The last few weeks have been a busy, but productive time for the Collaborative Leadership Team.  The purpose of this brief blog is to share what our Team has been up to as well as some exciting news regarding our course offerings.

This month started with Collaborative Leadership Team sponsoring and organizing the second annual, “Scrum Day Twin Cities”.   The goal of this event, which was also sponsored by the Scrum Alliance, is to allow Scrum Practitioners in the greater Twin Cities Area to network with one another while at the same time providing them an opportunity to grow their Agile and Scrum skills in a local setting.  Angela Johnson, CLT President and Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), presented on “Scrum in Reality” sharing her experience with real-world Agile transformations.  Christian Antoine, Certified Scrum Professional (CSP) and Agile Coach, also presented a session on “Determining the Rules of the Tribe” which provided attendees with a tool that they can use to discover and develop a working together agreement for their Scrum Team.  Our entire team is already excited about Scrum Day Twin Cities 2015.

While Christian and Angela were presenting, representatives of CLT got to co-train with Jeff McKenna, the coach of the original Scrum Team.  This co-train was an outstanding opportunity for us learn from one of the pioneers in the field and deepen his knowledge of both Agile and Scrum.  You have an opportunity to learn from Jeff’s knowledge and experience as well by reading his recently released book, Conscious Software Development.

Our busy month continued with the 30th Anniversary Dinner for PMI-Minnesota.  Collaborative Leadership sponsored the event and Angela was recognized as Volunteer of the Month.  This award is great recognition of the work that Angela has done to establish and grow Agile Practitioner Community (PrC).  If you have not had an opportunity to join the PrC, which meets prior to each monthly meeting, we recommend that you do so – it’s a great opportunity to network and hear from a diverse range of speakers on Agile-related topics.

The month continued with PMI-Minnesota’s Professional Development Days(PDD) and, once again, the Collaborative Leadership Team was well-represented throughout the week.  Christian started the week by teaching, “An Introduction to Agile”.  He taught this class as part of our partnership with the University of Minnesota’s College of Continuing Education.

The most significant development at PDD was Angela Johnson’s unveiling of our new scaled Scrum course offering, “Scaling Agile and Scrum”.  This course provides attendees with a practical approach to scaling Scrum that stays true to the foundations and principles of the Agile Manifesto.   This new course offering debuted to rave reviews from attendees and will be a centerpiece offering for us as more organizations look to extend the benefits of Scrum beyond the Team.

Our participation at PDD concluded with all of the members of the Collaborative Leadership Team participating in the Symposium Day.  Angela presented on the fundamentals of the Daily Scrum Meeting, while Mike and Christian outlined how all organizations that adopt Scrum start with “Scrum, but” in their presentation, “In Defense of Scrum, but”.

Check out our course schedule to take advantage of our upcoming opportunities!