Professional Scrum Master - Advanced

An Advanced Scrum Master Class

Professional Scrum Master™ Advanced (Former PSM II) course is a 3-day*5hrs  advanced Scrum Master class designed to support Scrum Masters in their professional development.  The PSM II course is intended for Scrum Masters with at least one year of experience who want to grow their knowledge and abilities as a Scrum Master. This course is one step in that journey. The course also includes a free attempt at the globally recognized Professional Scrum Master II (PSM II) certification exam.

Unlike the Professional Scrum Master (PSM) course, which focuses on using Scrum, the Scrum framework, and the role of the Scrum Master, PSM II is an advanced course that helps students understand the stances that characterize an effective Scrum Master and servant-leader while diving deep into how they serve the Developers, Product Owners, and organization. The course then teaches students about related practices and skills to enable them to have the right types of conversations and how to apply them to become better Scrum Masters.

What You Will Learn

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Over the three days*5hrs workshops, students will learn about areas critical to growing as successful Scrum Masters. For example, they will learn how Scrum's principles and values help guide Scrum Masters in their decisions and how the Scrum Master can help change the environment of Scrum Teams, creating an environment for agility to thrive. 

The Scrum Master role is complex, and often, a Scrum Master must be able to apply different stances to be effective, such as:

• The Scrum Master as a Teacher
• The Scrum Master as a Coach & Mentor
• The Scrum Master as a Facilitator

The Scrum Master as a Change Agent 

As a Scrum Master, identifying and effectively applying which stance would benefit your team the most, depending on the situation or circumstance, could prove to be the key to your team's success.

As a Scrum Master, part of your role is to help management and other stakeholders across your organization understand the benefits of Scrum and Agile. Therefore, it is imperative that you have the information and background that is needed to gain credibility to be an effective change agent.  Your PST will provide stories, exercises, facilitation techniques (such as “Liberating Structures”), resources, and more throughout the class.

There will also be a time in class for the Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) to provide coaching on challenges that you and your classmates may be experiencing today or may in the future.  

View the different Focus Areas covered within this class and others.

Course Objectives

• What practices, tools, skills, and stances make an effective Scrum Master
• How the Scrum principles and values help guide Scrum Masters in the decisions they make
• How the Scrum Master acts as a servant-leader and improves their ability in this role
• What the Scrum Master can do to support Development Teams and Product Owners to become more effective 
• Ways that the Scrum Master can help to change the environment, making it more conducive for Scrum Teams to be successful with greater agility

• Provide tips and techniques for the Scrum Master to work with the rest of the organization in support of their Scrum Teams  

   

Course Topics

• Effects on the organization of a successful Scrum Master
• Dealing with complexity and servant leadership
• Dealing with team conflict
• Removing impediments
• Facilitation techniques
• The Importance of a "Done" Increment
• The Sprint Goal
• Refresh the purpose of the Scrum Events
• The role of management in Scrum
• Successful product delivery
• Measurement in Scrum
• How to support the Product Owner
• Understanding the challenges of middle management
• Scrum Master as a change agent 

Why Scrum.org

Scrum.org provides the highest-quality Scrum training, training materials, and certified Professional Scrum Trainers (PSTs) to teach it. Our training materials are created and maintained by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber, Scrum.org, and the PST community members who teach the courses, helping to ensure that they are in tune with what’s happening in organizations and always up-to-date with the latest practices.

Professional Scrum Trainers bring their own style and experience to the courses but use the same materials so that students learn from the same content regardless of who teaches the course or where it is taught worldwide.  Read more about the differences.

What John Coleman's Students Say

• Google reviews
• TrustPilot reviews 
• VocalReferences reviews 

Read more about our PSM II student surveys and their feedback 

PMI PDU Credits

Students of Scrum.org courses can claim Project Management Institute (PMI) PDU credit: 14 PDUs after attending a two-day Professional Scrum Master II (PSM II) class. Please note that PMI PDUs are earned for course attendance, not for passing a Scrum.org assessment. Students can claim PDUs under PMI's "Education courses provided by other third-party providers” category. You can claim your PDUs online at https://ccrs.pmi.org. Find instructions here.

Certification Assessments

All participants completing the Professional Scrum Master II course will receive a password to attempt the Professional Scrum Master II (PSM II) assessment. PSM II class participants who attempt the PSM II assessment within 14 days of receiving their free password and do not score at least 85% will be granted a 2nd attempt at no additional cost. You are also entitled to a 40% discount on the PSM III assessment. These industry-recognized PSM certifications require a minimum passing score.

Pricing

Pricing excludes UK VAT. UK VAT only applies to orders from the UK; VAT does not apply outside the UK. 

