Those who are active in social media know that Twitter is not just about sharing what you had for breakfast. By following experts in your field, you are exposed to a priceless library of knowledge and access to the minds of the greatest industry thought leaders.
LinkedIn, Facebook, and other, niche-specific social media sites provide alternative ways to connect, but Twitter is perhaps the only social media site that allows you to follow without approval or a reciprocal follow-back. This means easy access to the minds of the rich and famous. Or at least the influential.
Though Scrum experts may not bring in the sorts of crowds that Ashton Kutcher and Lady Gaga attract, if you want to increase your knowledge of Scrum, you’ll want to follow the renowned Scrum authors, speakers, and trainers I've identified in this article. My list includes both people and organizations, all of them specializing in Scrum training and knowledge. Why follow organizations, you ask? Though connecting with people might be the first step toward forming a personal relationship, the tweets posted under organizational handles are also useful, and they will lead you to other Scrum enthusiasts and networks.
Scrum experts and orgs to follow
This list is focused on those that tweet primarily about the Scrum methodology, but of course Scrum concepts are used in other agile methodologies and many of these pundits actively share agile knowledge beyond Scrum boundaries. As you follow these leaders, your proficiency of Scrum and agility will expand and, before you know it, it will be your own tweets that are going viral. Each entry below includes a sample tweet.
Ken Rubin
Ken Rubin is author of Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process. He is the principle consultant at Innolution, where he provides consulting and training services to technical and senior executive teams. His tweets include an “Agile glossary term of the day,” with a link to a blog post in which he provides a definition and some context.
Mitch Lacey
Mitch Lacey, author of The Scrum Field Guide, recently released the second edition of that popular book. Lacey is a coach, consultant, and trainer, and his upcoming classes can be found on mitchlacey.com. He has been conference chair for the Agile Alliance's Agile 2014 and Agile 2012. His tweets include links to relevant Scrum courses and articles.
Ilan Goldstein
Ilan Goldstein is a Scrum trainer, blogger, and author; the owner of AxisAgile and the founder of Scrum Australia. Goldstein, like Lacey and Rubin, is also an author of a "Mike Cohn Agile Signature Series" book, titled Scrum Shortcuts Without Cutting Corners. Goldstein retweets news from other pundits along with passing his own gems from his blog, such as this “Part 10” of his Scrum Myth-Buster Series.
Geoff Watts
Geoff Watts is the founder of Inspect and Adapt, a leadership, Scrum, and agile training company based in Cheltenham, England. Besides authoring Scrum Mastery: From Good to Great Servant-Leadership and The Coach’s Casebook: Mastering the Twelve Traits that Trap Us, Watts’ accomplishments include speaking at TEDx and creating Scrum Coaching Cards.
Ken Schwaber - @kschwaber
Ken Schwaber is the co-creator of Scrum and founder of Scrum.org, a community site that offers tools and resources to Scrum practitioners. Though Schwaber himself is following only 55 people on Twitter, he has a large following of over 20,700 and obviously has a strong influence in the Scrum community. His tweets are relatively few and typically point to his blog, which he says “may be edgy, full of unproven opinions, sometimes unsubstantiated and critical.”
Jeff Sutherland
Jeff Sutherland is the second co-creator of Scrum and founder of Scrum Inc., another site with resources for those who want to improve their knowledge of Scrum. Sutherland tweets more often than Schwaber, passing along information about upcoming Scrum-related webinars and blog posts, with an occasional personal tweet or photo.
Dan Tousignant
Dan Tousignant, or “ScrumDan,” is an agile coach and trainer at AgileProjectManagementTraining.com. Though Tousignant’s company offers Scrum-based courses, such as Scrum Master Certification Training and Advanced Scrum Master and Agile Coaching Training, there are also courses in Kanban and PMI-ACP certification preparation, among other things. Tousignant tweets often and has a following of close to 50,000. His tweets, like his courses, are not limited to the Scrum framework, but include advice and information about agile project management, agile testing, and agile leadership.
Mike Cohn
No list of Scrum influencers would be complete without including one of the most popular leaders in the Scrum community, Mike Cohn. Cohn is the author of three books, including Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum, and was a founding member of both the Agile Alliance and the Scrum Alliance. He founded Mountain Goat Software, which offers training and consulting services. Cohn tweets often, passing along learning opportunities and links to helpful articles for those interested in learning more about Scrum and agile practices.
Kane Mar
Kane Mar is a certified Scrum trainer, organizational agility coach, and co-founder and principle consultant for Scrumology, a consultancy, specializing in — you guessed it — Scrum training, coaching, team mentoring, and consulting. Mar studied and worked alongside Ken Schwaber and was one of the first accredited Scrum trainers worldwide. He, too, promotes helpful links, along with the occasional geek joke.
Michele Sliger
Michele Sliger is another certified Scrum trainer, agile coach, trainer, and consultant, and the owner of sligerconsulting.com. She is a co-author of The Software Project Manager’s Bridge to Agility, and her passion is helping traditional teams cross the bridge to agile practices. With close to 12,000 tweets in her history, Sliger is quite an active Twitter user, though her tweets are not all about agile and Scrum. She actively retweets other posts from her network, as well as personal tweets. If you want to see a more personal side, Sliger’s someone to follow.
Roman Pichler
Roman Pichler specializes in Scrum product management. Another certified Scrum trainer, he’s also the author of Agile Product Management and Scrum; writes a blog for product owners and product managers, allthingsproductowner.com; and is the author of several product management tools, including the Vision Board, the GO Product Roadmap, and the Product Canvas.
Peter Saddington
Peter Saddington is a certified Scrum trainer and an organizational scientist. He writes for AgileScout.com and is the author of The Pocket Agile Guide, published in 2012. He currently works for Agile For All, an agile training organization. His tweets often go beyond Scrum and frequently include photos of agile teams in action.
Scrum Alliance
Though organizations don't push out the sorts of personal tweets you might get from authors, it’s worth following organizations related to Scrum, such as the Scrum Alliance, on Twitter. Not only will the Scrum Alliance tweets provide information about what’s happening at the Scrum Alliance, but the Scrum and Agile Coaches public list provides you with a list of 35 Twitter handles of Scrum and agile coaches around the world.
Scrum.org
No, Ken Schwaber himself does not spend a lot of time on Twitter, but his organization, Scrum.org, has its own Twitter account and is quite active. Tweets include blog posts, articles, retweets, and news about what’s happening in the Scrum community.
Scruminc
Scruminc, Jeff Sutherland’s company, also has its own Twitter account, which is used to promote events, activities, blog posts, and training. Because Sutherland Tweets quite a bit himself, in many cases you’ll find the same posts from both him and Scruminc (though one nice thing about Twitter is that the posts are short enough that redundant posts are typically not an issue).
Master Scrum
Master Scrum provides job opportunities for those who have Scrum or agile skills. Though tweets are primarily related to recruiting, there is also a Facebook page that includes articles that might help those who are searching for jobs in the field.
Scrum Expert
ScrumExpert passes along links from a dot-com site of the same name. Scrumexpert.com is a news site that includes links to an abundance of articles, blog posts, books, podcasts, quotes, videos, and news stories. There’s also information about agile and Scrum conferences being held throughout the world.
3Back
The 3Back Team is a group of 11 senior Scrum coaches. You might want to follow each individually to get more insights into their personalities. Their site offers a variety of training opportunities and a Scrum recommended reading list.
If you ink we missed any crucial Scrum experts in this list, please add to it by linking to them in the comments below. Be sure to check out TechBeacon's many other Twitter lists as well!
Image credit: Flickr
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