested parties can attend.  For example, CEOs have attended with benefit.

While it is a beginner level course, this course includes the practical knowledge to immediately start doing Scrum with a team.   You will also learn not just the how, but also the why.

This course is immersive and intensive, including practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussions.

Summary of the Course

Through a combination of immersive team-based learning, exercises, and real-world case studies, you will learn:

• To plan, initiate and lead a Scrum project
• To establish a shared vision for the entire team
• To generate an agile release plan utilizing user stories and story point estimation
• To lead your Scrum team through planning, review, and retrospective sessions
• To create an environment in which self-managing teams can flourish
• To identify and remove impediments
• To identify, engage and involve business stakeholders in your project
• To take most existing teams to the next level
• Practical suggestions purchased expensively from the school of hard knocks

This training provides an applied understanding of the Scrum process and helps participants begin to develop the tools, insights, and skills required to apply Scrum on their projects and across their organizations.

For more information about the course, click on the Register button. (You will not be “forced” to register.)

Additional Information: The course will run from 9am-5pm each day. A continental breakfast, breaks and lunch will be provided.

Following the course, each participant is enrolled as a Certified ScrumMaster, which includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional ScrumMaster-only material and information are available.  Participants will also get a hardcopy and a softcopy of the slide deck used (and more).

Course Leader: Joe Little is an Agile coach and Certified Scrum Trainer.  His goal is to use Lean-Agile principles and practices to help firms deliver more business value for customers, to make workers’ lives better and to benefit stakeholders.  Discovering business value is one of his passions.  And helping teams discover new avenues to greater productivity. He is proud for several people he has mentored, who now themselves are very strong in Agile.

Joe learned Scrum from Ken Schwaber and later mentored with Jeff Sutherland, with whom he continues to co-teach. He also works with several other CSTs (and friends).  He produces Lean Software training with the Poppendiecks.  His preference is to practice Agile as a combination of Scrum, XP and Lean principles and practices.  Joe was a speaker at Agile2007 and at Agile2008 and at AgileTour 2009.  He started Agile-Carolinas.

Course Description

When you’re ready to learn the fundamentals of agile and Scrum, choose a BigVisible Certified ScrumMaster course. Our two-day, hands-on workshop is filled with practical advice and time-tested techniques designed to give students the foundation they need to succeed with Scrum. Our Certified Scrum Trainers are coaches first, which means that long after your course is over, we have the experience and expertise to provide ongoing support and assist you in implementing what you've learned.

As one of the largest and fastest-growing agile frameworks, Scrum is a simple, yet powerful way to boost team productivity, elevate quality, and accelerate project delivery. Our CSM course offers a detailed examination of the Scrum project lifecycle and the ScrumMaster role, going beyond the basic definitions to focus on how to achieve success as a ScrumMaster and with Scrum. Each person will leave the class with practical, applicable changes and improvements they can apply to their own projects and teams. Course delivery is varied for optimal learning, with activities ranging from case study analyses and in-depth lectures to hands-on exercises and interactive games.

Agenda & Learning Objectives

Our CSM course covers a broad range of topics, including:

• How Scrum helps organizations cope with change, budget constraints, quality issues, and more
• The ScrumMaster role and how it differs from a traditional project manager
• Pragmatic practices for planning, project execution, and progress reporting
• How agile documentation differs from traditional documentation
• Strategies for succeeding with Scrum on your own project

Courses typically run from 9am to 5pm, though the exact hours may vary. Continental breakfast and lunch are provided and are included in the course price. These informal breaks are outstanding opportunities to visit and network with your trainer and classmates.

Intended Audience

This course is appropriate for team members, stakeholders, ScrumMasters, managers, product owners, and anyone who wants to understand what agile and Scrum are all about. Though no agile experience is required, some experience managing projects is helpful.

Course Benefits

Upon completion of the course, students will be eligible for the following benefits:

• Eligibility to test and apply for the CSM.
• Ability to apply for 1 PDU per contact hour with the Project Management Institute
• Satisfaction of two-thirds of the 21 required training contact hours for the PMI-ACP^SM (Agile Certified Practitioner) as well as a strong foundation for the associated certifying exam

Why a BigVisible Course?

BigVisible focuses on one thing: enabling organizational agility. As coaches, we understand the challenges organizations face at all phases of their agile implementations: from team-level execution and delivery, to higher-level strategy, governance, and leadership. We know that for an organization to achieve agility, people at all levels must understand agile principles and be educated about agile processes like Scrum.

Our foundational training courses are firmly rooted in the core agile principles and practices you need to achieve success, regardless of your ultimate role in the organization. In addition to this quality training, BigVisible offers comprehensive coaching services, so if you get stuck or find that you need more help applying what you’ve learned, you can call on us.

Find out more about us, our point of view, and our approach to transformation and organizational agility by visiting our blog and website. There you will find in-depth discussions, blogs, videos, and resources to help you get a sense of who we are, what we’ve done for others, and how we can help you.

In 2011, PMI introduced a new Agile certification, the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)^SM

If you are using Agile practices in your projects, or your organization is adopting Agile approaches to project management, PMI’s (PMI-ACP)SM certification may be right for you and Agile Foundation Training will help prepare you with valuable information and best practices for achieving success in the Agile landscape.

By becoming a PMI-ACP you can:

•             Demonstrate to employers your level of professionalism in Agile practices of project management.

•             Increase your professional versatility.

Be trained by someone that has the experience of not only training but also extensive experience in actual and successful Agile implementations at multiple Fortune 500 companies and knows what is needed to be successful in your Agile implimentations.

Here is the the short course description:

The agenda, coupled with exercises, will consume the full three days. As appropriate, content may be replaced based on class composition. When of interest to most of the class, student questions will be answered by having the class devise solutions within the framework and principles of Agile – just as you will have to do at work!

In 2011, PMI introduced a new Agile certification, the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)^SM

If you are using Agile practices in your projects, or your organization is adopting Agile approaches to project management, PMI’s (PMI-ACP)SM certification may be right for you and Agile Foundation Training will help prepare you with valuable information and best practices for achieving success in the Agile landscape.

By becoming a PMI-ACP you can:

•             Demonstrate to employers your level of professionalism in Agile practices of project management.

•             Increase your professional versatility.

