About Us
Rick Waters
CST, CAL 1, CSP-SM, CSM,
A-CSM, CSPO, CSP-PO, CSD,
ICP-ACC, PARP, PSM II, CESI
CESI, CBAC, CSSC, CLP,CAMS,
CAT, KMP II, DRiV
Founded by Rick Waters, Wisecrum started as a tounge-in-cheek website that grew into a practice of professional Agile Coaching and Training. Rick’s original motivation for a satirical book on Troubleshooting Scrum evolved into a significant part of this very website. The book was initially pitched as a vacuum cleaner owner’s manual look-alike. The ‘manual’ would call attention to the prevalent view of Scrum as a product that can be bought, sold, and fixed with one-liner recommendations. Ridiculous, right? Well, that’s what Rick’s experience in the industry of Agile Coaching had proven over the recent years.
When Rick was awarded the mantle of Certified Scrum Trainer, by the Scrum Alliance (in all of their wisdom, or folly), Rick decided to literally push Troubleshooting Scrum to the side and open Wisecrum (sometimes pronounced ‘Why Scrum?’) as an Agile Coaching and Training consultancy, as Wisecrum Associates.
Rick’s background in software engineering gives him the ability to empathize with developers, testers and business analysts caught up in the dysfunctional dynamics of organizations not sure of how to ‘go Agile’, and coach them to success. Rick’s experience with the Boy Scouts of America, the US Army, and his interest in team psychology, gives him a perspective rarely seen in the industry that is heavily focused on the success of engineering goals – Rick firmly believes that any claimed success, without a focus on, or attribution to, the welfare of the people directly involved (development teams) is merely a smokescreen, or success by chance.
Rick’s focus, while coaching teams, is on the health of the teams’ dynamics, and the welfare of the individuals on those teams. Without this strength in team foundation, the success of anything the team delivers is not guaranteed in any way.
Marcelo has worn the PO and SM hats interchangeably for the needs of his employers. He has even put it on with his kids when they needed it (that’s an experience).
Marcelo authored, and is currently one of the co-authors of, the original Spanish language translation of the Scrum Guide on https://www.scrum.org/Scrum-Guide. The first non-English languge version of the guide! Check out “Scrum en Breve“, my Spanish language version of “Scrum in a Nutshell”, an excerpt from “Exploring Scrum: The Fundamentals” by Dan Rawsthorne and Doug Shimp. Marcelo has also worked on the translation of “Exploring Scrum: The Fundamentals” to Spanish.
Find Marcelo on the Scrum Alliance website, or the Scrum Practitioners group on LinkedIn. He’s pretty active there.
Marcelo R. Lopez, Jr.
CST, S@ST, CSP, CSM, A-CSM,
CSPO, AKT, LST, DRiV
Matt Beam
S@SP, SPC4
With over 17 years of experience in the software development industry, Matt has seen some stuff, let me tell you. Some of it may even be useful to you in your journey as well.
In various roles including Technical Writer, Product Owner, Business Analyst, Scrum Master, and Agile Coach, Matt has worked with teams using approaches like Scrum, Extreme Programming, Kanban, and Scaled Agile Framework. This has given him a deep background in the theory behind Agile ways of working, as well as the advantages and challenges of the associated practices. Matt’s focus is a synthesis of systems thinking and the human factors that commonly slow teams down.
In addition to his coaching, consulting, and training work, Matt co-hosts the Here’s This Agile Thing podcast with Mike Marchi and Jeff Singleton.
Nash Tripathi is a born Agilist. Nash has been practicing one form of Agility or another since childhood.
Nash has trained hundreds of professionals in how to train ‘From the Back of the Room’. He’s been training other professionals from early in his own professional career.
Nash is working with Wisecrum and Scrum.Vet to offer Certified ScrumMaster (CSM)® and Jira classes with Rick and Marcelo, while he works toward his next career goal of becoming a Certified Scrum Trainer.
Nash Tripathi
CSP, TBR-T