We’re often asked by companies about how they can get the most value from Agile/Scrum practices. More specifically, they want to know if they are being as effective as best they possibly can be by using the Scrum framework for their explicit needs.

The other objective for individuals is determining if it necessary to be certified in order to be effective in the Agile Scrum world?   In short, a good Scrum Master must understand four things: the business they work in, the technology they work with, the Agile and Scrum principles, and, most importantly, people!  Based on these facts, Scrum Master Certification is not enough – real life experience and a bit of soft skills should be part and parcel of their training. For organizations, the main goal is to understand industry best practices when adopting and applying agile principles, to build strong teams, understand and distill business needs into software requirements.

In terms of getting a good grip on training for Agile/Scrum, one can opt to pursue a certification in Scrum (CSM) Certified Scrum Master for personal reasons or for a job requirement. Or, one can simply opt to learn the benefits and pitfalls of the methodology and decide the best approach for them.

There are different ways to get started with Agile training. Below are two of the most common paths to Agile our students take.

The short answer is, yes and no. It depends upon who you are. The purpose of this entry is to help you determine, yes or no.

Full disclosure. This entry is created on a Mac mini. And doing so on Windows 8 (Release Preview). If you are a developer, in my humble opinion you need to test on all platforms you expect your app to run or you are not much of a developer.

To be successful you need to leave politics in geographical territory known as Washington DC. My definition of that is: 14 mi.² of real estate surrounded by reality.

Only in politics can we afford to take sides. Those of us in IT, especially developers need to do our best to be all things to all people. Certainly this is a technical impossibility. However in our game we can get some points for at least being serviceable if not outstanding.

In Python, we can create three types of methods in a class:  instance or regular method, classmethod and staticmethod.  Instance methods are associated, as the name infers, with an instance or object of the class and take self as the first parameter.  Classmethods take a reference to the class, cls, as the first parameter of the class.  Staticmethods, for the most part, are convenience methods that could be declared as functions since they really do not have much to do with the class itself.  They were probably added at some time after the advent of Python in order to make the language more object oriented i.e. minimize the number of free floating functions. 

Refer the our article static, class and regular methods in Python for a detailed explanation on this subject.

There are normally two sides to the story when it comes to employment. On one hand, employers hold the view that the right candidate is a hard find; while on the other, job hunters think that it’s a tasking affair to land a decent job out there.

Regardless of which side of the divide you lay, landing good work or workers is a tedious endeavor. For those looking to hire, a single job opening could attract hundreds or thousands of applicants. Sifting through the lot in hope of finding the right fit is no doubt time consuming. Conversely, a job seeker may hold the opinion that he or she is submitting resumes into the big black hole of the Internet, never really anticipating a response, but nevertheless sending them out rather than sit back doing nothing.

A recruitment agency normally keeps an internal database of applicants and resumes for current and future opportunities. They first do a database search to try and identify qualified and screened candidates from their existing crop of talent. Most often the case, they’ll also post open positions online through industry websites and job boards so as to net other possible applicants.

When it comes to IT staffing needs, HR managers even find a more challenging process in their hands. This is because the IT department is one of the most sensitive in any given organization where a single slip-up could be disastrous for the company (think data security, think finances when the IT guys are working in tandem with accounts). You get the picture, right?