Virtual CSP-SM Course Preparation

Virtual CSP-SM Preparation

Updated: 28th May 2020

Our Certified Scrum Professional-ScrumMaster (CSP-SM) programme does not start with the interactive training but rather the pre-course work that you do prior. Please put aside several hours for this. Past course participants have repeatedly stressed the importance of this for maximising their learning during the interactive training.

The top five items in the Preparation Backlog below are crucial for you to do prior to the course as these are required as input into in-class exercises. Without these, you may not be able to contribute to exercises or present material from prior experience. This may lead to your being asked to redo an course exercise at a later date.

Preparation Backlog (prioritised)

  1. Pre-course Miro Board Completion
  2. Virtual Classroom Preparation
  3. Team Launch Reading
  4. Visual Facilitation Example Preparation
  5. Agile Teaching Preparation
  6. CSP-SM Study Material (videos and articles)
  7. Familiarisation with Post-course Assignments
  8. Log 24+ months Work Experience with Scrum Alliance

Please read on for details on each of these items.

1. Pre-course Miro Board Completion

We will be doing a lot of work in the virtual whiteboard tool Miro. Like many of the more sophisticated tools there is a learning curve involved do be fluent with tasks that you will be doing a lot of such as creating virtual stickies, selecting and moving items on a fixed background.

The purpose of the Pre-course Miro Board exercise is to familiarise yourself with using Miro. Also to create a personal profile and an avatar that will both be required when we start the course. These also space for you to add virtual stickies about what you are interested in learning and any questions you have.

The link to the Pre-Course Miro Board will be sent to you in the invitation to the Orientation call. If you cannot find this, please contact us.

2. Virtual Classroom Preparation

In our short sub-topic on facilitating distributed meetings, we stress the importance of the facilitator to lead by example by testing and familiarising themselves with their tools prior to an online workshop. Likewise, it is expected that you do the same prior to our first session of this course – especially for tools that you do not use regularly.

Our Virtual Classroom Preparation guide also includes Essential, Recommended and Ideal hardware configurations as well as The Core Protocols that we will refer to when we check-in and check-out.   

3. Team Launch Reading

Early in the course you will be invited to plan a team launch. To do this you will be expected to draw on the Team Launch material available at:

We will not have time for you to read the 10 pages during online course time. Therefore it is important to have familiarised yourself with this material prior to Session 1.

4. Visual Facilitation Example Preparation

Please gather together examples from Scrum events or other workshops that you have facilitated that illustrate your use of at least five visual facilitation techniques. These collaborative sessions could be Sprint Retrospectives, backlog refinement workshops or any other group interaction.

Of particular interest is photographic or video material that can be shown to a small group of other course participants. Ideally this include a facilitation plan or agenda, images of visual techniques used and the outcomes of the facilitated session.

Visual facilitation techniques may include (but are not limited to): Modelling with sticky notes/cards, Affinity clustering, Dot voting, Collaborative Mind Mapping, Graphic facilitation and Virtual visual note taking.

The emphasis here is not on how pretty your drawing is (there may not be any drawing), but rather the choice of techniques used and how these helped the group to achieve its objectives in the facilitated session.

Come to the course prepared to share this via screen sharing in Zoom. Also, be prepared to talk to what you have learned from your facilitation experiences.

5. Agile Teaching Preparation

During the interactive course, you will be invited to present to a small group of course participants on an Agile or Scrum topic. You choose the topic and at least one learning objective. It is recommended that you keep the scope narrowly focused as you will be limited to an 8 minute time-box which includes any learner interaction and exercises. This will be followed by 2 minutes for feedback.

If you are looking for examples of learning objectives, see the Scrum Foundations Learning Objectives at: https://www.scrumalliance.org/ScrumRedesignDEVSite/media/pdfs/Foundational_LOs.pdf

If you have slides or other visual materials pre-prepared, please have them readily available. If you would like to hand draw and you have a tablet, we suggest downloading the Miro app ahead of time. If you don’t have a tablet, we suggest experimenting with the Whiteboard feature in Zoom ahead of time so that you don’t get held up with technical issues whilst trying to teach within your time-box.

6. CSP-SM Study Material

In order to make the most efficient use of our limited training time, we will not be spending our time together going through required material that is freely available online. Instead, it is expected that you familiarise yourself with this material prior to the course.

Please see the CSP-SM Study Material page for the full list of videos and articles to work through. 

7. Familiarisation with Post-course Assignment

There is no expectation that you work on any of the Post-course assignments prior to the course. It is however advantageous to know what they involve so that you can maximise your chance of seizing the best opportunity from now on to carry them out. This could be an opportunity to run a certain workshop or an opportunity to mentor someone. High level familiarity with the assignments also allows you to ask questions about them during the training.

The CSP-SM Assignments instructions are available from:   

https://scrumwithstyle.com/csp-sm-assignments/

8. Log 24+ months Work Experience with Scrum Alliance

Logging your work experience prior the completion of the course (or ideally before the course) minimises the chance of the awarding a certification being delayed.

Please see our Updating Work Experience With Scrum Alliance page for instructions on how to do this.

 

Thank you

That’s it. Thanks very much for investing in being well prepared and maximising the value that we can attain from our time together.

You will receive a calendar invite for the first session roughly a week prior containing the details required to join the video call. We look forward to seeing you in session 1.