Certified Scrum Professional – ScrumMaster
Live OnlineMeet your Instructors
Arlen Bankston and Bob Payne train our CSP-SM courses.
Arlen Bankston: One of the First Certified Scrum Trainers
Arlen Bankston was at the vanguard of the agile movement, beginning to practice within two years of the Agile Manifesto’s writing and soon developing one of the earliest Scrum Product Owner courses. He co-founded a premier Agile consultancy (LitheSpeed), and was among the first to explicitly blend lean systems thinking and user experience practices with agile software development practices. An active executive for over 17 years, he continues to coach, speak, train and mentor to stay at the edge of ever-advancing lean and agile practices. Learn more about Arlen.
Bob Payne: Industry Leader, Podcaster, Trainer, Coach, Consultant
A Certified Scrum Trainer and early adopter of Extreme Programming, Scrum and SAFe, Bob Payne has worked exclusively as a Lean+Agile Transformation leader since 1999. He hosts the AgileToolkit podcast and has produced over 170 podcasts, recording a variety of industry leaders and Agile practitioners.
Bob’s consulting and training style is built on years of Lean+Agile experience, a MSEE in Computer Architectures for Artificial Intelligence, and having grown up working in his family’s restaurant, so you can expect a blend of technical excellence and customer service.
Hear from our trainees:
- I was a bit hesitant about the live online experience vs the on-site experience, but it was at least as good and engaging as the live version. The Lithespeed format works great and the interaction and sharing within the group is as strong as in the live session. Great job on creating this live online version of the CSP-SM program!
- It was great, I would take another class with Arlen and LitheSpeed! This was a great experience.It was very informative and great how others deal with similar issues.
- Despite being a virtual class, the instructor was very engaging and fed off the clues from the students to slow down or accelerate pace on topics.
- The class itself was a lot more interactive than I anticipated as we broke into small groups regularly to exchange ideas and experience.
- The virtual course was seamless and well executed. I did not feel as if I was missing out on any of my learning experience. The instructor encouraged discussion within class to get other’s perspectives and was able to related that back to the content.
- Loved the constant integration of our own personal scrum master challenges which kept content relevant
- Enjoyed hearing from people in other companies. We all seem to have similar challenges.
- I really enjoyed how you were able to make the experience interactive virutally with the breakout sessions and the mural board.
- Delivered content in a virtual setting in a very organized and engaging way.
- Perfect use of breakout rooms to feel engaged with classmates
- Arlen is awesome, Glad I chose him for my A-CSM and CSPSM
Thanks to Kristi Meredith for this sketchnote of the course!
What You'll Learn
The topics presented in this class include:
Lean Thinking – Dive deep into the history and application of lean principles to agile organizations, walking through situations and experiencing a multifaceted, immersive simulation.
Advanced Agile Facilitation – Experience techniques to bolster collaboration, manage groups and drive continuous improvement, while picking up new tips and tricks from your classmates and instructor.
Advanced Agile Coaching – Learn how to engage stakeholders and clients and apply behavioral and personality models to team formation and conflict resolution.
Team Dynamics & Effectiveness – Practice some of the latest techniques for driving self-management at both the team and organizational levels, and some tricks for dealing with emotional situations.
Starting New Agile Teams – See how to craft measurable goals, deal with integrating new team members or losing existing ones, and kick off new projects with aplomb.
Software Craftsmanship – Work through some advanced scenarios and techniques for promoting high quality software development and testing.
Coaching the Development Team – Find out how to connect team members beyond the basic transactional level, creating closer connections and higher trust.
Coaching the Product Owner – Learn how to apply advanced value stream and customer journey mapping techniques to align Product Owners and teams against tangible goals, as well as how to visualize and deal with unproven product assumptions.
Organizational Development – Work with systems thinking tools such as causal loop diagrams, work through sticky change management issues and build a proper coaching plan.
Scaling – Get some down to earth tips on how to scale without killing your team’s ability to adapt and work with autonomy, align and connect multiple teams in flight, and avoid common scaling antipatterns.
Scrum Mastery – Take a look inside at where you truly are in your mastery of Scrum, then figure out where you’re headed next!
When asked about their biggest takeaway from this training, here is what our trainees have said:
- All of the different ways to get teams to work together more effectively. In particular, setting objectives and having the teams come up with the metrics they want to monitor. Also, doing impact mapping and happiness metrics.
- Systems thinking as a mindset for mulpiple aspects of my role as a Scrum Master and a few new geat online tools to use on a day to day basis.
- Learnt a variety of facilitation toolkits and techniques and tools
- I took away 5-6 new ideas and techniques that I absolutely plan to test out over the next couple months. This was more than I was hoping for, from this class.
- A lot of good tools and reminders about how to improve teams, relationships, and processes
- I will be using the stretch goals method whenever something comes into the sprint that doesn’t belong.
- Introduction to Lean for me
- The different facilitation techniques/tools were very helpful
- The different facilitation constructs such as liberating structures
Any questions about this training? Contact our team.
The Online Experience
2 8-hour online training days are fun and exciting as you learn with fellow professionals from around the world.
Some answers to online training FAQs from our students:
- We host our virtual training on Zoom with interactive components on Mural
- We take breaks almost hourly
- No special tech skills are required, though basic familiarity with computers is a must
- We understand you may have family at home in this unique time, and our trainers know there will be some disruptions
- Our maximum student:instructor ratio for the best online experience is 25:1. Most trainings are smaller than this, and in most trainings we have a second technical host supporting our students
- Certification fees are included in the tuition