I am a trained Cobol Programmer (Yes, dinosaurs ages) and a Oracle Database Analyst by profession. I worked at the Data Center of a major logistics company for 10 years before deciding to resign so I could do me.

I first heard about Agile Scrum about 3 years ago. I remember thinking to myself “but this is the way I handle my everyday life so what’s so special about it?”.  Although I hung around the Agile crowd, I didn’t really give it much thought or time until recently when I had my actual taste of Agile in April of 2019. I was lucky enough to be invited to join Blue Ocean Agility (BOA) while they were in the middle of their Agile Capacity Tool (ACT) Training which was delivered by Patrick Ingram of Agile Capability, the founder of ProfessionaAgile.org. Even then, I participated blindly because I didn’t have an understanding of the process as I went through the training. I believe my attention was captured and I was able to easily participate because of Patrick’s style of training.

At the beginning of 2020, my fellow BOA Associates entrusted me with certain responsibilities. This is how and when I actually got sucked in. Although I had been getting by just by using my life experience, I now felt the need to get serious since I had officially accepted the responsibilities. For the first time in my life, I felt the need to read the Scrum Guide.

The Scrum Guide is only 17 pages which is excellent because, honestly, at this stage of my life, I can’t be bothered with much. I read it. I thought I understood it. But I later realized it’ll serve me well to go read it again. So I’ve began my second read of the Scrum Guide. This time, I’m blessed to have the Scrum Daddy (Kwaku Ampomah) to go through the read and coax me to interpret each sentence and paragraph for myself which is excellent because he’s not feeding me with the information. I’m being made to break it down in my own language and understanding.

Going through the Scrum Guide has brought to life what I learnt during my first Professiomal Agile training. I’ll let you know how it goes when we’re done going through it. I’ve a feeling, this second read won’t be my last.