It occurred to me while writing my last post that there are potentially a lot of organizations who, like ours, are looking for ways to be Leaner because of the worldwide impacts of the Coronavirus pandemic. Conferences are being canceled, budgets are being slashed, and many of the traditional methods that Agile practitioners use to earn PDU’s or SEU’s are suddenly unavailable or too expensive. I like to think I stay fairly well tied into the Agile community, and I’m a bit of a social media addict, so I tend to see a lot of great stuff come across my feeds throughout the week. I thought, perhaps, there might be some value in me saving and sharing those things out to the world.
So here you go…the first in a weekly series I am going to call Free Training Friday. Because I am original like that.
Events
AgileThought Virtual Forum – Effective Backlog Refinement for Remote Teams
Date: Thursday, May 28th
Time: 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Description: Backlog refinement is about adding details to the product backlog. Refinement, on the other hand, is something that the Scrum team does. Unlike the Sprint planning, the Daily Scrum and other events, the Scrum Guide does not prescribe exactly how refinement is to be completed, so the “how” is up to you.
Virtual Scrum Masters Guild – Agile Outside of IT Panel Discussion
Date: Wednesday, June 3rd
Time: 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Description: The Agile Manifesto was written by a group of software developers in 2001 and has been heavily rooted in Software and Information Technology from the very beginning. That trend has been shifting, and many companies outside of the software development world (or departments within larger companies that are outside of Information Technology) have embraced Agile values and principles. Join us for a moderated panel discussion on the challenges and opportunities involved in adopting Agile outside of the Information Technology domain.
Practice Does Not Make Perfect: Why Agile Transformations Fail (Gil Broza)
Date: Wednesday, May 27th
Time: 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Description: These days, almost every organization is showing interest in Agile. We seem to have all the ingredients for effective transformations: well-known practices, detailed processes, ever-improving tools, extensive literature, myriad certifications, and many consultants. How is it, then, that so few organizations are truly agile? Gil Broza, author of “The Agile Mindset” and “The Human Side of Agile”, thinks that one particular ingredient has been overlooked in the mad rush to adopt Agile. In this session, he leads us on an exploration of that ingredient and its place in an Agile transformation.
Podcasts/Videos
Agile Coaches Corner: Trainer Talk – Why Does Scrum Have So Many Meetings? (With Sam Falco)
Format: Audio
Duration: 4:24
Description: In this episode of Trainer Talk – the supplemental series to the Agile Coaches’ Corner podcast – Sam Falco, a Professional Scrum Trainer, addresses the complaint: “I don’t like Scrum because there are too many meetings.” At first glance, that seems like an odd thing to say because there are only four meetings, so let’s dive into this topic.
Relative Sizing by Clearly Agile’s Fred Mastropasqua
Format: Video
Duration: 9:20
Description: Fred Mastropasqua shares his insights on how to use relative sizing for your Agile and Scrum projects.
Follow Friday
Picard management tip: If you’re on red alert every day, then red alert means nothing.— Picard Tips (@PicardTips) May 21, 2020
I know it seems silly to link to a comedy account, but I get a lot of value out of this feed. This tweet resonated highly with me. I say something similar at work constantly (“If everything is a priority, you have no priorities”).