Due to the decimation of the oil prices one of my larger customers has had to cancel our engagement for February. I am suddenly and surprisingly available in February!
I usually have engagements booked out up to 3 months in advance and that makes for some difficult conversations with potential customers that want me onsite within two weeks. I have been trying to limit any one customer to no more than 2 consecutive weeks to mitigate this, but customers can be demanding. I did have an engagement booked in Oslo for February. I was going to be migrating over 20 Team Projects into a single uber Team Project. I was really looking forward to it… then a barrel of oil dropped to below $50…
I have been working with a large customer in the oil and gas industry and if you are following the news you will not be surprised to know that they need to push our engagement back by a few months. It happens…
Do you know of anyone looking for an expert in Visual Studio ALM, TFS, or Scrum next month?
I have been doing work all across Europe, but I would also be very willing to go further afield, consulting on both Visual Studio ALM and Scrum.
Onsite Training
I have been teaching both ALM and Scrum courses ac cross the world. More recently in Europe but also in the USA. Most of the courses have been private courses delivered onsite at a customer. This gives me the greatest flexibility as I do not change per student for Scrum course and only £100 per day per student for ALM courses to cover Azure, printing, and licencing costs. The idea is to give the customer the most value and allow you to put as many people as you can into a single instance of the course.
 | Scaling Professional Scrum WorkshopSPS14 | 2 Days | Intermediate | Development Managers, Coaches, Facilitators, Change Agents, Leaders |
I have a number of Scrum courses available from Scrum.org , only the best for my customers, and can deliver them at short notice anywhere worldwide. There is some logistics around these courses, but as there is no technical requirements from my end they can be scheduled quickly.
 | Managing Projects with Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2013ALMP13| 2 Days | Beginner | Stakeholders, Managers, Development Team, Product Owners, Scrum Masters |
![clip_image003[1]](images/clip_image00311-2-2.png "clip_image003[1]") | TFS 2013 Configuration & AdministrationALMA13| 3 Days | Intermediate | IT Pros, Dev Team Leads |
The ALM Training courses are all delivered onsite with course materials and practical labs. I have been delivering quite a few of these recently and as long as you allow RDP connections to Azure I can spin up training machines on very short notice. It current take 20 minutes to make VM’s available for 10 students…
Onsite Consulting
Consulting onsite with customers has been my main activity for over 4 years and this experience allows me to meet my customers’ needs quickly. I have often seen the same issues elsewhere, and even when I have not, I am used to working in a time limited fashion. If I have back-to-back engagements with customers, and I book three months out, then there really is no other option but to solve as many issues as possible in the time allotted.
To mitigate issues I most often engage on the basis of a backlog. We work together to create an initial backlogs of things that we want to achieve in the consulting engagement. That backlog could contain informal training, presentations, discussions, and documentation that you need to be part of the overall delivery. You, the customer, are the Product Owner of that backlog and can order, and re-order, it any time you like. When I come onsite we work through it on a daily cadence and get as much done as possible. Each day we update the backlog with the information we just learned on the preceding day.
If you are wondering how this works in practice then checkout my testimonials page or my Microsoft Pinpoint partner site. I have, so far, never had an unhappy customer.
Conclusion
I am free to provide consulting, and/or training in February on Visual Studio ALM or Scrum. I am happy to work anywhere in Europe, or even further afield. Training can be done in the USA, but I believe consulting is a little more complicated. But ultimately my question is:
Do you know of anyone looking for an expert in Visual Studio ALM, TFS, or Scrum next month?
