Certified ScrumMaster™

Certified ScrumMaster™

Learn how to apply scrum and gain practical agile skills to drive results in any role, whether you want to work as a scrum master or grow your capabilities. CSM® courses are delivered by Scrum Alliance-certified trainers who possess deep scrum knowledge. When you complete the course, you will receive a two-year Scrum Alliance professional membership.

About the course

This Certified ScrumMaster^® (CSM) course is an intensive deep dive into creating and continuously improving your Agile capabilty using the world's most popular Agile method: Scrum. You will debunk misunderstandings, gain insights as well as practical techniques that will enable you to make a big difference to your team and your organisation's success with Agile.

This course is not just for ScrumMasters. It is for every player in an Agile environment who wants to understand the mindset, structural and behavioural changes necessary for you and your organisation to be more effective.

The trainer's 15 years of experience with Agile adoption in Australiasia and Europe mean that you will hear first-hand accounts of what really good Scrum is like as well as real world stories of pitfalls to avoid.

The trainer's 8 years of Scrum training experience with over 3,500 people mean that you will learn using some of the most immersive adult learning techniques available such as visual modelling, simulations, role-plays, teach-backs and 'Training from the Back of the Room' activities. This promotes self-directed learning and enhanced retention.

This course is organised and run using Scrum as a management framework. This allows for feedback and flexibility as well as experiencing Scrum in action throughout the course.

You will learn:

1. Common misconceptions about Scrum and what the truth is.
2. What is core to the Scrum framework vs the limitless choices of what you should customise to your context.
3. The philosophy, values and principles that guide your ongoing choices in Agile adoption and continuous improvement.
4. Scrum as an elegant implementation of empirical process control, batching and queue management, time-boxing and self-organisation that together provide an effective model for working in a complex environment.
5. The Scrum roles in depth plus how they address project management concerns.
6. The characteristics of an impactful ScrumMaster and tools for being effective in this role.
7. The characteristics of exceptionally high-performing teams and what it takes to achieve this.
8. How to facilitate key Scrum events such as Sprint Planning and Daily Scrums.
9. Key considerations when scaling Scrum beyond a single team.
10. Key Agile adoption traps and how to avoid them.

A large proportion of enrolments on this course come through word-of-mouth recommendation from previous participants who were delighted by the experience.

Unlike Scrum courses with other trainers, this course offers a Trial Scrum Test on day 1 with answers discussed at the start of day 2. This provides you with clear feedback on your Scrum knowledge in preparation for the post-course Certification Test.

About certification

Established in 2003, the CSM certification with its globally recognised accreditation from the Scrum Alliance is by far the most popular Agile training offering worldwide. After completing the require pre-reading, the CSM training course is the second of three setups in gaining the CSM accreditation from the Scrum Alliance. The final step is successfully completing the CSM certification exam. For further information, see www.scrumalliance.org/pages/CSM

This course may qualify Project Management Professionals (PMPs) for 14 PDUs as approved by the Project Management Institute (PMI).

Five reasons to do your training with Rowan Bunning

1. Training experience. Our Principal trainer - Rowan Bunning - has trained over 3,500 people in Scrum after becoming the first trainer based in Australia to offer public accredited Scrum training back in 2008.

2. Real-world stories. Over a decade implementing Scrum in dozens of organisations enriches our training with stories and means that what we teach is what we have seen working ourselves. Rowan has experience in all three Scrum roles as well as a variety of coaching and leadership roles guiding successful Scrum adoptions in all sorts of industries, from small to large scale and from single site to multi-national.

3. Deep insights and inspiration. As past course participants testify, you can expect to take away many deep insights into the nature of Scrum and its potential to transform your organisation and your work life for the better. Stories of what our clients have achieved with Scrum are likely to inspire you to be a game changer yourself.

4. Comprehensive resources. As a course participant you will receive a comprehensive course workbook including slides, worksheets on key topics, detailed reference information, recommended reading and further resources both in the workbook and extensive follow-up email to assist you post-course.

5. Practice test. Our Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) courses provide the opportunity to practice for the CSM Certification Test with 35 multiple choice questions at the end of day 1 and all answers discussed at the start of day 2.

