Alston is the enterprise Agile Coach for Humana in Louisville, KY.  He is a Certified Scrum Professional (CSP) with over 10 years of Agile experience as a Scrum Coach, ScrumMaster, Product Owner and Agile Project Manager.  During his career Alston has worked with over 20 companies at varying levels of Agile maturity.  He enjoys sharing stories of success and challenges in implementing Agile techniques and approaches.

When: February 9, 2012  (Second Thursday).
Networking and dinner: 5:30-6pm.
Program: 6-7:30pm.
Where: Max Training. 4900 Parkway Drive Suite 160 , Mason (Cincinnati), OH 45040

Register through Eventbrite: http://agilecincinnati20120209.eventbrite.com

 Gold Sponsors:

Silver Sponsor:

Bronze Sponsors:

Door Prize Sponsors:

We had Troy Bitter presented us “How to plan Agile Projects”.

Troy started his presentation by comparing the values derived by traditional and iterative approaches. As we all know agile methodologies can provide incremental benefits at the end of each sprint while waterfall techniques may only deliver at the end of the project.

Providing timely information is necessary to support accelerating the project approval process.

Troy finalized his presentation with Key Takeaways about planning and reporting;

• Just Enough
  • Be as precise as necessary – likely talk in days, not hours
  • More precision requires time and cost trade off
• Time-box
  • Provides sense of urgency
  • Promotes prioritization
• Communicate with audience in mind
  • Bring the right people together
  • Datasheets are useful to collect and analyze data.  They are not necessarily the right medium to share information with Management

Katie Watson and Keith Callis were the winners of our raffle and they got the prizes provided by Pearson and Atlassian

This month we have added a new sponsor; Cohesion became our Silver Sponsor. Thanks for your contributions.

Our speaker, Troy Bitter, is the Director of Agile Services at Cohesion.  Over the last four years, he has focused on agile with training, coaching, delivering, and attaining the successes that agile has to offer.  He is also involved with the local PMI chapter as a trainer and the Director of the new PMI Agile certification (ACP) training.

When: January 12  (Second Thursday).
Networking and dinner: 5:30-6pm.
Program: 6-7:30pm.
Where: Max Training. 4900 Parkway Drive Suite 160 , Mason (Cincinnati), OH 45040

 Gold Sponsors:

Silver Sponsor:

Want to sponsor AC? Put your name here!

Bronze Sponsors:

Door Prize Sponsors:

Come join the Agile Cincinnati and Agile Roundtable leadership for an evening of food, fun, and comradarie as we ring in the holiday season!

Food and drinks are not covered for this event, so each attendee is responsible for purchasing their own meals and beverages. If you belong to an organization that would like to sponsor this event, please contact the Agile Cincinnati leadership at info@agilecincinnati.org

When: Tuesday, December 6

Time: 6:30-8:30pm.

Where: Bucca di Beppo (Rookwood), 2635 Edmondson Road, Norwood, OH 45209

 Gold Sponsors:

Silver Sponsor:

Want to sponsor AC? Put your name here!

Bronze Sponsors:

]]> http://agilecincinnati.org/events/december-holiday-mixer/feed/ 0 http://agilecincinnati.org/event-summary/november-epilogue-understanding-the-pmi-acp-exam/ http://agilecincinnati.org/event-summary/november-epilogue-understanding-the-pmi-acp-exam/#comments Sun, 13 Nov 2011 03:57:26 +0000 Levent Gorur http://agilecincinnati.org/?p=1261 We’re gathered on Thursday night (November 10, 2011) to review and understand the PMI’s new certification PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) with Sean Heuer and Alan Bustamante’s helps.

We started interviewing each other to understand the impact of Agile on us and our interest in PMI-ACP. While we found that the interest in PMI-ACP was low, our willingness to practice Agile was high in our group.

Later with Sean’s leadership, we reviewed the books in PMI’s reading list for ACP exam. Each group came up with 3 top books from the list. Agile Retrospectives from  Derby, Larsen and Schwaber is the only book which is a common selection across all of the groups.

Sean and Alan provided feedback about contents of each book in the PMI’s list.

Sean explained the requirements for individuals to be able to enter to the ACP exam.

To apply for the PMI-ACP, register and log in to get started.

A printable PMI-ACP printable application form is available.

For more information see the detailed requirements in the PMI-ACP Handbook.

If you’re ready to take the exam, the PMI-ACP exam preparation can get you started.

After the Q&A session we ended our meeting.

November’s food sponsor is Atlassian… Our sponsor for door prizes  is Pearson Education and Atlassian. Our November door prize winners are Robert Urbanski and Chris Boylan.

Thanks for all your support.

Abstract:

Last year the Project Management Institute (PMI) created a buzz among Agilists everywhere when it announced it was releasing an Agile certification.  Since then, PMI has released more details about what it is calling the Agile Certified Practitioner or PMI-ACP exam, including reference materials and a road map for successfully passing the exam.  In October of this year, a pilot group was given the exam with the intent of further refining the exam and issuing the first certifications in December 2011.

So, what are the pre-requisites for the exam? What exactly does the exam cover?  How is it different from other certifications on the market?  What value does having the certification provide? Does it replace the PMP (project management professional) certification or is it a complement to the PMP?   Come prepared with these questions and more!  Sean Heuer has sat for the PMI-ACP exam as part of the original pilot group.  Alan Bustamante was on the exam writing team that generated the questions for the exam and is part of the standards committee which will determine the passing points for the exam.

