At the end of 2012, we declared that 2013 would be “The Year of Innovation” here at ITSM Academy. And I’m proud to say it was!

This year, we’ve concentrated on 2 large projects.
1. my.itsmacademy.com – our Learner Portal
2. GAME ON! An Interactive Learning Experience

As I wrote about a few weeks back, part of the reason we were able to accomplish standing up both of these in a single years was by attaining our Certified ScrumMaster certs along the way. We have morphed from a standard Waterfall project methodology, using Agile instead. That wasn’t an easy transition.

Focusing on Shippable Products and running in 2 week sprints has been great. This has really helped us with prioritization. In an organization our size, self organizing teams makes sense, but appointing 3 individuals to be Scrum Master, Product Owner and then Team Members, isn’t always realistic. So we’ve taken the best of what we learned from Scrum, and have adapted to fit our needs.

An exciting by-product of this, is that it really helped us focus on our next Line Of Training – Agile ITSM.  We have 4 new classes which we are adding early 2014:

• DevOps Overview – 4 hour virtual class, introducing concepts of DevOps. January 24 and February 28 (with many more options to come), virtual classroom.
• DevOps Fundamentals – 2 day certification course, this course provides attendees the ability to formulate a high-level strategy and action plan for adopting DevOps in their organization.  April 7-10, virtual classroom.
• Certified ScrumMaster – 2 day certification course, which we are delivering in partnership with a leading Rep of the Scrum Alliance.  March 17-18 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
• Agile Service Management: Applying Scrum to Process Design – 5 hour virtual class. Coming soon.

So, with our 10th anniversary behind us (how is THAT possible?  Oh, Jayne Groll wrote a great blog about our first ten years…) we continue to grow, morph and change.  Which I’ll be honest, is something we are proud of 😉

Until your next trip to LisaLand…Happy Innovating!