Who should attend
As an advanced course, Agile Project Management is designed for those who have already spent time working within an Agile framework. Students will build on their existing knowledge and enhance their project management ability. Typical students on this course include:
The purpose of the Agile methodology is to produce functional software faster and more efficiently than can be achieved using traditional systems, in order to impress your clients and improve your business productivity. This course teaches students the project management techniques, skills, and mentality required to effectively run those teams and ensure those deliverables are met.
In order to run an Agile software development team as effectively as possible, managers require hugely different skills compared to “traditional” PMs. During this course, students will learn to:
Module 1: The Reality of Agile Projects
Class Exercise: In this exercise, we will discuss the project team in today’s environment and the impact that knowledge work has had on the development industry. Views from Drucker and select studies from leading industry whitepapers will be discussed to help you gain and understanding of and how to work with development teams in complex environments.
Module 2: Managing Constraints
Class Exercise: In this exercise, participants will investigate project uncertainty and discuss specific techniques to not only mitigate risk — but to leverage it! We will look at different ways to view constraints and tradeoffs to share them with the stakeholder. Additionally, we will review different approaches the Agile Project Manager can take to mitigate risk when dealing with budget, vendors and contracts.
Module 3: Understanding Agile Team Performance and Metrics
Class Exercise: The case studies and discussion exercises in this section help the Agile Project manager understand the difference between diagnostic and performance metrics and how to utilize metrics in an Agile Framework. Participants will discuss how understanding these types of metrics, applied to the individual, team and project, will help the Agile Project Manager guide both the team and the project in the daily work environment.
Module 4: Establishing and Empowering Teams
Class Exercise: The exercises in this section will provide participants with an overall view of how to establish empowered teams quickly based on the organization of roles. Exercises are designed to create an understanding of team dynamics. In addiion, we case studies are used to examine the differences between Agile teams and traditional teams. We will discuss a set of Agile project management “tools” which teams can use as they work towards becoming a high performing team. Additional exercises in this section cover trust and the three steps of rebuilding trust as well as conflict and conflict resolution and how the Agile project manager can help the team to develop trust and resolve conflict as it arises. A final, interactive exercise for this section will challenge the participants to put all of these tools and topics in place and work as a team to meet the exercise objective.
Module 5: Maximizing Value and Agile Planning & Estimating
Class Exercise: In these sections, the exercises will help the Agile PM focus on the delivery of value and achieving customer/stakeholder satisfaction. We will discuss theory and show the use of feedback loops in the value cycle and discuss as a group how techniques like “trimming the tail” can be used to assist the team and stakeholder. A highly interactive team exercise will be used to teach participants the concepts of continual planning and re-estimation how and why to make these plans visible to the organization.
Module 6: Communication and Collaboration
Class Exercise: The objective of the exercises in this section are to understand the importance of and how to create stakeholder involvement in our projects. As a “live case study,” teams will create an Agile “communication plan” and then, as a group we will discuss the options for communication and collaboration which an Agile project manager can utilize to create transparency and help create team success.
Skills covered
