Most Scrum Master trainings don't focus on the right skills. There, I said it. They are just general training about Agile.

When you start as a Scrum Master, you are usually off your comfort zone. You can't rely on technical skills. You can't use hierarchical authority anymore. No matter where you from, you are probably disoriented. We've all been there. I feel for you.
This session is about how to get you, new Scrum Master, to a safe zone as soon as possible. It comes from my personal experience, those of fellow coaches I worked with, and the feedbacks of the Scrum Masters I've been coaching over the last years.
We will focus on the actual useful skills to start with :
- facilitation techniques ;
- working with agile artefacts ;
- most common mistakes to avoid.
I hope to share them in the most practical manner, step by step, since that's what is needed when we learn something new (the Shu phase).
You come with me ?

Estimating dozens of stories in half an hour, impossible ? Not anymore.

If you’re tired of the Poker Planning, find estimation a pain, there is another way. If you are from the #noEstimate trend, you probably will find it to your liking too.

Where does it comes from?
Several years ago, a pair of Agile coaches lost an argument with an experienced agile developer. The guy hated Poker Planning : too slow, hard, boring, biased. And the managers will turn bad Fibonacci numbers to hard commitment on unrealistic deadlines. The reasoning was hard to beat. Still, the team had 90 epics to estimate for this new project.
So they looked for a ligher estimate technique, integrating facilitators principles, good practices from J.Rothman to "Predict the unpredictable". 
The ended up cooking a whole new recipe. No more protocol, no more poker cards, clean slate.

When they tried it, the team estimated the 90 epics in 20 minutes, and trusted the results. They couldn't believe it. 
So the workshop was tried on other teams, same speed. Other Agile practioners started to pick the technique for their own context and liked it so much they gave it a nickname : the eXtreme Estimate.

Be skeptical, mate, join the workshop and see for yourself. You will never want to do Poker Planning afterward.

Ester Derby wrote that 60% of a project odds depends on its preparation. This preparation is usually called an Inception.
A.Buzzacarro, former CTO of France Television digital, put it this way : "Any time we cut corners on Inception, we paid 10 times the price later. Projects preparation is where the attention of a CTO should be, not into steering comitees."

Working with pairs consultants, I have been facilitating inceptions throughout the last 10 years of my career. The process I had learn originally was basic. Over time it has been improved by UX designers, software architects, coders, facilitators, agile coachs, delivery managers.
Different versions of this process were run through dozens of Agile Inceptions: projects big and small, in a hurry or a soft pace, on domains varying from banking to media. As to help teams starting their project on rails, we have been experimenting, adjusting, simplifying or enriching, again and again, rince and repeat.
Today it has become a stable process with consistent result to help team launch their project on the right rails :
- a sequence of 8 mandatory questions
- a few guidelines to understand which style so workshops is effective in your context

My ambition is to give you one big takeaway in one unique session : every steps and every tools used for Inception. We will cover the overall process with drawing and pictures, then just enough details to run the workshops by yourself (with homework).