Combining Efforts?

[Joshua Kerievsky]

Folks,

Really sorry for the long silence. I've simply been swamped and also dealing with some low back pain stuff.  

My biggest issue with politics is that I have zero interest in working with the Scrum Alliance.   If we can confirm that the efforts of Ron and company aren't for the SA, I see no reason not to combine our efforts with Ron's effort.  Thoughts?

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best regards,
jk

Industrial Logic, Inc.
Joshua Kerievsky
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[Dave Rooney]

As I understand it, Ron & Chet were doing their work at arm's length
from the SA but still "within sight". The recent changes in the SA
Board and Ken's departure may have changed that, though.

Dave...

[D. André Dhondt]

>The recent changes in the SA Board

Can you elaborate, or point us to a URL that explains what is happening at the SA now?

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D. André Dhondt
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[Patrick Wilson-Welsh]

Hello Joshua,

I am going on gut here. It feels to me like a quorum of agile thoughtleaders is ready to take some action to make good open source "agile programming" and "software craftsmanship" learning systems available to the industry. But it feels like different gaggles of us geese are preceding in slightly different directions, with slightly different priorities. For example, as I keep saying, I'm not interested in the certification discussion until we have better learning systems out there, evolving. 

So my gut says these various threads will indeed eventually converge, but who cares how fast they converge?  My hair is on fire about learning, I'll head that direction with whomever wishes to accompany me. By the time I/we have useful stuff evolved for actual customer consumption, my guess is the cert folks will have separately achieved interesting useful things. 

In short, I'm OK converging later, instead of sooner. I'm excited that these related initiatives have this much momentum and interest. I think this time they will persist and not perish. :)

--Patrick 

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patrick welsh

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[D. André Dhondt]

>So my gut says these various threads will indeed eventually converge, but who cares how >fast they converge?  

I'm worried about integration conflicts... I think it's more effective to get everybody working off "trunk".

[D. André Dhondt]

The bulk of people on the other list are not associated in any way with the Scrum Alliance.  As I understand it, at some point someone in the Scrum Alliance asked Chet and Ron for their opinion in the matter.  I get the impression that person is no longer there.  Regardless, Chet and Ron are still interested in finding out if there is a meaningful assessment scheme or certification scheme that would actually provide value to the various stakeholders, something that would help developers improve their skills steadily for their entire careers.

[Dave Rooney]

Sorry, here's the URL for the press release: http://www.scrumalliance.org/news_items/75 .

I do know that there was some conflict within the SA that led to this, but I don't know how much and who was behind it all.

Dave...

[Patrick Wilson-Welsh]

A reasonable concern! I loathe late integration conflicts! But it feels to me that we have a large group of people who are, essentially, working on slightly different projects. I'm personally OK with separate trunks for separate projects, despite the longterm conflict resolution pain, as long as they are slightly different projects. Especially when this many people and divergent concerns are involved. 

I admit: I am speculating that trying to get these threads to converge immediately would already be a fairly painful exercise in backlog prioritization/grooming. In essence, I admit to you that I am a self-appointed Product Owner for the particular "learning system" project about which I am so passionate. I would not participate for long in an attempt to converge these efforts in a way conflicts with my basic backlog premises, which go like this:

1. First you start by finding/creating/grooming pretty good open-source, open-book, take-home learning systems. You get a quorum of folks to agree that these are useful, standard things to learn *some* things from. 

2. Then you figure out how to assess whether someone has passed/failed one of the above exercises. 

3. Then you figure out what can be "certified" on the part of someone with that much learning, and by whom. 

4. You keep iterating the above, trying to include more and more of the kinds of things that need to be learned and assessed (some of which cannot be learned via open-book, take-home sorts of exercises). 

--Patrick

[Charlie Poole]

My perception is that Ron and Chet are focusing most directly on content - what skills are needed rather than primarily on assessment and certification. I'm hoping this will come to a sharper focus in Ann Arbor.

 

Charlie

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From: assessin...@googlegroups.com [mailto:assessin...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of D. André Dhondt
Sent: Thursday, October 01, 2009 11:04 AM
To: assessin...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [Assessing-Agility] Re: Combining Efforts?