Be trained by someone that has the experience of not only training but also extensive experience in actual and successful Agile implementations at multiple Fortune 500 companies and knows what is needed to be successful in your Agile implimentations.

Here is the the short course description:

The agenda, coupled with exercises, will consume the full three days. As appropriate, content may be replaced based on class composition. When of interest to most of the class, student questions will be answered by having the class devise solutions within the framework and principles of Agile – just as you will have to do at work!

• Definition of Scrum: Basic Scrum background and framework, principles and values which ensure the correct understanding of Scrum.
• Scrum theory:the three legs of Scrum theory (transparency, inspection and adaptation) are explanied. Resultant and fundamental values are examined in details: responsibility, self-organization and self-management, sense of urgency, commitment, technical excellence, rhythm, discipline, respect and courage.
• Scrum framework: The meetings, artifacts and roles that make up the Scrum process.
• Scrum practices: Estimation, planning, user stories, planning poker, prioritization techniques and other practices which are commonly used in Scrum.
• Agile Leadership: What is it and why is it important for a ScrumMaster? Common models of Leadership.
• Coaching and facilitation: Coaching definition, coaching scenarios, and facilitation techniques used by ScrumMasters.
• ScrumMaster’s Soft Skills: Helpful hints and techniques for building high performing teams, conflict management, practical techniques for the daily work of a ScrumMaster.
• Scrum Evolution: Applying Scrum in more than one project, Scrum with geographically distributed teams (real cases), Scrum of Scrums, Product Owner configuration, Scrum beyond software, Scrum and pre-defined techniques like PMBOK, CMMI.
• Other topics as required by the attendees.

Target audience:

Project Managers, Software Developers, Functional Managers, Operations, Sales, Marketing, Engineers and Architects, executives.

Prerequisites: Experience with project management.

SolutionsIQ Certified Scrum Master (CSM) Training gives you all the tools and information you need to effectively apply Agile Scrum Project Management principles to your project or program.

Students will learn how to:

• Maintain and use a burndown chart
• Manage Product Backlogs
• Plan Releases and Iterations (Sprints)
• Conduct Sprint Planning, Daily Scrums, Sprint Reviews & Retrospective meetings
• Track and Report progress
• Effectively apply the principles of the Agile Manifesto

All SolutionsIQ Agile training courses are highly interactive. Students will participate in discussions group-based exercises, and simulations.

Download the course description here.

Register for our Certified ScrumMaster Course!

What You Will Get From This Course:

• 2-day Scrum Alliance Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) course earns 14 PDUs
• Interactive curriculum from our experienced Certified Scrum Trainer (CST™)
• Flexible schedules and convenient locations
• 2-year membership in the Scrum Alliance ($50 value)
• Increased productivity, faster ROI, and improved value to your end customers through Scrum

Instructor Info:

Roger Brown is a Certified Agile Coach who provides training, consulting and coaching services in Agile software development areas including Scrum project management, enterprise agile adoption. Roger also does training and mentoring in agile engineering practices such as Test-Driven Development, automated acceptance testing and continuous integration. Roger is focused on helping companies and individuals find their own best approaches to the use of agile methods.

Roger is one of four people in the world to hold all certifications granted by the Scrum Alliance including Certified Scrum Trainer and Certified Scrum Coach. He is a member of the Scrum Alliance, the Agile Alliance and the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN). Roger is a founding member and certification board member for the Certified Scrum Coach program. 

Roger is an experienced software engineer, technical project manager and staff manager. He has experience working with both large and small companies in many industries. His work experience includes Dartmouth College, Vicinity Corporation, Microsoft and TeleAtlas.

Register for our Certified ScrumMaster Course!

Our CSPO course offers a detailed examination of the Scrum project lifecycle and the product owner role, going beyond the basic definitions to focus on how to achieve success as a product owner with Scrum. Course delivery is varied for optimal learning, with activities ranging from case study analyses and in-depth lectures, to hands-on exercises and interactive games. Each person will leave this course empowered with practical, applicable advice and skills they can apply to their own projects and teams.

This one-day training teaches the principles and practices that make Scrum effective at managing projects. This is not a lecture-based training but rather, fully participative and experiential, where the content is prioritized by you! Exercises, demonstrations, facilitated discussions, and more are interwoven throughout the course to illustrate the principles being taught.
 This highly interactive one-day training will enable participants to:
* Understand the essence of Agile; understand its values, foundations and adopt a new way of thinking.
* Understand how Scrum values and foundations are related to the practices.
* Get a sense of what self-organization is (and is not).* How to support a new or transitioning Agile team and business.

This highly interactive one-day training will enable participants to:
* Understand the essence of Agile; understand its values, foundations and adopt a new way of thinking .
* Understand how Scrum values and foundations are related to the practices.
* Get a sense of what self-organization is (and is not).
* How to support a new or transitioning Agile team and business .

About your Instructor

Erin Beierwaltes has led teams from growing start-ups to multinational global companies with emphasis on improving efficiency of development groups and enhancing business processes since 2003. As an Agile Coach and Certified ScrumMaster she has transitioned groups from waterfall to scrum and has seen the positive effects Agile processes can play in a company. In an effort to improve the next generation of developers and business leaders Erin routinely acts as a guest lecturer for graduate and undergraduate students at many universities and colleges nationally..

• Definition of Scrum: Basic Scrum background and framework, principles and values which ensure the correct understanding of Scrum.
• Scrum theory:the three legs of Scrum theory (transparency, inspection and adaptation) are explanied. Resultant and fundamental values are examined in details: responsibility, self-organization and self-management, sense of urgency, commitment, technical excellence, rhythm, discipline, respect and courage.
• Scrum framework: The meetings, artifacts and roles that make up the Scrum process.
• Scrum practices: Estimation, planning, user stories, planning poker, prioritization techniques and other practices which are commonly used in Scrum.
• Agile Leadership: What is it and why is it important for a ScrumMaster? Common models of Leadership.
• Coaching and facilitation: Coaching definition, coaching scenarios, and facilitation techniques used by ScrumMasters.
• ScrumMaster’s Soft Skills: Helpful hints and techniques for building high performing teams, conflict management, practical techniques for the daily work of a ScrumMaster.
• Scrum Evolution: Applying Scrum in more than one project, Scrum with geographically distributed teams (real cases), Scrum of Scrums, Product Owner configuration, Scrum beyond software, Scrum and pre-defined techniques like PMBOK, CMMI.
• Other topics as required by the attendees.

