COURSE OUTLINE 

(THIS IS A 1 DAYs / 7 HOURS COURSE)

1. HISTORY & MINDSET

1.1. HISTORY

1.1.1. Origins of Agile Many people entering the Agile world see the Agile Manifesto as the beginning of the world, where it was really the summing up of much previous work.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Anchor the ideas of Agile development in earlier work, giving the learners continuity from the past to the present.

1.1.2. Agile Manifesto The 2001 Manifesto for Agile Software Development is still the anchor document for all forms of Agile development.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Make clear that the Agile Manifesto is a set of values, not a prescription for a particular type of process. Also, learners should be introduced to the fact that the values on the left are preferable to those on the right.

1.1.3. Agile Beyond Software Development Agile is gaining increasing adoption throughout the organisation.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Agile methods can extend beyond software development.

1.2. CULTURE & MINDSET

1.2.1. Understanding the Agile Mindset Many people come to Agile looking for "the Agile process". However, while some processes and methodologies may be more supportive or common in Agile organisations than others, the mindset must come first.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Introduce Agile as a mindset and explain that agility is achieved through both "being" and "doing" Agile. The Agile mindset is characterised by things like valuing early failure for learning, collaboration, continuous improvement, continuous discovery, etc.

1.2.2. Establishing the Agile Mindset Experiencing the Agile mindset is the best way to establish it in a learner.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Allow the learner to experience situations in which the Agile mindset is likely to be different from their current way of working, so the learner can internalise the difference experientially, not just in concept.

1.2.3. Agile in Context (As a Journey) The level of knowledge and experience held by individuals, teams and organisations can affect behaviours, processes and adoption.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Introduce the learning models that help contextualise the novice-to- expert journeys of individuals, team and organisations. This helps learners relate to each other and other parts of their organisation on an Agile transformation journey

2. INDIVIDUALS & INTERACTIONS

2.1. CREATING SHARED UNDERSTANDING

2.1.1. Developing Soft Skills Soft skills such as attitude, community, trust and morale have

traditionally been left out of team-based design. Agile brings them to the fore.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Highlight how changing community drivers affects work outcomes.

2.1.2. Understanding Communication Barriers Projects can be impacted when organisations underestimate the cost of physical and cultural separation.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Review the costs of physical and cultural distances, and introduce ways to successfully address the communication barriers these can raise.

2.1.3. Sharing Knowledge When teams ignore tacit vs. documented knowledge, they are not able to make conscious decisions about sharing information.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Discuss options for sharing knowledge with current and future team members.

2.1.4. Physical Work Environments It is easy to set up work spaces that hinder rather than help the team.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Illustrate concepts of setting up Agile working environments that are conducive to swarming, collaboration and teamwork.

2.1.5. Collaboration Techniques Collaboration needs to be experienced, not just talked about. LEARNING OUTCOME: Let learners experience techniques for improved collaboration.

2.1.6. Techniques for Shared Understanding The Agile community has adopted several tools and techniques to support shared understanding.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Experience the advantages created by tools and techniques that improve shared understanding.

2.2. SHIFTS IN ROLES

2.2.1. Shifts in Roles The term "self-organising" can create concern for individuals and organisations because it infers shifts in traditional power structures. Agile learners and organisations need to define and align old and new role definitions.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Define what is meant by "self-organising" and "self-managing," and where the learner fits in an Agile organisation.

3. VALUE-DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT

3.1. INCREMENTAL DEVELOPMENT

3.1.1. Incremental Development One anchor of Agile development is incremental development.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Introduce the concept and value of incremental development, and how it differs from effort-based or task-based management.

3.1.2. Value-Based Work Many people, even understanding the idea of incremental development, can't see how to break work into small, value-centred work items and track their progress.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Develop and practice techniques for breaking problems into value-based parts and tracking progress against them.

