Project Management Institute’s – Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK) Guide (Fifth edition) is now available! It’s an exciting an MUCH awaited news for (many) PMI volunteers who volunteered and worked hard on completing this!

I have been a part of this significant project since August 2010. I worked with a distributed, dedicated, talented team of project management practitioners from across the globe as a Content committee member. It’s an inexplicable experience to see your name listed in this Guide referred by worldwide practitioners and PMP aspirants. Thank you PMI and my amazing team for the support and this awesome chance!

The challenges that our team faced were tough but every team member was committed and made sure our work timeline was never impacted and delivered high quality output. There were multiple such teams working in parallel, and leads of those teams synchronizing all the work! I can’t imagine the number of stories rest of the volunteers must have to share.

To everyone who helped create this Guide and volunteered your expertise, time and probably sometimes sacrificed personal time – I personally thank you for your valuable contribution. If you stumble upon this post and have contributed, please share your story, views and journey.

If you have friends, colleagues, bosses  - please spread the word around. (PMI members might already be aware about this). But, surprisingly I found MANY in the community who talk to me regarding PMP certification prep unaware about this. Project Management Professional OR PMP (R) is a world wide respected credential which is not restricted to JUST software development, but is common for non-IT fields and jobs – e.g.: Construction, Oil and Gas, Finance, Non-profits and many other domains.

If you are affiliated to a PMI chapter, make your chapter operations team and members cognizant about it. If you are a PMI-REP (Registered Education Provider), a trainer, consultant, blogger or simply a project management practitioner – this change affects you.

Share the news – by word of mouth, through emails, through twitter, Facebook - whatever media you can. Just help make the people making choice regarding project management as profession be aware about this change.

Check the Newly Updated Standards Availability page on PMI site, specifically:  “Getting Ready for the Exam?” section with Study Recommendation and Updated Exam Schedule sections!

---

You just finished reading Project Management Institute (PMI) PMBOK Guide - Fifth edition is now available!! Consider leaving a comment!

---

We run our blog on Standard Theme. Be a writer for us. Post a job with us on Agile Jobs.

---

Be it teams new to Scrum or ones that have been practicing scrum for a while, one of the common problems they face is: User stories carrying over multiple time boxes (sprints/iterations). The team simply can NOT finish the story and it drags on..and on..sprint after sprint.

As a member of ever growing agile community, I am subscribed to many discussion groups. Recently, one such discussion Can’t get to done, roll-over every sprint on Scrum Alliance Google Group caught my attention.

The origin of the problem can be at many places like: Ambiguous requirement(s)/stories, Stories not sliced enough, Business owner/PO availability, Technical road block, Team member availability etc. One of the common cause is “over commitment”.  I’d like to share my recent experience about this specific problem and how I was able to address it.

Setting: Most of the team members were new to scrum/agile. 3 Sprints into the product development, our team was continuously moving more than a couple of user stories from sprint to sprint. Apart from the obvious problem of inexperience with user story creation and splitting, there was a zest in team which was leading to over commitment.

Having failed to try and discuss that problem in retrospectives, I had to wait for around 3 sprints to validate my assumption. (Yes, we progressed into creating better stories and got a little better at slicing them). After 3 sprints, I decided to try something different – I created a new backlog item “Spillover” stories for the next sprint. Since Thanksgiving was approaching people started talking about Turkey dinners and thus the “leftover” turkey sandwiches and all sorts of leftover recipe discussions were making rounds in office and internet. That inspired me to use the term “Leftover” stories.

At every daily standup, we would discuss about the “Leftovers”. And as it happens in every household, there came a day when the team got bored with leftovers. One of our developers broke the silence saying, “..I don’t like the term leftover/spillover you are using..”. The developer was concerned that the task board was not doing justice to the status of work completed in that story. That was the opportunity, I was waiting for.

We agreed to finish the standup and then discuss the issue. With everyone from the team present there, we looked at the stories, work history, capacity of every team member and turned the discussion into a retrospective. Everyone agreed that we had gotten better at describing the user stories, creating supporting documents/design/User interface. The team then realized given the time box, we were biting more than we can chew. For the first 3 iterations, we all were ignoring the fact as the team was forming, storming. It WAS a team commitment (or “lack of” to say NO to the product owner) issue.

