Hi,

Just wanted to let you know I will be in Boston teaching a CSM Class next week in Boston. If you are interested, please contact me offline! I may also be available for a pub run on Wednesday evening too (smile).

Thank you.

- mike vizdos
www.michaelvizdos.com
www.implementingscrum.com

OK.

I am overwhelmed right now.

So I am going to admit I am human (smile) and will post a new cartoon next week.

The good news is I have had a GREAT week working with teams and learning tons.

About a lot of things.

My apologies.

- mike vizdos

Hi all,

Well, as I write this I am sitting in a hotel room in wonderment of the airline system in the USA. Guess I will get home tomorrow morning. I had a great class this week in Chicago and, as usual, I learned a lot. It was a great class with a lot of interesting and challenging questions.

And.

I think I received a really great complement.

“This is one of the only classes I have never fallen asleep in.”

Was this good?

Or was it a slam?

Personally, seeing the engagement of this person during the class over two days, I was impressed with his engagement and participation levels. This person has been in the industry for many more years than I have, and he added a lot of value to the class.

I am taking it as a complement (smile).

Assume positive intent.

Heh.

So…. Next week I will be presenting another CSM workshop in Oklahoma City on Tuesday and Wednesday. If you are interested, we have a few seats left and I am always open to having others attend. If you cannot attend and would be interested in meeting before or after the class, please contact me off this blog and we can see if something can be set up.

I am happy it is Friday.

I am happy tomorrow afternoon I will be home hanging with my kids and wife.

Spring is coming in Richmond, VA.

Sounds like a cookout at my house tomorrow night.

And there is some great stuff coming next week.

As usual.

Hope you have a great weekend — or, if you are reading this on Monday — welcome to Monday morning!

Thank you,

- mike vizdos
www.michaelvizdos.com
www.implementingscrum.com

Hi,

[Sales voice on…. sorry gotta make a living! But keep reading as you may actually be able to meet me in person without paying a dime (maybe a beer or two!)]

I will be up on the upper east side of Manhattan on Monday and Tuesday this coming week (St. Patty’s day!) teaching a CSM Workshop.

If you are interested, please contact me or visit www.michaelvizdos.com/enroll to sign-up.

If you know anyone who is interested in a fun workshop (and you cannot go) — please pass along this information to them… Actually, either way, please pass this on to people who may be interested [thank you]!

Oh, and if you are reading this from someone who passed this along TO you (or if you have not done so already)…

Please Subscribe to Implementing Scrum by Email and receive any new comics or other announcements we publish on a regular basis.

Now for some inside information…

I am in the process of booking an ADDITIONAL nine or ten public CSM Workshops around North America right now (that’s in addition to those already listed at www.michaelvizdos.com/enroll) ) — so if you do not see one near you yet check back often or let me know if you’d like to book a private class in your organization!

You can also keep your eye on the left sidebar of www.implementingscrum.com for a list of my upcoming public appearances and workshops.

[Sales voice off, thank you for reading this!]

Eek. I really do hate sales talk. Sorry about that.

Now… for the FREE stuff… See… Aren’t you glad you read this far??

Also, as usual, I’ll make the offer to meet anyone reading this outside the class if we can make the timing work.

If you are interested, please let me know.

Thank you.

- mike vizdos
www.michaelvizdos.com
www.implementingscrum.com

Hi all,

OK. So I am not as geeky as I used to be. Especially to some of you reading this blog. But. Um. Errrr…. Uh…. I still code for fun, does that count? And. I work with teams and actually can code when I need to do that?!?!?!?

This coming week will be a three-city-tour for me.

On Monday and Tuesday I am teaching a CSM Workshop in Portland, Oregon. I have a seat or two left if you are interested — see www.michaelvizdos.com/enroll to sign up if you are local or want to hop on a plane there . Or drop me an email and I can offer you a discount for responding to this notice. Discounts are always good. I hope.

On Monday evening I will be meeting with a small group of APLN and other agile people at about 7:30PM local time…. good time for networking and drinking beer or whatever and talking about Scrum or not. If you’d like to attend the “meeting” please contact me off this list.

Wednesday and Thursday I will speaking at a conference (www.sdexpo.com). I’ll send more info later this week about my topic (funs stuff) and if you are interested in meeting please contact me off this list.

I hope you all have a great remainder of the weekend, or — if you are reading this on Monday morning — well…. welcome to Monday! Tony and I have a great comic strip coming to you — as usual — on Monday evening (where ever I am in the world!).

Thank you.

- mike vizdos
www.michaelvizdos.com
www.implementingscrum.com

Hi all,

I want to let you know I will be out and about traveling again over the near term (working with clients and teaching classes and speaking at conferences). I make this announcement to make sure if I am visiting an area you live in (or are interested in traveling to get there) we may have a chance to meet and chat. Plus, it makes traveling a lot more fun for me.

The “official” public places I will be include:

- Certified ScrumMaster Workshop in Portland, Oregon (March 3-4, 2008)
- Speaking on “Scrum in the Real World” at SD West Expo in Santa Clara (March 6, 2008)
- Certified ScrumMaster Workshop in New York City, New York (March 17-18).

Go ahead and check out the links to the workshops and speaking engagements and topics and sign up if you are interested.

More importantly, this is as close to a personal invitation to please contact me so we can actually meet in person // do some professional networking (over a beer or whatever is fine with me!).

It is a small world.

Thank you.

- mike vizdos
www.michaelvizdos.com
www.implementingscrum.com

Hi all.

Well, I was able to tell you a little about my first two days of this week. If you have not seen it, go here.

