What is a ScrumMaster?

An agile project manager emphasizes facilitation, leadership and communication over traditional command-and-control activities.  In the Scrum framework, this role is called “ScrumMaster” as a constant reminder of the differences between agile and traditional project management.  The ScrumMaster’s role is to maximize the team’s efforts toward its goals while removing the impediments that stand in its way.

Certified Scrum Master Course

In this two-day course, you will apply the Scrum framework to build a new product. You will learn what it feels like to be on a Scrum team—experiencing many of the challenges you're likely to face—while being coached by someone involved with the application of Scrum at many organizations. This “learning by doing” style of instruction demands your open mind and active participation.

We will apply the experiential activities to discussion of advanced topics such as how to use Scrum in multiple-team organizations, how to measure progress empirically at a macro level, release planning to maximize ROI, and why such a simple framework disrupts organizations to be the best they can be.

The CSM course will cover the following topics (among others) through two days of interactive exercises, lecture, and discussion:

• Introduction to Scrum
• Scrum Roles and Responsibilities
• Agile Requirements Analysis
• Estimating and Prioritizing Product Backlogs
• Sprint Planning, Execution, Review, and Retrospectives
• What does "Done" mean?
• Technical Debt and other pitfalls
• Release planning based on empirical measurement
• Scrum in multiple-team organizations
• Q & A

Participants who complete the course successfully will be designated Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), the first step on the road to Certified Scrum Practitioner (CSP). This certification includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional Certified ScrumMaster-only material and information are available.