Target audience:

Project Managers, Software Developers, Functional Managers, Operations, Sales, Marketing, Engineers and Architects, executives.

Prerequisites: Experience with project management.

During the course, attendees will learn why such a seemingly simple process such as Scrum can have such profound effects on an organization. Participants gain practical experience working with Scrum tools and activities such as the product backlog, sprint backlog, daily Scrum meetings, sprint planning meeting, and burndown charts. Participants leave knowing how to apply Scrum to all sizes of projects, from a single collocated team to a large, highly distributed team.

Following successful completion of the course, you will be qualified and ready to pass the Scrum Alliance assessment exam. This multiple-choice, online test is required to become a Certified ScrumMaster, which includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional ScrumMaster-only material and information are available. For more information on the certification exam, see this page about the CSM exam.

PMPs: This course counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Will Learn

• Practical, project-proven practices
• The essentials of getting a project off on the right foot
• How to write user stories for the product backlog
• Why there's more to leading a self-organizing team than buying pizza and getting out of the way
• How to help both new and experienced teams be more successful
• How to successfully scale Scrum to large, multi-continent projects with team sizes in the hundreds
• Tips and tricks from the instructor's fifteen years of using Scrum in a wide variety of environments

Who Should Attend?

Whether you're a manager, programmer, tester, analyst, product manager, or someone interested in working on or with a Scrum team, this course is suited for you. You will leave with solid knowledge of how and why Scrum works. Through practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussion you will be prepared to plan your first sprint immediately after this class.

PMPs: This agile training class counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Get

• High quality training from an industry expert
• Recognition by the Scrum Alliance as a Certified ScrumMaster after passing a short certification exam
• A continental breakfast buffet, a hot lunch buffet, an afternoon snack, and continuously replenished drinks
• A 4 GB USB drive containing a PDF of the course materials, relevant articles by Mike Cohn and others, sample chapters from Mike's books, and other information
• A one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, a $50 value
• A printed, color copy of the course materials
• Planning Poker® cards for use in estimating with your team

Certified Scrum Product Owner Training teaches you, the product owner, how to use the product backlog as a tool for success. As you watch the product take shape, iteration after iteration, you can restructure the Product Backlog to incorporate your insights or respond to changes in business conditions. You can also identify and cancel unsuccessful projects early, often within the first several months. The Certified Scrum Product Owner; course equips you with what you need to achieve success with Scrum.

Intuitive and lightweight, the Scrum process delivers completed increments of the product at rapid, regular intervals, usually from every two weeks to a month. Rather than the traditional system of turning a project over to a project manager while you then wait and hope for the best, Scrum offers an effective alternative, made even more attractive when considering the statistics of traditional product approaches in which over 50% of all projects fail and those that succeed deliver products in which 64% of the functionality is rarely or never used.

Let us help you avoid becoming one of these statistics.

Following successful completion of the course, each participant will be designated a Certified Scrum Product Owner. This certification includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional member-only material and information are available.

PMPs: This course counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Will Learn

• Practical, project-proven practices
• How to write user stories for the product backlog
• Proven techniques for prioritizing the product backlog
• How to predict the delivery date of a project (or the features that will be complete by a given date) using velocity
• Tips for managing the key variables influencing project success
• Tips and tricks from the instructor's fifteen years of using Scrum in a wide variety of environments

Who Should Attend?

This course is ideal for product managers, analysts, testers, and others who represent and are expected to understand the desires of users and customers on agile projects. You will leave with solid knowledge of how and why Scrum works and of your role on the project. Through practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussion you will leave prepared to guide a Scrum team to success.

PMPs: This course counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Get

• High quality training from an industry expert
• Recognition by the Scrum Alliance as a Certified Scrum Product Owner after passing a short certification exam
• A continental breakfast buffet, a hot lunch buffet, an afternoon snack, and continuously replenished drinks
• A 4 GB USB drive containing a PDF of the course materials, relevant articles by Mike Cohn and others, sample chapters from Mike's books, and other information
• A one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, a $50 value
• A printed, color copy of the course materials
• Planning Poker® cards for use in estimating with your team

During the course, attendees will learn why such a seemingly simple process such as Scrum can have such profound effects on an organization. Participants gain practical experience working with Scrum tools and activities such as the product backlog, sprint backlog, daily Scrum meetings, sprint planning meeting, and burndown charts. Participants leave knowing how to apply Scrum to all sizes of projects, from a single collocated team to a large, highly distributed team.

Following successful completion of the course, you will be qualified and ready to pass the Scrum Alliance assessment exam. This multiple-choice, online test is required to become a Certified ScrumMaster, which includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional ScrumMaster-only material and information are available. For more information on the certification exam, see this page about the CSM exam.

PMPs: This course counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Will Learn

• Practical, project-proven practices
• The essentials of getting a project off on the right foot
• How to write user stories for the product backlog
• Why there's more to leading a self-organizing team than buying pizza and getting out of the way
• How to help both new and experienced teams be more successful
• How to successfully scale Scrum to large, multi-continent projects with team sizes in the hundreds
• Tips and tricks from the instructor's fifteen years of using Scrum in a wide variety of environments

Who Should Attend?

Whether you're a manager, programmer, tester, analyst, product manager, or someone interested in working on or with a Scrum team, this course is suited for you. You will leave with solid knowledge of how and why Scrum works. Through practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussion you will be prepared to plan your first sprint immediately after this class.

PMPs: This agile training class counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Get

• High quality training from an industry expert
• Recognition by the Scrum Alliance as a Certified ScrumMaster after passing a short certification exam
• A continental breakfast buffet, a hot lunch buffet, an afternoon snack, and continuously replenished drinks
• A 4 GB USB drive containing a PDF of the course materials, relevant articles by Mike Cohn and others, sample chapters from Mike's books, and other information
• A one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, a $50 value
• A printed, color copy of the course materials
• Planning Poker® cards for use in estimating with your team

During the course, attendees will learn why such a seemingly simple process such as Scrum can have such profound effects on an organization. Participants gain practical experience working with Scrum tools and activities such as the product backlog, sprint backlog, daily Scrum meetings, sprint planning meeting, and burndown charts. Participants leave knowing how to apply Scrum to all sizes of projects, from a single collocated team to a large, highly distributed team.

