Martín Alaimo
… de personas y sistemas.
Is this PMI Agile perspective?
Sep 1st
In the August edition of “PM Network” a short presentation about what is and whether to adopt Agile was published. It touches on several of the principles and suggested (in a somewhat biased way in my opinion) the situations where they apply or situations where they don’t. Anyone interested in seeing it, can do it here::
http://www.pmi.org/resources/pages/agile.aspx
But the interesting part is the response posted by some Agile Folks 
Enjoy:
Mariana’s Scrum Implementation Laws
Aug 27th
Who is Mariana? True to the best journalistic style that doesn’t reveal its sources, sometimes for professional or ethic reasons and many other times just for fun (to annoy the audience), I won’t reveal his true identity. Let’s call it simply “Mariana.”
“Mariana” is one of the students who attended one of the Scrum courses I taught this year. Upon finalization, I gathered all my stuff, including the material usually used as letters, cards, post-its, tape rolls, markers, etc. Later when I got home, I proceed to arrange all those things and found this paper:
Infallible laws to Implement Scrum
1. Do it Iterativly, Incrementaly
2. Don’t try to cover everything from the beginning
3. Manage the expectations for the first Sprints
4. Don’t feel overwhelmed by all the impediments that will arise (previously hidden)
5. Have courage, experience and let experience – Its nor bad to fail, it’s bad if you don’t learn from your failure.
Well, the truth is that I do not know who was the author of this note because it wasn’t signed. Just guess it was a woman because she folded the paper very suspiciously neat and so I called her “Mariana.” Today I regret this haven’t been shared with the rest of the class, it would have been very productive, but at least the good thing is that she understood what it is to bring Scrum to practice.
photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/limaoscarjuliet/225249268/
Scrum in Rosario City!
Jul 27th
During a new visit to the beautiful riverside city, this time supported by Fundación Libertad, I have the chance to chat a few hours about the meaning of Scrum in order to get a little bit closer to Agile.
We were fortunate to enjoy a cool winter morning, in a high floor of a building in downtown that offers a breathtaking view of the river Paraná. Gorgeous!
At the beginning, we held a dynamic called “tribes” through which we identified different groups of professionals and their knowledge and use of Agile methodologies in their projects (it’s amazing how this kind of exercise always works, whatever the context or group of persons).
Later on, we started talking about the Principles, the Agile Manifesto, User Stories, Sprints, Product Backlog, Release Plan, Task Board, Daily Standup Meetings, Retrospectives…, trying to understand what makes Agile Methodologies so effective when talking about improving the quality delivered to the customer and the practices of our daily work.
Even though many people are reluctact about these methodolgies and find them strongly contrasting with what they´ve learnt so far, there are many others who are positively interested and look forward both to learning more about Agile and applying it at work. The mere act of participating in this experience is a great way to do it!
Here I post the presentation we used (in spanish):
Hope to see you again soon, Rosario!
CSD – Certified Scrum Developer in BA
Jul 26th
Last Week, from Monday to Wednesday, I facilitated another session of a 24hs intensive workshop about agile software development that belongs to the CSD certification (Certified Scrum Developer).
Here I post a video that illustrates the session:
For more information about these CSD certification workshops you can visit Keer’s dedicated webpage: http://www.kleerer.com/en/CSD
First Certified Scrum Developer (CSD) in Buenos Aires
Jun 8th
During July and August I’ll be facilitating the required courses for the CSD certification (Certified Scrum Developer) from the Scrum Alliance.
These courses will put speccial focus on the agile engeneering practices for software development like continuous integration, concurrent version managing, test automation, User Stories aceptance criteria automation (ATDD), TDD and refactoring, database evolutive development, database refactoring, taskboards usage, agile metrics, planning poker, release planning, retrospectives, etc.
There will be three different tracks for you to become a Certified Scrum Developer:
Track 1: Planning Orientation for non Certified Scrum Masters:
1. Introduction to Scrum (1 day course)
2. Estimatin and Planning with Scrum (1 day course)
3. Agile Software Developmenr (3 days course)
Track2: Software and DB Development Orientation for non Certified Scrum Masters:
1. Introduction to Scrum (1 day course)
2. Agile Software Developmenr (3 days course)
3. Agile Database Development (1 day course)
Track 3: Software Development Orientation for Certified Scrum Masters:
1. Agile Software Developmenr (3 days course)
After following any of these tracks you’re qualified to take the Scrum Alliance CSD exam.
You can see the course calendar in Kleer’s Scrum Alliance profile or in the Agile en Acción! calendar, grouped by track.
For more information you can download Kleer’s CSD brochure from:
A new era on motivation & engagement
May 24th
The problem is that Andrew doesn’t have his shirt on.
Incredibly this is the most common reasoning I’ve encountered over the last few years addressing the lack of commitment and / or motivation of resources within an organization. Let’s start calling them “people” instead of “resources” and we’ll begin to understand a little better the issue.
Another argument that is also used is:
Well, thats the way “Y Generation” is.
I have dozens of real examples which I won’t disclose die to respect purposes, but most occur / occurred in those organizations that are used to reward the “Performance” of the people.
This is a topic to chat for a long time, but it would be better to do with a coffee in between, much better in a lunch. Unfortunately we are not in any of these situations.
At this time there’s a very interesting discussion on the list of Agile Argentina that reminded me this issue, in which Juan sent a video that clearly illustrates the issue.
I leave it here for anyone who wants to see it. I hope you find Daniel Pink’s approach about the issue as interesting as i actually do.
For now, it would be good for the new start-ups to begin promoting autonomy, mastery and purpose of each of its employees.
PS: here’s another talk Daniel pink gave in TED:
