Course Description
In this Agile Project Management training course, you will learn how to:
- Embrace a model of continuous planning over simply following a plan
- Transform your Agile project management style from "command and control" to "empower and inspire" with your team
- Create a cadence for the team and eliminate process distractions for a dramatic boost in efficiency
- Establish credible and achievable estimates using Agile project management estimating techniques
- Communicate more transparently and reduce interruptions to your team
- Rapidly build trust with your customers through frequent and effective collaboration
Immediate Benefits of Participating in this Agile Project Management Workshop:
- Understand Agile project management principles and practices that will transform team performance and improve customer satisfaction
- Acquire valuable insights into how you can "empower and inspire" your Agile team
- Gain insight on how to establish transparency in communication inside the team as well as with customers
- Learn how to develop teams into high-performance, Agile teams; they will deliver amazing results for customers!
- Through hands-on practice, gain powerful Agile project management skills using Agile estimating techniques that will allow you to derive estimates quickly and more accurately
- Uncover the mystery of how the Agile team can be more accurate by being less precise
- Combine best methods from multiple Agile project management methodologies to apply to your Agile team
- Appreciate why knowing and collaborating with your customer will ALWAYS produce better results
- Build trust with your Agile team and your customer through consistent cadence of "common sense" best practices
- Establish a plan for incorporating Agile project management practices into your specific work area
- Recognize and avoid the pitfalls teams fall into when adopting Agile project managment practices
- Gain powerful insights, techniques and skills to successfully coach a new or existing Agile team
- Learn how to establish and communicate appropriate expectations for your Agile team, including roles, responsibilities and accountability
- React to and respond to change quickly and effectively in order to seize competitive advantage for your customer
- Understand and practice a model of continuous planning
- Gain and maintain trust between your Agile development team and your customer through a highly transparent prioritization practice
- Convert prioritization of requirements from a point solution to a continuously evolving part of the Agile development process
- Learn why studies have shown Agile teams are significantly happier with their work – make this a reality for YOUR team
Why Agile?
The top four reasons teams are moving toward Agile project management:
- The ability to manage rapidly changing priorities
- Increased productivity of the team
- Enhanced quality of the product
- Accelerated time-to-market
Join the many teams that have realized these and many other benefits through adopting Agile project management methods.
Improve Your Professional Skills — A Key Ingredient to Agile project management Success
Today's teams require vastly different leadership and management skills for Project Managers to truly achieve success. You can't simply tell everyone what to do. Instead, you need to be a strong coach, a change agent, and a very effective communicator.
Agile Project Management and PMI
Agile is no longer a grassroots movement to change software development. PMI is embracing Agile project management, recognizing the significant positive impact it has had on delivering better results for customers.
Active Learning
This Agile Project Management course is a stimulating combination of class interaction, active learning exercises, and group collaboration. Each is designed to allow you to learn through practice so you can readily apply what you have learned in your own workplace right away.
Cutting Edge Ideas:
This Agile project managment workshop is based on leading edge tools and techniques from some of the principles of the Agile revolution. We'll explore concepts from:
- Agile Estimation & Planning - Cohn
- Agile Project Management - Highsmith
- Extreme Programming - Beck
- Lean Software Development - Poppendieck
- Agile Retrospectives - Derby & Larsen
- The Software Project Manager's Bridge to Agility - Sliger & Broderick
Every instructor has been "in the trenches" as an Agile Project Manager with Agile teams and will bring their experience to bear in delivering the class.
In-Class Practice Session Overview
This Agile Project Management training course is a stimulating combination of class interaction, case studies, group exercises and workshops. Each is designed to allow you to easily grasp new Agile project management concepts and techniques.Specifically, you will cover:
- Understanding the enormous gains available by empowering Agile teams
- Reaching a common understanding of your customer and their needs
- Utilizing Planning Poker with Story Points to become a more accurate estimator
- Tangible effective methods of team based planning
- Creating transparent communication among and with customers
- Tips and techniques for Agile Project Managers to inspire the team to better performance
- Prioritizing methods that will help the team build trust with customers
- Connecting all five levels of planning to create cadence for the team
- Establishing a roadmap for what you would like to apply to your Agile team and how success with Agile project management can be achieved
Substitution & Cancellation Policy:
You may cancel or reschedule up to 21 days prior to the start date of the class at no penalty. For any cancellation or reschedule requests within 21 days, the full course tuition is still due and not eligible for refund. Any paid tuition will be credited towards a future class and must be used within 12 months.
*Partner delivered courses may be subject to different cancellation terms
Agenda
Section I: Understanding Agile
More than simply a methodology or approach to software development, Agile embraces a set of principles that drive effective software development. Agile focuses on the customer, embraces the ever changing nature of business environments and encourages human interaction in delivering outstanding software. In the introduction to this Agile PM training course, we'll discuss the following:
- What is Agile?
- Why Agile?
