Becoming a Certified Scrum Trainer w/ Anderson Hummel

Last fall Anderson Diniz Hummel became a Certified Scrum Trainer. This means that he has been approved by the Scrum Alliance to teach Certified Scrum Master and Certified Scrum Product Owner classes. The journey to becoming a CST is never easy and never as quick as anyone would like and for Anderson, it was over three years from the time he first started working on it. (And this is after already having taught at the University level for a number of years.)

During the recent holidays Anderson and I had a conversation about what his journey to CST was like. We recorded this in hopes of helping offer some encouragement, advice and support for others who are headed down the path.



To help provide some background about the CST designation, according to the Scrum Alliance’s 2018 State of Scrum Report, there are over 500,000 certified practitioners of Scrum worldwide. Within that community, only 234 people are certified by the Scrum Alliance as being allowed to teach Certified Scrum Master and Certified Scrum Product Owner classes. So, it is a rare certification to have and many people who begin heading down the path do not have a great understanding of what to expect. Hopefully this interview will help with that.

SHOW NOTES

• 00:09 Podcast Begins - What’s up with Anderson
• 01:56 Anderson’s background as a teacher and how that led to him applying for Certified Scrum Trainer
• 03:10 How is teaching Certified Scrum classes different than teaching at the University level
• 04:39 Anderson’s 3 year journey to become a Certified Scrum Trainer
• 10:17 Being a CST is a lot more than just teaching Scrum correctly
• 11:36 How Anderson went from failing art exams in school to excelling at creating art in his classes
• 15:45 How big a role does experience working on Scrum teams play into teaching CSM and CSPO classes
• 19:25 Anderson’s advice for coaches who want to become Certified Scrum Trainers
• 25:20 Understanding how teaching all day impacts you as a human and planning recovery time
• 27:32 A word of caution for new CSTs who try to book too many back to back classes
• 29:32 Parting words of encouragement and advice for CST candidates
• 32:25 Getting in touch with Anderson
• 32:27 Interview Ends

ANDERSON's ARTWORK

CST CERTIFICATION

https://www.scrumalliance.org/certifications/trainers/cst-certification

CONTACTING ANDERSON

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/andersonhummel/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/anderson_hummel

Challenging the Sprint - An Interview with John Cutler

John Cutler describes himself as a Product Development Nut. He’s deeply focused on Product Development with a Lean /Agile approach and finding ways to improve how we work. He posts his thoughts in Medium, and although he says he is not a professional blogger, he generates new content about twice a week. I really enjoy reading his posts because they always challenge me and push me into seeing things through a different perspective. 

A few weeks ago John posted an article called “Flow, Decoupling Cadences and Fixed Sprint Lengths” in which he challenged the idea of Sprint time boxes.  (There is a video version if you’d rather watch that). The article was thought provoking and left me with a number of questions. So I reached out to John and he was kind enough to let me pester him with my questions in a podcast.

Show Notes

• 00:08 Interview Begins
• 00:50 Some background on John
• 04:31 Lessons John learned as a touring musician that help him work with teams and build new products
• 07:46 Intentionally disrupting your flow in order to grow and learn
• 08:47 Introduction of the main topic - Flow, Decoupling Cadences and Fixed Length Sprints
• 11:48 Understand they why behind the practices you are applying and figuring out how to make them work for you
• 13:30 What job do we hire the Sprint for? If you don’t know why you are using these time boxes, they may not be helping
• 19:47 If you are failing Sprints, is it about the length of the Sprint or the size of the work? Get ridiculously uncomfortable.
• 22:09 When you can’t get through it, go slower and do less. Blazing away at tempo is not going to help anyone
• 23:29 Why brand new teams should start by going slower and doing less
• 25:17 Is it that Scrum doesn’t work, or that people aren’t doing it right?
• 30:02 Be intentional and understand why you are employing practices, and then figure out how you’ll know if they work
• 32:27 What is your company hiring Agile to do?
• 33:42 Know your audience
• 38:00 Filling your Product Backlog with goals instead of features
• 41:18 Visualizing dependencies in your backlog - WITH STRING!
• 51:55 How to reach John
• 52:36 John’s upcoming events and deliverables
• 54:31 John’s writing process
• 55:40 Podcast Ends

Links from the Podcast

• John's post "Flow, Decoupling Cadences and Fixed Length Sprints"
• LeanAgile US (February 26-28) http://leanagileus.com
• FlowState (application) http://hailoverman.com/flowstate

Contacting John

• Twitter https://twitter.com/johncutlefish
• Medium https://medium.com/@johnpcutler