At the end of January, I ran a Certified ScrumMaster class for students at the IT University of Copenhagen.

My colleagues in Finland have been in touch for a couple of years with Maria Paasivara, working as an adjunct professor at Aalto University in Helsinki and researcher in multiple subjects including globally distributed software development, distributed agile development and software project management.

A couple of years ago she started as an associate professor at IT University in Copenhagen and, moved by the strong belief that a Certified ScrumMaster training would be a good complement to her course content and a great added value to the students’ professional development and employability, she asked if we were available to support the University and run a pro-bono class.

At agile42 we believe that obtaining a quality education is the foundation for creating sustainable agility. In addition to improving quality of life, access to inclusive education can help equip students with the tools required to develop innovative solutions to the world’s greatest problems. That is why we are used to offering pro-bono training classes to people in need and to university students, to build the next generation of leaders our organizations and society need. We often also work with local schools introducing agile concepts to teachers during their professional development days, because a better education system will shape a better future.

In particular, I have always found it essential to instill a culture of agility into the new generation of students, who, in many universities, after almost 20 years from signing the Agile Manifesto, are still taught traditional software development techniques and lack an accurate introduction into industry-leading methods and practices.

When in 2012 I designed and delivered the first-ever class on Agile SW development in the Computer Science program at the University of Salerno in Italy, almost no student I met knew even the name “Scrum” before the course, nearly 20 years after Scrum was first practiced in 1993. Nevertheless, that was one of the most rewarding experiences in my career: I had a great time interacting with clever guys eager to learn and experiment with new things, and what most of the students achieved in that class, despite the small amount of time available, was really incredible

So it was a no-brainer for me to accept the invite from Maria; it was definitely worth it to engage with her students and share a small portion of the professional development career of twenty brilliant individuals.

It was two days of great conversations, learning and fun on both sides. As it normally happens in my classes, I took the opportunity to challenge their thinking and some of them got exposed for the first time to ”real life” examples from industry, which are soon going to be part of their daily life after the university time.

The reward for me came from this valuable interaction, the comments from the students during the class and the feedback I got from Maria:

”The training that Giuseppe gave to my students was a great start for our course. After this class, I can be sure that the Scrum Master students are well prepared to start practicing their role as Scrum Masters with their teams that will be developing software for real industrial customers.

Giuseppe is a wonderful teacher! My students really liked him and his style of teaching and facilitating. He was full of energy and transmitted that good energy to the students and managed to keep them engaged during the whole training, which seldom happens. Thank you agile42, and especially Giuseppe, for giving our students this possibility to get this wonderful CSM training! The students had hoped for this opportunity and you made that wish come true.”

Thank you, professor, for the opportunity and thanks to the Scrum Alliance for supporting this initiative.

If you wish to know more about our classes have a look at the course offering on our website and, if you are a school or university teacher and are intrigued to get you and/or your students exposed to Scrum and agility, do not hesitate to get in touch.