To request a manual invoice, email info@orderlydisruption.com  

Without exception, all seats for a booking must be prepaid to confirm that booking.

Profile of the trainer

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John Coleman is an active practitioner with 15+ years of experience in growing sustainable agility. Learn from John's breadth & depth of current case studies with the "old reliable," the latest trends, and some leading & not yet well-known patterns. 

 Why John Coleman?

Every PST has his/her own strengths. John Coleman is one of the few LeSS-Friendly Scrum Trainers. He regularly interviews leading lights on his YouTube channel. His podcast, XAgility™, consists of wisdom from some of the most famous faces in the agile world. His Agility Island podcast is dedicated to active practitioners of scrum and those looking to understand more complex topics. John is a prolific blogger on advanced topics, and he leads content creation for Scrum, Lean UX, measurement, Kanban, scaling, de-scaling, Executives, people & change. John teaches Marshall Goldsmith's techniques at all of his workshops in a #payitforward fashion. All of John's workshops feature Liberating Structures. John Coleman offers a number of practice tests where they are needed. John's client base consists mainly of non-native English speakers (English is the 3rd/4th language) in continental Europe. John's clients give rave reviews on Trustpilot, Google, and VocalReferences, and they get great results as long as they put in the effort.

John is Top 10 on Thinkers360 for Agility and founded Executive Agility (x-agility) to create authentic sustainable organizational agility. 

Review & Ratings for John Coleman of Orderly Disruption on Google, VocalReferences & Trustpilot

Reviews & Ratings for all of John Coleman's workshops are available on: 

• Google -  http://bit.ly/GoogleJohnC
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• TrustPilot - https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.ace.works
  
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• Vocal References - http://bit.ly/VocalRJohnC
  
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It's not just about Reviews & Ratings 

Reviews & ratings are limited by nature. John needs to understand if the learning made a real difference back in the office. So, John checks in up to 12-18 months later. He sees a pattern of improvement and regularly gets pleasant vibes from successful agility inspired by workshop ideas. For example, see this experience report.

Content writing

John Coleman is a Professional Scrum Trainer, a candidate LeSS trainer / LeSS Friendly Scrum Trainer, organizer of ELNA (Executive Leadership Network for Adaptiveness), co-author of Kanban Guide, and author of Kanban for Complexity™ aka Kanplexity™ with lots of attribution to Dave Snowden & Cognitive Edge for Cynefin and related theory. See https://kanbanguides.org. 

John made one of the most comprehensive comparisons/contrasts of the scaling/descaling frameworks at https://valueglide.com/blog and https://orderlydisruption.com/blogs/grow-agility-for-your-why/mirror-mirror-on-the-wall-preamble-to-1-of-4  ("Mirror Mirror" series). John Coleman's blog posts on executives, Scrum, Kanban, Nexus Vs. LeSS are available at https://bit.ly/JohnColemanBlog. John blogs prolifically at orderlydisruption.com, valueglide.com, Medium, CIO Water Cooler, and The Digital Transformation People. 

Practicing what he preaches, except he doesn't preach -- he doesn't sell, huh?

John helps teams, managers, leaders, change agents, and execs. He can answer all sorts of up-to-date questions with ease. John coaches teaches and consults for sustainable agility growth in non-software and software. He created Broad and Deep agility (BaDa) on top of the shoulders of existing theory & practice. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUen2CeyTDk. John himself is broad & deep from the points of view of agility, people & change.

Standing on the shoulders of giants

John is a systems thinker who happens to be a huge fan of Cynefin and sees the benefits of both, erring on the side of Cynefin where they clash. Most importantly, John takes an independent view. John is also a people & change thinker; he uses Spiral Dynamics Integral (certified to level 2) and other models; even if they are criticized in some quarters as pseudoscience, John finds aspects of Spiral Dynamics helpful in structuring better conversations with people. 

More proof he knows what he's talking about and has done what he talks about

John's Scrum+Kanban Nexus+ case studies can be found (international payments company, European bank) at https://www.valueglide.com/blog/nexus-nexus-and-scrum.org-certifications. 

John is grateful to be part of Marshall Goldsmith's #payitforward campaign and, in so doing, offers free coaching/mentoring/co-training to a selection of potential agility chefs. John is a member of the #MarshallGoldsmithLead60 group, a cohort from the 16,000+ #MarshallGoldsmith100CoachesApplicants. It was a privilege for John to be one of a lucky group of 60 people; Marshall Goldsmith himself taught that group in Salt Lake City in February 2018. All of John's workshops #payitforward Marshall Goldsmith content, including Marshall's advice to John himself.

