Paul Dolman Darrall is Chief Examiner for the BCS Agile Practitioner exam. Helen Walton and Dan Rough write the scenarios and questions for the BCS exam and also act as co-examiners. Every BCS exam script is marked by two of us (one lead marker and one moderator to make sure the other is not being too cruel or too kind).
Having marked the BCS Agile Practitioner exam scripts for over a year, we have become aware of several common issues amongst candidates who fail, as well as common points between those who do well and gain distinctions. Although we have provided general guidance and feedback to the BCS to help candidates, we decided that a more detailed guide would prove helpful – especially to those who have not sat an exam in several years!
The three authors are well known in Agile circles.
Paul was an early adopter of Agile and Kanban, having studied with Ken Schwaber, Don Reinertsen and worked with many leading Agile names. He has written widely on Agile at the executive level, as part of organisation-wide transformation, consulting with numerous large FTSE100 and Fortune 500 companies as well as UK Gov. He has often presented at the Agile Alliance Conference, discussing the failures and challenges to Agile. He has won a UK Agile Award for leading the Best Agile team, covering a department of 150 people.
Dan Rough was an early proponent of XP, running several networks and study groups that spread the method’s popularity in the UK – especially within the BBC. He is a vocal member of the Agile and XP community and his experience report on the shock therapy implementation of Scrum, following Jeff Sutherland’s work, was particularly acclaimed. He went on to pioneer the shift to Scrumban within organisations. He has a great deal of experience in introducing different Agile methods to leading organisations, both as an in-house department head and latterly as a consultant.
Helen Walton is a writer, speaker and journalist who has written for InfoQ, IT Today and many journals and online magazines. She has worked with numerous leading consultancies and companies, studying their transformations to offer case studies and white papers on topics such as Legacy, Engineering Rigour, Innovation, Network Structures and Organisation-wide change.
She presents at various conferences, including Culturevist, Spark the Change and Q-Con.
The three first met as part of the original VFQ team at Emergn, where Paul Dolman Darrall was General Editor; Dan Rough, Chief Researcher, and Helen Walton, the Writer. The team expanded and shifted over the years to include many other researchers, editors, reviewers and experts who contributed their time, knowledge and insights to make up the finished course.
Gluttons for punishment, the three of them now run an employee-owned tech start-up, Gamevy, and organise a conference on radical management ideas, Spark the Change.
Having marked the BCS Agile Practitioner exam scripts for over a year, we have become aware of several common issues amongst candidates who fail, as well as common points between those who do well and gain distinctions. Although we have provided general guidance and feedback to the BCS to help candidates, we decided that a more detailed guide would prove helpful – especially to those who have not sat an exam in several years!
The three authors are well known in Agile circles.
Paul was an early adopter of Agile and Kanban, having studied with Ken Schwaber, Don Reinertsen and worked with many leading Agile names. He has written widely on Agile at the executive level, as part of organisation-wide transformation, consulting with numerous large FTSE100 and Fortune 500 companies as well as UK Gov. He has often presented at the Agile Alliance Conference, discussing the failures and challenges to Agile. He has won a UK Agile Award for leading the Best Agile team, covering a department of 150 people.
Dan Rough was an early proponent of XP, running several networks and study groups that spread the method’s popularity in the UK – especially within the BBC. He is a vocal member of the Agile and XP community and his experience report on the shock therapy implementation of Scrum, following Jeff Sutherland’s work, was particularly acclaimed. He went on to pioneer the shift to Scrumban within organisations. He has a great deal of experience in introducing different Agile methods to leading organisations, both as an in-house department head and latterly as a consultant.
Helen Walton is a writer, speaker and journalist who has written for InfoQ, IT Today and many journals and online magazines. She has worked with numerous leading consultancies and companies, studying their transformations to offer case studies and white papers on topics such as Legacy, Engineering Rigour, Innovation, Network Structures and Organisation-wide change.
She presents at various conferences, including Culturevist, Spark the Change and Q-Con.
The three first met as part of the original VFQ team at Emergn, where Paul Dolman Darrall was General Editor; Dan Rough, Chief Researcher, and Helen Walton, the Writer. The team expanded and shifted over the years to include many other researchers, editors, reviewers and experts who contributed their time, knowledge and insights to make up the finished course.
Gluttons for punishment, the three of them now run an employee-owned tech start-up, Gamevy, and organise a conference on radical management ideas, Spark the Change.
