PMI-ACP: Teaching it and Passing it
I guess you could say I've had a relationship going on for the last few months with PMI's Agile Certified Practitioner test. I was among the set of people who took this test in its beta last year and (finally!) heard in January that I was among the first to achieve this certification. At the same time, I was teaching the 3 day prep class for the PMI-ACP. So here's what I would say about my experiences on both sides of the test and the training.
Why I Am Excited About The New PMI Agile Certified Practitioner Certification
I am just going to lay it all out on the table here... When you think about the PMI organization do you also think of procedures and processes that support waterfall release models? To be perfectly honest, I did, and I have heard others in the software development industry say the same. For a lot of us, PMI and the PMBOK they publish are synonymous with the processes and procedures used in a typical waterfall release model. Then PMI comes along and forces me to question my automatic association between the two by offering a PMI-ACP certification. No fair!
What to do When Things Aren't Going so Well
I love to teach and write about tips and tricks to help people improve their ScrumMaster skills. I talk about great ScrumMasters in the classes I teach - giving specific examples of exemplary masters of scrum who I’ve met and worked with through time - and I personally try to be as good as I can possibly be when I’m coaching a team. However, recently I’ve had some experiences that I honestly wouldn’t put into the ‘great’ category.
Do you suffer from lackluster retrospectives?
A retrospective is one of the most important meetings in Agile – it’s the key to continual improvement in how your team operates. But it’s easy to fall into the trap of dull retrospectives where little is accomplished and everyone is just hoping to move on to the more “practical” stuff. Here are a few thoughts on how to sail your retrospective “ship” out of the doldrums and get back on track.
Visibility: A ScrumMaster's Best Defense
As you know, one of the primary roles of the ScrumMaster is to keep the delivery team focused on accomplishing their sprint goal. There are many distractions that can prevent a delivery team from meeting their commitment to the sprint, the ScrumMaster’s best defense? Complete visibility.
Something is visible if it is easily observed and visibility provides a clear, unobstructed view. Visibility is one of the three legs of empirical process control used in Scrum (transparency, followed by inspection, and then adaptation).
