We are looking at starting to do some scrum training and I was wondering if we should look at sending a couple of people to become scrum masters, or bring in a consultant to do scrum training.
Also any recommendations for scrum training, either to come in or to go to?
If you have the budget and can afford it, I don't know why you wouldn't have the whole team receive the same training.
The important thing, I think is to have everyone learn together at the same time. Bring in a consultant, or send the entire team off to a course. True, you might drop a 1000 bucks or so on each person that attends, but it'll pay off in the long run for a couple reasons:
A pretty clear ROI if you are serious about adopting Scrum.
I was just at a ScrumMaster certification course several months ago. I'd already been doing scrum for a year or so, but I even begin to relate how many interesting points I picked up in those two days. I went through Winnow Management and thought it was well worth it.
(Disclaimer: I do Agile coaching and training for a living, though not in your area.)
The big secret is that it's not a one-shot thing. The best process for really learning something goes like this: get some training; practice; get some more training. Sometimes you can even swap the first two.
In most situations, I'd say you'll get more bang for your buck by bringing someone in for the initial training. First, it's more cost-effective, if you can negotiate a per diem fee with the trainer (sending folks to training outside is a per capita fee, starts to cost more beyond N people with N usually small). Also, they can tailor the content to your specific situation, which is a big plus.
The situation changes a bit after your people have been doing Scrum for a while, because what's most valuable then is to swap war stories with other folks - in different companies, domains, etc - who have also given Scrum a try. For that it makes sense to send your people (especially those who didn't go to the first training, or have joined you since) out to trainings - not just trainings, but also conferences, user group meetings, and so on. At this stage it's organizational learning more than individual learning, and networking with similarly situated people is a big part of that.
The issues are trust and respect.
If the people you send are trusted and respected, they become consultants to the rest of the team.
If the people you send are not trusted or respected, the exercise turns into a finger-pointing exercise. The Scrum-trained folks vs. the non-Scrum folks. Everything can turn into a quibble.
If the rest of the team does not want to change, a consultant is less disruptive. You listen politely and do nothing. If you send two people away and the rest of the team does not want to change (or management does not want a change) then you've fragmented the team into two people who are trying to change vs. everyone else who is actively trying to not change.
If management really wants change, they should really invest in change. It has to be all or nothing -- no going back. Otherwise, you'll be forced back to non-Agile techniques at the very next management meeting.
If at all possible, bring in Uncle Bob to train your team in Agile methodologies.
Unless you have an ideal case where everyone is happily asking for the training and generous budget has been allocated, it's always better to got some influential people on the team trained and committed to Scrum first, they will build up momentum to get the whole team moving toward the practice.
Even if this topic is quite "old"....
If you want to implement Scrum to your team or even organisation training people is NOT enough. Of course everybody needs to learn the Scrum rules, but the problems and the real challenges will grow on a daily basis when you face the real project situation. I suggest to combine training and coaching.
Who could support you. The title Scrum Master is not an indication of experience. Make sure that you get a coach and trainer who has some years of Scrum project experience and knows how to move to Scrum.
Maybe you can read that topic to understand a bit bette what a Scrum Master is supposed to do and what not.: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/179548/do-i-have-to-be-a-scrum-master-to-manage-the-agile-scrums
I think that a training alone will not help you to use Scrum, doesn't matter if it's an open training or an onsite course. The real questions will occur always after the training and there you need answers!! A training is good to get an overview on Scrum, but don't think that afterwards you can DO actually Scrum. Its like driving a car - only the license is not making a good driver!
A nice hands on training with many practical parts and experienced trainers is offered by agile42. They are also offering coaching and lean management consulting to convince the management that they have to change to.
It could also be a matter of simple math (economy)...
Divide the amount it costs to get a master, with the amount it costs to send each employee alone to a course.
The result will tell you how many employees you need to send to the course before it is cheaper to get a master to your premises.
On a related subject, I have now seen two Scrum projects in problems, because the code is not “clean” enough and does not have unit tests. (Only the best coding will work with Scrum)
The standard of coding was good enough when only one or two developers worked on each area of the product and there was an up front design.
However when Scrum come in, all developers worked on all the code with no clear code ownership and developers did not know (and/or have time) to test the part of the product they were changing.
So think about the coding as well as the project management!