We plan to have around 30 minutes of lecture and use the remaing time for Q&A, where Sean and Alan will take questions from the audience.

Bios:

Sean Heuer, CSM, CSP is currently a Senior Consultant with Sogeti.  Previously he was an Agile Coach/Evangelist for the Kroger Co., at its technical center in Blue Ash, Ohio where he helped lead the company’s Agile adoption and community of Agile practitioners.

Alan Bustamante, PMP, CSP, leads Seapine Software’s Agile Services practice. Alan has worked with software development teams for more than 11 years in tester, software engineer, business analyst, and project manager roles. He has worked on projects in the Americas, Asia, and Europe, and in multiple industries, including energy, insurance, IT, manufacturing, non-profit, and telecom. Alan has spent the last four years leading Agile teams, and is passionate about promoting Agile values through his involvement in the Agile community.

When: November 10 (Second Thursday).

Networking: 5:30-6pm.

Program: 6-7:30pm.

Where: Max Training. 4900 Parkway Drive Suite 160 , Mason (Cincinnati), OH 45040

 Gold Sponsors:

Silver Sponsor:

Want to sponsor AC? Put your name here!

Bronze Sponsors:

Food and Door Prize Sponsors:

Dr. Suscheck started his interactive presentation as follows;

“I am going to talk about how to sell your ideas using psychology when you really don’t have the authority. As a scrum master you don’t have a direct control; you can’t say you’re going to do “x, y, z”. You have to figure out a way to move your team, especially if you’re a coach.”

Why retrospectives are good? The groups came up with following items with Dr. Suscheck’s lead.

what’s right & wrong learn from mistakes

forum for visibility group voice/collaboration

Then, we tried to distinguish the differences between “influence” and “manipulation” and came up with the following list;

Dr. Suscheck provided a text  about retrospectives meetings; it’s important to read this text/announcement before and after reviewing the following enactments so you can distinguish the differences between influence and manipulation within the text.

Here’s Dr. Suscheck’s list of enactments to sell your idea;

• Reciprocation
  People are more willing to comply with requests from those who have provided such things first.
• Liking
  People prefer to say yes to those they know and like. Even being associated with groups or others that they like has an effect.
• Commitment Consistency
  People are more willing to be moved in a particular direction if they see it as consistent with an existing or recent commitment.
• Authority
  People are more willing to follow the directions or recommendations of a communicator to whom they attribute relevant authority or expertise.
• Scarcity
  People find objects and opportunities more attractive to the degree that they are scarce, rare, or dwindling in availability. Even information that is scarce more effective.
• Social Proof
  People are more willing to take a recommended action if they see evudebce that many others, especially similar others, are taking it.

He also gave us a suggested reading list on this subject as follows

October’s food sponsor is Atlassian… Our sponsor for door prizes  is Pearson Education. Our October door prize winner is Kevin Zamora.

This month we have added a new sponsor; Seapine Software became our Gold Sponsor.

Thanks for all your support.

Bio:

Dr. Charles Suscheck is a nationally recognized agile thought leader who specializes in agile software development adoption at the enterprise level. With over 25 years of professional experience, Dr. Suscheck has held positions of Process Architect, Director of Research, Principle Consultant, Professor, and Professional Trainer at some of the most recognized companies in America. He has spoken at national and international conferences and has over 30 publications to his credit. Dr. Suscheck is also one of the organizers of the Agile Coach Camp.

When: October 13 (Second Thursday).
Networking and dinner: 5:30-6pm.
Program: 6-7:30pm.
Where: Max Training. 4900 Parkway Drive Suite 160 , Mason (Cincinnati), OH 45040

Food and Door Prize Sponsors:

Marjorie and Robin finalized their presentation with Keys for Successful Agile Implementation followed by a Q&A session.

Management Support and a Great Coach Product Owner involvement to prioritize and review completed work. Daily stand up meetings – to inspect and adapt quickly changing situations Focus and commitment to the prioritized work Team retrospectives for process improvement Team is self sufficient & self managing Discipline to keep the process going

This month our food sponsor was Atlassian. Thanks again for their support to our community.

Manish Gupta and Pat Newberry were the winners of our raffle and they got the prizes provided by Pearson and Atlassian

We had been facing challenges using the traditional waterfall method and needed to improve project outcomes. After attending several Agile presentations we decided to give the Agile process a try. Join us as we share our experiences over the last two years of using the Agile framework.  We’ll discuss how we introduced it, what type of projects we have implemented using this process and how we keep spreading the word and moving forward.  We’ll be talking about what went well; the positive impacts we have made delivering projects at CCHMC and, of course, what can be improved!

Bio:

Marjorie is a member of the Project Management Office at CCHMC. She has over 25 years of IT experience in a number of verticals including insurance, manufacturing and telecommunications.  Various roles have been programmer, resource manager, project manager and Agile evangelist.

Robin manages the PeopleSoft HCM/ELM and Kronos development teams at CCHMC. She has over 25 years of IT experience in a number of verticals supporting human resources information systems.  Her roles have included: programmer, resource manager, project manager and Agile advocate.

When: September 08 (Second Thursday).  Networking and dinner: 5:30-6pm. Program: 6-7:30pm.

Where: Max Training. 4900 Parkway Drive Suite 160 , Mason (Cincinnati), OH 45040

Food sponsor: TBD

This event qualifies for 1 PDU. Attendees must pre-register through Eventbrite and sign in at the door to qualify.