Following successful completion of the course, you will be qualified and ready to pass the Scrum Alliance assessment exam. This multiple-choice, online test is required to become a Certified ScrumMaster, which includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional ScrumMaster-only material and information are available. For more information on the certification exam, see this page about the CSM exam.

This class is preceded by an Effective User Stories course and is followed by an Agile Estimating and Planning class in the same location. You can attend these classes separately or together.

PMPs: This course counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Will Learn

• Practical, project-proven practices
• The essentials of getting a project off on the right foot
• How to write user stories for the product backlog
• Why there's more to leading a self-organizing team than buying pizza and getting out of the way
• How to help both new and experienced teams be more successful
• How to successfully scale Scrum to large, multi-continent projects with team sizes in the hundreds
• Tips and tricks from the instructor's fifteen years of using Scrum in a wide variety of environments

Who Should Attend?

Whether you're a manager, programmer, tester, analyst, product manager, or someone interested in working on or with a Scrum team, this course is suited for you. You will leave with solid knowledge of how and why Scrum works. Through practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussion you will be prepared to plan your first sprint immediately after this class.

PMPs: This agile training class counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Get

• High quality training from an industry expert
• Recognition by the Scrum Alliance as a Certified ScrumMaster after passing a short certification exam
• A hot lunch buffet and afternoon biscuits
• A one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, a $50 value
• A printed and bound copy of the course materials
• Planning Poker® cards for use in estimating with your team

• have an excellent understanding of the Scrum Basics (principles, roles and meetings)
• know how to go from Release Planning to Project Completion using Scrum
• know the value of User Stories and Relative Estimation
• understand how to build a high performance team
• know how to reduce time to market and increase quality
• know how to create a culture of learning and continuous improvement
• fulfill the requirements of the Certified ScrumMaster Program including preparation for the CSM Exam

Finally this is one of the few CSM courses where you’re likely to discuss the neuroscience and psychology of teams.

• have an excellent understanding of the Scrum Basics (principles, roles and meetings)
• know how to go from Release Planning to Project Completion using Scrum
• know the value of User Stories and Relative Estimation
• understand how to build a high performance team
• know how to reduce time to market and increase quality
• know how to create a culture of learning and continuous improvement
• fulfill the requirements of the Certified ScrumMaster Program including preparation for the CSM Exam

Finally this is one of the few CSM courses where you’re likely to discuss the neuroscience and psychology of teams.

Looking for agile training that doesn’t assume you already know everything about sprints, stories and backlogs? Tired of webinars full of theoretical concepts that tell you why you should use agile but not how to practically apply it? Do you want to start applying agile principles in your work but don’t know where to start?

Choose from 5 classes, only $99 each, or take the whole series for just $396:

VersionOne’s Agile eLearning series is your fast track to becoming an agile ninja.

Entertaining, experienced agile practitioners

Learn the how, not just the why

Collaborative environment

Education designed to keep you engaged

Small class size

All the benefits of being in a classroom without the headache of traveling

 

What’s so special about this series?

You don’t have time to waste trying to find education resources and grappling with complex theoretical diatribes. VersionOne’s Agile eLearning is designed visually for the way your brain works, not a text heavy approach that puts you to sleep.

Our CSPO course offers a detailed examination of the Scrum project lifecycle and the product owner role, going beyond the basic definitions to focus on how to achieve success as a product owner with Scrum. Course delivery is varied for optimal learning, with activities ranging from case study analyses and in-depth lectures, to hands-on exercises and interactive games. Each person will leave this course empowered with practical, applicable advice and skills they can apply to their own projects and teams.

Course Description

When you’re ready to learn the fundamentals of agile and Scrum, choose a BigVisible Certified ScrumMaster course. Our two-day, hands-on workshop is filled with practical advice and time-tested techniques designed to give students the foundation they need to succeed with Scrum. Our Certified Scrum Trainers are coaches first, which means that long after your course is over, we have the experience and expertise to provide ongoing support and assist you in implementing what you've learned.

As one of the largest and fastest-growing agile frameworks, Scrum is a simple, yet powerful way to boost team productivity, elevate quality, and accelerate project delivery. Our CSM course offers a detailed examination of the Scrum project lifecycle and the ScrumMaster role, going beyond the basic definitions to focus on how to achieve success as a ScrumMaster and with Scrum. Each person will leave the class with practical, applicable changes and improvements they can apply to their own projects and teams. Course delivery is varied for optimal learning, with activities ranging from case study analyses and in-depth lectures to hands-on exercises and interactive games.

Agenda & Learning Objectives

Our CSM course covers a broad range of topics, including:

• How Scrum helps organizations cope with change, budget constraints, quality issues, and more
• The ScrumMaster role and how it differs from a traditional project manager
• Pragmatic practices for planning, project execution, and progress reporting
• How agile documentation differs from traditional documentation
• Strategies for succeeding with Scrum on your own project

Courses typically run from 9am to 5pm, though the exact hours may vary. Continental breakfast and lunch are provided and are included in the course price. These informal breaks are outstanding opportunities to visit and network with your trainer and classmates.

Intended Audience

This course is appropriate for team members, stakeholders, ScrumMasters, managers, product owners, and anyone who wants to understand what agile and Scrum are all about. Though no agile experience is required, some experience managing projects is helpful.

Course Benefits

Upon completion of the course, students will be eligible for the following benefits:

• Eligibility to test and apply for the CSM.
• Ability to apply for 1 PDU per contact hour with the Project Management Institute
• Satisfaction of two-thirds of the 21 required training contact hours for the PMI-ACP^SM (Agile Certified Practitioner) as well as a strong foundation for the associated certifying exam

Why a BigVisible Course?

BigVisible focuses on one thing: enabling organizational agility. As coaches, we understand the challenges organizations face at all phases of their agile implementations: from team-level execution and delivery, to higher-level strategy, governance, and leadership. We know that for an organization to achieve agility, people at all levels must understand agile principles and be educated about agile processes like Scrum.

Our foundational training courses are firmly rooted in the core agile principles and practices you need to achieve success, regardless of your ultimate role in the organization. In addition to this quality training, BigVisible offers comprehensive coaching services, so if you get stuck or find that you need more help applying what you’ve learned, you can call on us.