This experience touched many aspects of the team’s operation, but mainly addressed the commitment issues. We do have some scrum certified team members but until we practice, fail, inspect-adapt and repeat the cycle, we are not being true to agile values and principles. It was a wonderful experience for me and the team and we all have made adjustments since then.

Many other scrum/agile experts offered excellent advice/response to that thread on Scrum Alliance Google group. I shared this story very briefly. I was delighted to see @RonJeffries responding to my response on the group as “Nice!” Made my day! [blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/RonJeffries/status/268815166001532929"]

http://xprogramming.com/index.php

[blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/Bendre/status/268790235276652544"]

Thanks to @WoodyZuill for encouraging me to create this post out of a twitter conversation! [blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/WoodyZuill/status/282132950387138560"]

If it helps, here are some of my User Story related valuable reads. I know it’s time to update that list! I am eager to hear your comments and stories.

---

You just finished reading User Stories - Tackling team commitment through "leftovers"! Consider leaving a comment!

---

We run our blog on Standard Theme. Be a writer for us. Post a job with us on Agile Jobs.

---

Be it family, friends, co-workers, travelers on the road/public transport – Humans. Yeah, different race, religion etc. – but humans. Every one of us is unique.

We all are marching together to accomplish something – To work. That work – believe it or NOT, affects humans – mostly in a positive way. We as a community are engaged in solving problems for each other, trying to make this journey called life a little simpler. So, if I am supposed to work on something that benefits others, I would myself like to be in a positive frame of mind. When I am feeling good, I have seen it influence positive vibe with others whom I interact.

I am not here to lecture on world peace. Most of the people reading this article and blog, I assume, are adults. Some leaders, agile enthusiasts and great human beings. I just wanted to share a simple message – before we honk at someone, before we shout at a colleague, team member or anyone, before cutting in the line while driving, before showing that finger because someone is not driving the way WE want them to drive – let’s take a moment: breathe, think and then react.

AgileScout blog is not just about agile, but it is about that scout in everyone of us. I’ve been one. I always will be. As a scout, I was taught to respect people and I always will. How about you?

Munch over this thought, while I cook something else for us.

Sameer

---

You just finished reading Just a little respect - It's about Being Agile! Consider leaving a comment!

---

We run our blog on Standard Theme. Be a writer for us. Post a job with us on Agile Jobs.

---

*** Disclaimer: I am an active volunteer with PMI’s Agile Community of Practice as one of the 5 official leads. Views expressed here (and related future posts) are my own and not an endorsement by Project Management Institute ® (PMI) or Agile Community of Practice (CoP) leadership team.***

If you know me, I have been pretty active (as a volunteer, lead and contributor) in PMI + Agile space. I volunteer as:

• PMBOK® Guide 5th edition – contributor (engagement just wrapped up)
• PMI Atlanta Agile Interest group – Program Manager for Agile Interest Group
• PMI Agile CoP – Knowledge Management lead

These opportunities have allowed me to connect with lots of people – amazingly talented, some famous agilists, practitioners and gurus. There’s a common thing we all share – desire to learn coupled with the passion to share!

I have learnt a lot, have actually got hands on experience (tools, technology, principles, practices etc.),  mentored a lot of people and I am still enjoying the journey!

What do we share? Knowledge. Of course about Agile, primarily.

I have seen a lot of questions that follow an agile presentation or discussion, ranging from:

• What is Agile?
• Where do I start? (There are so many places to start with)
• What is different at Agile CoP? (from other valuable sites, groups and resources)
• What does a Project Manager do in Agile projects?
• What is PMI’s – Agile Certified Professional (PMI-ACP®)  certification? Is it for me?
• Whom do we trust as good training companies?
• What are good books, blogs, sites to start/continue building my knowledge about agile?

and many such questions.

There are 2 ways to go about it:  (1) Invest your time – Do personal research, find what’s best for you – decide and go.     (2) Interact with world-wide professionals with experience in agile in conjunction with project management knowledge. Utilize the Knowledge base and assets they are building (of course, by reusing some of the industry famous resources – and providing proper credit to them).

