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Houston, Texas, USA November 18, 2011 -- Stromeyer and Partners have been accredited as Certified Project Management-Training Provider and also Scrum Training Provider by the International Association of Project Managers (IAPM). The IAPM is an international association in many countries and certifies project managers, senior project managers, and project management training providers. For further information, visit the International Association of Project Managers website.

Become a scrum manager who has the game under control

What does project management and the game of rugby have in common? Not much, at least at first glance. In rugby, the game is usually restarted with a “Scrum” after a minor breach of the rules, or if the ball goes out of play. This involves the players facing each other in a fixed configuration and starting the game. In a figurative sense agile project management works in a similar way.

The basic idea is that IT projects tend to be unpredictable for them to be assessed with any certainty from the outset. Scrum therefore seeks to simplify complex projects to adapt them in the light of changing requirements.

In classical (waterfall) projects, product requirements are defined at the beginning of the project in a specification. Whenever changes occur, this specification has to be reworked and approved, before the changes can be implemented by the developing teams. This requires time and resources. In agile projects on the contrary, the requirements for the future software are lined out in a product backlog, which is a raw collection of the wishes of the future users of the software. These wishes or ideas are expressed as so-called user stories.

In the next step, development cycles for the software are planned and conducted in “sprints”. A sprint is a fixed time period for the team to translate the user stories in workable software. In sprint planning, a prioritized subset of the product backlog is transferred into a sprint backlog, which constitutes the planning material for the sprint. Here, the team enters the technical steps necessary to build, program and test the software. At the end of each sprint, the result of the sprint has to be demonstrated and accepted by the customer. These sprints have fixed time periods (time-boxed). Should the result of the sprint not meet the customer´s expectations, changes can be implemented immediately in the following sprint.  This satisfies the requirement for agility because any deviations or errors can be identified straight away and corrected in the subsequent period.

A further defined rhythm relates to the work of the actual development or scrum team. At the “daily scrum” (duration of 15 minutes), the previous day’s progress and the obstacles to development or programming are visibly documented. Obstacles are removed promptly and the team agrees on what to tackle next. This enables a high level of transparency.

Become a certified Scrum Manager (CertScrumMr IAPM))

In our scrum seminar we prepare you for the examination for certification as a scrum manager (CertScrumMr (IAPM)). Because it is essential to define different roles in scrum projects, such as the product owner, the scrum master or the scrum team, we define these different roles along with you. You and your team work on a fictitious scrum project, enabling you to learn the practices up close. You learn the basics, methods, working techniques and tools for managing agile IT projects – and of course the soft factors are not neglected.

Our preparatory seminar prepares the ground for you to take the examination of the International Association of Project Managers (IAPM) for certification as a scrum manager (CertScrumMr IAPM).