Collaborative Leadership Team Members Earn Prestigious Path to CSP Educator℠ Credentials

Johnson and Antoine part of first group certified in the United States

MINNEAPOLIS (September 10, 2018) – Collaborative Leadership Team (CoLead Team), an industry leader in providing Scrum and Agile coaching and training, is proud to announce that two of its team members have earned the rigorous Path to CSP Educator℠ credentials enabling them to deliver the Advanced Certified Scrum Master (A-CSM℠) certification. CoLead Team Founder and CEO, Angela Johnson and Certified Scrum Trainer, Christian Antoine are two of the first group of ten individuals to achieve this certification in the United States.

“For Christian and I to be among the first group that achieved the Path to CSP Educator is profoundly important to us,” said Johnson. “It demonstrates how committed we are to our own continuous improvement and continual advancement of Scrum. We are passionate about providing a path forward for solving problems and accomplishing business objectives!”

To achieve the Path to CSP Educator certification, Johnson and Antoine had to demonstrate advanced learning techniques that will be used in the program to the Scrum Alliance and undergo Scrum Alliance® approval of their materials and approach.

As a Path to CSP Educator, Johnson and Antoine will serve as mentors to individuals pursuing their A-CSM certification and validate all of the A-CSM learning objectives Those who pursue A-CSM certification must demonstrate their experience working as a Scrum Master and work with a CSP Educator prove their ability to facilitate dialogue and work with teams as an effective Scrum Master.

In addition to being among the first to achieve the CSP Educator status, Johnson is a Certified Scrum Trainer and Certified Less Practitioner and Scrum@Scale Trainer. In 2010, she founded CoLead Teem to provide education and coaching to clients adopting Scrum and Agile. Prior to founding the company, Johnson was an independent Scrum Master consultant to a variety of companies including Jostens, Wells Fargo, Thomson Reuters and Best Buy. A graduate of Hamline University (B.A.) and the University of St. Thomas (M.B.C.), Johnson resides in Wayzata, Minn.

Working with Agile since 2008, Antoine’s diversified experience includes its application within the medical device, finance, healthcare, securities, international law and agricultural industries. He’s a Certified Scrum Trainer and Agile Transformation Coach and consults, trains and coaches teams and companies on Agile at all levels of the organization. He enjoys helping others see there is a different way to approach work, at a sustainable pace, and achieve outcomes that delight customers. Prior to CoLead Team, Antoine worked for Medtronic, Hollstadt & Associates and Computer Science Corporation. He is a graduate of St. John’s University and resides in Golden Valley, Minn.

About Collaborative Leadership Team

Founded in 2010, Collaborative Leadership Team is an industry leader in providing Scrum and Agile coaching and training to companies in a variety of industries including: software, hardware, services, marketing and more. Practicing what they teach, the employees of the Twin Cities-based company use Scrum to manage their services organization. The breadth and depth of Collaborative Leadership Team's experience extends beyond Scrum and includes Kanban, eXtreme Programming, Facilitation and Organizational Change for business agility.

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Are You Resistant to Change?

Are you resistant to change?  One of the reasons people attend Collaborative Leadership Team’s courses is to learn a different way of working.  Many, however, spend the duration of the course trying to figure out how to make Agile and Scrum into exactly what they are doing currently.  Angela Johnson, Certified Scrum Trainer and Agile Coach shares information she recently learned about why change is so hard.

As someone who has transformed the way that they do work with Agile and Scrum, I seek to help others learn how Agile approaches are different from other ways of doing work.  The levels of resistance that I notice do not seem to be dwindling, but rather increasing!  Even in coaching situations where clients have not only actively engaged our team to help them change, but have given us permission to identify when they are not changing, heels dig in and defenses increase when people are held accountable to working another way.

The song that inevitably plays in my head is the Gear Daddies “Gonna Change”.  As the lyrics note, “I’m gonna change, just not today”.  I’ve always been a big believer in the fact that you cannot change free will.  If someone just is unwilling to try something different, there will be little success in asking them to.

I recently read an article by Kathy Caprino that suggests, maybe we’re just going about it all wrong – click here for article.

One thing that Kathy points out is that we tend to inundate people with information.  As if they would simply change if they knew all of the data.  Trouble is that this simple act does not translate into behavior.

Kathy goes on to share the Personal Motivation & Abilities, Social Motivation & Abilities plus Structural Motivation & Abilities that will enable change.  When I think about the people attending our Certified ScrumMaster classes who want to learn how to be great Scrum Masters, I do think they have the best intentions to take what they learned back to their organizations and apply it.

