We're blushing. Drew Powers, the new editor of the SF Bay Area Chapter of the Project Management Institute's newsletter, attended our Certified ScrumMaster workshop in September and has written a thoroughly glowing account of the class, concluding that Agile is indeed highly relevant for Project Managers:

…while migrating from a traditional PM environment may require applying Scrum‘s mantra of "Do, Inspect, Adapt, Redo" to the overall organizational culture, I believe Scrum‘s potential for faster time to market of a high quality products that better meets clients‘ needs will prove itself in a relatively short period of time.

Powers also praised our experiential approach to training, and the "give and take" between our instructors, Chris Sims and Jeff McKenna, but perhaps the most flattering part of the review was Powers' summary definition of scrum. When a student leaves your class able to articulate what he learned this well, you know you did a good job with the teaching:

Scrum is a specific methodology within the Agile umbrella of methodologies that also includes Extreme Programming which are characterized by iterative requirements elaboration and product development. Scrum is based on several principles: Iterative elaboration of requirements, self-managing project teams in which the ScrumMaster acts more of as a facilitator than a leader, and a minimum of documentation. The Scrum mantra is Do, Inspect, Adapt, Redo – that is, give it your best shot the first time, learn from what you do, then do it again. It involves three major roles: The Product Owner, sometimes thought of as the Client, the ScrumMaster, and the Development Team, which may include architects and tech writers as well as coders. The Product Owner supplies and prioritizes requirements from a list of requirements called the Backlog. The Development Team determines which of the highest priority requirements they can bring to a customer-ready state (including QA and user documentation) within a development cycle, normally about two weeks to thirty days in length and known as a Sprint. The ScrumMaster facilitates the entire process, but it is key to note that the development team makes all key project decisions and manages itself. The role of the ScrumMaster is to remove roadblocks and enable the development team to focus on the project.

Thanks, Drew!

If this makes you wish you'd been there, join us for our next Certified ScrumMaster training on the weekend of December 5-6, again with Chris & Jeff.