The Lonely Scrum

#3: Develop a plan and implement basic steps in establishing an effective networking/job search strategy. Being that I have a job that I plan to stay in I would have to think a little about what I plan to do with my project to get a job. I plan to use the knowledge gained from getting my certification to help with the projects I run. Ideally I would like to help build a contingent of Scrum users at my work. There are some that used it in school a little but none who have worked in a professional environment with it. Perhaps I will get the chance to change that.

Write a journal entry that addresses these points: What is your professional networking strategy? What are your and job search / refinement plans? Identify clearly the first step, to be done in the next 2 weeks. You will revisit this in your week 8 Journal Entry. I am in an interesting place work wise coming out of this quarter. I have a great job that I was able to get through leveraging skills I gained in the program. Where I go from here really is within the organization or move out to others. At this point, I am not stagnant in my work. There is still ladder to climb and opportunities on the horizon. A few years in my position and I may be able to move to a supervisory role or into a more higher level of project management. For now I need to keep my projects on track and push to get them as close to automated as I can. This will allow me time to excel and refine my workload.  One step in the right direction would be to expand my use of scrum tools in my cu...

What are presentations today? Can you make a written presentation? Or does written mean you have a few power point slides with some graphics that glean over what you are attempting to convey? A purely written presentation would probably look something more like a research paper. Something that rolls up all your thoughts and wordily depicts them in a readable format. Is this blog a written presentation? We gave presentations in class this past Wednesday. Kind of a mid term roll up of where we are in our projects. Since my project consists of probably 80% study for the PSM test, there wasn't much direct information I could talk about. I did however take the opportunity to speak on the wins and the troubles I have had working to try and implement some of the project management techniques I have been learning at work. Overall it wasn't hard to fill the 10 minute talk time. I was able to cover everything just as my timer was reaching zero. Only a couple questions and I was don...

How am I going to implement my project? Well getting my scrum certification is going to be just the start of the implementation of its practices. Where the real challenge is going to be is using scrum in the workplace. Traditionally Scrum is used by software development teams. Where I work, most of our product lines are part of a depot environment and a lot of the processes are based upon not knowing the reason the unit is not working correctly. This leads to stratification of production lines. And while the type of work if similar, there could be hundreds of different units being worked at one time all with their own process and procedure. There are use cases where Scrum is used in manufacturing plants and I can see how it can be implemented there easier than in a repair facility. One of the hurdles is, that five of the same units may be broken in five different ways. How do you break that out? can you scrum the process? the execution? What do teams look like in that sense? Would ...

For years I would always say that I was good working within a system. Whether it was in school growing up or during my time int he military, I always seemed to do when when I was working within a system. But Looking back on it all, I don't think that my strengths come from just being in a system. An established system has processes for just about every aspect of the work it is built to cover. I think that it is my ability to understand process and why processes are set the way they are that give me a leg up in a system. Give me a process or directive and it will act as both my sword and shield when it comes to executing my job. I learn it quickly and retain it for use in my day to day duties. Sometimes though process can be wielded to produce some"unintended results". I like to think of it as a "Clever use of game mechanics". I don't break the system but it can be occasionally be bent to clear a roadblock. Now wielding process on its own requires a ...

So here I am at the start of my project. It is kind of silly to think that I am beginning a project to learn a form of project management. But here we are... What is is exactly that I plan on doing here? Well if I had to do an elevator pitch to someone whom was stuck with me in an elevator, It would probably go something like this: "My senior project is to study and get my Professional Scrum Master certification. Scrum is a project management technique that I learned about last year in my 400 level Project management class. We only spent a week or two on it, but I would like to learn more. I also think it would be interesting to apply its methodologies to more traditional manufacturing/repair work, rather than software development where Scrum has quite the market share already." To properly pursue the certification, I need to hit the books and do some research into Scrum and what it takes to be a Scrum Master. There are a number of resources that out there I have had my...