Who should attend: Current or prospective Product Owners, product managers, analysts, software team members.

Why attend: Building a product with a new process can be a daunting prospect. Being asked to serve as the team’s Product Owner can be downright intimidating. You’ve got an idea of what Scrum is, and have read a few articles or books on the topic, but you really don’t know how to start putting that theory into action.

The CSPO course gives you just enough information to understand how Scrum works, but focuses mainly on functioning as the product owner, or customer, for a Scrum team. You will learn about activities such as managing stakeholders, ROI, backlog grooming, creating effective stories, acceptance criteria for stories, defining done, and so on.

Through practical, hands-on exercises and small-group discussion you will be prepared to plan your first (or next) sprint immediately after this class. ScrumMasters can benefit from this course, because they must coach Product Owners in these skills.

Following the course, each participant is enrolled as a CSPO, which includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional Scrum materials and information are available.

Participants will learn to:

• Plan, initiate and lead a Scrum project
• Develop the initial Product Backlog
• Improve the identification of Business Value
• Establish a shared vision for the entire team
• Generate an agile release plan utilizing user stories and story point estimation
• Manage the Gap between customer expectations and the Team’s ability to deliver
• Improve business value engineering
• Balance new features against digging out of technical debt
• Refactor the Product Backlog continuously
• Lead the Team and yet have the Team remain self-managing
• Work with Stakeholders to make them more effective

Who should attend: All members of software teams, managers

Why attend:

• Your team has just started or will soon start developing using Scrum
• You want to understand what it means to be agile
• You want clarifications about the various roles in Scrum and how they relate
• Your Scrum meetings are ineffective
• Your Scrum board is unused, almost empty or impossible to decipher
• You want to monitor your process and need some metrics
• You don’t know how to manage the product backlog
• No actions are taken as a result of your retrospectives

This is a hands-on training that aims to teach the Scrum framework with a real example. Teams are encouraged to prepare with examples from their applications, but we can provide an example product to work on.

To achieve optimal results, we recommend the participation of the entire team (Product Owner, programmers, testers, business analysts etc.).

Topics covered:

• Agile Project Management with Scrum
• Iterative, incremental development
• Scrum roles—PO, SM, team member
• Scrum meetings—Release and Sprint planning, Sprint review, Retrospectives, Daily Scrum
• Scrum artifacts—Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Boards, Charts
• User stories and story splitting
• Estimating, planning

Who should attend: all members of software development teams that want to adopt Scrum or have used Scrum for 1-2 years

Why attend: Becoming a member of a Scrum team can be a daunting prospect and being asked to serve as the team’s ScrumMaster can be downright intimidating. You’ve got an idea of what Scrum is and have read a few articles or books on the topic, but you really don’t know how to go about putting that theory into action.

This course focuses on the Scrum framework, including team roles, activities, and artifacts, so that you can be an effective member of a Scrum team.

The CSM course was formulated to train and certify ScrumMasters and it is used worldwide for ScrumMaster training. This class has to cover a specific syllabus provided by Scrum Alliance, but each instructor creates his or her own material, allowing courses to differ based on the strengths, interests, and experiences of the instructor.

All CSM courses are taught by Certified Scrum Trainers. Taking a CSM course and the corresponding evaluation designates you as a Certified ScrumMaster, which indicates that you have been introduced to the concepts you need to perform as a ScrumMaster or team member on a Scrum team. Participants will receive Certified ScrumMaster designation from the Scrum Alliance upon completion of an on-line exam. Participants will also receive a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional ScrumMaster-only material and information are available.

Participants Will Learn:

• Practical, project-proven practices
• The essentials of getting a project off on the right foot
• How to write user stories for the product backlog
• Why there’s more to leading a self-organizing team than buying pizza and getting out of the way
• How to help both new and experienced teams be more successful
• How to successfully scale Scrum to large, multi-continent projects with team sizes in the hundreds
• Tips and tricks from the instructors’ years of using Scrum in a wide variety of situations

Who should attend: Software developers that want to learn some basic techniques for changing code they have difficulties understanding and cannot verify.

Why attend:

• To practice techniques for changing legacy code in a low stress environment.

A legacy code retreat has a similar format with a code retreat but attendees work on an existing codebase.

Participants are encouraged to try out techniques like: writing tests on legacy code, test driving changes, refactoring, generating test suites.

Topics covered:

• creating and identifying seams in software (places where we can decouple tightly-coupled modules)
• adding tests
• isolating behavior from frameworks
• introducing mocks
• writing characterization tests

Who should attend: Software developers that need to change code they have difficulties understanding and can’t verify.

