NB Crew together with  Agile42  is going to organize first public Certified Scrum Master training in Riga.

In every practice is very important to have a right start for it. You can start you Scrum practice with our guest from Finland Lasse Ziegler. Lasse is the one of Agile Finland founders, widely recognized Agile expert and Certified Scrum Trainer.
Ask a great trainer about your problems, get Scrum infection, establish connection with other Scrum practitioners, start using Scrum and get benefits from it right after the training.

Becoming a member of a Scrum team can be a daunting prospect, and being asked to serve as the team’s ScrumMaster can be downright intimidating. You’ve got an idea of what Scrum is and have read a few articles or books on the topic, but you really don’t know how to go about putting that theory into action.

That’s where the CSM course comes in. Our trainer will teach you what you need to know to fill the role of ScrumMaster (or Scrum team member). This course focuses on the basics of the Scrum framework, including team roles, activities, and artifacts, so that you can be an effective member of a Scrum team.

When: 24-25 of May 10:00AM – 17:00 AM

Where: Riga, Tallink Riga Hotel

Price: 710 LVL (22% VAT included)

Registration: APPLY HERE

Trainer: Lasse Ziegler is a Lean and Agile Coach, Certified Scrum Trainer of agile42

Just watch how good and convincing he might be:

What is Scrum:
A framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while
productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value. Scrum is:

• Lightweight
• Simple to understand
• Extremely difficult to master

Scrum is a process framework that has been used to manage complex product development since the early 1990s. Scrum is not a process or a technique for building products; rather, it is a framework within which you can employ various processes and techniques. Scrum makes clear the relative efficacy of your product management and development practices so that you can improve.

What training consists of:
The Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) training class is a two-day learning experience that provides students a full immersion into Agile principles and the concepts and practices that define the Scrum framework.
The class is presented in a highly interactive and collaborative format with elements of lecture, classroom discussion, exercises, games, simulations, and video interwoven throughout the class.

Upon completion of the class, students will be eligible to take the Certified ScrumMaster evaluation and become Certified ScrumMasters.  This course also allows the students to claim 14 Project Management Institute (PMI) Professional Development Units (PDUs) which can be applied to Project Management Professional (PMP) and PMI-Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) certifications.

Implementing Scrum
The Scrum Master Training conveys an elaborate knowledge about Scrum and the Scrum framework. During the course, attendees will learn why such a seemingly simple process such as Scrum can have such profound effects on an organization. Participants gain practical experience working with Scrum tools and activities such as the product backlog, sprint backlog, daily Scrum meetings, sprint planning meeting, and Burn Down Charts.

Components of the Scrum Master Training:

• Introduction to Agile Principles
• Introduction to Scrum Principles
• Scrum Core Elements & Practices
• Roles & Responsibilities
• Product Backlog & Release Planning
• Sprint Backlog & Sprint Planning
• Daily Standup Meeting
• Burndown Charts & Project Reporting
• Sprint Review & Retrospective
• Course contains simulations, exercises and role plays
• Certification
• The training includes also the agile42 Scrum Lego City Game.

Although a conference definitely should be a lot of fun, on the other hand it requires plenty of effort from every attendee, so I’d like to share my vision what kind of effort that could be.

First, going to a conference, please, keep in mind that it’s a place where exchange of ideas is happening. And you need to be prepared to get these ideas; hence often ideas need a soil to grow from a small seed into something useful. A conscious preparation requires not only reading a brief talk intros, which still remains as a pre-requisite, but also an understanding of who will give a talk, what kind of experience he/she has.

Usually before a conference when I’m doing data mining on speakers, I look into their blogs, tweets and videos from previous talks. It gives me a clearer idea of what to expect during the talks and enables me to prepare some questions in advance.

Another part of the story is to become familiar with some concepts talk will be given about. Frequently, after Agile Riga Day we receive complains about too advanced topics having been presented, and it is typical for people to ask for less advanced talks.

I half-agree and half disagree with that complains. Of cause, not every talk suits a novice. But on the other hand, we strive to host interesting topics, not just another “Let me tell you how we’re using Scrum”.  I’m glad that people wish to share their experience on that, but I’m sure that such talks are a better fit for a local community gathering somewhere in a pub, not for an annual conference. In a more informal atmosphere people will be willing to share more details about their experience, and the audience will have more time to discuss every nuance of it.

If you feel some lack of fundamental knowledge, you have two ways – either to write down all the unclear things and dig into it after the conference is over, or spend an hour or two before the conference reading some intro materials.

This year, we’ve made a pre-conf event on basics of Agile&Lean and in a future, certainly, we will post some materials on the conference site to help people prepare themselves for the upcoming conference.

Next part of story is attending a talk.

We strive to invite people who are good at what they do, and whose ideas we like. It’s pretty good if they have excellent presenting skills. But what if their ability to deliver the message may vary depending of surrounding environment? Even a confident speaker may be nervous, feel sick or be exhausted.

Last year, I applied as a speaker for Agile Turas at Vilnius with my talk on Agile Testing with Agile Tools. We departed from Riga around 3:00 AM and were in Vilnius around 7:00 AM. I caught a cold earlier that week and I felt terrible. And of cause, while giving a talk, I had forgotten almost half of my speech, I just followed the slides, and sometimes it was hard to link one slide with another. When the video was published, I almost committed a suicide, seeing how terrible it was. But for the audience, perhaps, I was just another moron, who thinks he knows something that other don’t. But I really know. And I’d be happy if few people got the idea behind the presentation.

So, I’d like to state that a burden of understanding the idea behind a presentation is shared 50/50 between a speaker and an audience. And if speaker is failing to deliver something, you could ask him again and again, until his part of work is done.

I attended at TDD Coding Dojo workshop once, and I wasn’t exited with overall content of the workshop, since we were only gliding on a surface of TDD by doing a very simple and trivial exercise. But after we finished, I spoke to the presenter, and it turned out that he was presenting Coding Dojo as a way to teach TDD. The idea wasn’t to teach us TDD, but to show how TDD could be taught in Coding Dojo format. I asked, and now I’ve got the idea. Somebody may have left without asking, and they might remain convinced that it was a stupid waste of time.

So, it is almost completely up to you, how hard you want to work to understand a speaker and sometimes it requires a lot of effort. But the payback may be equally impressive as well.

Be conscious, spend time to prepare yourself, and don’t let the speaker slip away leaving you alone with your doubts.

P.S. I’m really wondering at those, who ignore conference after-parties, since most of the idea exchange and other interaction happen there. Actually, the whole idea of organizing Agile Latvia group first surfaced in my head after a conversation with Vasco Duarte at Turku Agile Day after-party. God knows what ideas may visit you at the next one.