Another timeout for a little self-promotion as I am proud to announce I am now a Certified Scrum Product Owner, or CSPO. A week ago I took a 2-day course and in the process gained certification through Scrum Alliance.

What is a CSPO?

A CSPO is a practitioner of the Scrum. With its origins in software development, Scrum is “framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value.” A product owner is one of 3 roles on a Scrum team, along with the Scrum Master and Developers. The team delivers software, or whatever the work product is, in an iterative approach over periods of time called sprints, where a sprint can last a few weeks to a month. You can read more on Scrum in the Scrum Guide the “bible” on the framework.

The role of the Product Owner is an empowered representative of the stakeholders for the product the entire Scrum team is working on. Its mission is to maximize the value of the product for said stakeholders and its users. High-level responsibilities include defining the Product Goal, managing the Product Backlog (or what the team will be working on), communicating and ensuring transparency.

Why the Product Owner Course? And didn’t you take the Scrum Master course?

Last year I took the course and exam to become a Certified ScrumMaster through Scrum Alliance. Through this process, I was really intrigued by the Product Owner role. In my current job, in many regards I serve as a Product Owner more than I do a Scrum Master. Also, I found a lot more emphasis on the Scrum Master role on the Scrum team “out there” more than I did on the Product Owner. This led me to pursue this course of study and serve in this capacity. Even had I not had this strong interest in being a Product Owner, I feel it important to understand all of the Scrum team roles to better serve as one of them.

The Course Itself

Before the global lockdowns last year, Scrum courses were never taught remotely. You would take a course near you or travel to take one in person. The Scrum Master course I took last year was virtual, though I had signed up for it as an in-person course originally. I was pleased with the last-minute pivot, the instructor and learned a lot from it.

All Scrum trainers have since gone to a virtual model. Where some courses are now starting to be taught in person, the majority are still online. This opened wide the possibilities from where to take the course. As I chose to continue courses through Scrum Alliance, I took the CSPO course through Mike Cohn, a veteran Scrum practitioner, trainer and author.

Where I have only taken a few courses online over the years, this was by far the best offering I have experienced. The online “space” is integrated into Agile Mentors, a community and resource center whose membership is included for a year with the course. Before the live sessions, there was about 4 hours of “basics” videos going over the core of the Product Owner role, including quizzes throughout. It was structured this way to ensure to maximize the 2 days of live instruction, and it worked very well. I was equally impressed with the design of the overall experience – Cohn and his Mountain Goat Software spent a considerable amount of time in the branding and technology for this and all of their products.

No exam?

At the lunch break during the first day of the course it dawned on me there was no mention of an exam following the course to earn the certification. During the Q&A at the end of the day I asked this “meta” question. A good discussion followed and Cohn went into great detail on it from his own experience – he was a founder of the Scrum Alliance, and he said for this role it is a challenge to create questions for such an exam, as he has tried himself. Cohn’s upfront and no-nonsense approach was also a selling point for me on training with him. The non-binding quizzes throughout the pre-course videos did help in reinforcing the materials.

Without an exam and by actively participating in the course, this is the only qualification for the CSPO certification. Where I felt it was a little anticlimactic, I have decided it will be up to me to challenge myself as a Product Owner and always quiz myself. But what a better challenge for Scrum Alliance to develop an exam for this certification!

Next Steps and Kudos

I am looking forward to my continued journey with Scrum, the better way to do things – just ask Elon Musk! I have been asked my employer to help emphasize and further the Product Owner role, and I am up to the task. I also welcome your questions on Scrum in general. If you are thinking of studying for it as I did, I highly recommend the course from Mike Cohn. Thanks to him, Stacey Ackerman of the Agile Mentors community and the numerous classmates I had from around the area and the world who made the CSPO course a memorable experience.

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email

Announcements • Business • Agile / Scrum • Thrive • (0) Comments • Permalink

For years I’d often say, “I want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem.” This came to be as I’d get into a situation where all I was doing was complaining about it. By removing myself from the chaos in the middle of things to think – perhaps taking a walk along a lake – hopefully I could come back with a way to make a situation better all around. If it takes me to be directly involved and it could to be beneficial to me as well, then I will commit to it.

Over time, however, I have revised that statement to the following, “I want to be part of the solution if I can.”

There’s a few differences from the initial statement above. First, I am removing the declaration there is a problem. Am I in denial here? Not necessarily. In that original statement I (emphasis: me) am saying there is a problem. The fact of the matter is that I (emphasis: me, again) may be the only person who thinks there is a problem!

