On March 18th, the body of a curvier beaked whale was retrieved from Davao Bay in the Philippines . The cause of death - starvation and dehydration as a result of ingesting ninety pounds of nylon rope, plastic bags, and other plastic objects found stuffed in the animal’s stomach! A month later and a half a world away, a pregnant sperm whale was found dead off the coast of Sardinia . In this poor animal, marine biologist retrieved nearly fifty pounds of routine plastic products - fishing nets, fishing lines, flip flops and plastic bag, pipes, plates and drinking cups! "These tragic stories are not isolated or freak occurrences but a series of troubling statistics that point towards growing global problem - our oceans are becoming clogged with plastic detritus and debris." said Carlton Nettleton , Chief Product Owner at Applied Frameworks . "Something needs to be done about this complex global problem because the status quo is untenable. If we do nothing, and continue along our current (mis)use of plastic, the oceans are going to become a plastic soup ." Since 1997, when the Great Pacific Garbage Patch was first discovered in the North Pacific gyre, our awareness of the amount of plastic clogging our oceans, and its impact to marine life, has grown. Here are some data points meant to shock you about the severity of the problem: 8,000,000 metric tons of plastic is dumped into the ocean every year, that is the equivalent of one dump truck stuffed full of plastic being dropped into the ocean every minute. Today, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is nearly three times the size of Texas. In the last twenty years, four other garbage gyres have been discovered increasing the amount of the ocean’s surface covered with plastic trash equivalent to the land area of the continental United States. Over 700 species of marine animals have been documented to consume ocean plastic - 90% of all sea birds, 50% of sea turtles and approximately 10% of whales and dolphins have all ingested plastic. If you have eaten seafood recently, chances are you ate plastic. More then 50% of the plastic junk in the ocean today has been deposited there within the last twenty years. Yet, our efforts to recycle this garbage remains less than 10%. It is estimated that by 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish! "When Carlton shared the impact of this problem with me, I knew we had a unique opportunity to help others see what we were seeing." said Jason Tanner , CEO of Applied Frameworks . "Over the course of the next three days at Scrum Gathering Austin , we are going to use our expertise with frameworks to help raise awareness of this problem, explore why we do not do more to resolve this challenge and inspire action. Based on the the guidance provided by the conference attendees, Applied Frameworks is going to make a charitable donation to a non-profit dedicated to helping clean-up the oceans." Come visit us at Booth #600 to learn more about this problem, share your perspective, commit to making a change in your use of plastic and inspire others to change their behaviors. Each day, we will be exploring a different elements related to the problem of an ocean of plastic to gain deeper understanding of why this challenge is so hard to resolve. May 20th - What Lies Beneath: in order to understand any complex problem, it is important to explore the issue from a variety of perspectives. Help us go below the surface to identify the various factors which contribute to the accumulation of plastic trash in the ocean. May 21st - Pains-Gains Map : to devise a lasting fix to a complex problem requires a deep understanding of the aspirations and fears of the human actors. Take time to explore the lives of plastic consumers, i.e. ourselves, by identifying what benefits and pains we could experience if we use less single-use plastic. May 22nd - Buy A Feature : there are number of interesting proposals that address the plastic contamination of the oceans from the mundane, banning straws, to the high-tech, deploying autonomous garbage drones. Help us identify which of these solutions are most appealing to you, and we will make a charitable donation to help rescue the oceans. If you cannot make it to Scrum Gathering Austin, we will be scheduling a few on-line forums to allow you the chance to participate in this project and help understand why this problem is not getting resolved. In the meantime, learn more about this problem, recycle the existing plastic found in your home, think of ways to reduce your use of plastic and share your direct action.

