Agile Estimating & Planning Class - Completed

Ok, so now where do I go. I just praised Bryan and Chris for having the best IT related class I've ever been in and now I've just completed another class which is just as good, if not better. But to tell you all that would make me seem well....

OK, so how to describe the Agile Estimating & Planning Class?

First the class is for more "advanced" scrum users. Or better said, people in this class are much more likely to have done scrum and have a higher probability to understand the basics of scrum. Makes the class a lot easier.

Why go to this class after CSM and CSPO. After all planning and estimating are covered in every scrum class out there. At least is was covered in both my CSM and CSPO classes in some level of depth anyway. I guess about 1 - 2 hours in the other classes. This is much more immersive in nature. 8 full hours to take in the concepts. And WELL WORTH IT. I'm a firm believer that a lot of the success of scrum in in the nuances of the process. 1 hour in a scrum class just isn't enough to get into the nuances. 8 hours gives you a much greater foundation.

For me this class related more info that I haven't grasped out of the books like I had the CSM and CSPO classes. I won't go into detail about what I learned now. Later as I have a chance think it out some.

The real strength of this class can be attributed 100% to Mike Cohn's obvious deep level understanding of the material and a high energy passion for the subject. One of the other students said it well. "Class literally flew by". We were on our lunch break before I realised it. And I mean, I thought we still had 2 hours before break time.

For me, most of what we learn in Agile/Scrum is just common sense, and in a lot of ways I've been "Agile by Accident" for a very long time. But what I've always struggled with was how to estimate software projects. I know the old ways, and I know they fail miserably. So in the end, I really haven't ever (or almost never) have been willing to waste the time. Now I have a complete tool kit around how to estimate, and estimate with solid accuracy.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS CLASS FOR ANYONE WHO IS SERIOUS ABOUT IT AND BUSINESS GETTING ALONG.

Where to now?

Ok, so in the last two posts I bored you with my background, and some of the technologies I've dealt with over the years.

In the end though I've been around the block a few times and I've done the VBITS conference speaking kind of things, you probably won't know my name. I tend to be heads down, deep in the technologies, and do more private mentoring than shouting out loud.

I'm seriously enamored with a couple of things. First and foremost in my frontal cortex is Agile development practices, with a serious concentration in Scrum. I was able to go through Certified Scrum Master class a month ago and am rolling it out into my organization slowly, but steadily. Next week I'll be in Certified Scrum Product Owner class, and the following week in a 1 day "Agile Planning and Estimating", class presented by Mike Cohn. (Ought to be a CSE, Certified Scrum Estimating) . I'm starting to ramp up involvement in the Scrum Alliance.

I will be using this as my bully pulpit for my thoughts on Scrum. To a certified cowboy coder like me, who has hated all things process, this has hit me like a thunder storm. Scary, but oh so refreshing. One of my very best buds tried to get me to look at Scrum a couple of years ago, but my head and heart were just dead set against more process. I've been kicking my self and apologizing to him for a couple of months now.

Next is AJAX. I've done remote asynchronous calls from browser to server side methods without a full post back for years. But with the mash-up of technologies called AJAX, this is so much easier, more robust, and is going to be a huge enabling tool for web development in the future. I don't want to deprecate the use of the MS AJAX Toolkit. As a java script library, it's a very nice set of tools, but the true power of AJAX lays in the in the asynchronous nature of the technology.

Next on my list is WCF. I've been in an org for years that hasn't had a real need for an SOA, or the time and resources needed to deal with SOA and all the work it takes to put it together. Enter WCF and the encapsulation of all the plumbing necessary to do the grunt work, and let my dev team work on building business solutions.

Have a couple of books I'm working through. One great, and well one that's not worth the ink and paper it took to print is. The great one is "Programming WCF Services: Building SOAs with Windows Communication Foundation" from Juval Lowy.

So swing buy from time to time to listen to me rant. Technology, development, process are all on the table. Heck might even do a movie or book review or 2.