This past weekend we visited my Alma mater and conducted a two-day Scrum Training for interested Purdue students.  We partnered with the Purdue University Computer Science Women’s Network – thanks CSWN!

Each time we do a training, the class is different.  Different backgrounds, different perspectives, different reasons for coming to training.  It’s magical watching the pieces coming together in the attendees’ minds where they start having “aha!” moments as we near the end of training.

What was special about this training class were the women (and a couple fellas!) in attendance.  Let me tell you why.  If you know Scrum, you know an important component of every sprint is the retrospective.  The team answers three questions regarding the work they performed and how they performed it in the last sprint – what went well, what didn’t go well, and what can we improve upon to fix what didn’t go well.  We run our training sessions just like sprints and end with a class retrospective.  The trainers leave the room for 20 – 30 minutes and allow the attendees to answer the three retrospective questions about how the training went.  

This class took this task very seriously.  They were thoughtful and insightful with their feedback.  What was most profound was their authenticity and vulnerability.  They were brave enough to share feedback that I think most professional adults might have avoided.  And the result?  Yes, an improved training format but, more importantly, a class of students I won’t ever forget.

Boiler up!

Tana