Find out more about us, our point of view, and our approach to transformation and organizational agility by visiting our blog and website. There you will find in-depth discussions, blogs, videos, and resources to help you get a sense of who we are, what we’ve done for others, and how we can help you.

This two-day course will begin to clear away that murkiness through short, focused lectures by a qualified Certified Scrum Trainer teaching the basics of Scrum as well as practical tools gathered while mentoring and consulting with organizations learning to apply Scrum.  An important aim of this course is to leverage the wide-ranging knowledge and experience of the participants, so expect a significant amount of this course will be spent in peer-to-peer interactions, hands-on activities and drawing connections between the classroom material and your day-to-day experience.  This course will equip the participants with the knowledge on how to facilitate Scrum in their teams and begin the process of change in their organization.

The learning objectives for this course are:

• List the five values of Scrum and the eight essential Scrum principles.
• Draw a diagram describing the Scrum framework, highlighting all meetings, roles and artifacts.
• Describe the rights and responsibilities of  each role in Scrum – Team member, Product Owner, ScrumMaster and stakeholder.
• Discuss with other participants what Scrum means to you and what it will mean to be a ScrumMaster in your organization.
• Watch Scrum in action as the framework of Scrum will be used to deliver the course material.
• Identify the main obstacles to using Scrum in your organization.
• Practice applying ScrumMaster skills to solve real life problems.
• Pass the Certified Scrum Master assessment.

In addition to the objectives listed above, your instructor will incorporate your learning objectives into the class curriculum, provide regular opportunities to reflect-and-adapt on the class direction and make adjustments to achieve your learning objective.  By the close of the training, you will have gained the confidence and understanding to begin socializing Scrum within their your organizations and support teams with improving their processes.

Who Should Attend:

Any person who is interested in learning more about Scrum or wants to make Scrum work better for their Team or organization, is encouraged to attend.  While the focus of the class is for people who want to learn how to leverage the Scrum framework to bring about change, any member of Team or the organization who is interested in how to use Scrum would find this class useful.

Typical attendees in the past have been functional managers, Team leads, analysts, architects, engineers, software developers, directors, testers and other roles that support product development.

About your Instructor:

Carlton Nettleton, is an Agile software development coach, consultant and thought-leader in San Diego County.  He provides advice, mentoring and training to teams and programs looking to better software quality, improve productivity, build great teams and apply Lean Thinking to software projects.  He has over ten years of experience with software development as a contributor, facilitator and leader.  He is a Certified Scrum Trainer and has been practicing Scrum since 2005.

14 PDUs Awarded
The Braintrust Consulting Group is a Scrum Alliance Registered Education Provider (REP)

Limited to only 16 registrations, sign-up now in order to ensure your seat is reserved.

No Prerequisites Required

Who should attend?

• Product Managers/Business Analysts
• Functional/Operational Managers
• Project Sponsors
• IT Leadership (Managers/Directors/VPs/CIOs/CTOs)
• Anyone interested in learning the benefits of Scrum

Course Overview:

Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) is an in-depth two day immersion into the world of Agile Product Management. The course is full of practical, real world techniques, which can be implemented immediately at your workplace. This course will allow your organization to enjoy the many advantages Scrum has to offer. Hands-on exercises demonstrate key concepts and let you experience the benefits of Scrum firsthand.

Course Learning Objectives:

• The advantages that Agile Product Management brings to your organization
• A solid understanding of the Scrum framework
• Your role and responsibilities as the Product Owner
• Developing a vision that serves as a guiding light for the product and the project team
• Predicting delivery dates and determining release plans
• Grooming the product backlog; how to effectively gather and document Agile requirements
• Establishing an effective measure of business value so that the right features can be implemented
• Embracing continuous planning throughout the project lifecycle

 Benefits:

• Properly align your development efforts around delivering the highest business value features first
• Ensure that the right features are being implemented for the right reasons at the right time
• Effectively and efficiently incorporate new insights into the product during the project lifecycle
• Rapidly respond to changing market conditions
• Increase customer satisfaction and time-to-market delivery
• Gain organizational trust and improve your team's reputation for on-time and on-budget delivery by setting them up for frequent successes
• Achieve greater flexibility and value to your organization by adding another tool to your toolbox

Takeaways:

• Thorough understanding about Agile Product Management using Scrum
• A new outlook on the way you develop and prioritize features 
• The knowledge necessary for incorporating Scrum practices into your working environment
• A one year membership to the Scrum Alliance
• The Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) designation

About The Instructor: Brian M. Rabon, CST, PMP

 Brian is the President of The Braintrust Consulting Group, He holds a BS in computer science from Auburn University and a MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is an avid author, blogger and speaker at conferences, professional organizations, and user groups around the globe. Brian is an Adjunct Instructor for UAB’s Information Engineering and Management Program, a contract instructor for ASPE, New Horizons, Rally, Version One, and many other quality organizations. Brian is a Certified Scrum Trainer® through the Scrum Alliance and The Braintrust Consulting Group is a Registered Education Provider® for the Scrum Alliance.

Visit Brian's testimonial page at - http://www.yourpmpartner.com/testimonials.html

Cancellation Policy:

In order to receive a refund of your tuition for this course you must notify us no later than 5 days prior to the course start date. Cancellation requests received after the 5 day window will be issued a credit that can be applied towards a future class.

We may on some occasions share your email address with a limited number of our trusted partners. We do not sell your personal information and we treat your privacy with the utmost regard. Please contact us at info@your-pm-partner.com if you have any concerns. 

Our CSM course covers a broad range of topics, including:

• How Scrum helps organizations cope with change, budget constraints, quality issues, and more
• The ScrumMaster role and how it differs from a traditional project manager
• Pragmatic practices for planning, project execution, and progress reporting
• How agile documentation differs from traditional documentation
• Strategies for succeeding with Scrum on your own project

.

This one-day training teaches the principles and practices that make Scrum effective at managing projects. This is not a lecture-based training but rather, fully participative and experiential, where the content is prioritized by you! Exercises, demonstrations, facilitated discussions, and more are interwoven throughout the course to illustrate the principles being taught.
 This highly interactive one-day training will enable participants to:
* Understand the essence of Agile; understand its values, foundations and adopt a new way of thinking.
* Understand how Scrum values and foundations are related to the practices.
* Get a sense of what self-organization is (and is not).* How to support a new or transitioning Agile team and business.

