Scrum-i-kanban-agilistic-xp-lean-ido-cious

Breaking it down:

 scrum i kanban agilistic xp lean i do cious

Scrumikanbanagilisticxpleanidocious is a word I dreamed up, this is its story.

It sounds like: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

This wonderful word enters many english-speakers vocabulary at an early age thanks to that great coach, Mary Poppins. Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious.

For those who (sadly) missed Disney's musical gem, here's a refresher:

Reporter: There probably aren't words to describe your emotions.

Mary Poppins: Now, now, now, now, gentlemen, please. On the contrary, there's a very good word. Am I right, Bert?

Bert: Tell 'em what it is.

agile/lean mashings

I was in-flight from Cape Town to Barcelona to give a talk on contracts at the  ALE unconference (yes, back in 2012), overflowing with enthusiasm.

Looking forward to a mash-up of great people in the European Agile and Lean worlds, I had a think about what we were doing as an industry.

There is a lot going on, with different schools of thought coming together, clashing, dancing, growing.

We each choose a particular subset of them all to find a way to create great software.

"There probably aren't words to describe it all"

But, "On the contrary, there's a very good word. It's...

scrumikanbanagilisticxpleanidocious

Bringing together:

• scrum i
• kanban
• agilistic
• xp
• lean
• i do 
• cious

(even though the sound of it is something of a process).

And that's what we do: a weird & wonderful mash-up portmanteau of the bits that fit from what we find in the toolboxes of others.

I was so taken with it that I stood up in front of a room of people, many of whom I admired, but (mostly) hadn't met and said it as the first lightning talk. That was the start of a very #alesome conference.

Enjoy the word, use it for awesome.

:D

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CoderDojo Cape Town

A few years back I met a young soul exploring software development. He had programmed some robots, learnt some python and gotten himself to a python conference to meet other geeks.

His name was Sam, he was 10. And he needed someone to help him get unstuck and take the next steps.

I really, really wanted to teach youngsters coding.

By this stage, I'd seen too many well-meaning attempts die in analysis paralysis trying to figure out a curriculum, where to recruit learners etc, et cetera ad nauseam.

Just do it

Instead, I said: "Why don't you come to my office for 2 hours on a Tuesday afternoon? I'll help you where you get stuck."

A few years later and up to 15 (fifteen) 7-14 year-olds (seven to fourteen year-olds) come to our boardroom every Tuesday for coderdojo.



Our neighbours Esteq have offered up their boardroom for overflow, which is amazing.

Format

It is (lightly) organised chaos, in the manner of a self-organised learning environment. It closely mirrors professional software development.

We do a standup (what did you do last week, what will you do this week, who wants to help) and emotional check-in (using charts4hearts) to kick off each class. Then the kids pair/swarm to find interesting things to do. Sweets are at 4pm or for completing collaboratively-chosen missions.

CoderDojo

coderdojo (coderdojo.com) "free coding clubs for young people": It's a thing, and when I looked at it, found that it's similar to what we do, so we signed up and took up their flag.

Our dojo page is at zen.coderdojo.com/dojo/113.

Syllabus

We have no official syllabus, but a collection of activities. Over time, this has evolved into:

• lightbot 2.0: program the robot through all the puzzles 
• scratch: do the tutorial, remix something 
• wordpress.com (make a blog) 
• hello little turtles: generally get started with the first few points and then explore 
• turtle quest: a skills tree I developed covering drawing squares, triangles (then a house), input, and functions. 
• code combat: battle the dungeon, beat the free levels 
• invent your own computer games with python (book): work through the chapters (10 yrs+ for reading level) 

Next steps

We've reached the limit of what we can do in our boardroom (overflowed already) and what I can personally do. We have:

• a great uchi deshi (back room) WhatsApp channel with keen helpers 
• an agreement from the CEO at an epic company in the Waterfront to run one at their training room. 
• a keen facilitator in the southern suburbs to train including kids from the Cape Flats 
• a school in Sea Point looking to start a coding club 
• a potential venue at the Science Centre 

If you're in Cape Town, come collaborate with us, (check out our dojo page for details) this is your invitation.

If you're somewhere else in the world and you want to get involved, check out coderdojo.com for a dojo near you.

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