News Archives | Applied Frameworks

Applied Frameworks Grows – How WE Can Be Better Together

By Jason Tanner|2020-01-21T17:39:23-05:00December 16th, 2019|News|

Five years ago, Carlton Nettleton and I began collaborating to develop advanced training for ScrumMasters and Product Owners. Our work culminated in CSP Fast Pass, the first and only online, on-demand option for pursuing the Certified Scrum Professional designation. This year, we realized the need to integrate CSP Fast Pass into ...
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Oceans of Plastics – Scrum Gathering Austin Report

By Joel Bancroft-Connors|2019-12-23T03:29:55-05:00June 6th, 2019|Frameworks, News|

At the 2019 Global Scrum Gathering Applied Frameworks introduced attendee to our Oceans of Plastics problem. The principle behind using frameworks at the Scrum Gathering was to apply the unique skills and knowledge we possess to solve challenging social problems. At the conference we engaged with hundreds of participants to ...
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Applied Frameworks @ Scrum Gathering Austin

By Carlton Nettleton|2019-12-24T05:21:32-05:00May 31st, 2019|News|

At Scrum Gathering Austin, our team engaged with the conference attendees to raise awareness around the issue of Oceans of Plastic and demonstrated the power of using frameworks to solve social problems. Each day we used a different framework to guide the conference attendees along a journey that began with ...
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An Ocean of Plastic

By Carlton Nettleton|2019-12-11T21:25:53-05:00May 19th, 2019|News|

On March 18th, the body of a curvier beaked whale was retrieved from Davao Bay in the Philippines. The cause of death - starvation and dehydration as a result of ingesting ninety pounds of nylon rope, plastic bags, and other plastic objects found stuffed in the animal’s stomach! A month ...
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We Need 10000 Agile Coaches!

By Jason Tanner|2019-11-19T11:40:54-05:00December 11th, 2016|News|

As of today [2016], the Scrum Alliance identifies 322,157 people as Certified ScrumMasters (CSM). You can find 66,813 people identified as Certified Scrum Product Owners (CSPO), and a number of people have both certifications. Although the anemic number of Product Owners relative to ScrumMasters raises some questions, the more serious ...
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Complete Your Agile Coaching Journey in a Group

By Jason Tanner|2019-11-07T10:50:35-05:00December 2nd, 2016|News|

In the 1996, I attended the Amphibious Warfare School with about 300 other Marine officers to complete a one-year program to prepare us for the next level of our careers. One of the most valuable elements of that experience was the study group. Led by an instructor, our small group ...
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Online Scrum Training – The Inspiration for our Programs

By Carlton Nettleton|2019-11-24T07:02:05-05:00December 3rd, 2015|News|

Our Online Training programs will help protect your career from costly mistakes. I wish I had something like our programs that could have guided me from being an idealistic, brash and inexperienced practitioner to a pragmatic, respectful and successful Agile leader. Instead, I was just one guy who read some ...
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What A CEO Truly Thinks About Agile – Piyush Gupta’s Perspective

By Jason Tanner|2019-11-19T11:48:28-05:00December 3rd, 2015|News, Process|

I recently attended and spoke at the inaugural internal Agile conference by DBS Bank in Singapore, which to my surprise opened with comments by the CEO Piyush Gupta. The term “comments’’ fails to describe Piyush’s exceptional articulation of how Agile connects to the bank’s strategy. He covered three major topics ...
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Meetings as Dialogues: The Seven Types of Meetings

By Carlton Nettleton|2019-11-12T11:24:04-05:00September 4th, 2015|News|

Meetings are such a disaster! There are so many things wrong with meetings today from the frequency of meetings to number of participants to a complete lack of purpose to horrible facilitation, that I do not know where to begin. IMO, the biggest problem with most meetings is that people have forgotten ...
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Growth Path for Product Managers

By Jason Tanner|2019-12-23T04:08:20-05:00March 27th, 2015|News|

In the last two Certified Scrum Product Owner courses that I taught, people have asked, “What’s next?” A beautiful question indeed. My answer included a path to Certified Scrum Professional that Carlton Nettleton and I have developed, a series of advanced courses that Applied Frameworks offers, and the Scaled Agile ...
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