- Agile Manifesto
- Agile Principles
- Agile Methodologies
- Agile Benefits
Section II: Forming the Agile Team
Agile Teams embrace cross-functional collaboration and understand that the individual succeeds only when the team succeeds. In this section we discuss how to form the Agile Team, including:
- Team Roles and Responsibilities
- Expectations
- Self Organization
- Communication
Section llI: The Agile Coach
Agile Project Managers use a combination of skills and techniques to manage and coach their Agile teams to success. The Agile PM is most interested in discovering what actual problems need to be solved and then do whatever it takes to allow the team to move forward. In this section we cover:
- Role of the Agile PM or Agile Coach
- Agile Project Management
- Tips for working with Agile Teams
- Communication
Section IV: Agile Planning
The Agile framework embraces a methodical process of planning that goes into 5 levels of detail. Rather than prematurely fixating on details of ever-changing requirements, Agile planning helps us focus on the right level of detail for the right priorities at the appropriate time. In this section we'll cover the following:
- Project Planning
- 5 Levels of Planning
- Product Vision
Class Exercise
Working in small teams, you will "design the box" in order to establish a vision for a sample project. You may choose to utilize a project from your work as well. You will participate in identifying key selling points, features, operating requirements, etc.
Section V: Focus on the Customer
It is critical that the customer be the focus of a product throughout the development lifecycle. Every requirement should bring some value to the customer. Therefore, prior to defining requirements, it is important to define the customer. This will include the following topics:
- Customer Involvement
- User Roles
- Creating and Using Personas
- Constraints
Class Exercise
Within your teams you will brainstorm some customer roles for your Agile project. From the brainstorming, you will consolidate the larger list of roles into key roles that will be the focus of your sample Agile project.
Section Vl: Creating the Product Backlog
The Product Backlog is the complete list of requirements for the product. It consists of User Stories (requirements based on the customer's point of view), Foundational Stories and other work items the team must complete. Stories don't capture all of the detailed requirements, but do require enough information to estimate and plan. In this section we will explore:
- The Product Backlog
- User Stories
- INVEST Model (Bill Wake, 2003)
- Acceptance Criteria
- Foundational Stories
Class Exercise
In small teams identified previously, you will engage in a story-writing workshop as a means of building a product backlog for your Agile project.
Section Vll: Prioritizing the Product Backlog
Prioritization is often done at a level that excludes the development team and fails to account for the technical expertise the team provides in determining dependencies, impact, risk and the sequencing of work items. In this section we explore methods of prioritization and how Project Managers can help the business and development groups collaborate together to determine the right priorities.
- Prioritization Themes
- Decision Matrix
- Kano Analysis
- Preventing Fire Alarms
- Continuous Prioritization
Class Exercise
Utilizing the prioritization techniques discussed, you will prioritize the Product Backlog for your sample Agile project taking into account the dependencies, risk and impact of your user stories.
Section VIIl: Agile Estimating
Among the greatest challenges in developing software and delivering against stakeholder expectations is estimating accurately and subsequently planning how those expectations can be met. Agile cannot make that challenge disappear, but offers some very helpful tools that enable teams to set and meet the appropriate expectations.
- Relative vs. Actual Estimating
- Introduction to Story Points
- Using Story Points
- Planning Poker (Grenning 2002)
Class Exercise
Using the Agile estimating techniques of story points, enjoy a few rounds of Planning Poker, a fun and very effective method of relative estimating to establish estimates for your highest priority stories. This is a critical tool for you to incorporate into your Agile estimating process.
Section lX: Agile Release Planning
The release plan identifies a goal for the stories that will be included in a release of the software. Through the prior processes, the team will have prioritized the stories and estimated the team velocity. These key elements will come together to give the team a level of confidence that they can deliver the necessary requirements for a product release in what is normally a fixed timeframe. We'll examine the following topics:
- Velocity
- What is a Release?
- Schedule Based vs. Feature Based Planning
- Building the Release Plan
- Communication
Class Exercise
Each team will establish a release plan for their sample Agile project incorporating priority, Agile estimates and velocity as appropriate. We'll discuss how real experiences of fixed time and fixed feature projects can work with an Agile release plan.
Section X: Building Cadence
Building cadence with a team will help the team know what to expect from itself and will help other individuals and teams within the organization know what to expect from them as well.
- Getting to the Details
- Building Trust
- Best Practices
Section Xl: Iteration Planning and Execution
An iteration is a fixed amount of time in which stories/requirements will be developed, tested and ready for release. Agile Project Managers need to understand how to engage the team to effectively break out the tasks, hours and assignments for the Iteration. We'll also discuss how Agile Project Managers can guide the team to effectively execute the Iteration and facilitate the necessary communication and review sessions.
- Capacity
- Engaging the Team
- Planning the Iteration
- Executing the Iteration
- Daily Scrum/Stand-up
- Scrum of Scrums
- Iteration Review
- Demonstrating Working Software
Section Xll: Measuring and Communicating Progress
An important aspect of Agile Project Management is measuring progress and communicating that progress to the Agile team, customers, management and stakeholders. We will discuss:
- Taskboards
- Story/Task cards
- Metrics
- Burndown Charts
- Agile Tools
Section Xlll: Retrospectives
Retrospective are one of the key Agile practices and is the inspect and adapt mechanism for the team. Agile Project Managers help the team identify what is working, what is not working and what specific areas need to be improved.
- Elements of the Retrospective
- Facilitating Retrospectives
- Tips for effective Retrospectives
Class Exercise
The instructor will facilitate a Retrospective for the class allowing participants to provide feedback for the course in addition to demonstrating how a Retrospective should be run.
Section XlV: Adopting Agile Project Management
This section is where we bring everything together and discuss specific implementation strategies, including how to overcome resistance. We will also discuss several additional tips to effectively manage projects in an Agile environment.
- Agile Process Overview
- Overcoming Resistance and Getting Started
- Agile Calendar of Events
- Challenges to Agile Adoption
- Team Roadmap Exercise
Audience
Who should attend this class&l