Bath User Group kick-off meeting

Filed under: Presentation, Scrum — Andrew @ 11:56 pm

This post is long over due but hopefully it will be the impetus for organising regular meetings of the group in 2010.

6 Weeks after I first suggested the idea of creating a local Scrum user group we held first meeting.  People quickly joined a hastily created group on LinkedIn and started spreading the word.  The first person to join the group was Nigel Baker, a Bristol based Certified Scrum Trainer, who kindly offered to sponsor the first meeting and present with another local CST, Paul Goddard.

The turnout for the meeting was good, about 19 people.  This was impressive considering how difficult it was to find the lecture theatre at the University campus!  Nigel and Paul presented “15 tips to do good Scrum (and more importantly, build better products!)“, which was both informative and entertaining.  This gave everyone a lot to talk about when we moved to the student bar on campus, thankfully the unexpected Mexican night had pretty much finished by the time we arrived.

Everyone at the meeting was clearly enthusiastic about Scrum and Agile development, many face similar challenges.  My hope is that members of the group will be able to support each other to use Scrum successfully.

There has been some discussion in the LinkedIn group since the meeting including ideas for a second meeting.  I’ve included these and some of my own below:

• Scrum for distributed teams
• Software to support Scrum (can they be better than a board and post-its?)
• Turning your clients into Product Owners
• Scrum or Lean?
• Starting Scrum in a Waterfall environment

Thanks to everyone who attended the first meeting and made it a successful event.  I’d welcome suggestions for speakers, venues and sponsors.  Help with arranging meetings would also be very much appreciated.  Check back here or the LinkedIn group for details of the next meeting, looking forward to seeing you all there.