So I am a pretty enthusiastic participant in this class- meaning, I am VERY interested in scrum-ing.  We (my team) have always had a pretty fluid software process.  We have not been much for giving things official sounding names, but have been successful at what we do.  We have been sooo blessed with good clients that seem to be truly engaged in an interactive development process.  They buy into the "find people who are good at what they do and let them do what they are good at".  This scrum-thing seemed like a good fit.  so let's give it a try, right?

The class is great.  Interactive.  Engaging.  Great instructor.  Great classmates (and about half women- woohoo!).  Etc.  Etc. Blah. Blah. Blah.

In class we each had to make our goals of the class known to the class.  A great way to hold ourselves accountable!  Even if I am the only judge of my goals and their success, I said them, OUTLOUD to a room of strangers!

My goals

• Confidence
• Conviction
• Network of resources

Now those are some pretty good buzz words, but they have meaning to me too.  Confidence in myself to lead a scrum team.  Conviction that scrum is the way to lead my teams.  And a network of resources from other smart people in similar boat as I.

I have no problem seeing that I will have the confidence to lead a scrum team.  (we had a discussion of the word "lead" vs "facilitate".  I will use lead with the understanding that lead does not have to equal decision maker.)  The class materials are presented in a way that it is easy to follow and it makes sense.

Network of resources.  Again not a problem.  All of the exercises are allowing us to meet new people, learn about them and their work and I am sure we will be exchanging emails, blogs, etc.

The problem I am having is finding the conviction that it is scrum that we need.  I am having a problem thinking that if we are a successful team (success defined by happy clients AND happy dev staff) why would we change anything?  I am having a hard time imagining a dev team that would really work well in a textbook scrum world.  I know I am spoiled.  Totally and completely.  I work with such great smart people.  Everyone truly enjoys the success of each other, as individuals and as a group.  I know I can depend on them, and I hope they know they can depend on me.  So, why would I change anything?

I don't know.  I totally see the value of the scrum process.  I can totally see nuggets of value that can be incorporated into just about any software team.

My hope for tomorrow's class is to find the value to bring back to my office.  (that sounded so wrong, but I am not implying there is not value because there is, but I am not convinced there is something to fix if we are not broken?)

And, I had an epiphany today.  My first wedding was "traditional" or "waterfall" like.  My second was very agile.  So my next business may just have to be "The Agile Wedding Planner".