Prerequisites: You must know one of Java, C# or php. All examples during the class are in Java, but you will work in your preferred language. You need a laptop with a fully working development environment to use during the class.

Why attend:

• You would like to increase estimates accuracy while developing on a large existing codebase
• You want to learn how to rescue legacy code today so that you avoid introducing bugs or unexpected side effects
• You want to reduce the pain of working on an existing codebase
• You want to add automated tests to an existing codebase

This workshop introduces specific techniques that help developers deal with legacy code. We start with documenting the existing behavior through automated tests. We continue with refactoring the legacy code using the tests as a safety net. Finally we learn how to test drive changes – bug fixes or new features.

Participants apply all techniques on existing codebases and, if possible, on their own codebase.

Topics covered:

• Basic Unit Testing
• Quick techniques for documenting behavior
• Getting the code in a test harness
• Breaking dependencies
• Safe Refactorings

Who should attend: Software developers that would like to learn incremental design using test-driven development.

Prerequisites: You must know one of Java, C#, C++, php, Python or Ruby. All examples during the class are in Java, but you will work in your preferred language. You need a laptop with a fully working development environment to use during the class.

Why attend:

• You want to reduce the number of bugs
• You want to minimize the cost of change of your project
• You consider adopting TDD in your team or for yourself
• You are a developer who wants to improve his toolset

This workshop teaches participants how to achieve simple design, thus keeping the cost of change very low, using Test Driven Development (TDD). It builds from the basic TDDcycle (red → green → refactor), introduces simple design principles and emergent design and builds towards the real TDD cycle and towards using TDD in large systems while still being very productive.

Topics covered:

• Basic TDD cycle, the real TDD cycle
• Using TDD to achieve modular design
• Isolated testing using stubs and mocks
• How to be fast when applying TDD
• How to test larger systems
• Work with legacy code

Who should attend: Software developers that would like to learn how to reduce the number of bugs in their software.

Prerequisites: You must know one of Java, C#, C++, php, Python or Ruby. All examples during the class are in Java, but you will work in your preferred language. You need a laptop with a fully working development environment to use during the class.

Why Attend:

• You want to reduce the number of bugs in your project
• You consider adopting unit testing
• You want to adopt unit testing and would like to avoid common pitfalls
• You would like to simplify your unit tests because they are complicated and slow

This workshop teaches participants how to write simple, maintainable unit tests. It introduces the core unit testing techniques and a set of guidelines that when followed minimize the time spent on maintaining test code.

Participants practice all the techniques on specific exercices that ensure they can apply them after leaving the class.

Topics covered:

• Basics of Unit Testing
• How to effectively use an xUnit framework
• State and collaboration tests
• Isolated tests using stubs and mocks
• Organizing tests for a large system
• Dealing with legacy code

Who should attend: Product Owners, testers, other software team members

Why attend:

• You want to express requirements using user stories
• Your estimations are wrong because the stories are too big
• You don’t know how to plan using user stories
• What you develop is not what the customer asked for
• Your current requirements format is too complicated

During this one day workshop, participants will be taught how to model system requirements with user stories.

Through the use of a real example, we will start from a product vision and gradually build a product backlog of refined user stories, plus their respective acceptance criteria.

Topics covered:

• What are user stories
• The user story template
• INVEST criteria for a good user story
• Story splitting techniques
• Minimum marketable feature
• Acceptance criteria
• Using user stories for planning

Who should attend: Managers or team leaders working inside organizations that have adopted Agile; team members that what to understand the agile management approach and practices

Why attend:

• You are unsure of your role as manager/team leader in an agile environment
• You need to understand the right balance between control and delegation
• You are not sure what self-organization means
• You don’t know how to motivate your people in an agile environment
• You don’t know how to structure your teams an agile environment
• You want to start a change process

Agile management is an often overlooked part of Agile. There is much information available for agile developers, testers, and project managers, but very little for development managers and team leaders.

Several studies indicate that “old-style” managers are the biggest obstacle in transitions to agile software development. Development managers and team leaders need to learn what their new role is in agile software development organizations. This course will help them.

