#brad swanson

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[betoiii]

I am now Certified Scrum Product Owner (whatever that means)

"Higher Learning"

Despite my penchant for getting degrees from elite institutions, I'm always a bit skeptical of people who seem to have too much education or enjoy being educated continuously. This stems not from an intellectual disdain, on the contrary, I think continuous learning is the only way to keep up and thrive in knowledge economies. Rather, I believe the notion of continuing to learn in a closed environment can be detrimental to one's craft and capacity for learning; particularly in software.

Getting our of the building has always garnered the biggest learning opportunities for me. These times always stood in stark contrast to the dull lecture halls and final exams of the traditional educational environment.

That being said, I couldn't be happier to have just completed the Certified Scrum Product Owner class put on by Brad Swanson of Agile42 and Mark Spitzer of AgileVelocity. The class class was full of people like me - who practiced agile (cause that's what you're supposed to do these days) but probably did not practice it very well. The reason we were not doing it well is not because we were not committed to the ideals and outcomes of agile, rather, it's because we were all more or less self-taught, with no structured practice around our craft.

This class is exactly what we needed.

The class was split into two one-day sessions. Some of the material was elementary, but necessary (e.g., reviewing the agile principles, reviewing scrum roles, what makes a great product owner). Most of the time was spent implementing our lessons into a hypothetical build of a Rube Goldberg machine which is both a funny and appropriate analog to software.

Some of the best parts of the class was observing what happened when we pitted one large team versus one small team in Rube Goldberg competition. And big surprise - the large team created an inferior machine. 

Determine to internalize the lessons, I have been reviewing the reading materials almost every day since the class last week. Brad Swanson even created what he has coined the "lean project canvas" that I am using for my current product build.

Five stars and kudos for such an awesome class.

[braddoze]

I knew there was something about Ron Swanson

But I just couldn't put my finger on it. The man takes pictures of his food, I take pictures of my food. We're the same person.