Waverley Blog

I recently attended a Certified Scrum Master training course and came away from the experience convinced it was worth the time and cost.  I have, of course, been exposed to Agile development over the years, but more from an informal, incidental perspective and from reading books on the subject.  The major concepts of short iterations, fully functional results, and the opportunity to rearrange priorities during project development I knew and understood well.  However, seeing the entire framework described – and used – during the course of the training really tied the entire concept together for me.  I have not only a fuller, more complete picture of what Scrum is and why it works, but also hands-on experience garnered in the rich, guided environment of experienced teachers and other motivated and smart colleagues.

The questions asked by others taking the course really increased the value of the training; their own concerns and past experiences brought out answers and advice that will probably come in very handy in the future but that I would not have thought (or known) to consider myself. Of course our training “exercises” were not nearly the same intensity or complexity as a real-world project, but they provided an excellent combination of getting to “try out” Scrum while having coaches readily available to answer questions and provide guidance.  I am much better prepared to initiate using Scrum with a team after this course than I would be after reading 10 books.

As Waverley’s newest CSM, I recommend that if your company is considering implementing Scrum, formal training is an investment that’s well worth it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 at 12:35 pm and is filed under Process. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.