Client list

John typically practiced with many of his clients for 18+ months. He is switching to shorter-term engagements. John's client list (directly or indirectly) includes Japanese Tobacco International, Shell, Barclaycard, Vocalink Mastercard, Centrica / British Gas, the Musgrave Group, RR Donnelley, DELL, Nordic Aviation Services, 84.51, Intralinks, PaySafe, Vodafone, Ericsson, NASA, Sky, and BP. 

Workshop Environment

Assessment preparation tends not to be covered in the workshop. The workshop focuses on attendees getting ready to apply new skills back at work immediately after the workshop. There is an expectation that attendees will attend free post-workshop Zoom calls and watch recordings of their group (or previous groups) doing strict practice tests, sometimes including John Coleman's practice tests, which address the same learning outcomes, albeit from a different angle. John expects attendees to attend the calls, as assessment preparation does not scale on a 1:1 basis. Signing up for this workshop is effectively signing up to attend these calls.

Sometimes, John Coleman will have a co-trainer, someone who is already qualified or has built-up experience. Please inform John Coleman if you need him to bring an assistant trainer who speaks your language via john@orderlydisruption.com; economics will hopefully be in our favor to allow that if there is enough demand.

Live Virtual

• Each segment is 60-75 minutes long with 15-30-minute breaks. Attendees can spread the workshop over several days if advertised or if other attendees are ok with that —no recording of the workshop to improve openness. The workshop size is limited to 20 attendees.
• Workshop attendees will use Zoom/Teams, Mural, Slack, StoriesOnBoard, Strategyzer, Kanbanize/SwiftKanban, and John's physical flipcharts.
• Learning online is almost as effective as face-to-face. The critical difference is working together online; it takes longer to do things. A "funnel" gets added to the Kanban Board for optional best efforts and additions to the official curriculum. Most questions will be answered to the attendees' satisfaction, one way or the other. 

Rules to follow:

• cameras on
• mics on - let's avoid delayed interventions
• be on time for every segment
• no meetings/phone calls/emails during the active segments
• be self-aware and conscious of the needs of others to have their say
• There is no agenda hijacking; a free coach session is offered per attendee; use that instead.

A Scrum Reset is often needed in the workshop.

If the class attendees demonstrate additional ability, bonus content may be covered. However, per pre-class communications, the class pace can get set to a slower pace by even one attendee who has not prepared for class. While John Coleman's style assumes zero knowledge, some attendees may have negative knowledge and incorrect preconceived ideas, according to Scrum.org.

Negative knowledge creates drag for a training class. Hence, John Coleman sometimes performs pre-training screening calls. While there are no formal prerequisites for Scrum.org classes, the trainer may request in pre-training phone calls that some attendees go to Professional Scrum Foundations/Scrum Master (by any Scrum.org trainer) to ensure a smooth learning experience, even if the booked class ticket needs to be postponed to another date, refunding if necessary less banking fees. Either way, at the beginning of each workshop, some Scrum reset takes place to align attendees and reduce the potential for learning drag later.

Payment, fees & cancellation

• Payment in advance is required, with no exceptions. All documentation requirements for invoice payment by the training date must be declared immediately. 
• VAT additional for UK clients only. 
• You may cancel up to the specified online ticketing deadline, and if so, depending on the payment engine/approach, the refund could have deductions for bank transfer fees.
• You may postpone your ticket with a minimum of three business days' notice; thereafter, your lack of attendance at the booked date will be treated as a cancellation with zero refund (due to planning & venue costs for class numbers). Best efforts will be made to fit you into a later workshop.
• Electronic manuals and Scrum.org assessment fees are included. Physical manuals are not provided.

GDPR etc.

Subject to GDPR or other regulations:

• Attendees may be asked to optionally consent to receive communications, e.g., follow-up email newsletters.
• To get an assessment, the trainer must submit your name and email address to Scrum.org; Scrum.org may send you regular newsletters. 
• Attendees will be invited to a Slack channel for the class to enable communications before, during, and after the class. 
• Photographs and video permission will be requested in class for follow-up marketing purposes.
• Reviews & Testimonials will be requested in class; you can add the same review and star rating to each VocalReferences, TrustPilot, and Google, to be performed optionally in class. Attendees may also be asked to provide feedback to Scrum.org. Additional bonus learning content will be delivered for these requests regardless of the response.
• A limited number of free-of-charge post-training Zoom/alternative calls are offered. To book, attendees can arrange to meet me via  https://calendly.com/johncolemanagile 
• Attendees may be asked to join compatible communities, e.g., the LeSS community.
• See the privacy statement at orderlydisruption.com.