Project management consulting and training for social change organisations.
From Driving Fear Out of the Workplace: Creating the High-Trust, High-Performance Organization, by Daniel Oestreich and Kathleen Ryan.
importantprojects, nptech, officepolitics, politics, projectmanagement
Last Friday I travelled to Woodstock, Oxfordshire to spend the morning talking about Scrum with a dozen or so representatives of OLM Group, the UK's largest independent supplier of social care products and services (including Bettercaring, which I believe my friends at Enable originally built — nice one, fellas).
One of the divisions of OLM Group is already using Scrum, so the morning was really an opportunity for me to acknowledge the good work that group is already doing, honor their courage for undertaking such a cultural/paradigmatic change, and to reinforce the organisational/business value Scrum can help teams deliver by agreeing to follow just a few simple rules (i.e. make everything visible, frequently inspect outcomes and adapt the process as necessary).
I love simple rules because as chaordic visionary Dee Hock once said:
Thanks for having me, OLM!
agile, importantprojects, nptech, olmgroup, projectmanagement, scrum, training
Alright! The next meeting of Drupal for NGOs will be held at the Comic Relief UK offices near Vauxhall 34 days from today!
Presentations for September are TBD (and please contact me if you'd like to present) — watch the event page or the Eventbrite registration page for more details as things come together :)
If you can't make the meeting but want to join us at the pub afterwards, we'll be at the Morpeth Arms (and thank you, Dan Duke of Comic Relief, for the recommendation).
UPDATE: Oliver MacColl of GCAP will present! Still looking for one more presenter. Francesco Moretto will travel from Milan to present on using CiviCRM with Drupal! 18 11 4 tickets remain The event is now sold out!
comicrelief, drupal, drupalforngos, importantprojects, opensource, nptech, softwaredevelopment
Photo by rumpleproofskin, June 2006
I'm going on holiday! Tomorrow! I can't remember taking a vacation in the last 5 years but tomorrow Frankie and I are taking the train to Cornwall and staying for 10 days. See you when we get back :)
importantprojects, holiday, howbaddoineedthis, vacation
Last Thursday I took the train to Charlbury and spent the day talking about SMART objectives and Scrum with the project managers and account directors at Torchbox, a 25-or-so person conscious business specialising in the design and development of websites and Internet software for socially and environmentally progressive organisations. They've built a few Drupal sites in the last little while as well and are extremely lovely people to boot!
Thanks for having me, Torchbox — I had a fantastic time meeting and speaking with you and hope to see you all again soon! Hopefully tomorrow at the second installment of Drupal for NGOs ;-)
agile, importantprojects, torchbox, nptech, projectmanagement, scrum, smart, training
I almost forgot to mention — I'm now a Certified ScrumMaster! I took the 2 day training course with Nigel Baker of AgileBear 2 weeks ago and am a changed man ;-)
You don't need ScrumMaster Certification to manage projects with Scrum (IMHO), but if you're using Scrum with a team that hasn't used Scrum before, I highly recommend bringing in a professional trainer to take the team through an overview of the framework at the outset of the project — we brought Nigel in to train the entire Concern web team last month and it was money and time well spent :)
agile, agilebear, certification, CSM, importantprojects, nigelbaker, nptech, projectmanagement, scrum, scrummaster, softwaredevelopment
Alright! The next meeting of Drupal for NGOs will be held at the Greenpeace UK offices in Islington 19 days from today!
Check out the Drupal for NGOs group Robert Castelo set up for us on the Drupal UK site, create an account if you haven't already and comment on the event page so we know how many people to expect (last month we had more than 50 and it was awesome).
Presentations for this month are TBD — watch the event page for more details as things come together :)
UPDATE: Owen Pringle of Amnesty International and Ben Steele, Ben Alexander and Martin Gill of Comic Relief will present!
drupal, drupalforngos, greenpeaceuk, importantprojects, opensource, nptech, softwaredevelopment