Take the Certification Test with confidence!

Meet your trainer - Rowan Bunning

Rowan has trained over 3,500 people on Certified Scrum courses in Australia and New Zealand since 2008 making him one of the most experienced Scrum trainers in the Australasian region.

Rowan worked as an Agile Coach at one of the top Scrum web design consultancies in Europe and an organisation that offered Agile training by Ken Schwaber and Mike Cohn (two of the most widely recognised names in the global Agile community).

Unlike many Agile Coaches and Trainers, Rowan not only has years of experience in Business/IT Project, but also in ongoing Product Development environments that have proven highly effective without using a project model. This allows Rowan to guide clients in combining the best of both worlds to achieve superior results.

Rowan draws from an extensive Agile toolset with a technical background using eXtreme Programming as well as expertise in Product Management, Lean, Lean Startup, Kanban and Cynefin. He is Cognitive Edge accredited and holds qualifications as a PRINCE2^® Practitioner, a trained Innovation Games^® facilitator and a Certified Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) Practitioner.

A high proportion of Rowan's work is initiated via word-of-mouth recommendation from highly satisfied course participants.

Testimonials from course participants

“Wow! A superbly run ScrumMaster course which inspires. Great resource set provided at the end too."

- Director, Leaf Data Pty Ltd

“I have been lucky to have had Rowan as my coach for both CSM and CSPO ceritfications (in fact I chose him for the CSPO after the great experience I had on the CSM course). Rowan brings a wide range of experience in coaching scrum teams and in helping businesses with their introductions of scrum and other agile techniques. I can't recommend Rowan enough."

- Simon Waight, CSM, CSPO and Cloud Architect (blog)

“Attending the Certified ScrumMaster course was incredibly helpful. Rowan worked hard to make sure the course content was useful for all attendees, regardless of their backgrounds. The sessions were interactive and we were encouraged to engage with the material, to immediately apply and practice what we were learning. We left with a clear understanding of the Scrum framework as a whole, as well as specific actions we could apply to our own Scrum environments. Massive thanks to ScrumWithStyle - looking forward to future courses."

- Charlie Gavey, 3months, Wellington, NZ

More testimonials...

Pricing

NZD $1,900 excl GST per person. This includes the following.

• Two full days training with a highly experienced agile practitioner.
• A printed course workbook.
• Full catering during the course including morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea.
• Certification as a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) for participants who pass the post-course Certification Exam taken online with the Scrum Alliance.
• 2 years of membership with the Scrum Alliance.
• A letter of course completion that may be submitted to your employer and/or a professional body (PMI/ACS) for PDUs (available upon request).

Registration

Simply select the "Register Now!" button below to begin online registration through the Equinox IT website.
Alternatively, you can call Equinox on +64 9 307 9450
or email us at [email protected].

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Sprint Goals

We use the Scrum framework to manage our Scrum certification courses as a two day Scrum release cycle that includes four half day Sprints.

Goal: Scrum Framework - I can describe the components of Scrum and how they fit together to form a cohesive framework.

Goal: Roles and Responsibilities - I can describe the key attributes of each of the Scrum roles and the personal qualities desirable to play them well.

Goal: Scrum Teamwork - I can describe what enables effective teamwork in a time-boxed environment.

Goal: Continuous Team and Organisational Improvement - I can describe how to go about Scrum’s inspect and adapt activities in a way that maximises our opportunities for learning and improvement.

Initial Backlog

The following Backlog provides an initial course agenda. Just like any good Agile initiative, the backlog that we choose to pull in can change as we inspect feedback from stakeholders and make adaptations to the backlog during the course.

Please note that the following backlog does not detail the many group discussions and hands-on exercises that we run throughout the course.

Scrum Framework: As a Scrum practitioner, I want to understand the Scrum framework holistically, so that I can identify opportunities to improve our implementation.

Lean Principles: As a Scrum practitioner, I want to understand how Scrum differs from Waterfall from a Lean perspective, so that I can leverage these differences to get the most out of Scrum.

Scrum Principles: As a Scrum practitioner, I want to understand the most relevant principles that form the foundation of Scrum, so that I can leverage these to get the most out of Scrum.

