How does Naked Agility select associate Scrum Trainers?
A big part of the selection process is co-training with a certified, Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) over a variety of scrum.org certified courses, in a variety of different applications.
We do this to assess the effectiveness of their teaching and presentation style, and to assess how effectively they engage with course delegates. Theory is important, but ultimately, we are looking for people who have the ability to educate, empower, and inspire others.
Ironically, we don’t look for pure educators.
We actively look for people who have deep knowledge, expertise and experience working at the agile coalface. People who are agile practitioners, agile consultants, and agile coaches. People who have a proven track record of solving problems and growing powerful teams in complex applications and environments.
Naked Agility have a great record of delivering a powerful, transformative learning experience because our trainers are able to relate ‘war stories’ based on the problems and opportunities they have encountered during their careers.
They can talk confidently about:
A specific scenario that often arises within complex product development environments.
Problems that arise because of this scenario, and they can articulate the impact of those problems on the team, the organization, and the customers they serve.
The process of discovery, experimentation, and problem-solving that they employed, and they can speak to the outcomes and objectives achieved because of the action(s) they took.
There are a lot of agile purists who are deeply immersed in the dogma of agile, but don’t have the real-world experience or skills to understand that the theory of agile doesn’t solve every problem.
Working with deeply experienced practitioners, coaches and consultants allows us to tap into a wealth of knowledge, skills, and expertise that helps people on our courses solve real problems that they encounter in their own working environments.
They can speak to circumstances where a specific technique or approach works, and they can speak to other circumstances where that specific technique or approach is proven not to work. They have a massive body of knowledge and experience to draw upon and help people move out of the quicksand that they find themselves in.
Any person who has delivered a scrum or agile course can tell you that each class evokes questions about a unique or special application of agile or scrum.
People will run a simulation and be impressed, but insist that in their specific industry or application, this simply wouldn’t work because of X, Y, and Z.
You need a trainer that has a deep knowledge of agile and significant experience in helping teams overcome those problems to be able to help that person come around. They need to have enough experience to acknowledge that each environment does indeed have it’s own unique challenges, but be able to highlight a specific organizational or team dysfunction that is preventing the team from successfully adopting and implementing scrum.
They need to solve that person’s problem, live and in real-time, in a way that empowers that person to go back to their team environment and propose an experiment or solution that works.
You can’t do that if you’ve simply memorized the scrum guide .
You need to have earned your stripes and have proven yourself to be an expert in your field to pull that off. You need to have strong coaching, mentoring, and consulting experience to pull that off.
I personally worked as a software engineer for over a decade, followed by another decade as a DevOps consultant before I even considered the idea of becoming a Professional Scrum Trainer.
I’ve just brought on a wonderful woman named Joanna, and she has a PHd in Robotics.
She has worked as a scrum master in some of the most high-performance scrum teams in the world and has actively coached software engineering teams for many years. She has combined all of her technical, agile, and coaching experience to become a powerful Professional Scrum Trainer.
That’s exactly the kind of person that I love to work with.
I also work with Russell Miller. Someone who has earned their Professional Scrum Trainer credentials but has also actively built and developed components for fighter aircraft in the U.S. Military.
He designed control surfaces for aircraft and was an instrumental part of product development and project management in the context of Lockheed Martin.
For myself, Joanna, and Russell, we have had to solve significant problems and grow agile capability despite some of the most horrendous, strict constraints imaginable. From Microsoft to Robotics to remote Software Engineering teams to Military Defense.
We’ve also had to do that as consultants, without the kind of organizational relationships and knowledge that comes with 10 years of working for the same company, in a way that quickly and effectively empowered our clients to achieve the objectives that most matter to them.
Please visit our About Us page for a brief overview of our team and professional scrum trainers.
Naked Agility is an #agile consultancy that specializes in #scrumtraining, #agilecoaching and #agileconsulting to help teams evolve, integrate, and continuously improve.
We recognize the positive impact that a happy AND inspired workforce can have on customer experience, and we actively help organizations to tap into the power of creative, collaborative, and high-performing teams that is unique to #agile and #scrum environments.
If you are interested in #agiletraining, visit https://nkdagility.com/training/
If you have identified the need for #agilecoaching and #agileconsulting, visit https://nkdagility.com/agile-consulting-coaching/
We would love to work with you.
#scrum #agile #scrumteam #agileprojectmanagement #agileproductdevelopment #projectmanagement #productdevelopment #agilecoach #agileconsultant #agiletraining #scrumtraining #scrumorg
If you've made it this far, it's worth connecting with our principal consultant and coach, Martin Hinshelwood, for a 30-minute 'ask me anything' call.
We partner with businesses across diverse industries, including finance, insurance, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, technology, engineering, transportation, hospitality, entertainment, legal, government, and military sectors.
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