This volunteer driven space of agile experts, passionate practitioners, eager enthusiasts and dedicated newbies is: PMI’s Agile Community of Practice. (agile.vc.pmi.org)

Note:  PMI does require an individual to be a paid member and then you can subscribe to this community.

Some of the benefits in my opinion:

• Agile project management experts from across the globe are active in this community
• Access to experienced practitioners, consultants and trainers in one place
• Features like: Ask the community, Discussion forums, Newsletters, Blogs, Experience reports, Social media and Webinars (Live plus recordings) with agile experts
• Access to ACP guide that helps members prepare for PMI-ACP
• As a volunteer, working with various level of agile practitioners, coaches and experts on a frequent basis
• and by the way, while doing all this, earn your PDUs!

Are you a project management professional, who:

- Is currently a member, subscriber of the 17,000 + strong community?

- Is using or planning to use agile methods in your project(s)?

- has a story to share with the world about your success or learning?

- has a question that the community can help answer for you?

Join, connnect, contribute and earn PDU’s while learning from the best who are trying to help bridge the gap between traditional project management and agile practices today with their everyday work. What more would you like to see being discussed here that brings value to the profession of project management and agile practitioners?

I plan to continue sharing my experiences with the amazing audience of AgileScout and learn from your experiences too! As it is, life is too short to make the same mistakes again and again and again..!

It’s good to get back. It sure feels good.

Sameer

---

You just finished reading Getting back online: Agile, PMI, Volunteering and Me! Consider leaving a comment!

---

We run our blog on Standard Theme. Be a writer for us. Post a job with us on Agile Jobs.

---

SAN FRANCISCO AGILE

As a consumer, there are good things and bad things.

Good: there are lots of products, services in today’s world to choose from. So many that we may not be even aware of.

Bad: WE have to make the choice.
Being a typical Libran, it’s a difficult one for me.

Since my introduction to agile, there have been multiple conferences that I have been hearing about. I’ve been fortunate to attend some large conferences and some small ones. One such conference that caught my eye was SFAgile Conference. This is the 2nd year SFAgile will be held and got great reviews from 2011 attendees.

SFAgile 2012 is a 3-day “unconference” that brings together practitioners from Lean software development, the LeanStartup movement, and Agile software development. 

It’s a refreshingly different conference format: a mix of crowd-sourced content that include workshops, talks, dojos, and open-space-inspired spontaneous sessions. There will be many ways to learn new things, share your ideas, and get your questions answered.

The unique part about this conference is crowd-sourced content through Ideascale. Submissions were accepted in “Waves” http://sfagilecon2012.ideascale.com/

Wave 3 is now closed but Wave 4 is open from April 9th to April 15th – Here’s some help with submission walkthrough.

Main conference site is: http://sfagilecon.org/ where you will find the information about:

• Program: http://sfagilecon.org/program
• Speakers: http://sfagilecon.org/speakers

This year, Keynotes will be delivered by: Steve Blank, Joshua Kerievsky and Jim McCarthy during the 3 days.

• Sponsors: http://sfagilecon.org/sponsors

Conference chairs: Angeline Tan & Mike Sutton hand picked team of volunteers who are helping them with conference organizing activities: http://sfagilecon.org/who-we-are

I’m excited to be a part of #SFAgile2012. Looking forward to meet industry experts, thought leaders, some old friends and to make new ones! I will be joining from Atlanta, GA while some great speakers will be flying in from outside of US.

What are you waiting for? Go to http://sfagilecon.org/ and click, register. (Follow #SFAgile2012 hash tag on Twitter or follow the account @SFAgile2012)

See you there!

---

You just finished reading San Francisco Agile 2012 (SFAgile2012)! Consider leaving a comment!

---

We run our blog on Standard Theme. Be a writer for us. Post a job with us on Agile Jobs.

---

We’re happy to introduce Sameer Bendre as he joins AgileScout as an Executive Contributor.

---

You just finished reading [Announcement] - AgileScout adds Sameer Bendre as Executive Contributor! Consider leaving a comment!

---

We run our blog on Standard Theme. Be a writer for us. Post a job with us on Agile Jobs.

---