CSM Course – Day 2 Review

Wow! what an exciting day. The CSM course at Bangalore [or Bengaluru] saw participation from employees of Siemens, Chordiant, Nokia and Accenture along with many others,. The group comprised mostly of senior managers and hence, we saw focus more on issues like metrics, measuring productivity and quality.

The day started with my session. I took exactly 35 minutes to wrap up my session. And it went really well. If first day was 5/10, next would be 9/10 easily. I felt confident and flowing. I narrated stories and situations rather than just some theory mumbo jumbo and when done felt ever so confident. Through out the day I helped conduct planning poker and other games. We shared a wonderful Lunch.

And at the end, got a number of Linked In contacts and business cards 🙂

Great going and excited to go back to Chandigarh to tell my colleagues about the course and the experience.

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CSM Course – Day 1 Review

The day 1 of CSM [Certified Scrum Master] course has ended. The course was conducted at ISTA Hotel, Bangalore. I was to reach the venue at 8 AM and reached there only at 8:45 AM – thanks partly to Bangalore’s notorious traffic as well as no one in area knowing where the hotel was located. When I finally did reach there, I was almost terrified of facing Pete [well I did not have his phone number of hotels phone number handy – mental note, do it next time around]. However, he was genuinely concerned if I would make it or had I got stuck. After a cup of tea, he explained me my role.

We set up the course room well enough. Two wonderful hotel attendants helped us for that. I organized the training attendance and labels and waited for attendees to come. Once they were there, I explained them purpose of the course as well as showed them various things they could do before the course commenced – provide feedforward on what topics they would like covered in more detail, check out washrooms and whether there would be tea breaks etal. This helped me get a personal rapport with most attendees [but not all :p]. We started the course at 10 AM sharp. After I introduced myself, I immediately went to organize the first tea at 11:15 PM as well as help attendees who had not yet signed in. I pitched in on two occasions till Lunch and after Lunch almost entirely spent practising my session. My session started at 5 PM and till 5:45 PM, I covered potentially shippable code. I did a pretty lousy job of it with only some good things in between. And worse of all, I could not complete my section and Pete had to schedule part of it for tomorrow.

After the first day, I and Pete sat down for drinks and he explained me what I did well. And he had a pretty long list of things. He also told me things I could try tomorrow. Throught out I felt, he was not judging me but just helping me do better. This was very encouraging. I went back to my room and thought over things. I gave up all practice and just went ahead to get a good night sleep. Afterall, tomorrow is another day.

CSM Course Assistance at Bangalore

I will be assisting Pete Deemer with the conduct of CSM Course in Bangalore from December 19-20. I will do work like help manage attendance, breaks and organize hands on trainings. In addition I will conduct a small 1 hour module on potentially shippable code as well. Its going to be my first time in Bangalore and second time at a CSM course. Am I excited? Well yeah! However, anxiety is more the over-riding emotion at this stage. Pete is a tremendous presenter – thorough yet engaging, and there is never a dull moment in his course. It would be a good exposure and learning experience. Lets see how it goes.

CSM Course by Pete Deemer at Hyderabad

I recently attended the CSM course by Pete Deemer [Hyderabad – September 7 and 8].

I have been practising SCRUM for a year now. However, I wanted to be formally trained in SCRUM through an experienced practitioner and meet other people in a live audience. Needless to say, I enjoyed every bit of the 2 days spent at the course. Most of all I enjoyed interacting with cross spectrum of participants – from Noida to Pune to Bangalore to Hyderabad itself. The participants comprised of people in their 20s, 30s, 40s and might be 50s as well, although not really sure on the last one. There were about 5 female participants which is a ratio of 16-17% and seemed very bad. This is something the Agile Community could focus on, special promotion drive for female employees. Come to think of it, other than Mary Poppendick, there does not seem to be any female authority in Agile/ Lean world either [Mary is also more Lean than Agile]. Anyways, focusing on the actual course itself, the lunch on both the days was delicious. A delightful mix of Punjabi and Hyderabadi, the cuisine had variety and flavour galore. Overall very enjoyable 2 days.

A word about Pete – really impressed, very calm, very focused and punctual. He does great role play exercises and mixes theory with practicals very nicely. He encourages questions, counter views and never chides people for obvious anti-common sense thinking they come with to the course.

I have a simple test for a good thing. When it ends, you want more of it. When the course did end, I wanted it to last a bit more. So did other participants.