Information about AgilePhilly

Policy Statements

• You/your organization can support this user group by
• Sponsoring food: We'll read out any announcement from your company for those sponsoring food.  For about $150, to cover pizza for one of our meetings, you and your events/products/openings are also listed in the Announcement Emails that go out twice a month.  Email for more information 
• Volunteering We encourage you to contact any Coordinator or Email us with comments, ideas, or other actions to help us in our mission.

Group Information

The Agile Philly User Group has been in existence since 2003-2004.  It's a very active user group and was approved as an official affiliate of the Scrum Alliance on April 23, 2014.  Agile Philly meetings are free and open to the public - and common sense Security procedures of our hosting companies require attendees to RSVP at our AgilePhilly event webpages - or notify us so we can notify the hosting company. Anyone can attend.  Meetings are held twice a month; 1) the second or third Tuesday of every month in the suburbs.  Meetings in Center City are sporatic.  

AgilePhilly embraces all aspects of Software Development using practices and frameworks such as Lean, Kanban,Scrum, and even Waterfall, with the proper amount of Testing, Team Building, and other areas included in our meetings.  The mission of the group is to helping it's members build better software.

Our members have identified themselves as being broadly distributed across the range of experience: ( April 2016)

15 % Expert

15 % Intermediate

15 % Novice

15 % Curious

40 % = 0 =  ( joined before question was added to enrollments in Nov 2012 )

This is a volunteer run, non-profit organization which aims to provide a community for individuals involved in agile software development.  This group aims to provide an environment where its members can exchange ideas and meet with individuals involved in agile community. The AgilePhilly listserv has all meeting announcements. Discussions throughout the month are encouraged at our AgilePhilly.Slack.com channel.

Our website crossposts events of other Technical User Groups and Vendor Events that we feel our members will appreciate learning about.  RSVP's for those other Meetups & events are done on their own websites.

Moderation Policy
To promote the flow of free information, we restrict advertisements for job offers, paid events, surveys, and commercial advertising--these may only appear on our Job Listings and Local Events and Announcements pages.
Moderators are in place not to guarantee high standards (which tend to be subjective) but to prevent low standards (which can usually be expressed more objectively). In that regard, posts should generally be let through unless they are clearly either:
1. Not relevant to the group
2. Not consistent with the publicly stated standards or guidelines for the group (listed above)

Find out More

• Read the AgilePhilly announcements and discussions at our Yahoo Group: AgilePhilly @at Yahoo Groups . com
• Join the discussions, our LinkedIn group, and this web site!
• Plans for coming months are discussed by AgilePhillyCoordinators@YahooGroups.com
• Get involved by volunteering to help organize the next event!
• Check out our @AgilePhilly twitter

Book Recommendations
Please follow the link for book recommendations

Professional Credits

Some professional accreditation groups recognize extra-curricular activities like AgilePhilly meetings as part of a lifelong pursuit of professional excellence. Continuing education units such as SEUs and PDUs can be satisfied by attending our meetings. ;The education units can be applied toward certifications with the appropriate organizations. Although we cannot provide these directly, we encourage our members to pursue these and other certification steps in their professional education.

AgilePhilly is a Scrum Alliance-endorsed user group(as of 4/23/2014). The Scrum Alliance is a membership organization that the widespread adoption and effective practice of Scrum. When you attend one of our events, you will earn SEUs toward your Scrum Alliance certifications. The number of SEUs will depend on the event and duration and can be managed/tracked in your Scrum Alliance dashboard. Members may submit those meetings or events in Category A on a 1 to 1 basis. That is, for each hour of participation, members may submit 1 SEU. You will need to provide enough information in the submission to show what you gained from the event or meeting as well as a description of the subject matter.

The Scrum Alliance typically wants SEUs to be the learning session or presentation time of the meeting, so 1 SEU for the meeting you describe is appropriate. They do value the time spent networking, but for SEU purposes, 1 SEU for the presentation would be considered.

If you are not yet a member of the Scrum Alliance, don't fret.  It just means that you won't be able to login to their site and use their member dashboard to track your SEUs, but there is no reason why you can't track them on your own. Keep them handy and add them when you become a Scrum Alliance member.

You can also get credit for volunteering or speaking at AgilePhilly. " Category D: Volunteer Service by speaking or coordinating sessions.  Credits may be earned by providing non-compensated, professional Scrum services. The Scrum Alliance is looking for ways that you give back to the community. Yes, you will be asked to affirm that your volunteer work was not compensated and was not for your employer, and you will need to  provide information on the application form.  Contact the coordinators for assistance for this.

PDUs are professional education units offered by the Project Management Institute (PMI).  Click here to view the different ways PDUs can be earned.  PDU's can be applied toward the PMI's Agile Certified practitioner certification.  We at AgilePhilly have chosen not to become an R.E.P. (Registered Education Provider) Program Developer for the PMI or other certifying agency, as this is not in our mission statement.  From the Project Mgmt Institute website: 

CATEGORY B for the P.M.I.

"....By attending relevant educational courses offered by training organizations  NOT registered with PMI (like AgilePhilly).  This may include training or a Webinar offered by  your employer, another professional or membership association, or a non  R.E.P. training organization.... "

Category B PDUs are self reported. 

The session is in general correlated in a way the PMI thinks is appropriate, and anyone can self report Class B PDUs for any session.

Example for maintenance for PMI-ACP continuing certification:

Category: Cat B: Continuing Education

Activity Title: 2014 Agile Philly Tour

Date Started: 06 Oct 2014

Date Completed: 06 Oct 2014

Hours: 4

URL: http://www.agilephilly.com/events/2014-agile-tour

PDUs Claimed: 2

General Information

http://www.pmi.org/globals/~/media/Files/PDF/Certification/PDU%20CategStructure_Final.ashx

Thanks to Greg Robinson, Paul Doyle, Carl Vogel, David Bulkin and Louise Griffith for their help in collecting this info.