Agile Thoughts

Greetings from Buenos Aires, Argentina.  I am here to teach a two-day public CSM course.  To the best of my knowledge, this will be the first public CSM course to be taught in South America: an exciting, and scary prospect.  I speak no Spanish and my lame attempts to use BabelFish to translate some of my emails to the local Agile list ended up with heart-felt sentiments such as “I hope, like me you will catch the Agile bug” being translated into something about chasing fast-moving insects.  Undeterred I persevered with translating some of my handouts into Babelfish-Spanish.  Tomorrow will tell how foolish I look.

The translation effort was probably in vain anyway, as today I discovered that it is not the written word the Argentinean software people have difficulty with, but the spoken.  This has caused me to inspect my Powerpoint deck, kept deliberately minimal to avoid confusion, and add a number of new slides which can support my (now to be expected) unclear verbal expression.  So here I am at midnight, drinking coffee and inspecting and adapting like crazy.  Not really sustainable pace… nervousness and coffee: a lethal combination.

I have designed this course to be mostly interactive, so the participants can talk to each other in any language they choose, and I don’t need to understand a word of their discussions.  This course will be learning-by-doing:  Scrum simulation from start to finish.  The concept is something I have been experimenting with over the past few weeks, along with a couple of CSM/Trainer colleagues.  Results so far have been very positive, but it has not yet been tried in a different language… More tomorrow.

A few general interest notes… I am staying in an apartment belonging to a friend of my co-organizer, Alan Cyment.  Alan has essentially put this course together, finding the space, gathering the people, and organizing my accommodation and various entertainments.  The apartment belongs to an ex-professor of his, so full of books, all in Spanish except for “Eats Shoots and Leaves” (is that even translatable?) and the occasional Douglas Adams novel. 

The apartment is on the eighth (top) floor of a city apartment block.  There is a Jacuzzi in the living room; no kidding.  On a deck, and everything.  In  fact, the office desk is also on the deck, and the only available chairs have the spindliest legs imaginable.  Trying to place one of these chairs on the deck and have it not slip through the cracks… well, you can imagine.  It’s like a challenge from one of those dumb TV shows (hidden cameras in the walls,  maybe?).  After making the same mistake and expecting a different result enough times, I resorted to sitting on a bean bag, stacked up with two sofa cushions.  It started well, but when I found the keyboard was at the level of my chin and I felt like a hunch-backed midget I eventually gave up and relocated to the dining room.  The internet access is now spotty, at best.  Compromise - hate it.

Alan and I did some last minute running around this evening, trying to buy a flip chart.  Not something that is easily found in this city, apparently.  There is not even a common translation for the item.  We settled on a big role of brown paper instead, which we shall line the walls of the training room with before we begin.  Reconceiving - love it!

Twenty-four people have enrolled for this course.  Eleven more were turned away.  That is quite remarkable.  When Alan and I first discussed this, we optimistically hoped for around fifteen, which would have just covered expenses.  It is still largely a labor of love - and a challenge.  The economy in Argentina is such that the cost of this course seems extremely expensive to locals, yet is barely viable for a trainer to come here.  Not something that bodes well for future training.  Love of Scrum and a desire to spread the word will need to be the inspiring force for future trainers to head out this way.

I hope I am able to offer something worthwhile over the next two days.  Training anyone, anywhere, is a noble and scary endeavor, and one I shall never take for granted.  Time to get some rest.