This highly interactive one-day training will enable participants to:
* Understand the essence of Agile; understand its values, foundations and adopt a new way of thinking .
* Understand how Scrum values and foundations are related to the practices.
* Get a sense of what self-organization is (and is not).
* How to support a new or transitioning Agile team and business .

About your Instructor

Erin Beierwaltes has led teams from growing start-ups to multinational global companies with emphasis on improving efficiency of development groups and enhancing business processes since 2003. As an Agile Coach and Certified ScrumMaster she has transitioned groups from waterfall to scrum and has seen the positive effects Agile processes can play in a company. In an effort to improve the next generation of developers and business leaders Erin routinely acts as a guest lecturer for graduate and undergraduate students at many universities and colleges nationally..

Certified Scrum Product Owner Training teaches you, the product owner, how to use the product backlog as a tool for success. As you watch the product take shape, iteration after iteration, you can restructure the Product Backlog to incorporate your insights or respond to changes in business conditions. You can also identify and cancel unsuccessful projects early, often within the first several months. The Certified Scrum Product Owner; course equips you with what you need to achieve success with Scrum.

Intuitive and lightweight, the Scrum process delivers completed increments of the product at rapid, regular intervals, usually from every two weeks to a month. Rather than the traditional system of turning a project over to a project manager while you then wait and hope for the best, Scrum offers an effective alternative, made even more attractive when considering the statistics of traditional product approaches in which over 50% of all projects fail and those that succeed deliver products in which 64% of the functionality is rarely or never used.

Let us help you avoid becoming one of these statistics.

Following successful completion of the course, each participant will be designated a Certified Scrum Product Owner. This certification includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional member-only material and information are available.

PMPs: This course counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Will Learn

• Practical, project-proven practices
• How to write user stories for the product backlog
• Proven techniques for prioritizing the product backlog
• How to predict the delivery date of a project (or the features that will be complete by a given date) using velocity
• Tips for managing the key variables influencing project success
• Tips and tricks from the instructor's fifteen years of using Scrum in a wide variety of environments

Who Should Attend?

This course is ideal for product managers, analysts, testers, and others who represent and are expected to understand the desires of users and customers on agile projects. You will leave with solid knowledge of how and why Scrum works and of your role on the project. Through practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussion you will leave prepared to guide a Scrum team to success.

PMPs: This course counts for 15 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Get

• High quality training from an industry expert
• Recognition by the Scrum Alliance as a Certified Scrum Product Owner after passing a short certification exam
• A continental breakfast buffet, a hot lunch buffet, an afternoon snack, and continuously replenished drinks
• A 4 GB USB drive containing a PDF of the course materials, relevant articles by Mike Cohn and others, sample chapters from Mike's books, and other information
• A one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, a $50 value
• A printed, color copy of the course materials
• Planning Poker® cards for use in estimating with your team

Learn from the best! Experience the ONLY course designed by 3 of the members of the PMI-Agile certification steering committee.

Through an engaging combination of discussion, group interaction, case studies and Real World focused workshops, you will learn not only how to apply Agile, but will gain the experience necessary to immediately implement Agile practices that are appropriate for your teams. Better yet, this course was designed to cover all the 10 tools and techniques, and 43 knowledge skill areas you need to learn to pass the new PMI Agile Practitioner Certification. This is also a certified ICAgile course which qualifies participants for the ICAgile Associate credential. 

Projects start with their requirements. How those requirements are documented or expressed has a tremendous influence on the rest of the project. A great way to build software that meets real users’ real needs and gets the project off on the right foot is to begin with user stories.

User stories are simple, clear, brief descriptions of functionality told from the perspective of a user. User stories in agile and Scrum development can be useful to either a user of the software or the customer of the software. These user stories can then become the product backlog of an agile or Scrum project.

The technique of expressing requirements as user stories is one of the most broadly applicable techniques introduced by the agile processes; and user stories can also be an effective approach on all time-constrained projects.

This course provides you with the knowledge and tools needed to identify and write effective and helpful user stories. You’ll learn the six attributes all good stories must exhibit and thirteen guidelines for writing a better user story. The class explores how user role modeling can help when gathering a project's initial stories. During this hands-on course, all participants will have the opportunity to practice identifying user roles and writing stories on a case study.

This class will be followed by a Certified ScrumMaster class and an Agile Estimating and Planning class in the same location. You can attend each class separately or with this class.

This course counts for 7.5 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Will Learn

• A useful template for writing user stories
• The six attributes of a good story and how to achieve them
• How to write non-functional requirements as user stories
• How much work to do up-front and how much to do just-in-time
• How to conduct a story-writing workshop
• Practical examples from real-world projects

Who Should Attend

This course is equally suited for programmers, testers, managers, analysts and even customers and product owners who are interested in applying these agile techniques to their projects.

PMPs: This agile training class counts for 7.5 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

What You Get

• High quality training from an industry expert
• A hot lunch buffet and afternoon biscuits
• A printed and bound copy of the course materials

It was originally created to train ScrumMasters, but is now used to train teams and the managers around teams.  It is particularly useful if a whole team (or team group) takes the course together.  In any case, all team roles (programmer, tester, analyst, Product Owner, ScrumMaster, etc) and managers and other interested parties can attend.  For example, CEOs have attended with benefit.

While it is a beginner level course, this course includes the practical knowledge to immediately start doing Scrum with a team.   You will also learn not just the how, but also the why.

This course is immersive and intensive, including practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussions.

Summary of the Course

Through a combination of immersive team-based learning, exercises, and real-world case studies, you will learn:

• To plan, initiate and lead a Scrum project
• To establish a shared vision for the entire team
• To generate an agile release plan utilizing user stories and story point estimation
• To lead your Scrum team through planning, review, and retrospective sessions
• To create an environment in which self-managing teams can flourish
• To identify and remove impediments
• To identify, engage and involve business stakeholders in your project
• To take most existing teams to the next level
• Practical suggestions purchased expensively from the school of hard knocks

This training provides an applied understanding of the Scrum process and helps participants begin to develop the tools, insights, and skills required to apply Scrum on their projects and across their organizations.

For more information about the course, click on the Register button. (You will not be “forced” to register.)

Additional Information: The course will run from 9am-5pm each day. A continental breakfast, breaks and lunch will be provided.

