3Back LLC, in conjunction with Critical Point Group (CPG) ran their first ever "Applied Agile" training in Charlotte on Oct 1-3. "It was simply head and shoulders above anything that we have done before. The power and passion that came out of the course was unrivaled in our experience", said trainer Doug Shimp. The course offered total immersion into techniques for building and sustaining well-formed Agile teams. The immersion was achieved by combining classroom theory, simulation, and a unique opportunity to observe Agile methods practiced by the hyper-productive technical product development team at CPG.
The course was co-taught by Guy Beaver, Director of Software Engineering at Critical Point Group and Douglas Shimp, Partner and Senior Consultant with 3Back.
On day one, the class attendees got to view CPG's team environment and walked through the team work-space. The team space was an open environment with highly visible information posted on the walls.
Class attendees saw spaces without dividing barriers, workstations with double monitors and walls filled with index cards. More importantly, class attendees observed people spontaneously engaged in dialog in groups of two's and three's throughout the team space. The environment was energetic, almost chaotic to the observer, but a trained eye would have detected an intensity of purposeful focus that was underlying every interaction. After observing the agile team space, the class returned to the training room. The class debriefed and digested what was observed and covered more theory, combined with regular interactive discussions. It was obvious that class attendees were intrigued by what they saw and heard and wanted to understand more.
"We ate our own dog food as we taught the material," said co-trainer Guy Beaver. "We planned an agenda with high-level topics, and unfolded details on just enough material to get started, and courageously allowed the class to determine priorities. Of course this was all tracked with notes cards visibly displayed on the wall. This let the class participants select the focus, while not losing the breadth of the material, which was kept visible. This is just how CPG works with its clients to implement our highly customizable platform. We ran the class similar to our adaptive approach with our clients, providing the ability to change direction based on the dynamics of a complex choreographed marketing strategy."
"CPG has one of the best up-and-running Agile product development teams that I've seen," added Shimp, who has consulted and coached some of the most hyper-productive teams in the country. "They've found ways to put executive presence on Agile concepts and have proven that technology development can be tightly coupled with business goals using these approaches."
On day two, things picked up. The class had the opportunity to shadow CPG's well-formed team during their daily stand-up meeting. The class observed an easy, conversational style meeting that was focused and involved everyone in a natural flow of dialog to tightly synchronize the planned work for the day. For lunch, the class was given an opportunity to interview CPG's well formed team in a lunch panel. The CPG team was amazing, and answered any and all questions from the group. CPG's team worked the questions effortlessly as a unit without intentionally trying to, it was simply what they were--a tightly synchronized team.
An amazing result that surprised the instructors was how the class started to emulate the cohesive behavior being demonstrated by CPG's team. It is hard to describe that behavior, but it was obvious that attendees wanted to be part of a team that exhibited the passion being demonstrated. The attendees were observing so many intangibles of CPG's mature Agile implementation that as individuals they could not understand it but by starting to act like a team they could experience it. After the unique lunch experience, the rate of learning and understanding accelerated, there was a growing hunger to be part of an Agile team. Said Shimp, "What we observed is that they started to work hard not to leave any member of their team feeling confused or left behind in a discussion. They started to care for each other as member of a passionate team and started to move with agility as a learning unit."
On day three, the class undertook a full blown sprint simulation. It was magic. There was an amazing explosion of energy and focus. Before the panel lunch it was simply a collection of students taking a class, after the panel lunch they become an Agile team. During the simulation the class overcame technical hurdles, behaved as a unit, helped each other out, laughed, struggled collectively, wrestled with creative tension and overcame an enormous number of obstacles in a short time. In essence they were becoming a learning machine, experiencing the "amplified learning affect" that a collocated Agile team experiences. The end result was a working transaction processing website that met the simulated business goals.
"Having done a lot of training, we have never seen a class like it. And almost to a person, the comments were something like 'we have never experienced any training like this before.' For most of the folks, it was a transformational experience," said Shimp.
Other comments from the class:
"This is the training no one knows about but, everyone needs."
"Guy--Thanks so much for your ... training this week. I think it has been one of the best courses I have ever taken. Both you and Doug did an incredible job! In addition, I would like to say that your management style is phenomenal. You are the kind of manager I strive to be."
Find out about our Applied Agile Training.