training Archives

February 25, 2016 by Chris Daily Leave a Comment

Blue Pillar: Scrum Training at the Speakeasy

Last week, I got the opportunity to spend two days in Scrum training with the development team of a great Indy company, Blue Pillar. For those of you haven’t heard of Blue Pillar yet, you’re not alone. I only learned of them through my partner in crime, Tana Linback. Blue Pillar is one of those companies that tech folks dream about: Company is started by a tech founder who starts out coding in his basement, growing into an award winning business.

The story wasn’t what got me stoked about the scrum training though. BP has adopted Scrum and Agile through a grass roots effort, and had wanted to get their team on the same page by attending scrum training. Because most of the attendees had been practicing for a while, the framework portions went fairly quickly. As a team, they were less interested in the activities geared toward reinforcing the concepts, and were more interested in the practical applications. As you can imagine, I enjoyed the back and forth of the discussion interacting with the BP team.

What got me stoked were the attendees. The attendees included the BP scrum team, plus their product strategy/management folks (Kyle Zeronik, Eric Reichel, David Schwarz). In fact, the leadership of BP felt so strongly, that Brad Witter, the President of BP, was an active participant for both days. For a small company, titles don’t mean much, but BP‘s staff is comprised of about 50 people. If a company’s success is measured by the commitment of their leadership, BP will go a long way. The commitment of the leadership certainly resonated with the other attendees.

As always, I enjoyed the opportunity that the Blue Pillar Scrum team was kind enough to provide. I hope the Blue Pillar Scrum team found the Scrum training helpful as they continue on their Agile journey.

Thanks for coming in today.

Chris

February 6, 2016 by Chris Daily Leave a Comment

CEWiT: A Scrum Training

Tana and I just finished our second Indiana University Scrum training class. We partnered with Center of Excellence for Women In Technology (CEWiT) to offer a two day course over a weekend. If you don’t know about CEWiT, you should check them out here. Tana and I feel it is important that we “pay it forward” to the next generation of women leaders.

I am always amazed that students willingly gave up their weekend to attend a class that has no effect on their grades or course load. They were motivated and enthusiastic and took the opportunity to learn something new, and that positive energy carried over to Tana and I. I believe we get more out of these classes than our attendees do.

Our goal with our Scrum class is to provide students with a foundation upon which students can start on their Agile journey. The mix of students was great. Their level in school ranged from undergrads to Ph.D. candidates, with a variety of backgrounds including informatics, computer science, design, and education. There was also a mix of professional experience levels, we had a few people involved in start-ups, a few experienced developers, an experienced IU employee or two, and a few folks with only internships under their belts. It was apparent that the attendees were engaged by the questions that seemed to be coming at us continuously. It seemed we could spend the entire two days just providing answers to their specific questions on how to apply the agile principles to their specific experiences. It made for an interesting weekend. We utilized several exercises to reinforce the Scrum process, including a Scrum simulation using Legos. This was our first time simulating Scrum through building a Lego City , and we liked the results.

We would like to thank the leadership of CEWIT and our attendees for the opportunity to share Scrum with them. We would also like to thank Jenny Hertel for making sure we were taken care of with drinks and food. I am looking forward to our next CEWIT event.

Thanks for coming in today.

Chris

December 15, 2015 by Chris Daily Leave a Comment

Agile 101 Presentation

Learn the basics of the agile way-of-life that has helped many companies realize their potential in the market. The agile secret sauce was once a thing that was only enjoyed by software organizations on the East and West coasts, but is now invading Indianapolis — increasing productivity, making teams empowered (and happier!), and helping managers focus less on the taskmaster role and more on the important stuff.

Attendees will learn:

1. Some of the challenges with the waterfall approach to software development.

2. The definition of Agile and its frameworks and practices.

3. To view your world a little differently and how agile might fit in it.

Agenda:

7:45 – 8:15am Breakfast and networking
8:15 – 9:45am Program
9:45 – 10:00am Q&A

About the Speaker:

Chris Daily belithe

Chris Daily has over 30 years’ experience in software development in start-ups to Fortune 500 companies in executive level positions. The last several years of his career have been focused on coaching organizations and teams through agile transformations in a variety of industries. Chris has a BS in Computer Science from Ball State University, an MBA from the University of Indianapolis and is a Certified Scrum Master (CSM) and a Professional Scrum Master (PSM).

Get your tickets here: https://indyagile101.eventbrite.com

December 4, 2015 by Chris Daily Leave a Comment

Our first Agile 101 class is complete.

On December 15, 2015, beLithe conducted our first Agile 101 overview at the Speak Easy. Our Agile 101 course provides an overview of what agile represents, and why the agile movement is starting to sweep through corporations and businesses around the globe. Agile is the most misunderstood term in business today often being used as a synonym for Scrum, Kanban, and a variety of other terms. Our overarching goal for Agile 101 is to provide a little clarity to as attendees start their agile journey.

We had a number of things stacked against us. For starters, most people were shifting into holiday mode. Second, we hadn’t ever done an event that wasn’t scheduled for a university. Tana did a great job of getting us setup, but we could have done a better job on letting people know we are out there. Thanks to the 10 brave souls who showed up at 8 AM.

As an activity, the attendees got to experience untangling the human knot, which reinforces the differences between agile and authoritarian approaches to leadership.

To those who attended, thanks for coming.

For those of you who couldn’t attend on December 15th, you’ll get another chance. We are currently working on our calendar of events for 2016, so check back in a few weeks. In the meantime, Tana shared the slides here: Agile 101 Presentation. It won’t be as riveting as listening to me, but it provides a good reference.

Chris

Agile 101 from beLithe

October 6, 2015 by Chris Daily Leave a Comment

IU Scrum Training Lessons

Gandhi once said:

“Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.”

I’m a big believer that our thoughts control our destinies. If you look at life and the professional world in these terms, you suddenly become aware of all the little things that shape you and those around you.

I’ve prided myself in my career for choosing my words and language in an inclusive way. When I was directing human resources a pet peeve of mine was hearing the executive team describe future hires (especially for leadership or technology positions) in this way ALL the time: “When we hire him, he will do XYZ” or “When we hire a CTO, he will get the team trained on XYZ”… I drove the (all-male) executive team crazy by constantly and consistently correcting them, asking them to start using she instead of he all the time. I certainly wanted more women in these roles and the executives said they did too, but like most of us, they were just used to using he/man/guy all the time. But we needed to change – our thoughts become our destiny and we wanted our destiny to have more women in our technology and leadership roles. By the time I left the company, I had the executive team thinking twice when describing a generic person or role… they were saying she as much as they were saying he!

Fast forward to our Scrum Training at IU. A room full of women (well, except for Chris) from varying levels of education and professional experience, undergrads, graduates, PhD candidates. Inclusive language was the last thing on my mind because I thought I had it covered. I was wrong. I found myself referencing the group over and over as “you guys” and “hey guys!”. I noticed several of our analogies and photos in the training referenced all-male sports teams but didn’t show women. One student even commented “Hey! Women play Rugby too you know!”

As a woman in an industry dominated by men and a passion for introducing underrepresented individuals to the technology profession, I learned at our last training that just being aware of the importance of inclusive language isn’t enough. If we want to be more inclusive our words must consistently reflect that. Our words become our destiny after all.

Thanks for a great session, women of IU!

Tana

Blue Pillar: Scrum Training at the Speakeasy

CEWiT: A Scrum Training