Upon arriving into Richmond (my home base) at about midnight, i got the opportunity to make the final preparations for the Certified ScrumMaster Workshop I would be delivering on Wednesday and Thursday.

It would be yet another great class where the attendees walked out of there with a new respect (as did I) for what Scrum can and cannot do.

I have done this course around the world and have trained on my own, with one other person, and with two other people.

Wow.

What a change this makes to both the overall presentation and the outcome to the attendees.

Is this bad?

The easy answer to this is, “No.”

Can every Certified Scrum Trainer co-teach with other people?

Nope.

When it works though….

It is like magic.

I have been lucky enough to work with multiple trainers around the would (and most are not CST’s).

Lucky?

Am I nuts?

Think about it.

If some initial ground rules are set between the two or three people training the class — it can be extremely more powerful at the end of the two days for the attendees.

The first sentence of this is important.

And.

This last one with another Certified Scrum Practitioner (who is looking to become a Certified Scrum Trainer) worked out very well. It was, to be 100% transparent, a surprise to me.

While I was initially looking for the art of the possible, I also knew our styles of coaching in the past has been wildly (sometimes) divergent in techniques.

I made a bad assumption.

Wow.

Like a lot of things in real life that we all live in.

The course got great feedback (sorry about the air conditioning versus the constant heater war going on with the HVAC system… we finally (at the end of day 2) were shown how to useeeeeee the system). Sigh.

So now there are about 11 new Certified ScrumMasters running around Virginia in one place or another.

I’d say it was one of my best classes (workshops) to date.

Why?

Well… let me know why you think this is so….

Gotta run….Please send comments, questions, criticisms, ideas, or whatever here.

You can also enter The Forum to discuss this entry and other Scrum topics. Thank you!

Hi all,

After leaving town on Sunday late afternoon I arrive in Atlanta (yeah… it was not a hub for me… an actual destination!) and hopped on the MARTA (their train system) to one of the outward bound stations; I arrived around 9:00 PM. Spent the night in a decent Holiday Inn Express (non-smoking, thank you!) and got started at 7:00 AM to head to the training center via the hotel shuttle.

The first class this week was geared toward, “Agile Project Management” and about 14 people had signed up. We had 8 show up.

So.

Eight it would be.

This course talks a lot of Agile from a much different perspective than just “Scrum” — which of course I normally teach to certify new ScrumMasters.

It was a great two day course that I facilitated discussions about topics such as the origins of Agile, Agile Project Management basics, Lean and Agile, XP, Scrum, and a few other topics. As with most of the courses I teach, the feedback was great (OK… so the projector at this site sucked but I could do nothing about it turning black text into blue text).

One good story that came out of this that I feel like sharing includes a story from a company that is implementing XP (Extreme Programming... remember… the Agile Practice that actually talks about engineering practices — Scrum does not by design!). This is not a Fortune 50 company; instead, it is a company that is looking at revenue (religiously??!!) and had brought in Scrum.

What is happening in their shop?

Hmmm…. Something I did not expect.

See. The development team was/is using a modified version of Scrum and XP; and they are blowing away the quality standards that have been measured in the past (however that was).

And.

People starting seeing that the customer was astounded.

That’s a great thing, right?

Uh.

Not really.

Why?

Well…. the company using this modified version of Scrum and XP became so good at producing software without defects that….

… take a breath please….

…. the support team in operations had nothing to do.

The customers had nothing to report as not working.

Fabulous some people would think.

Including me!

But.

The majority of this organizations revenue comes from support and maintenance contracts.

Uh.

See the problem?

Do you?

Really?

And this was from bringing in Agile / Scrum / XP.

Interesting learnings.

I will cover our Richmond CSM class tomorrow.

It was awesome and I did some co-teaching with a non-CST (Certified Scrum Trainers) who should soon be a trainer. Tomorrow I will tell you more about co-teaching with another instructor and why I feel this is something everyone should try.

And try again.

And again.

Again.

I got home from Atlanta at about midnight so I could prepare the for the next days of classes — a CSM class in my home base of Richmond, Virginia. More on the tomorrow. Gotta keep you in some suspense. Or whatever we call that in geek-speak blog worlds.

Have an incredible Friday!

I will be putting in cabinets into the kitchen with my wife. For all those who have taken the course, I’d rate that a 20+ for story points (smile). Hope you understand that reference!

Gotta run….Please send comments, questions, criticisms, ideas, or whatever here.

You can also enter The Forum to discuss this entry and other Scrum topics. Thank you!

Hi all.

Wow. Looks like next week will wind up a little different than I anticipated (smile).

Inspect and adapt. How so very agile of me!

I wanted to let you know I *just* got contracted to do a Certified ScrumMaster Workshop in Richmond, Virginia (my home town right now!). It will be on Wednesday and Thursday, January 30-31, 2008.

You can read more about the class (and others) at http://www.michaelvizdos.com/enroll.

I want to try something new here too… if you mention to me you saw this announcement on implementingscrum.com I will take off $100.00 from the price of the workshop… and group discounts are still available.

Please let me know if you have any questions and have a great day!

- mike vizdos
www.michaelvizdos.com
www.implementingscrum.com

Hi all,

At the end of this month a friend of mine (another CST who I co-train with regularly) is hosting a public Certified ScrumMaster Course in Paris, France. The course will be conducted in French on January 28-29, 2008.

If you are interested in attending the course, please contact me and I will get you in contact with them.

Or if you contact them directly, please let them know you saw it on www.implementingscrum.com!

For a full list of my upcoming workshops and public speaking engagements, please visit www.michaelvizdos.com.

Thank you!

- mike