Self-organisation: As a Scrum practitioner, I want to understand the nature of self-organisation, so that I can better identify what we can do to enable and enhance it.

Agile: As someone interested in Agile, I want to understand what Agile Software Development really is, so that I can better identify what is and is not aligned with being Agile.

Roles: As a Scrum practitioner, I want to understand each of the Scrum roles and how they fit together, so that I can play my role well and understand how to interact with others in their roles.

Project Management: As a Scrum practitioner, I want to understand how Scrum maps to the activities undertaken by a Project Manager, so that I can see what the implications are for traditional roles and key activities.

Trial Exam: As a workshop participant, I want a trial run of the post-course Exam, so that I can better gauge my level of Scrum knowledge.

Trial Exam Feedback: As a workshop participant, I want feedback on my current understanding of Scrum, so that I can identify what gaps to start filling during the second day of training.

Team Development: As a team member, I want to understand how good Agile teams develop, so that I can help my team achieve and sustain high performance.

Product Backlog Refinement:As a Scrum practitioner, I want to be aware of guidelines for Product Backlog Refinement, so that I can play my part in keeping the Backlog in good shape.

Sprint Planning: As a Scrum practitioner, I want to know how to conduct effective Sprint Planning workshops, so as to initiate productive and successful Sprints.

Scrum Simulation: As a Scrum practitioner, I want to experience a full Sprint cycle developing a real product, so that I can put the theory into practice and learn by doing.

Sprint Retrospective>: As a facilitator, I want to some techniques for conducting effective Retrospectives, so that we continuously improve our way of working.

Daily Scrum: As a member of an Agile team, I have techniques for running effective and efficient Daily Scrums, so that we keep well-organised as a team.

Done: As a Scrum practitioner, I want thinking tools and techniques to help create an operational Definition of Done, so as to have clear exit criteria.

Next Steps: As a workshop participant, I want some actionable next steps, so that I can start making use of what I have learned immediately back at work.

Audience

This Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) course is the world's most popular foundational course in Scrum. Given that the course is fundamentally about how we work together in an Agile environment, it is appropriate for anyone in any role working in such an environment.

Whilst suitable for anyone interested in Agile, elements of our CSM course are particularly useful for those taking some form of leadership role in respect to Agile capability building. Roles for whom this is typically relevant include, but are not limited to the following.

• ScrumMasters,
• Iteration Managers,
• Project Managers,
• Team Leads,
• Development Managers, and
• Capability Managers.

This workshop is also relevant to those involved hands-on in agile delivery who wish to have an in-depth understanding of the Scrum process and how to get the most out of it. This includes the following.

• Programmers / Developers,
• Testers,
• Business Analysts,
• User Experience Designers,
• Solution Architects, and
• Technical Writers.

Pre-requisites

The first step toward your CSM is familiarising yourself with Scrum. The following outlines the pre-reading necessary to attain the minimum level of Scrum familiarity required for this course. Further to that, additional recommended pre-reading is also listed.

Essential pre-reading

At minimum, it is expected that you have read and are familiar with both of the following prior to attending the CSM course. This is step 1 of 3 in attaining the CSM accreditation. (See: tinyurl.com/csm-sainfo for more on the certification process.)

The Agile Manifesto: agilemanifesto.org
including the 12 principles: agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

The Scrum Guide: scrumguides.org 
This is the authoritative definition of Scrum by it's creators. There is a PDF copy of this available via the “Download PDF in English” link at the top right of the above page.

Further recommended pre-reading

We would also encourage you to read further on Scrum prior to the course. This will enable you to get even more out of the CSM course as well as your Scrum implementation at work. Further recommended material on Scrum is as follows.

The Scrum Primer: tinyurl.com/scrump2 (PDF)
This contains specific guidance about the Scrum Activities, example backlogs and burndown charts and Scrum Terminology in Appendix B.

Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process: tinyurl.com/essentialscrume (eBook. Hardcopy book also available.)
A clearly articulated and richly illustrated in-depth reference on Scrum. Includes a high quality set of Scrum and Lean thinking tools as well as practical implementation guidance.