Topics covered:

• Introduction to Agile methods
• Complexity science and systems thinking
• Motivate people
• Allow teams to self-organize
• Set appropriate goals
• Develop competences
• Grow organizational structures
• Manage change

Who should attend: All members of agile organizations that want to learn what self-organization really means, managers that want to support self-organization and to develop an agile culture in their departments and in their companies

Why attend:

• Your team does not work together
• You want to remove the blaming culture in your organization
• Help managers to be facilitators and enablers
• Help technical teams to work out solutions and make decisions more effectively
• You would like to handle conflicts more easily
• Make your organization more productive and proactive

Learn in this workshop the dynamics that make the difference between an Agile team that works and one that doesn’t, as well as practical techniques that team members, managers and coaches can use to improve the level of self-organization in their group.

Understand through lectures and practical exercises why self-organization is so important, what factors prevent it to happen and the countermeasures you can take.

Topics covered:

• The key role of self-organization in the Agile approach
• Institutional, relational and systemic views of the Agile organization
• Decisional influence shifts in the Agile organization
• Guidance vs. command: Meta-, macro- and micro-guidance levels
• Understanding the manager’s and team’s resistance to self-organization
• Counteracting blame
• Effects of the Controlling Parent pattern
• Unsuspected pitfalls that undermine the team’s cohesion
• Identifying and addressing counterproductive collective traits
• Visualizing the team’s alignment with business goals

Who should attend: All members of software teams, managers.

Kanban is a lean process tool with a low footprint, well suited for complex environments where an overview is normally hard to find. It helps you drive improvements, both in your environment and in the surrounding value stream. Learn how to introduce kanban and how to use it for cooperative problem solving.

Topics covered:

• What is kanban?
• Kanban vs. Scrum
• How to design a kanban system
• Planning and estimation
• Risk mitigation using Classes of Services
• Metrics and reporting
• Continuous improvement
• Techniques to improve flow
• Multiple case studies from Operations and Development

Who should attend: All members of software teams, managers.

Why attend:

• Your team has just started or will soon start an agile transition
• You want to understand what it means to be agile
• You want to better understand how to structure your team
• Your estimations are always wrong
• There is poor visibility on your progress
• You want to monitor your process and need some metrics
• You don’t know how to manage the product backlog
• No actions are taken as a result of your retrospectives
• Nothing ever gets finished
• Your customers are unhappy

This is a perfect workshop for teams starting an agile adoption process. It provides everyone with a shared understanding of the topics, their strengths and challenges. We ensure attendees understand the key principles and that they leave the workshop with a concrete list of practices to start with.

Theory is covered during a third of the time, with the rest being dedicated to team exercises and discussions.

Topics covered:

• Iterative and incremental development
• Effective retrospectives
• Manage flow using Scrum/Kanban boards and work in progress limits
• Business and development collaboration
• Agile estimating and planning (user stories, story points, burndowns)
• Story splitting
• Team roles
• Software development models: agile, lean, waterfall

We are a fast-growing agile and lean training company looking for a person to join our excellent team of 12-people. We are based in the Bucharest Hubb near Unirii Square.

As a Team Leader of Software Development School you will:

• Lead a project-launch team for our new software-development teaching programme.
• Later, you will lead the operational activity of our software development teaching business.
• Work closely with our team members on marketing, commercial, financial and administrative matters.
• Coordinate the activity of a small software development team serving Mosaic Works’ internal needs.
• Report directly to the General Manager of Mosaic Works.

As a team leader in Mosaic Works:

You will learn a wide range of new skills & behaviours. These will build on your existing personal productivity behaviours, management behaviours, team-working behaviours, communication behaviours, and technical skills. You will have a defined professional development programme. In common with us all, you will never stop learning.

As with all our team members, you will have accountability, autonomy and flexibility on how, where and when you will work.

This is what we are looking for:

• You have been in the software development industry for more than 5-years.
• You co-ordinate various teams in IT software industry. You have experience in understanding customer needs for developing useful IT software products.
• You have a good understanding of the full software development cycle.
• You understand the benefits and adhere to agile, lean and software craftsmanship.
• ScrumMaster or Product Owner experience is a plus.
• Financial knowledge is a plus.
• You are experienced in collaborating with management for removing impediments from your teams.
• You are a continuous learner; you like to read and share your ideas about technology; you take part in the community.

How to apply

Email us to jointheteam@mozaicworks.com. Add to the subject line “ Leader of Software Development School”. If you’re attaching a CV, provide it as a PDF. We look favourably on people who get creative with their applications.

Mosaic Works is an equal opportunities employer and we welcome applicants with disabilities.

We look forward to hearing from you.

