A reminder that Agile Denver will meet at the Tivoli near Downtown
Denver this coming Monday, April 27th. Guest speaker Pete Behrens will
explore "Death by Scrum"

At the end of Pete's presentation we'll be giving away a few door
prizes, including one free pass to attend Mike Cohn's "Effective User
Stories for Agile Requirements" class in Boulder. This class will be
held on August 3rd -- see http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/boulder
for more info.

Scrum is pitched as a powerful change agent by driving more committed
self-organizing teams, delivering results more predictably and more
quickly, increasing progress transparency, improving quality, and
creating a team-based organizational culture. Yet, in many
organizations, Scrum is but an empty shell around a set of meetings
which many feel they are wasting their time and micro-managed with
little time to get "real" work done.

Death by Scrum arises because organizations lose focus on the primary
reasons that Scrum was created - Teams and Timeboxes! Teams solve
problems better than individuals. Teams are more productive and create
higher quality results working in focused time-boxes.

Death by Scrum is a saga navigated by a Scrum Coach across many
organizations who have struggled and succeeded with adopting Scrum
principles, but who learned that Scrum's shell is only the protective
layer shielding the vulnerable principles within and only through
recognition and refocus on the principles were they able to avoid death.

Death by Scrum is a leadership and team concern because it impacts the
effectiveness of the organization in their ability to deliver results
quickly, reliably, and with high quality. This session will focus on
three primary tools to put the focus on teams and avoid Death by Scrum:

1) Facilitating Team-based Time-boxed Meetings

2) Guiding Team-based Time-boxed Sprints

3) Fostering a Team-based Time-boxed Organization


AGENDA

5:30 - 6:30 PM Pizza, networking and announcements
6:30 - 8:00 PM Pete Behrens Presentation


SPEAKER

Pete is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and Certified Scrum Coach (CSC)
with over 18 years experience in developing software solutions and 7
years guiding organizational-wide Scrum transformations. Pete
specializes in large-scale adoption working in multi-team engagements
with highly-dependent product platforms often with distributed
organizations. Some of his work over the past three years has included
companies such as Salesforce.com, Nokia, McKinsey & Co, Earthlink, JDA
Software, Corporate Express, Los Angeles Times, Media News Group, and
others.

Pete is an active leader within the Agile Community through the Scrum
Alliance, Agile Alliance and Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN). He
guided the establishment of the Certified Scrum Coaching (CSC) Program
through his extensive work as an external coach and leadership of the
development team in defining the guidelines, criteria, and certification
process for the program. He is a moderator and reviewer for multiple
platforms at the Agile Alliance Agile 2009 Conference.

Prior to his work with the Agile Community, Pete led the development of
Rational RequisitePro working extensively through the Rational Unified
Process (RUP), and developed solutions through traditional phased-based
and Rapid Application Development (RAD) methods at Electronic Data
Systems (EDS).


SPONSORS

The April 2009 meeting sponsor is Trail Ridge Consulting.

Trail Ridge Consulting is an agile consulting firm specializing in
coaching leadership agility and guiding enterprise agile transitions to
transform organizational ability into organizational agility.

Their unique approach centers on developing high-performing disciplined
teams which share responsibility through agile team-based education,
agile leadership coaching, and agile organizational alignment.

Trail Ridge Consulting has the agile expertise backed by a track record
of successful agile transformations providing you the experience and
support required for the challenges ahead.

For more information, see http://www.trailridgeconsulting.com


DIRECTIONS

The March meeting will be held in the Tivoli Student Union (TV)
building, in Room 320 Section A (Baerresen Ballroom).

The Tivoli is located on the Auraria Campus, within walking distance of
Downtown Denver via Larimer Street crossing Speer. You can reach the
campus from the I-25 south Colfax or Speer exits.

Please review or print out the parking map for reference:

http://www.ahec.edu/parking/ParkingMap2008.pdf

Parking on site costs around $5 for attendees of our event and there
should be parking available in the lots off of Auraria Parkway and Ninth
Street. Be sure to mention that you are attending an on campus event
otherwise they might assume you are there for a sports event.


A G I L E D E N V E R
www.agiledenver.org