This has come from experiences where I get involved in something, providing a fresh point-of-view on it and perceive an issue or problem. Note there may well be a problem, but if the consensus of the overall group or community that I have recently joined doesn’t see it that way, or simply thinks things are just fine, then trying to highlight an issue or trying to help solve one may be futile.

Learning the Best Way – The Hard Way

A recent example highlights this. I answered a call to volunteer for an organization I was already a member of to help in live-streaming their meetings. They have already been doing this for a while, but needed more people to help. The idea of this sounded fun and I signed up. The training on live-streaming was in real-time – I and another person observed someone who had set this process up execute on it, all the while following some brief instructions. It was a good thing I brought a notebook as I took several pages of notes above and beyond the instructions. Armed with what was provided and what I wrote, I was ready to take on this task by myself. Or so I thought.

When it came for my first solo live-stream, I followed the instructions to the letter, weaving in my own notes, and thought all was well. When I went to test to see if it was actually streaming (something from my own notes) I found it wasn’t. Panic washed over me as I am sitting here thinking all is working while people are trying to connect to a live-stream that isn’t there! I tried troubleshooting the process, challenging as I didn’t know all I didn’t know, and found that a required field wasn’t filled in, and when I filled it in, the stream started. Twenty minutes into the meeting, but started nonetheless.

Following this screw-up I sent an email to those involved and apologized, then offered to help improve the instructions. I got a response back saying this wasn’t necessary. However I felt it was – as someone who trains people regularly to manage their own Web sites, I felt this enhanced documentation, complete with photos and screenshots, was essential.

Despite the lack of response to my offer, when it was my next opportunity to volunteer, I was ready to further document this process. I started with a new document, bringing in the existing instructions and enhanced them with my notes. I then printed this and brought it with me so I could write in pen the remaining pieces. I also took pictures and captured screenshots along the way.

The only issue was the live-stream didn’t work again. It was a different problem from before, and I troubleshooted it the best I could, but I never got it working. I was furious, but needed to focus. As the video camera was recording the meeting, I knew that would be the Plan B and I would upload the video files later. I double-checked the camera to ensure it was still recording then went outside to get some fresh air, and perhaps to let out a scream or two. When I came back in I checked the camera and it had stopped recording. What? There was plenty of room to record, what could have happened? I resumed the recording, but a key piece of the meeting was never captured. I stewed in boiling water in my mind thru the rest of the meeting, then afterwards I resigned from this volunteer opportunity.

Why did I quit? I saw a need for more documentation, not to mention troubleshooting tips. But nobody else did. Plus I couldn’t put myself through another live-stream failure. Those in charge of this effort, however, felt things were fine. I even heard from the organization’s volunteer coordinator that live-stream issues happen all of the time, yet clearly nobody felt a need for improvement earlier. Where I wanted to be part of the solution, I felt it was a situation I didn’t want to be a part of, and as well I didn’t feel my participation was welcome either.

Unfortunately there have been other situations over the years where I have been in where there was a similar disconnect. I was not trying to impose “my way” rather wanted to make it better for myself, and what I later found out for others too. On the flip side, I have been involved in the past – and currently – in roles where I was able to be part of the solution. And with that I will end this as I need to work on one of those very volunteer roles.

Deconstructing Being Part of the Solution If You Can

Our time is precious, and if time spent contributes to a greater good then it is an overall ideal situation. However we are not mere robots doing a task – we have our ideas and past experiences, and many times we see a way to make a situation better, all the while making a win-win situation. However not everyone is open to that, and in those cases we need to determine if it’s the best use of our precious time, no matter how noble the cause is.

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email

Business • Strategize • Thrive • (0) Comments • Permalink

LinkedIn has long offered the ability for its users to download a list of their connections contact information. However at some point in time the business social network threw in a roadblock – your connections need to allow your email address to be included in a downloaded file. Each one of them. Individually. Seriously.

Most people are unaware you have to make this selection. I first learned about this opt-in setting from veteran tech journalist John C. Dvorak. I then allowed my connections to see my email address in their download files, and then I checked how many of my connections opted to do this – of my 1,676 connections downloaded, only 24 email addresses were in the file. Twenty four. That’s only .0143%!

Granted some of my connections may not want their information in a downloaded file as someone maybe doing so to spam email them. But among those whose email addresses were not in the list are some whom I consider “power networkers.” My guess is they are simply unaware of this setting.