3.1.3. Retaining Quality It is easy to lose sight of the cost of rework in incremental-iterative development.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Introduce and highlight why Agile developers need to keep an eye on design quality even (or especially) when working incrementally and iteratively.

3.2. WORK-IN-PROGRESS (WIP)

3.2.1. Work-in-Progress (WIP) Work-in-Progress (WIP), a term from lean manufacturing, seems to many people a strange concept to introduce outside of manufacturing, but WIP shows up in incremental development.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Describe WIP, demonstrate how it maps to design work, to incremental development, to multi-specialist and multi-department teams, where it hides on a design project and why it is useful to track and reduce WIP.

3.2.2. Continuous Integration Continuous integration is a valuable goal in software development; non-software projects can still use the more general concepts of frequent integration.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Introduce the concepts of early, frequent and continuous integration, and link them to project effectiveness.

3.2.3. Cost & Benefit of Frequent Delivery Delivering is not merely giving a demo; it includes costs as well as benefits.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Discuss the benefits, challenges and costs of delivering frequently.

4. CUSTOMER & USER INVOLVEMENT

4.1. INCLUDING CUSTOMERS AND USERS

4.1.1. Defining the Customer The literature and common usage can be confusing in defining the customer.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Clarify customer-side roles and how they are referred to in Agile methods, particularly sponsor, buyer and user; relate these roles to actual people who need to be satisfied by the project and product.

4.1.2. User Involvement Product/project success correlates with end-user involvement. Many teams face resistance to getting end-users to participate in a project, which then can fail even if the team practiced every other Agile habit besides getting feedback from real users.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Convey the importance of end-user involvement within, as well as at the end of, iterations.

4.1.3. User Feedback Ongoing user feedback is important for maximising customer value.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Provide the learner with one or more techniques for soliciting feedback from users and sponsors during an iteration or project.

5. PLANNING & ADAPTING

5.1. PLANNING AND ADAPTING

5.1.1.Planning A misconception of Agile development is that it involves no planning and no

promises.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Review different planning stages and timeframes, separating release- level planning from daily & task-level planning.

5.1.2. Estimation Agile teams understand the value of collaborative estimation during planning.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Introduce the learner to the power of relative estimation using the wisdom of the crowd; Incorporate different Agile estimation techniques for different granularities and time scales.

5.1.3. Status A team and its sponsors need to know how the work is progressing.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Provide two or more techniques Agile teams use to track and show the

status of the project and the team.

5.2. PROCESS & PRODUCT ADAPTATION

5.2.1.Process Adaptation A common mistake is to imagine that there is a single process that can fit all projects & situations; even a good process becomes mismatched to the team over time.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Illustrate to the learner how products/projects in different contexts need different methodologies, processes or strategies, and why it is important to adapt processes even within a single product, project or team.

5.2.2. Product Adaptation Products need to be adapted based on learning and feedback, however an unprepared team can suffer from reacting too vigorously to change requests.

LEARNING OUTCOME: Introduce ways to receive feedback and balance responding to change with product stability and work predictability. These might include not accepting new work during an iteration, having a disciplined Product Owner who re-prioritises for the team in ways that do not disrupt ongoing work, etc

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REFERENCES:

1. Catalyst: Expert Open Source Solutions

2. International Consortium for Agile (ICAgile)

LICENSING INFORMATION The work in this document was facilitated by the International Consortium for Agile (ICAgile) and done by the contribution of various Agile Experts and Practitioners. These Learning Outcomes are intended to help the growing Agile community worldwide. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercialNoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND

• Anyone who is new to Agile, and those with some exposure to Agile who need more information and an opportunity to practice their skills.

RATIONALITY

• This course is not specific to software development. We use a number of examples from software development, however the mindset and practices can be applied to product development, marketing and even HR.

LEARNING OUTCOME

• Learn the Origins of Agile

• Establish an Agile Mindset for Your Project 

• Practise Incremental Development

• Understand Process & Product Adaptation