As we head toward the five year anniversary of announcing the Scrum.org Global Professional Training Network (PTN) program I have been reflecting on the value that this group of partner organizations has brought to Scrum.org, the Professional Scrum Trainer community and most importantly the students who have taken Professional Scrum classes from these partners.
Leading up to the November 2016 announcement, the team at Scrum.org was talking about students and how we could better support their learning experience at a global level, how students and their organizations could engage with training organizations and how this process could help us in driving our mission to help people and teams solve complex problems.
One of the great values of Scrum.org Professional Scrum training is global consistency. Professional Scrum Trainers (PSTs) bring their own style and experiences to the class with a consistent delivery of Scrum.org training around the world, so you know each course we teach is aligned with Professional Scrum, and all students are learning from the same course materials. However, we were asking ourselves, how does that scale to help global companies?
Through the PTN program, our partners now have access to the more than 350 PSTs around the world to help satisfy the training, coaching and agile transformation needs of the PTNs’ clients. For example, if a company has training needs in say 4 countries around the world in 3 different languages, they can work with a PTN partner to provide a single source for coordinating the training. This was a major change for Scrum.org, our trainers and student’s companies.
Today the PTN program continues to grow and improve providing more value to both partners and students while maintaining the high quality bar expected from Scrum.org training. All PTN classes must be taught by PSTs, the PTN must hold a minimum number of classes per year and uphold a set of values and ethics.
All Professional Scrum training classes provide a hands-on, activity-based learning experience exploring real-world challenges to help students apply what they learn in their roles once back at work.
Since the inception of the PTN program, we have seen companies better able to participate in global training initiatives and an increase in satisfied students. Some examples of feedback that we have received from students taking classes from our PTN partners include:
A very well-prepared trainer; he brought the content in a dynamic and very enlightening way. He answered very practical questions that we, Product Owners, have in our day-to-day activities.
An interactive and game changing class on Product Ownership
The instructor has extensive knowledge about product ownership and is very passionate about being a product owner. He explains the 6 stances in much detail to explain the accountabilities of a Product owner. Numerous exercises during the workshop also help learning about the accountabilities of a Product owner and bringing new perspectives that can be taken back to apply in our respective organizations.
Personally, the way of teaching is really important. You can always have a Powerpoint slide and teach people the things that they have to know. But by playing random games and challenging each other with questions, you won't be learning only but also having fun and getting to know things even better.
Now with more than 180 PTN partners, the future has never been brighter for students and their organizations. Our partners have the bandwidth to support training, consulting, coaching and agile transformation needs with proven skills and capabilities in helping organizations of all sizes from getting started with Agile to improving their skills at all levels. I am excited that as we approach the five year anniversary of the program, it has not only grown the numbers of participating training companies, but most importantly, those companies are helping us better deliver on our mission. See our list of PTN partners and find one that best suits your organization's needs.