COVID-19

COVID-19 – Scrum WithStyle’s Response

The COVID-19 situation and Australia’s response to it continues to change very quickly. Our hearts go out to the people who have contracted the virus as well as the many who have lost their jobs or are facing financial hardship.

Our Duty

We believe that our greatest duty at this time is to look after the well-being of participants, clients, staff, family and the wider community. Therefore, we will not proceed with in-person training whilst heightened health concerns persist.

Pivot to Live Virtual Training

Scrum WithStyle is planning to temporarily pivot to delivering our courses via live Virtual Training. This will feature the trainer and all participants on video for the equivalent time of an in-person course with rich collaboration in breakout rooms and virtual collaboration spaces.

We believe that we will be able to provide a live virtual training experience that in some ways provides benefits beyond what we can achieve through in-person training. This includes participants having more individual feedback through quizzes and more gaps between sessions in which you can apply techniques, do small assignments or reflect on the learnings. We will also be able to offer the bonus of extra Question & Answer time without the constraints of needing to leave to catch transport or pack up the room.

Virtual training includes the same opportunity for certification as in-person as Scrum Alliance has approved all the certification courses that we offer for delivery as virtual.

Incremental Release of Live Virtual Courses

Quality is our primary differentiator at Scrum WithStyle. Therefore, in moving to virtual training, we will not compromise quality by rushing to it immediately. Instead we will put some weeks into redesigning each course for virtual training and release these incrementally over the next few months.

Here’s how our virtual training backlog looks at this point.

  1. First Virtual Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) – course starting 29th of April
  2. First Virtual Advanced Certified ScrumMaster (A-CSM) – course starting 18th of May
  3. First Virtual Certified Scrum Practitioner (CSP-SM) – course starting 8th of June

Special “Free Retake” Offer

As a special offer for the first run of each of these courses, Scrum WithStyle is offering all participants “free retake” that includes both:

  • Course 1: The virtual training with the opportunity to achieve certification, and
  • Course 2: An option to join the in-person version of the same course at a future date in Sydney within 12 months.

To ensure the highest quality experience possible, our first CSM will be limited to 12 participants.

Virtual Agile Coaching and Consulting

We are excited to be moving the Agile Coaching and Consulting services that we offer to a virtual interaction mode as well. Specific coaching and consulting services that we are offering virtually can be found on our Coaching and Consulting page.

Ongoing Support via Slack

We continue to offer all clients and course participants the opportunity to ask questions, share resources and experiences as well as keep in touch with hundreds of others interested in Scrum and Agile. We do this via the Scrum WithStyle Alumni Workgroup on Slack. If you have taken a course with Scrum WithStyle (through Equinox IT in New Zealand) or have had us in for coaching, please contact us for access to this online community.

Supporting the Community via Virtual Meetups

Scrum WithStyle is the organising sponsor of the Sydney Scrum User Group. This group has over 3,000 members and has been running events since 2008 making it the longest-running Agile related community group in Sydney.

We plan to continue our high level of engagement with the local Agile community by running these events via live video for the foreseeable future. This will mean that we are no longer constrained by room capacity – only by the number of people that the streaming platform can handle comfortably. It will be B.Y.O. food and drinks however!

One of the advantages of online events is that participation need not be restricted to Sydney. I’d encourage you to have a look through our past events and consider joining to be notified of our online events by joining the Sydney Scrum User Group on Meetup.com.

We greatly appreciate the ongoing loyalty of our customers and look forward to continuing to serve you throughout 2020 – just via different channels.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us about any of the above.

Above all, stay well!

Rowan.

Managing Principal – Scrum WithStyle