Below I will show you how you can download a list of your connections, then how to make the setting change. I tested this with my friend Gary T. Sanborn as his email was not in my downloaded list, but was after he made the setting change.

How to download your contacts

Perform the following steps – these were done in a standard Web browser, and may vary in the LinkedIn mobile app.

• Navigate to LinkedIn.com and login
• Click "Me" in the top navigation, then "Settings & Privacy" from the menu
• Click "Get a copy of your data"
• Check "Want something in particular..." then check "Connections"
• Click "Request archive" button
• Enter your password in pop-up window and click "Done" button
• You will see a "Download pending" message
• Await an email that the download is available, or refresh the page and click the "Download archive" button
• Open the Zip file and extract the Connections.csv file
• Open the CSV file and sort by email address to see how many addresses you actually have

As you can see below in my initial list, Gary’s email address was missing. Interestingly I can view his email address on his profile page, as that is a different setting.

When I mentioned this to Gary, he had no idea about it. I then asked him to go through the following steps, to which he obliged as he is a sharing, networking kind of guy.

How to allow someone to download your email address

Perform the following steps – again, this works in a standard Web browser.

• Navigate to LinkedIn.com and login
• Click "Me" in the top navigation, then "Settings & Privacy" from the menu
• Click "Visibility" in the left sidebar
• Click "Who can see or download your email address" to expand the area
• Under the option "Allow your connections to download your email [your email address] in their data export? If no, your primary email address will not be included." slide the switch to Yes (as shown in the screenshot above)
• You will see a green "Saved" indicator that your choice has been saved

After he made the change, I followed the first set of steps and requested another download of my connections, and his email address was in the new list.

Deconstructing Downloading Email Addresses

I urge all of my own connections and anyone reading this to make this setting change. If you are on LinkedIn, you are there to connect with people. If people want to manage your contact information in their own database, and yes perhaps send you emails, they should be able to easily do so. Where I understand LinkedIn likely wants to mitigate people getting spam email, they should also make this setting change front and center so the masses are aware of it, as the numbers show they are not.

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email

Business • Social Media • Strategize • (0) Comments • Permalink

One thing that drove me to work on the Web, gladly leaving behind a career of mainframe and client-server systems behind me, was the ability to create highly visible applications and projects that could be easily shared and used by the masses. Armed with this skillset, it was easy for me to imagine a system from any random idea that came to mind. If I had the proverbial nickel for every idea I had, I would be too busy sunning myself on a tropical beach to be writing what I am right now.

Along the way I actually executed on some of my project ideas, one being the very blog you are reading. The others, well, came to an unfortunate but necessary demise. Though I have written about some of these in the past, I haven’t brought them together until now, in My Project Graveyard. Inspired by similar collections by others, I am sharing projects that started with good intentions, and ended for various reasons.

Phenom – This was my personal Web site and the first I created using a domain name. Though I created my first personal Web site as early as 1993, it was using the domain name of the combined dial-up Internet / shared Web hosting providers. In 1996, I registered my first domain name – monehp.com. Why that? It is “phenom” spelled backwards. Again you are likely asking, why that? I sent out an email to the few dozen people I knew who had email back then asking them to help suggest a domain name for me. Two people came up with this one – my license plate on my car then was PHENOM, which was a take on my college radio show, the Madman Phenomenon, from the late 1980’s. Why did I call my radio show that? Now that I don’t completely remember.

This site was also my first development sandbox where I tried several ideas, including a surfing Web site where my friend RJ provided the content (trust me, I am no surfer!). It was also the first home of what became GoPats.com. The Wayback Machine at archive.org has the oldest record of what was on the site going back to 1997. I maintained this site until better homes for my projects came along. I kept it as a separate site for about 10 years, then I set the domain name, which I still own, to redirect here to The Hot Iron.

GoPats.com – This site, as mentioned above, started as a sub-site of Phenom, that I initially called it Patriots Unofficial. It then took on a life of its own within a year with its own domain name (complete credit to my friend Clint, who wrote a weekly column for the site, for the idea to register it) and went on for another 21 years, until it was “retired” which means the site wasn’t updated for years and it was time to move on. During its run not only did it serve Patriots fans but myself as well as it was a showcase of the type of Web development work I could do.

I wrote a fairly complete story about GoPats.com a few years ago and the domain name now redirects to that blog post.

