Last year I created a short session – Learning Scrum Through Games – to help people explore the basics of Scrum in a one hour format. This year I rewrote it and took it to both Agile Tour Toronto and Ottawa.

We learned a number of interesting things from both sessions:

• Even with a poor quality Product Backlog (the Backlog I gave attendees has many issues) the team was still able to create a pretty good product.
• I don’t give the best instructions to start the exercise and yet attendees manage to create some great comics. When a real Scrum team start it’s chaotic at first. I would prefer attendees get a sense of this during the exercise so I give deliberately vague instructions. Read More…

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We’re starting to organize an Agile Tour 2012 event for the Ottawa Gatineau region. We need a kickass logo and you want some advertising. Create an amazing logo and we will make you famous – at least in the region :-)  I’m not going to limit your creativity by

Details for logo submissions:

• 1 square – 175 x 175 pixels
• 1 rectangular – 350 x 182 pixels
• We are looking to have the words "agile tour" and "Gatineau-Ottawa" in the logos
• Deadline end of day July 11th

Send logos to logos@GOAgileTour.ca

BTW I’ve not included any samples because I don’t want to create a “Priming Effect”

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Agile Coach Camp 2012 is happening in Ottawa this year, from June 22-24:

We are proud to welcome everybody to Agile Coach Camp Canada in Ottawa. A two-day highly collaborative, self-organized event with an Open Space for everyone involved in coaching, training, mentoring and leading Agile organizations, teams, and individuals. ScrumMasters, team leads, change agents, Product Owners, managers are welcome, and so are individuals assuming other roles.

It is run as a non-profit, low-cost, community-organized event.

Facilitation will be held in English

While I can’t attend, I’m delighted to be a sponsor and help to make this event happen. If my sources are correct there are still a few spaces left. Attend if you’re available and if you’re an Agile business signup as a sponsor. By sponsoring you’re helping to raise the dialog in Agile/Scrum around Canada..

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Preparing for Tonight’s Agile Ottawa Retrospective

Tonight’s retrospective is divided into two parts:

1. Retrospective of the past year’s Agile Ottawa Events
2. Discussion of Various Retrospective techniques

A great retrospective takes a little bit of preparation from all parties. For the first part I would like you to spend 10-15 minutes gathering your memories and recollections of the past year. To jog your memory, use: https://agileottawa.wordpress.com/, http://www.meetup.com/Ottawa-Scrum-Users-Group/events/past/ and http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1981258&trk=hb_side_g (Agile Ottawa on LinkedIn). Also consult your email archives.

Read More…

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On May 11th Agile Ottawa is proud to announce a joint event with the Ottawa Scrum User’s Group. 

Craig Larman, author, speaker and trainer will be our guest speaker for the Agile Ottawa May 11th meet-up.

The topic is Scaling Lean & Agile Development for very large, multi-site, and/or offshore development.

Sign up via EventBrite requested so that we have an idea of the audience size.

Come out and help make this the best attended event in the Agile Ottawa’s history.

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Come play a game with us.

You have been hand-picked by your company to join an exciting new division.  You have over-heard that this new group will be ‘Agile’ but what does that mean?  Is this the career opportunity you’ve been waiting for?  Is this a chance to make your mark and be part of something big? Did someone just say “making games”?

On March 9, Bryan Beecham will bring us through an Agile workshop to help sharpen our team skills.  We will simulate the experience of a company that has just decided to become Agile. Regardless of your experience in Agile there’s a spot for you on one of our teams.  To understand Agile you can’t just read about it, you need to experience it.  Come and join us for an exciting evening of learning and discovery as we tackle some interesting problems by applying Agile principles.

Location: 343 Preston Street, Ottawa, ON (Detailed directions)

When: Tuesday March 9th, 2010

Time: Networking from 6:00-6:30; meetup from 6:30-8:00

Shamelessly copied from the Agile Ottawa blog

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Via the Agile Ottawa Blog: Don’t Do Agile:

Tim Bacon will be talking this month about the focus in an Agile rollout is the change required and not so much on “Agile”. This will be an exciting discussion and will certainly give pause to think of Agile in a different light.

Tim specialises in assisting teams or organisations to introduce Agile software development methods such as Scrum or XP. He is a passionate “people person” and an advocate of test driven development and software craftsmanship, with over a decade’s experience working with software development teams in the UK, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland. Tim enjoys his work most when helping teams to see that they can produce more and better software with less stress.

Time and Date: Tuesday November 10^th: Networking from 6:00 – 6:30; Presentation from 6:30 to 8:00

Location: the Code Factory (2nd Floor – 246 Queen Street), you need to buzz for the elevator.

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I’m presenting at Agile Ottawa this month. The presentation is a reprise of my Agile 2009 session:

“Learning: the Best Approaches for Your Brain.”

Do you mentor, coach, teach, or just help other people? Do you wonder why after your greatest teaching moments people just don’t get it? In recent years, neuroscience has started to provide us with a number of insights into what happens when we’re teaching. These insights make it clear that learning is really about building and reinforcing existing neural networks. Instead of providing lots of new ideas out of the blue, we need to understand the learners’ existing context and work with that. Instead of focusing on mistakes and errors, we need to focus on what good solutions look like.

The top 5 reasons that traditional approaches to learning and mentoring fail are as follows:

• Lead with the abstract
• Not grounded in the listeners’ experience
• Passive students—i.e., those who just listen and take notes aren’t using all of their brain. They retain knowledge but don’t really understand it.
• Rewards don’t work
• High-fructose corn syrup

Benefits:

• Students and mentees will remember
• Learn how to correct mistakes
• Workshop attendees will stay awake

Time and Date: Tuesday, October 13. Pizza + Networking from 6:00 pm to 6:30 pm; Presentation from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm.

Location: the Code Factory (2nd Floor, 246 Queen Street); you need to buzz for the elevator.

Agile Ottawa is a group for anyone interested in Agile Software Development in the Ottawa region. The group organizes events the second Tuesday of every month at the Code Factory (2nd Floor, 246 Queen Street). Events usually begin at 6:30 pm.

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