Following the course, each participant is enrolled as a Certified ScrumMaster, which includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional ScrumMaster-only material and information are available.  Participants will also get a hardcopy and a softcopy of the slide deck used (and more).

Course Leader: Joe Little is an Agile coach and Certified Scrum Trainer.  His goal is to use Lean-Agile principles and practices to help firms deliver more business value for customers, to make workers’ lives better and to benefit stakeholders.  Discovering business value is one of his passions.  And helping teams discover new avenues to greater productivity. He is proud for several people he has mentored, who now themselves are very strong in Agile.

Joe learned Scrum from Ken Schwaber and later mentored with Jeff Sutherland, with whom he continues to co-teach. He also works with several other CSTs (and friends).  He produces Lean Software training with the Poppendiecks.  His preference is to practice Agile as a combination of Scrum, XP and Lean principles and practices.  Joe was a speaker at Agile2007 and at Agile2008 and at AgileTour 2009.  He started Agile-Carolinas.

This highly interactive two day session has been designed to give you the ability to experience first-hand what it is like to be part of a Scrum team. Arrive prepared to face the challenges every ScrumMaster encounters and leave with the knowledge of how to handle each situation. This course is high energy and contains numerous exercises that require attendee full participation. The instructor will help each of you whether brand new to Scrum or adapting to a Scrum implementation identify what is required within each Scrum team member role, learn about Scrum reporting and meetings, and how to return to your organization with a fresh way of approaching complex projects successfully applying the Scrum framework to achieve success.

Upon successful completion of this course, and passage of the certification examination, each participant will be enrolled as a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM). Your certification will be registered and includes a one-year Scrum Alliance membership. The Scrum Alliance is home to additional ScrumMaster-only material as well as the latest in Scrum information and course offerings.

Course Content:

I. Agile Foundations

II. Scrum Foundations

III.Scrum Roles
a. Overview of Scrum roles
b. ScrumMaster
c. Product Owner
d. The Team

IV. Scrum Meetings
a. Sprint Planning meeting 1
b. Sprint Planning meeting 2
c. Daily Scrum meeting
d. Sprint Review meeting
e. Sprint Retrospective meeting
f. Release Planning meeting

V. Scrum Artifacts
a. Product Backlog
b. Product Increment and the Definition of Done
c. Sprint Backlog
d. Burndown Charts
e. Other Artifacts

VI. Scaling Scrum
a. Working with multiple Scrum teams
b. Working with distributed Scrum teams

It was originally created to train ScrumMasters, but is now used to train teams and the managers around teams.  It is particularly useful if a whole team (or team group) takes the course together.  In any case, all team roles (programmer, tester, analyst, Product Owner, ScrumMaster, etc) and managers and other interested parties can attend.  For example, CEOs have attended with benefit.

While it is a beginner level course, this course includes the practical knowledge to immediately start doing Scrum with a team.   You will also learn not just the how, but also the why.

This course is immersive and intensive, including practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussions.

Summary of the Course

Through a combination of immersive team-based learning, exercises, and real-world case studies, you will learn:

• To plan, initiate and lead a Scrum project
• To establish a shared vision for the entire team
• To generate an agile release plan utilizing user stories and story point estimation
• To lead your Scrum team through planning, review, and retrospective sessions
• To create an environment in which self-managing teams can flourish
• To identify and remove impediments
• To identify, engage and involve business stakeholders in your project
• To take most existing teams to the next level
• Practical suggestions purchased expensively from the school of hard knocks

This training provides an applied understanding of the Scrum process and helps participants begin to develop the tools, insights, and skills required to apply Scrum on their projects and across their organizations.

For more information about the course, click on the Register button. (You will not be “forced” to register.)

Additional Information: The course will run from 9am-5pm each day. A continental breakfast, breaks and lunch will be provided.

Following the course, each participant is enrolled as a Certified ScrumMaster, which includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional ScrumMaster-only material and information are available.  Participants will also get a hardcopy and a softcopy of the slide deck used (and more).

Course Leader: Joe Little is an Agile coach and Certified Scrum Trainer.  His goal is to use Lean-Agile principles and practices to help firms deliver more business value for customers, to make workers’ lives better and to benefit stakeholders.  Discovering business value is one of his passions.  And helping teams discover new avenues to greater productivity. He is proud for several people he has mentored, who now themselves are very strong in Agile.

Joe learned Scrum from Ken Schwaber and later mentored with Jeff Sutherland, with whom he continues to co-teach. He also works with several other CSTs (and friends).  He produces Lean Software training with the Poppendiecks.  His preference is to practice Agile as a combination of Scrum, XP and Lean principles and practices.  Joe was a speaker at Agile2007 and at Agile2008 and at AgileTour 2009.  He started Agile-Carolinas.

14 PDUs Awarded
Scrum Alliance CSD-Eligible Course

Limited to only 16 registrations, sign-up now in order to ensure your seat is reserved.

No Prerequisites Required

Who should attend?

• Project Managers
• IT Professionals (Architects, BAs, DBAs, Developers, etc.)
• IT Leadership (Managers/Directors/VPs/CIOs/CTOs)
• Anyone interested in learning the benefits of Scrum

Course Overview:

Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) is an in-depth two day immersion into the world of Scrum. The course is full of practical, real world techniques that can be implemented immediately at your workplace. This course will allow your organization to enjoy the many advantages Scrum has to offer. Hands-on exercises demonstrate key concepts and let you experience the benefits of Scrum firsthand.

Course Learning Objectives:

• The advantages that Scrum brings to your organization
• A solid understanding of the Scrum framework
• Your role and responsibilities as the ScrumMaster
• The fundamentals of Agile Leadership (Servant Leadership)
• Facilitation skills that will help you succeed in your new role
• The importance of quickly uncovering roadblocks and clearing them for your team
• Tracking team performance with Agile Earned Value Management and burn down/up charts
• Considerations for implementing Scrum throughout your enterprise

Benefits:

• Increase customer satisfaction and time-to-market delivery
• Properly align your development efforts around building the highest business value features first
• Gain organizational trust and improve your team’s reputation for on-time and on-budget delivery, by setting them up for frequent success
• Experience higher team morale and productivity with a fundamental shift in management style
• Focus your personal efforts on the highest value tasks that will have an immediate impact on your team’s level of success
• Improve communications through transparency and “pull” versus “push” systems
• Achieve greater flexibility and bring value to your organization by adding another tool to your toolbox

Takeaways:

• Thorough understanding of Scrum
• A new outlook on the way you manage projects and lead your team
• The knowledge necessary for incorporating Scrum practices into your working environment
• A one year membership to the Scrum Alliance
• Eligibility to sit for the Certified ScrumMaster assessment

About The Instructor: Brian M. Rabon, CST, PMP

Brian is the President of The Braintrust Consulting Group, He holds a BS in computer science from Auburn University and a MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is an avid author, blogger and speaker at conferences, professional organizations, and user groups around the globe. Brian is an Adjunct Instructor for UAB’s Information Engineering and Management Program, a contract instructor for ASPE, New Horizons, Rally, Version One, and many other quality organizations. Brian is a Certified Scrum Trainer® through the Scrum Alliance and The Braintrust Consulting Group is a Registered Education Provider® for the Scrum Alliance.