Where I think things fall short, however, is in the Social and Structural aspects.  If the ScrumMaster does not have Social support for the new ideas partnered with any Structural Motivation or Ability in the organization, it’s unlikely that the new way of working will spread further than individual levels.

This is one of the reasons the Collaborative Leadership Team remains dedicated to coaching those clients who are willing to examine the way that they are currently doing work.  Agile and Scrum are all about delivering business value faster and delighting customers.  When we are not in the classroom, we are helping our clients out: assessing, mentoring and coaching.

Want to learn more about our Assessment or Coaching services?  Click here to learn more how your organization can benefit.

A New Definition of Insanity – Why Certified ScrumMaster Training?

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In Certified ScrumMaster courses, I find myself using the old saying “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result”. Agile approaches such as Scrum are completely different ways of doing work. Yet so many organizations today do not understand this.

Jeff Sutherland created Scrum largely because the traditional way of doing work, or “Waterfall”, physically delays any business value to the customer. Scrum and other Agile methods deliver value faster if used as directed.

So why do organizations insist on continuing to follow the same, old system development life cycles or build cycles that they were using 20-30 years ago? I call this the New Definition of Insanity since all they have changed is their vocabulary. They say things like Daily Scrum or Product Owner, ScrumMaster, Sprint but in reality they have not gotten something shippable into a customer’s hands any faster than the way they had been working.

If work is not done during a Sprint, there are constructs in Scrum to get to the root cause of this and to prevent this from happening again. Yet so many organizations report they simply “carry work over” to the next Sprint. Working in their old Waterfall ways.

In this day and age of Google, Amazon and Zappos, delighting the customer is key. If organizations cannot deliver value to their customers, someone else will. Are you working the same old way, but using new words to describe it?

Want to learn how Scrum delivers business value more quickly? Click here to view our upcoming classes and register for our next CSM or CSPO course.

Author: Collaborative Leadership Team. Learn more about our coaches and offerings here. 

Consistency vs. Accuracy – Certified ScrumMaster Training

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In Certified Scrum Master Training (CSM), participants learn that consistent and frequent delivery of value is an outcome when Agile or Scrum is used as directed.  Accuracy is not the goal, consistency is.  Seeking accuracy is not the same as trying to be ‘perfect’.

“It is better to be vaguely right than exactly wrong.”

~Carveth Read (1848-1931) Logic Deductive and Inductive

Perfection is unobtainable and creates undo pressure. Consistency is obtainable, allows predictability, and better planning. The best status report is to hand the customer a product. When customers consistently see progress and receive value, conversations focus on the product and what the right thing to do is. Not the politics of where we are and how we get there.

Agile and Scrum teams allow the Scrum framework to work for them and produce their consistency.  Teams trying to force consistency in how they use the Scrum framework are trying to be perfect at the cost of delivering value.

Want to learn more?

Click here to view our upcoming classes and register for our next CSM or CSPO course.

Author: Collaborative Leadership Team. Learn more about our coaches and offerings here. 

Do Good Scrum – It's Time To Focus

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It’s time to focus on good Scrum again.

A controversial statement I made in a Certified ScrumMaster class last year was, “every time you do bad Scrum a kitten will die.”

I do not intend to inflict harm on any kittens.  Quite the contrary!  I love the furry little creatures so much that I want to protect them.  And I love Scrum. I really love it when people do good scrum. It is a results oriented process that can deliver business results faster than traditional methods.  If used as directed.

But so many people attempting Scrum turn a blind eye to the culture change, dig their heels in and try to force their status quo onto Scrum.  By definition Scrum is different.  That is how it can deliver faster than other methods.

Jeff Sutherland is a smart guy.  If he thought that there was a need for a “Sprint 0” that produced nothing but requirements, he would have included it in the framework.  There is a reason that it does not exist – because by definition a Sprint should produce a working product increment.  Not a document.   Not a Product Backlog.

So why do people make things up that do not exist?  If the organization is not ready to commit to the work, why waste the team’s time with activities that the Product Owner and ScrumMaster are capable of addressing?  The team could be executing something that does deliver a potential shippable product increment or something of value to your customers.

Do people make up structures in Scrum that do not exist such as Sprint 0 because they do not understand that the Product Owner is empowered to frame up a Vision?  A Roadmap?  A Product Backlog?  Why abdicate these activities to the team who is supposed to be developing the product?

So why bother with Scrum at all?  If your current process is making your customers happy, don’t change a thing. But if you want to try something different, why not respect the process as it was intended to be adopted and not make things up. 

Come and learn from the Collaborative Leadership Team as we get back to doing good Scrum at our upcoming Certified Scrum Training classes.

#dogoodscrum

Author: Collaborative Leadership Team. Learn more about our coaches and offerings here.