My meeting with Jeff Sutherland

Last week, along with certain other members of the Xebia team, I went on a Scrum Master certification training course given by Jeff Sutherland. Because of the coincidence of its timing, we didn’t stop talking about rugby scrums during this session (yes, I know, this one is easy easy but I couldn’t resist). For those who don’t know him, Jeff is one of the founders of Scrum.
My role within Xebia organization is not to run projects and I was there only to do my job better as President of Xebia France (“What is well expressed is well understood”). So believe me, these two days have to be marked with a cross in my professional diary.”¨And, no doubt about it, it was a special experience. If I was lyrical, I would qualify this session as a breath of fresh air in terms of common sense, a pragmatic delight or even a well of clear sightedness.
Jeff has definitely influenced my way of approaching situations for ever. If I dared to, I would almost put Jeff on an equal footing with those Anglo-Saxon authors that any manager eager to learn should read, like Jim Collins and Jack Welch.
I’m not going address, even partially, the concepts delivered in the 200 training slides of the training nor even repeat the juicy anecdotes that Jeff was kind enough to share with us on the damaging effects of traditional project management: it would be a but a pale imitation, not to say clumsy, of course. But I do promise to write up a series of notes on “Agile Tips”.
For those reading these few lines and who, like us, are particularly fond of Agile Methods, Xebia is organising a “Scrum Master” certification training course with Jeff on 24 and 25 March 2008 in Paris (in English with the linguistic assistance of a French certified Scrum Master from Xebia).”¨We’ll leave this news with the “Scrum sensitive” readers of this blog for two weeks before announcing the fact to the community on a large scale. If you want to enrol, send an e-mail to info@xebia.fr.