Recently I had the great pleasure of traveling to Amsterdam for a SCRUM conference, it was a great conference and I have spent two other blog posts cataloging the meat of the conference, and here I will share with you what happened the last day of the conference. If you’re just joining us, please check out Day 1 and Day 2 for some great info and recap.
Day Three Summary
Day three was a whole-conference Open Space with a little bit of a twist. The Certified Scrum Coaches (CSCs) were either doctors or nurses and they invited the conference participants (patients) to bring forth their ailments (Scrum smells). Each session worked as follows; a patient brought forth an ailment, the doctors and nurses facilitated a group discussion, and everyone was able to contribute to the cure of the disease. I attended several sessions throughout the day, but the two that stood out the most were on “Scaling Scrum” and “Distributed Teams”.
Here Is What’s New In The World Of Scrum
One thing that really surprised me was the number of people from Brazil who are currently utilizing Scrum. I met two gentlemen in particular who were doing some amazing things; one guy was building multi-million dollar buildings with Scrum for the Brazilian government and another who is working for a telecom company and transitioning a 1,500 person IT organization to Scrum.
Kanban, Kanban, Kanban is hot, hot, hot! The Scrum community seems a little polarized by Kanban at the moment. Many entrenched agilists are staunchly opposed to it; they feel that is “sucks the soul of Scrum”. Others are seeing great value in Kanban when it is applied with Scrum as a way to manage maintenance projects/operations. While the jury is still out, one thing is for sure; people are aware of and experimenting with Kanban in record numbers.
Donna Farmer is the new Managing Director of the Scrum Alliance. Donna comes from the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT). She was a prominent figure at the gathering making herself known and letting the Scrum community know that she is there to serve all of our needs.
Final Thoughts
I have attended several Scrum Gatherings and each one has been a very worthwhile experience. I would highly recommend that you attend a future gathering. Complete schedule can be found on http://www.scrumalliance.org.
