Agile Complexification Inverter

I've been considering studying for the PMP exam.  So today in the bookstore I browsed a few PMP exam prep books.   Having just finished a master's in organizational leadership that has quite a focus on teams, I decided to look for areas of overlap.  Places where the PMP aspects of building a team and helping the team perform would be an easy read for me given my recent experience in gradual school. I found a few pages in the exam prep books - less than 10 total.  They briefly covered Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, Tuckman's Stages of Group Development,  Vroom's Expectancy Theory of Motivation, etc.  All very good stuff.  Having spent a year studying this 10 pages or less, appeared rather brief for an exam guide that wishes to prepare a project manager to optimize a project's performance. In one guide the process of Manage Project Team is defined: "3.5.5 Manage Project Team Manage Project Team is the process of tracking team member performanc...

This is my experience report for the Scrum Alliance's Certified Scrum Practitioner (CSP) requirements. I publish it online now because of the debate on the CSM Exam. It was written in April, 2009 in reference to a project that lasted over one year. ---- 1. Through the questions below, please describe one project on which you have used Scrum over the past twelve months. 1.1. What was the project’s purpose? What business goal was the project intended to deliver? To introduce Agile practices to existing organization while developing a new VoIP product for home use by consumers. The software to be developed created the new users account and provisioned the consumer’s hardware on the network and the VoIP Broadsoft server. 1.2. What was the project length? What was the duration of the project? I was on site for about 1 year (Oct, 2007 - Oct, 2008) the project continued on until approx. Feb, 2009 when it was canceled. After having delivered a product to the market place for regiona...

Reading Danube's blog The CSM Exam . Some background - the CSM (Certified Scrum Master) is a certification by the Scrum Alliance that has been given to every (99.999% perhaps I exaggerate) one that attended the 2 day training program. The certification has been a contronversy for as long as it has been offered (many years now). The Alliance is putting a real written exam into place as a requirement for certification. I think a real test is a GREAT thing. Given that it is a “certification”. Definition of certification: a document attesting a level of achievement in a course of study or training. Attendance, the previous requirement does not “attest to a level of achievement”. In Danube's post they state: “Of course, the flipside is that an exam will only test attendees on certain aspects of the Scrum framework in a format that does not necessarily promote a deep understanding of Scrum’s values.” The assumption in this statement appears to be that the test is not well designed ...

I’ve noticed a new trend—people have been gaining titles. When I was younger, only doctors had initials (like MD) after their names. I always figured that was because society held doctors, and sometime priests (OFM) in such high regard that we wanted to point out their higher learning. I hope it was to encourage others to apply themselves in school and become doctors also. Could it have been boastful? Achievements for "the Great" post-nominal The Wikipedia describes these “post-nominal initials”: Post-nominal letters, also called post-nominal initials, are letters placed after the name of a person to indicate that the individual holds a position, educational degree, accreditation, office, or honor. An individual may use several different sets of post-nominal letters. The order in which these are listed after a name is based on the order of precedence and category of the order. That’s good enough for me. So I ask you: is the use of CSM or CSP an appropriate use of ...