A New Appointment Means New Agile Training Options

This time last year, I’d just finished teaching one of my last in-person classes for the year.

Of course, at the time I didn’t know it would be one of my last.

Back then I couldn’t have predicted the changes we’d see in 2020 or the changes we’d make at Mountain Goat Software.

I’ve been constantly impressed at people’s ability to adapt. I don’t just mean everyone here who helped us move to live, online classes. I also mean our customers—people who have put their trust in us to learn in a new format.

It’s no small thing. I know plenty of people didn’t know what to expect from a two-day course taught via Zoom. But the team and our trainers have worked hard to make the sessions interactive, engaging, fun, and informative.

Everyone has worked hard, and as a result we’ve been able to train more than 1,700 people online.

And Now We Have Another New and Exciting Change

My goal has always been to help as many agile teams as possible go from good to great. Last year we added five handpicked trainers to our course schedule so that we could offer more classes to more people.

And now we’re adapting again so that we can offer even more training opportunities.

Starting February 1, Brian Milner will be joining the Mountain Goat Software team full time as Senior Vice President of Training and Coaching.

You may know Brian—he’s already one of our trainers. You may have seen the Ask Us Anything Session we did together on Facebook, which was a lot of fun. I’m hoping we can do more of those sessions in the future to answer your questions.

We’ll Be Expanding Our Offering of Training Options

I’m thrilled to have Brian as a permanent member of the team because he’s going to help us expand our training options with new content that meets the high standards of our audience and customers. This means that:

• We’re going to be more available for private courses and mentoring—something that wasn’t possible when I was on the road so often.
• We can expand our offering of courses. Brian is already looking to develop an Advanced CSM course (you can register your interest for it here).
• Brian and I have already brainstormed a list of 80 courses we think the agile world needs, and we’re going to get to work on them together.

Meet Brian Milner

Brian Milner is a Certified Scrum Trainer who brings over 20 years of software development experience to his classes. Over half that time, he’s been working exclusively with organizations transitioning to agile practices.

Beginning as a developer, Brian worked up through management layers and eventually transitioned to life as a Scrum Master and then as a Coach. Having been in both waterfall and agile organizations, Brian brings the practical experience of having seen what works and what doesn’t in the real world.

Brian has deep understanding of the Scrum Master role, having been one for many years and worked with them in multiple organizations.

I’m excited to make this announcement and I look forward to developing even more classes, resources, and training opportunities to help even more teams succeed with agile.

Please join me in welcoming Brian to the Mountain Goat Team.