Visit Brian's testimonial page at - http://www.yourpmpartner.com/testimonials.html

Cancellation Policy:

In order to receive a refund of your tuition for this course you must notify us no later than 5 days prior to the course start date. Cancellation requests received after the 5 day window will be issued a credit that can be applied towards a future class.

We may on some occasions share your email address with a limited number of our trusted partners. We do not sell your personal information and we treat your privacy with the utmost regard. Please contact us at info@your-pm-partner.com if you have any concerns. 

Course Description

66% of software features are rarely or never used. Making the right product decisions, building the right features, and incorporating feedback is the difference between building products that satisfy customers and building products that delight and engage them.

As one of the largest and fastest-growing agile frameworks, Scrum is a simple, yet powerful way to manage product requirements, elevate quality, and accelerate project delivery. One of the key roles in Scrum is that of Product Owner, the person tasked with setting and communicating the product vision, the one who ultimately determines what gets built.

The BigVisible Certified Scrum Product Owner course is a 2-day, hands-on workshop, filled with practical advice and time-tested techniques designed to give students the foundation they need to succeed with Scrum. Our Certified Scrum Trainers are coaches first, which means that long after your course is over, we have the experience and expertise to provide ongoing support and assist you in implementing what you've learned.

Our CSPO course offers a detailed examination of the Scrum project lifecycle and the product owner role, going beyond the basic definitions to focus on how to achieve success as a product owner with Scrum. Course delivery is varied for optimal learning, with activities ranging from case study analyses and in-depth lectures, to hands-on exercises and interactive games. Each person will leave this course empowered with practical, applicable advice and skills they can apply to their own projects and teams.

Agenda & Learning Objectives

Our CSPO course covers a broad range of topics, including:

• How Scrum helps organizations cope with change, budget constraints, quality issues, and more
• The product owner role and how it differs from traditional roles, such as business analyst
• Ways to manage the product backlog and write effective user stories
• Pragmatic practices for managing and communicating the scope and vision of a product
• How to partner effectively with a development team
• Strategies for delivering faster by taking advantage of the iterative, incremental nature of Scrum

Courses typically run from 8:30am to 5pm, though the exact hours may vary. Continental breakfast and lunch are provided and are included in the course price. These informal breaks are outstanding opportunities to visit and network with your trainer and classmates.

Intended Audience

This course is appropriate for stakeholders, business analysts, managers, product owners, and anyone who wants to understand what agile and Scrum are all about from the product-owner perspective. Though no agile experience is required, some experience managing projects is helpful.

Course Benefits

Upon completion of the course, students will be eligible for the following benefits:

• Eligibility for the CSPO
• Ability to apply for 1 PDU per contact hour with the Project Management Institute
• Satisfaction of two-thirds of the 21 required training contact hours for the PMI-ACP^SM (Agile Certified Practitioner) as well as a strong foundation for the associated certifying exam

Why a BigVisible Course?

BigVisible focuses on one thing: enabling organizational agility. As coaches, we understand the challenges organizations face at all phases of their agile implementations: from team-level execution and delivery, to higher-level strategy, governance, and leadership. We know that for an organization to achieve agility, people at all levels must understand agile principles and be educated about agile processes like Scrum.

Our foundational training courses are firmly rooted in the core agile principles and practices you need to achieve success, regardless of your ultimate role in the organization. In addition to this quality training, BigVisible offers comprehensive coaching services, so if you get stuck or find that you need more help applying what you’ve learned, you can call on us.

Find out more about us, our point of view, and our approach to transformation and organizational agility by visiting our blog and website. There you will find in-depth discussions, blogs, videos, and resources to help you get a sense of who we are, what we’ve done for others, and how we can help you.

Course Description

Our intensive, three-day Certified ScrumMaster + PMI-ACP^SM course offers you a strong foundation in the Scrum framework and agile principles plus an extensive overview of the knowledge areas, tools, and techniques required for the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner^SM. The real-world experience of BigVisible’s Certified Scrum Trainers allows us to incorporate practical advice and time-tested techniques into this hands-on workshop. Our Certified Scrum Trainers are coaches first, which means that long after your course is over, we have the experience and expertise to provide ongoing support and assist you in implementing what you've learned.

As one of the largest and fastest-growing agile frameworks, Scrum is a simple, yet powerful way to manage product requirements, elevate quality, and accelerate project delivery. This offers a detailed examination of the Scrum project lifecycle and the ScrumMaster role, going beyond the basic definitions to focus on how to achieve success as a ScrumMaster and with Scrum. Each person will leave the class with practical, applicable changes and improvements they can apply to their own projects and teams. Course delivery is varied for optimal learning, with activities ranging from case study analyses and in-depth lectures to hands-on exercises and interactive games. 

Agenda

The BigVisible ACP-Prep Plus CSM course is a 3-day, hands-on workshop, filled with practical advice and time-tested techniques designed to give students the foundation they need to succeed with Scrum. Our experiential setting allows participants to put the values, principles, and concepts into action in a safe, learning environment. The agenda includes the following key activities:

• Team-based “Scrum Game,” as well as additional agile games that introduce key values, principles, and concepts
• Discussion of the Scrum framework plus other agile tools such as eXtreme Programming and Kanban
• In-depth look at the product backlog and agile planning
• Illustration of Scrum product development
• Side-by-Side comparison of Scrum and Waterfall
• Closer look at agile documentation
• Reflection on the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) to understand where it changes when implementing agile and how it stays the same.