| [epf-dev] Out reach vision |
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Hello Everyone: Did someone call off the recesion? Before I left for
holidays I was running flat out and already my calendar is looking scary! I
will probably regret my joke about the recession later but it is busy, so busy
that I will not be able to make the call tomorrow. That said, here are a few points
that I want to make for EPF outreach. 1) I am completing some new course offerings, portions of
which I will donate to EPF. I'm running about 2 months behind on this right
now. 2) One of my SD West proposals was accepted in the dreaded
1:00pm to 3:30pm Friday slot. This is my "Agile Business Analyst"
talk which describes how to effectively incorporate a BA into an Agile Process.
I use EPF as the example process. This is one of the presentations I will be
donating to EPF. I have a couple of others including my "Agile Grows
UP" talk. I still believe for this to take off we need (listed in a
priority order): 1)
Steve to get off his butt and start participating again….its
been so long since I've actively participated that I have forgotten how to
access the buglist and CVS…sigh 2)
an EPF user oriented website (not an EPF developer
oriented one). This website shall have: a. EPF
articles, whitepapers, how to guides, tutorials, etc - ideally we could create
an example project (maybe not the "recycling machine" and use it consistently
through all training material) b. presentation
material that trainers/consultants can re-use or incorporate into their
training material 3)
Social Networking - nothing happens anymore without
blogging, twittering, or vblogging. 4)
Book(s) - I've said this over and over again, while
there may be volumes in the e-world, credibility only comes with dead trees. I
have created huge volumes of material, with my new courses and others, but now
I have to really winnow this down into a book with a useful and catchy story
line. A few of us have agreed to collaborate on writing a book. Maybe we should
take a page from the agile manifesto and meet a ski resort, and brainstorm some
outlines. Whistler is of course good, but so is Big White (smaller than
Whistler, but much better snow and cheaper). We could bring our families along,
rent a big condo, ski durin the day, then starting in the later afternoon (our
apre's ski ) start brainstorming some outlines. 5)
Certification - while I personally pooh pooh a lot of
certification process, I believe they do give some credibilty to a process and
there is some assurance that a person may know what they are talking about. The
only argument I see for us is whether we test knowledge. We could take the
scrum approach and if you warm a seat for two days you are a certifiied scrum
master. At least with this designation you have some assurance that a person
may have heard the words "backlog", sprint, and product owner. Also
I must admit shamelessly, that certification is a great way of earning income,
look at the demand and prices for Certified Scrum Trainers. I think we should
follow the Scrum model where we will have a cadre of certified EPF instructors
who create their own teaching material (using the EPF core training material)
to create their own courses. I was thinking we could have three certifications: § EPF
Master (EM) - someone who is familiar with the content and intention behind EPF
and can use EPF to inform the design of a process in their organization § EPF
Process Master (EPM)- an EM who can use the composer effectively § EPF
Trainer (EPT) - us and whoever we believe is competent enough to teach this
stuff. I know we have been talking
about the website for months now. What appears to be blocking it beyond all of
us having busy lives is simply where is it going to live and who is going to
look after it. I'm prepared to pay for hosting the site but I am not even a
good web master let alone a web designer. So we need someone who can at least
initially design the site and set up some kind of useful content management
system. For EPF certification, what
courses or training programs should we have ( or will have?) In other words,
what courses should make up a certiication cirriculum? I know I can offer
courses and seminars like "Agile Grows UP", "The Agile Business
Analyst", and the "Agile Architect" . I know the
"Agile" adjective is tiresome. Ok now here is my first cut
at a vision statement: The problem of knowing how to
design an appropriate process for a software project is resulting in
sub-optimal performance of software teams. Process frameworks like RUP offer
excellent solutions, but their "tailoring down" approach to software
process design is confusing for most of those involved in software process
design. Agile processes have offered good solutions for small teams and have
the ability to scale to larger teams, but there is little guidance on how to
scale leading to significant inconsistencies in the results. We believe EPF
offers an excellent solution to this problem, but unless there is a supporting
community, no one will adopt it. A successful solution will
popularize EPF in the software development, project managememt and product
management communities. A successful solution will make the adoption of EPF a
straight forward and reasonably risk free solution. A successful solution will facilitate
the growth of a large supporting community for EPF and encourage numerous
independent and large consulting organizations to push EPF in their practice. Feature Description I haven't worked things out
fully yet, but here are a few tentative use cases… § Share
Training Material - a contributor shares training material (e.g. PPT slides)
which others can use to build their own EPF training material. § Contribute
Method - contributor can upload a plugin or a complete method built using EPF
to share (or sell?) § Contribute
article/resource - a contributor contributes a § Connect
with colleagues - a epf user can connect using social networking facilities
with other EPF users § Blather
away - an epf user can blog, twitter and even flame about EPF § Search
for training provider - an EPF user can find a § Register
EPF training provider Ok that is long enough, for now, I really need to start
refining this a lot more. Hopefully catch you all next week. best regards, Steve |