Agile and Scrum are becoming standard hiring requirements... which presents the dilemma of you have to have experience to get experience. Agile and Scrum are really, really hard to understand from a book, website, or online resource. You have to be on a team that does it this way with real, live people you can talk to and collaborate with to learn how to do it. But if your company isn't running this process and you can't apply what you learn in a real world scenario, how do you learn Agile and Scrum?

Agile and Scrum are industrial business process improvements for software development. All “business process improvements” help companies 1) spend less time and money on efforts that do not help the company progress daily towards the ultimate goal set by leadership, and 2) free up resources to take advantage of unique opportunities in the market as they arise.

There are many definitions of what Agile and Scrum are. Here is the "man on the street" explanation:

  • Agile software development is STRATEGY... in the form of a “zen” design philosophy that helps software development teams break down big goals and complex processes to their smallest part… which is “doable”
  • Scrum project management is LEADERSHIP... a discipline that teaches you how to take that breakdown and move the team forward every day

To put things in perspective... Agile means something to about 5% of the US business community. Scrum doesn't mean anything to 98% of the US population. By placing Agile and Scrum in their proper context, strategy and leadership, we are more effective.