What is My Experience?
I have been working as a Project Manager in a large organization for more than 12 years. Prior to this, I had been designing and developing software for 13 years. At the risk of making myself an “outcastâ€, I will also reveal that I hold a PMP designation and have even taught a few of the PMP prep courses.
In August of 2007 I became a Certified Scrum Master. What I have found is that some of agile techniques have been around for awhile, even if we didn’t understand them as agile and the techniques were not as well defined. Currently, I am part of our company’s Project Office, and also am running one project.
What do I want to Learn?
What I really want to learn is how others are overcoming the challenges of introducing Agile into an organization, especially a large organization. Even if they are not overcoming them, just learning how they are attacking them would be useful.
The books, articles, and training, always seems lay it out as easy and straight forward. But then you have to enter reality. Reality is messy and can’t fit in such a nice box.
So, what are some of these challenges: 1) Getting people to think in terms of breaking up the work, especially in sizes that can be done in an iteration. How to decompose a problem into iterative pieces is not a skill that seems to be taught. 2) Establishing product owners. 3) Working with multiple product owners. 4) Integrating it with the other work going on that may be non-agile. 5) What about a project that has both iterative and non-iterative work in the same project 6) Getting dedicated project teams, or working with those that are not.
What do I plan to contribute?
I would plan on being able to draw on my many years of experience in software development, infrastructure upgrades and other IT projects as we wrestle with the problems that we face. Oh, and not to mention, years of working with people in highly political environments.
I have been working as a Project Manager in a large organization for more than 12 years. Prior to this, I had been designing and developing software for 13 years. At the risk of making myself an “outcastâ€, I will also reveal that I hold a PMP designation and have even taught a few of the PMP prep courses.
In August of 2007 I became a Certified Scrum Master. What I have found is that some of agile techniques have been around for awhile, even if we didn’t understand them as agile and the techniques were not as well defined. Currently, I am part of our company’s Project Office, and also am running one project.
What do I want to Learn?
What I really want to learn is how others are overcoming the challenges of introducing Agile into an organization, especially a large organization. Even if they are not overcoming them, just learning how they are attacking them would be useful.
The books, articles, and training, always seems lay it out as easy and straight forward. But then you have to enter reality. Reality is messy and can’t fit in such a nice box.
So, what are some of these challenges: 1) Getting people to think in terms of breaking up the work, especially in sizes that can be done in an iteration. How to decompose a problem into iterative pieces is not a skill that seems to be taught. 2) Establishing product owners. 3) Working with multiple product owners. 4) Integrating it with the other work going on that may be non-agile. 5) What about a project that has both iterative and non-iterative work in the same project 6) Getting dedicated project teams, or working with those that are not.
What do I plan to contribute?
I would plan on being able to draw on my many years of experience in software development, infrastructure upgrades and other IT projects as we wrestle with the problems that we face. Oh, and not to mention, years of working with people in highly political environments.