PSD (Java) Train the Trainer

From Jan 20th until 28th the first PSD (Java) Train the Trainer gathering took place. It was held in Sao Paulo/Brazil. The idea behind train the trainer is to horizontally scale up our effort to teach good and emergent coding practices to developers. With more trainers there is more exposure. Let’s cross the chasm!

The training was two-fold. First Giovanni Bassi from Lambda3 held a two day PSM class to reinforce the agile fundamentals of Scrum. The potential trainers are by no means new to Scrum, most of them are veterans with years of field experience. The PSM class helped to set a common foundation and understanding within the group. The following Monday the PSD class started. One week of four mini sprints, each one with sprint planning, development, daily scrums, review and retrospective (details). The idea is to communicate what real agile development using Scrum by applying XP practices feels like. I strongly believe that once a developer has drunk the Cool-Aid, they will always try to get that feeling back. There is no way back - they are addicted, addicted to best of breed development practices. The five days are laced with theoretical blocks to explain the underlying ideas and principles. So, it is a great mixture of hands on and theory.

In contrast to the PSD (.Net) course, the Java one is less tool focused and more on the craft. Our backlog management is done with paper on a pin board and bugs are handled through the backlog – no issue tracking system. All used software is open source. (Eclipse, SVN, Ant,Hudson, Cobertura, EclEmma, Mockito, …). A low tech story board with paper is still the most effective information radiator.

The students were great, throughout they were agile-savvy and smart people. It was fun to work with them and during late night discussions I had the chance to learn from them as well.

Brazil was the perfect setting for this training. There is a vibrant agile community and Lambda3 is a driving force. I am looking forward to see more inovation coming from this part of the word. Globalcode was an excellent host and very forthcoming.

We named ourselves the Boi Tátá Team. (Boi Tátá is a mythical Brazilian creature)

There will be more PSD (Java) Train the Trainers. If you are interested please get in contact with Scrum.org.