Boston Jaycees – This was the first Web site I built for a greater cause. I got involved with the Jaycees (also known as Junior Chamber outside of the US) and, recognizing they didn’t have a Web site, I offered to build one. It was also the first time I worked with someone who is now referred to as a digital marketing professional; it was another Jaycees member who worked for an ad agency who was developing a digital practice.

The site evolved both as my technical skills did, along with higher user expectations as more people were using the Web. What started as a “static” site – one that had to be hand-coded – evolved to one “dynamic” – one that had what is now called a content management system or CMS. A lot of the functionality was similar to what I built for GoPats.com, and often I would design elements to be used across many of my sites. At the point I became president of the chapter, I handed the reigns of the site to another emerging digital marketing guru John Wall, who discontinued the paper newsletter we had and evolved the Web site even more.

Within a few years of leaving the organization and the Boston area, the site went dark as the chapter ceased operations. For a time I “rescued” the domain name but eventually I dropped it. For another time it was pointing to the last Jaycees chapter in Massachusetts, but now it is once again available for registration. You can see the last version of the Boston Jaycees Web site as I had built it here.

Control – In the course of running my former Web consulting business, I was tracking more and more information, from domain names to project elements to billable time and everything else I could possibly track. I was fairly organized with multiple spreadsheets, but over time they became too much to manage. I then decided to build an application to manage it all, and I aptly called it Control.

I don’t want to brag too much, but I was able to easily manage and control all of items I needed to with this platform. I even impressed myself when I brought on a bookkeeper at one point, and with creating a few simple reports she was able to generate invoices rather easily using the system. When I decided to shutter the business and return to the working world, this application was shut down as well.

tasklogr – When I first heard of Twitter I wasn’t immediately drawn to using it, but the idea of a short-messaging system did inspire me in how I keep track of bits of information, as I wrote about back in the day. That inspiration led to me creating tasklogr, a system of capturing short messages. The interface to enter these messages was Web pages – one that was a top bar frame on my browser’s home page, and another that would fit nicely on a mobile device. Notes I entered were captured within my Control system, and from there I could manage a straight task list or convert to other actionable information for my business.

This solution served me well for a while, but eventually I found other note-taking apps like BugMe that I still use to this day.

GoPats.com Report – Bitten by the podcasting bug, I decided I wanted to create one. But about what? That question seemed to be the only thing I should be concerned with creating a podcast. Little did I know how wrong I would be.

I came up with the idea for a podcast on the New England Patriots, an audio companion to GoPats.com. As both my own and my friend Clint’s activity on the site had been waning, I thought this would be a good way to breathe life into it. There I go thinking again. The podcast lasted exactly 1 episode. In short, it took too much work for me to edit and produce it, and in the end wasn’t something I was interested in doing on a regular basis.

Flagship CMS – As I mentioned earlier, I was developing code for GoPats.com and the Boston Jaycees Web site, and in some cases leveraging code from one for the other. This came in handy as I grew my Web consulting business and I used this code as the foundation for the CMS for client sites. This worked well for many years, and I eventually gave these tools a name – Flagship CMS. This was solely an internal name and I never really developed it as a branded product. The timing of the name was actually at the tail-end of using it as I was pivoting to commercial CMS applications for sites. This decision was based on many factors, including the proliferation of such tools in addition to reevaluating where I should focus my time on. Eventually all of the sites running Flagship CMS were taken over by others firms who deployed their own technical solution to the Web sites, which coincided with the winding down of my former business.

Looptopia Memories – In 2007 and 2008 a weekend arts festival in the Chicago Loop called Looptopia took place. At the time I was living in the Loop and decided to create a Web site about it, featuring photos and videos from the event. All of that content was uploaded to Flickr, with whom I have since deleted my account. Where I kept the Web site around for a few years I didn’t update it much. The last state of Looptopia Memories can be seen here.

sourcegate – As any good technician should I keep notes of code, services, procedures, etc. that I have used or think I would use at some point. And lots of them. Like any burgeoning collection of information, it needs to be managed to be effective. After several systems didn’t quite do the job I decided to try a public blog, where each item would be its own post. That way I would not only be curating the information but sharing it with the greater community. Eventually I decided to shutdown this additional blog as I wasn’t actually referencing much of the information I was posting. An early version of this tech tips blog can be seen here.

