Montana Code School (MTCS) is a community project that has deliberately used philosophy, ideas, practices, and patterns from the Agile community to teach new programmers to code since it was founded in 2015. This experience report tells its story, of how the local business and entrepreneurial community requested it during an agile meeting process, and how volunteers and non-profits got it launched with support from the University of Montana. MTCS teaches new programmers mostly through immersion in group projects with frequent community interaction that includes visits and presentations from the developers and business leaders in the community, and demonstrations of student project offered to the public. Scrum, TDD, and Mob Programming are some of the most powerful of the agile practices used in classes, though there are many more. As of Spring 2017 MTCS has completed 6 cohorts in two locations and in Montana with three more in progress (both full time and part time). This report will share some of the challenges and benefits in adopting agile techniques, and offer some insights for general education and how this teaching effort helped evolve the author’s understanding of agile coaching and enhanced the power and impact of his own consulting practice.
Large organizations and enterprises always talk about "operating in a lean-startup" like fashion. Do you ever wonder how does a lean-startup operate? What does it take to make a lean start up successful? How do we bring Lean-Agile principles to build…
