He’s been an Agilist since 2005 when the “lights turned on”. Since late 2008, he has done over 400 certified Scrum courses as a Certified Scrum Trainer by Scrum Alliance. He has worked quite internationally and with both small and big organizations.

In Agile, he is most excited about the human element – team formation, motivation, self-fulfillment – and he sees them as platforms for everything else.

“Sure, we need also good ways of working, but if we can get the people to work together and want to do a good job, everything else becomes possible. “

Topic: The World’s Most Expensive “Hello World!

In an Agile project in 2008, at the Sprint Review of the first Sprint, the Team demoed their first increment – the text “Hello World!” in the top left corder of an otherwise empty browser window – and everybody celebrated.

Why did this apparently simple result elicit such a powerful response? What was the point of spending two weeks of time, and the effort 8 people working on the project, for this apparently trivial outcome?

This story takes us to an exploration of “learning value”, and how it can affect the planning in an Agile project. In fact, learning value often trumps business value in the very first Sprints. We will look at some exercises that allow us to explore our Backlog in a few different ways, and then use that knowledge to sort it collaboratively into a meaningful release plan, seeking to optimise our chances of success.

Interested to hear him? Get your ticket HERE