What’s interesting is the domain name I gave the site – sourcegate.com. I acquired the domain name several years after I worked for SourceGate Systems, a dot-com start-up in the Boston area. I had placed the name with a backorder domain name system and eventually the name was available and I was able to register it. At this point I have owned the domain name longer than the company was in existence, and certainly longer than the six months, five days I worked there.

psURL – This one isn’t as much a site demise as one reimagined. I decided to build my own short URL service, one where I could take a ginormous URL and have a short one that I could easily pass along in a message or even speak it for someone to easily remember and access. For example, https://psurl.com/mike links you to a longer URL for a PDF of my resume.

Using Flagship CMS as a base, I built my own system. As an addon I built the ability for a short URL to display a Web page with a text message on it. There were similar services out there like this that were inspired by the desire to workaround the then-120 character limit of a tweet on Twitter. Several years after I built this I found YOURLS an open source short URL application, and decided to move to that. Where I liked the Twitter workaround, I didn’t really use it much, and in its place I gained a system I didn’t have to maintain much at all.

dMorning – This is one that is out there, lost, wandering around the streets of northeast Wisconsin. After moving here a few years ago and not finding a tech/creative networking venue, I decided to create one, and called it dMorning. Well, I tried to at least. For some reason it never took off, and I tried twice to do so. The Web site is still out there in hopes that a third time is the charm. Though it will have to wait until in-person network resumes in general. What does the name mean you ask? Look at the dMorning site to find out.

Domain Names – Ah, domain names. I never kept a log of all of the domain names I no longer own. Most of them I simply dropped by not renewing them, and a few I sold off over the years. I would likely have to irritate my friends at Name.com for a history of all of the domain names I once registered with them. The fact that I don’t have that exhaustive list is probably a good thing, as I am guessing it would be rather long and a reminder of many, many more fleeting ideas.

Deconstructing My Project Graveyard

There’s a saying in business today to “fail fast” whereby we move on quickly from something that different work. Where I basically agree with this, we must also recognize the good and bad from these failings or things we simply decided to no longer do. Burying them in a project graveyard is a good way to acknowledge them, and move on to the next big thing.

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email

Business • Technology • (0) Comments • Permalink

Recently I got an alert on LinkedIn that someone viewed my profile. I knew who this person was as they were a connection. Well, I thought they were one, for when I looked at their profile we were no longer connected. My guess was they viewed my profile solely for the purpose to remove the connection between us, and yes, as you may guess there’s a long story here that I will purposely not share.

What this person didn’t realize, and many others do not as well, is that you can remove someone as a connection on the business social networking site without them even knowing it. It is not completely obvious that you can do so, however. As I have known about it for years and maybe even did it once or twice myself, I will share my stealth disconnect secret in the wide open here.

The Steps to Disconnect

Here’s the steps to remove a LinkedIn connection using a standard desktop/laptop Web browser.

1. Navigate to LinkedIn.com, select My Network in the top navigation bar, then under Manage my network click on Connections.

2. Search and scroll, but do not click – the key here is to not open someone’s profile, rather scroll to it in the list of connections. You can try entering a partial name to search, but do not click on their name. If you’re unsure, simply scroll to the bottom of your connections, which may take a while, then use Ctrl-F (on the PC) or Command-F (on the Mac) to find the name of the contact.

For this exercise, I chose my friend and long-time The Hot Iron reader Gary. Don’t worry, I won’t actually disconnect from you!

3. Click the ellipsis (the 3 dots) to the far right of their entry on the list, which will display the option to Remove connection, and click it.

4. You will be presented with a pop-up to confirm to Remove Connection. As the message says, they won’t know that you did. Click Remove to proceed, or Cancel if you don’t want to, as I did.

You will receive a confirmation message when complete, and your connection count will be one less.

To Remove or To Not Remove Connections

This is not the first time I talked about removing LinkedIn connections, as it first came up for me over 8 years ago in this post on how I removed them then. As you may guess, the functional process is much different now. But in re-reading this original post (and adding an editor’s note on its now-outdated content) the reasons for removing connection remain the same, both in what I stated as well as comments to the post. Nothing is forever, as I mentioned in that post, and it certainly holds today. Even the “wise man” who told me is someone I haven’t spoken to in years.

Deconstructing Removing LinkedIn Connections

Removing connections on any social network is a reality. However it’s good to know you have options on how to do it, especially if you don’t want the other person to know you have made a disconnect.

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email

Business • Strategize • Technology • (0) Comments • Permalink