• Test Driven Development, Unit Testing, working with legacy code
• Scrum workshop, Certified Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Product Owner
• Agile Management, Lean and Kanban
• Lean Software Development Adoption
• Agile Transformation
• Assessment for software teams and companies
• Helping adoption of specific practices and techniques to improve specific areas
• Organizational: root cause analysis, culture of continuous improvement, self-organizing teams, etc.;
• Technical: continuous integration, automatic testing, clean code, etc.

Coaching

• Coaching software development teams to leverage their potential, both in organizational and technical areas; coaching managers and clients in relation with their software development teams
• Agile Coaching for: teams, Scrum Masters, Product Owners and Managers
• Technical coaching: pair programming, automatic testing, clean code, micro-techniques (e.g pomodoro)

Furthermore, we offer support to the Romanian Agile, Lean and Software Craftsmanship communities (Agile Works) in Bucharest and other Romanian cities and we organize the OpenAgile Romania conference with speakers who are world-class agile practitioners.

Hope you are having success with Scrum, and having fun!

If I can help as a coach or trainer, or in any other way, please contact me.

Some further background on me:

* With an MBA, I tend to put more focus than others on Business Value Engineering, by which I mean all the practices in identifying and confirming where the BV really is.

* I have 20+ years of experience as a consultant to well-known firms in New York, London, and Charlotte.  And in Richmond, VA, and San Antonio, TX. I have worked at relatively few clients over those years since I tend to be extended or invited back.

* I have been a Senior Manager in Big 6/Big 4 consulting.

* I initially was trained in Scrum by Ken Schwaber and mentored with Jeff Sutherland. I continue to work with Jeff Sutherland, the Poppendiecks and a number of other great coaches and trainers.  I am pleased to call many of the coaches and trainers and practitioners in the community friends.

* I helped start Agile Richmond (formerly APLN-Richmond). I started Agile-Carolinas, which has had some great speakers. I was a speaker at Agile 2007 and will be at Agile 2008.  I have a book in draft (The Elements of Agile Style).

* I have a BA from Yale and an MBA from NYU (in finance and international business).

* I am pleased to pass on Little’s Law (2) which somehow one day came to me:  “People are remarkably good at doing what they want to do.”  Much like “where there’s a will, there’s a way”, but with a twist.

I run TDD and team leadership classes for software developers.

If you’ve ever been to one of my classes, I’d love it if you left me a testimonial!

Roy Osherove is one of the original ALT.NET organizers. He consults and trains teams worldwide on the gentle art of unit testing, test-driven development and how to lead software teams. He frequently speaks at international conferences on these topics and others.

Roy is the author of the book The Art of Unit Testing, and writes about subjects such as unit testing, TDD Team Leadership and agile development on his blog is at osherove.com/blog

Since 2008 Jurgen writes a popular blog at www.noop.nl, which deals with development management, software engineering, business improvement, personal development, and complexity theory. He is the author of the book Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders, which describes the role of the manager in agile organizations. He is also a speaker, being regularly invited to talk at business seminars and conferences around the world.

After studying Software Engineering at the Delft University of Technology, and earning his Master’s degree in 1994, Jurgen Appelo has busied himself starting up and leading a variety of Dutch businesses, always in the position of team leader, manager, or executive. Jurgen has experience in leading a horde of 100 software developers, development managers, project managers, business consultants, quality managers, service managers, and kangaroos, some of which he hired accidentally.

Nowadays he works full-time developing innovative courseware, books, and other types of original content. But sometimes Jurgen puts it all aside to do some programming himself, or to spend time on his ever-growing collection of science fiction and fantasy literature, which he stacks in a self-designed book case. It is 4 meters high.
Read more about him at http://www.jurgenappelo.com/about/

Comments from Jurgen’s audiences:

“Humoristic and positive, energy and vision.”

“Good speaker, nice story.”

“Original slides and relaxed speaker.”

“Content and way of presenting very good.”

“Excellent – would want an advanced session.”

“Great session in general.”

“Really liked the tools and wake-up calls.”

“Creative, command of topic, passion, good structure, super concepts.”

“Makes a difficult problem easy quickly.”

“Just left me wanting more.”

“Very experienced speaker with humor and a good story.”

“Makes things visual, talks clearly.”

“Good contact with the audience.”

“Fast, clear, humor, makes you start thinking.”

“Very clear slides.”

“The best presentation of the day.”

He is co author to the book “Kanban and Scrum – making the most of both” and an experienced speaker at Lean and Kanban conferences.

In 2011 he was one of the Brickell Key award nominees at the Lean Software and Systems conference in Long Beach.