"The class itself was all it was cracked up to be: an interactive session of give and take between the instructors and students with a lot of hands-on exercises that kept the pace moving..."

- SF Bay PMI Newsletter

Upcoming Events:

March 13, Sunnyvale, CA
P-Camp '10
Join Chris and Steve this Saturday at P-Camp, an all-day unconference for Product Managers and Product Marketers. It's free, and although advance registration is full, this year you can register on-site the day of the event, so come on down!

March 17, San Mateo, CA
Agile Managers Support Group
The March meeting, to be held at the Belmont/San Mateo Round Table Pizza. Chris Sims will demonstrate The Team Estimation Game, which offers an interactive way for teams to quickly estimate user stories, without getting bogged down by numbers. There is no such thing as free beer, but there will be free pizza, and we'll be raffling off a JetBrains license.

March 23, San Francisco, CA
San Francisco Agile Meetup
Chris and Steve will be presenting to the San Francisco Agile Meetup group on the theme of retrospectives, demonstrating through interactive exercises why the retrospective might just be the single most effective item in the agilist's toolbox. This group gets a lively turnout, so RSVP early!

March 31, Milpitas, CA
Silicon Valley SPIN
Chris will be putting his interactive spin on the basics of agile estimation at the March meeting of the Silicon Valley Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN).

April 8, Oakland, CA
East Bay Agile Managers Support Group
Join David Chilcott for the April meeting of the East Bay Agile Manager's Support Group. Bring your issues and concerns and get advice from your peers on how to make Agile work in your organization. RSVP and get directions here. As usual, we'll be raffling off a JetBrains license.

April 10-11, Redwood City, CA
Certified ScrumMaster Training with Jeff McKenna and Chris Sims
Join Chris and Scrum co-founder Jeff McKenna for an interactive weekend course leading to ScrumMaster certification by the Scrum Alliance.

Future CSM Dates:
June 26-27
September 11-12
December 4-5

Register for the CSM now

April 12, Redwood Shores, CA
Welcoming Changing Requirements
Steve Bockman and Chris Sims will lead this 2 hour breakfast workshop at Hobee's Restaurant in Redwood Shores. Earn 2 PDUs and learn how to apply the 2nd principle of the Agile Manifesto to your software project.

April 15, Palo Alto, CA
SD Forum Engineering Leadership SIG Our partner in agility, Ron Lichty, is hosting, and Chris will be participating in, a panel on the evolving role of the manager in an Agile framework.

April 24-25, Redwood City, CA
NEW WORKSHOP: Certified Scrum Product Owner with Jeff McKenna and Chris Sims
Chris Sims & Jeff McKenna will be teaming up again on this course leading to Scrum Product Owner certification by the Scrum Alliance.

April 28, San Mateo, CA
Agile Managers Support Group
Support Group members suggested the theme for the April meeting: Scrum vs. Extreme Programming. The event will again be held at the Belmont/San Mateo Round Table Pizza, and we'll be raffling off a JetBrains license.


Chris Sims

Principal Agile Coach

Chris Sims helps software development teams improve their productivity and happiness. His approach combines experiential training, coaching, and even direct technical contribution.

Chris is the founder of Agile Learning Labs, as well as the Bay Area Agile Managers Support Group. He is on the board of BayAPLN, the Bay Area chapter of the Agile Project Leadership Network, and is a past chair of the IEEE Technical Management Council of Silicon Valley. He has published over 50 articles on agile topics on InfoQ, and even more on the Agile Learning Labs blog.

Chris is a certified ScrumMaster and practitioner, who has been helping agile teams succeed since the turn of the century. He has made a living in roles such as: Scrum Master, Product Owner, Engineering Manager, Project Manager, C++ Developer, Musician, and Auto Mechanic.

Professional Memberships & Activities


Publishing


Conference Presentations


Presentations to Local Organizations


Education & Professional Certifications


Chris tells the story so far...

In the eighties I was an aspiring rock star, playing bass in a series of Chicago area bands. Without intending it, I often found myself the leader. I scheduled rehearsals, found gigs, booked the sound and light crews, did promotion, and mediated conflicts. My bands enjoyed ever-greater success and eventually I gave up my job as an auto mechanic to pursue music full-time. While leading a band was a lot like herding cats, I loved facilitating the creative process.

Eventually, I realized that superstardom wasn't in my future and sold my music gear to fund a college education. I got involved in student organizations, including two years as chairman of an ACM SIG and a year as president of the student government. During this time I met a mentor who helped me grow as a leader, and ignited my passion for helping others learn and grow as well. Together, we created and delivered workshops on communication and leadership skills.

I graduated from the University of Illinois in 1998 with a degree in computer science and mathematics. It was the height of the technology boom and Silicon Valley was at the epicenter; I didn't bother looking anywhere else. Turning down offers from IBM, Marimba, and others, I became a software engineer at FactSet, a small financial software company.

Again, a mentor played an important role, helping me get up to speed on VMS, Windows, MFC, COM, and the existing code base. For several years I lived and breathed C++, building software that kept FactSet's client base and profits growing.

The engineering team needed to grow, but the competition for graduates at top engineering schools was fierce. I put together some presentations on tech topics that would interest the hard-core geeks that we wanted to attract. The lectures were a hit and FactSet gained an on-campus reputation for being a cool and exciting company.

The first team that I led created an application for the investment banking industry. During this project I introduced agile development methods, creating a process that borrowed heavily from Extreme Programming. To ensure that the product would meet the high standards of the investment banks, I introduced formal QA processes including automated unit and regression tests, manual white-box and black-box testing, as well as a structured alpha and beta release process. The result was a string of releases that delivered valuable functionality to the market, on-time, and with high quality. The product was adopted by most of the major investment banks and today generates tens of millions of dollars a year.

While I had learned much at FactSet, it was time for new adventures. I spent the better part of a year traveling, including some time in India. During my travels I started to think about what I wanted to do next.

What I found was that I was most passionate about sharing the insights and lessons I had learned through years of guiding agile development teams. This also turned out to be what my clients most wanted. Agile Learning Labs was born!