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Product, Project and Program Management

Agile Fundamentals

Group Training

Overview

Scrum. Kanban. Retrospectives. Lean. What’s this Agile stuff all about? This Agile Fundamentals course focuses on agile as a mindset and not just a methodology or framework. Agile is applicable to organizations and businesses beyond those doing software development. The key is understanding and applying the fundamentals of “being Agile” so teams experience sustained results and success “doing Agile”. 

This course is designed to provide participants with key insights into value-driven development, adaptive planning techniques and maximizing collaboration with customers and within teams and organizations. Using hands-on activities, students will experience the value of continuous feedback, learning and adaptation for products, processes, teams and organizations, and continuous improvement. Transitioning from a traditional plan-driven approach to a change-driven approach requires team members to live into the mindset of agile to drive the necessary behavioral change. 

Upon completion of the course, students can claim Technical, Leadership, and Strategy PDUs from the PMI®.

Who Should Take This Course

Audience

This program is suitable for current project team members and project managers transitioning to agile and interested in gaining experience with the agile mindset, agile principles and widely applied frameworks and practices.

Prerequisites

This course is applicable to any practitioner who is part of a team or organization that is just starting to consider agile or is already in the process of transitioning to agile, regardless of role or experience.

Why You Should Take This Course

Outcomes

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

  • Identify the 4 values and 12 principles behind the manifesto and list a couple that they believe would have significant impact in their current environment.
  • Give at least one example of where Agile could be useful outside the context of a software development project.
  • List several well known Agile processes as well as key characteristics of an Agile mindset.
  • Explain the relationship between the Agile mindset, values, principles, and practices.
  • Describe a way to share tacit information.
  • Identify at least one example of a work environment that encourages Agile team behaviors and describe at least one technique to improve distributed Agile work environments.
  • Discuss and explain at least one method to encourage team collaboration.
  • Give at least two examples of tools and techniques for explicitly sharing knowledge.
  • Describe the differences between teams that are self-organizing and those who rely on more management direction.
  • Explain the novice to expert development model: Shu-Ha-Ri.
  • Compare and contrast a feedback-based empirical method from a plan-driven method.
  • Explain the importance of focusing on quality throughout the process.
  • Describe the explicit and hidden cost(s) of cutting corners (such as build up of technical debt).
  • Define WIP and describe how limiting WIP can improve flow or cycle time.
  • Discuss what should be included in integration using both software and non-software examples.
  • Evaluate a release plan and explain the balance of costs and benefits on its proposed release cadence

Course Outline

Agile Fundamentals

Lesson 1: Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

  • Topic 1A: History
  • Topic 1B: Roles
  • Topic 1C: Teamwork and Lencioni’s Pyramid
  • Topic 1D: Estimation/Planning
  • Topic 1E: Waterfall vs. Agile Approaches
  • Topic 1F: Extreme Programming
  • Topic 1G: Agile Manifesto
  • Topic 1H: Agile in CI/CD Pipelines
  • Topic 1I: Lean Manufacturing/Toyota Production System (TPS)
  • Topic 1J: Waste

Lesson 2: Scrum

  • Topic 2A: Roles
  • Topic 2B: Scrum Master
  • Topic 2C: Product Owner
  • Topic 2D: Developer
  • Topic 2E: Ceremonies
  • Topic 2F: Sprint Planning
  • Topic 2G: Daily Stand-up
  • Topic 2H: Sprint Review
  • Topic 2I: Sprint Retrospective

Lesson 3: Kanban

  • Topic 3A: Theory of Constraints
  • Topic 3B: Principles
  • Topic 3C: Start with Current Setup
  • Topic 3D: Pursue Incremental, Evolutionary Change
  • Topic 3E: Respect the Current Process, Roles, and Responsibilities
  • Topic 3F: Encourage Leadership at All Levels
  • Topic 3G: Practices
  • Topic 3H: Visualize Workflow
  • Topic 3I: Limit Work-in-Progress
  • Topic 3J: Manage Flows
  • Topic 3K: Make Policies Explicit
  • Topic 3L: Implement Feedback Loops
  • Topic 3M: Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally
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