Tribute to my Agile "guru"s

Guru (Sanskrit: गुरु. IAST: guru) is a Sanskrit (an Indian language) term that connotes someone who is a "teacher, guide, expert, or master" of certain knowledge or field. In pan-Indian traditions, guru is someone more than a teacher, traditionally a reverential figure to the student, with the guru serving as a "counselor, who helps mold values, shares experiential knowledge as much as literal knowledge, an exemplar in life, an inspirational source and who helps in the spiritual evolution of a student".

So why am I telling all this to you? My path in Agile transformations was filled with many challenges. It would not have been smooth if I did not get connected with such a Guru who was friend, philosopher, guide, mentor, counselor and coach to help mold agile values into me, to share his/her experiential knowledge as much as literal knowledge and to be an exemplar in life with an inspirational source.

I have came across many such Guru's and I want to pay a tribute to the most influential Guru's through this post. I want to sincerely thank each one of them for being part of my journey.

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Chad Holdorf

Chad was my first guru. Chad was the one who showed me the first step towards the agile ladder. He told me the basic of agile manifesto and principles. And that's all. He never told me how to implement these principles, neither he told me how to conduct sprint planning, demo and retro. It was weird feeling in the beginning. But later I understood that it was all part of coaching Agile. Agile itself works on an empirical process control. So I learned that he wanted me to do experiments and learn, rather than doing a spoon feeding for me. This helped me understand different frameworks like scrum. Thank you, Chad!

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Vibhu Srinivasan

Vibhu taught me scrum. He was my trainer in Certified Scrum Master class. He was the one who created solid foundation of scrum knowledge in my brain. He was the one who explained all the scrum rituals in a fun way. The training given by him included many table exercises which helped me to understand sprint planning, daily stand up, retro, story points, complexity, etc. I also learned from him on how to train somebody on agile-scrum. Thank you Vibhu!

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Ashish Dhoke

Ashish showed me project management side of Agile. Until I met Ashish, I knew only scrum and kanban. This was the first time I learnt other siblings of Agile like DSDM, Lean, etc. He conducted 3 days of training on PMI-ACP for me and I never felt tired in the class. I also learnt the value part of agile from Ashish like ROI, IRR, etc. Getting certified by PMI would not have been possible without Ashish's guidance. Thanks Ashish!

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Sachin Dhaygude

Sachin was (and is) a friend, philosopher and guide in my agile journey. He coached me on coaching skills. Sachin was the one from whom I was able to clear my thoughts around story point and relative estimation. He taught me soft skills as well which come handy while coaching anyone on Agile. His skill/art of explaining any difficult topic in a simple way amazes me always. I was able to put forward some of my ideas during his training, which I was not able to implement before, but after the training it was so easy to implement. Thanks Sachin!

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Vineet Patni

Vineet is always looked at as an Agile evangelist. He coached me on ICP-ACC certification. His training was the most interactive training I had ever had. Vineet created the most brain damage during training. Vineet helped me to come out of project manager role and mold into an agile coach role. He used several real world examples to explain Agile principles and Agile mindset. I was able to relate with the human part of Agile. Thank you Vineet!

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There are many more "guru"s to come. I will keep this blog post updated.