Training

This is a deep dive course that takes you into some more advanced topics of how to take your ScrumMaster skills to the next level. Participants start by brainstorming many of the real world daily challenges they face as ScrumMasters then we discuss practical ways to address them. This is NOT the entry level ScrumMaster Certification course. The course aims to help new and seasoned ScrumMasters who are transitioning to a ScrumMaster, Agile Coach or Agile Program Manager/Release Manager role learn how to successfully apply Agile methods and lead high performing self-organizing teams. We will cover the key Servant Leadership, Facilitation, and Soft Skills necessary to make this role a success.   This is a must have course for team leaders interested in taking their skills to the next level!

This course takes a deeper dive into the topic of Agile Planning at the Program Level and at the Release Level. Many teams struggle with the topic of ‘Just Enough’ upfront requirements, ‘Just Enough’ upfront sizing and design and ‘Just Enough’ planning so this course is dedicated to demystifying these concepts and walking through practical real world approaches to successful Agile planning.

This is an advanced and unique workshop that will take your team through a practical, real world and intensive hands-on journey of applying Agile, Lean and Kanban to YOUR Portfolio Planning and Management! Be prepared to learn some new and innovative methods for planning, prioritizing, sizing and managing your portfolio of initiatives. We will also share a different approach of looking at enterprise capacity planning by planning around teams, measuring velocity and establishing a pull method from your portfolio backlog. Come with an open mind! We guarantee you will learn creative methods you can apply immediately!

This course aims to help new and seasoned project managers who are transitioning to a ScrumMaster, Agile Coach or Agile Program Manager/Release Manager role learn how to successfully apply Agile methods to their projects and programs. Participants will learn the full Agile Development Lifecycle, how to lead teams through Agile planning sessions, and understand techniques and practices to successfully execute on project and program deliverables.  We will discuss the role of the Agile Project Manager and Program Manager through the various stages as well as the key Servant Leadership, Facilitation, and Soft Skills necessary to make this role a success.

Organizations are increasingly moving towards finding ways to cut waste and optimize their processes. More and more companies are adopting Lean and Kanban methods as part of their Agile Transformation. Pure continuous flow Kanban systems work very well when your backlog includes minor enhancements and support related items. There is no need here for strict time-boxes, instead a regular continuous flow optimized process for delivering predictable value with no bottle necks. Scrum mixed with Kanban walls works great for Projects and Initiatives that have a specific Product Owner and require more strict planning and review/demo time-boxed iterations. This course will help you understand how Agile, Scrum and Kanban all fit together to deliver value for your organization!

Many teams that adopt Agile will tend initially to focus on adopting the Scrum practices of Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review and Retrospective. The only problem is these practices will not help on the engineering side of the house. The goal of this course is to take a team (Developers, DBAs, Analysts, Testers, Deployers, Architects) through a journey of Agile Engineering Practices founded from methods such as XP, FDD  and pure common sense architectural patterns we’ve always known. We will discuss in detail some of the XP practices below, in addition to topics such as User Centric Design, Agile Architecture, Agile Database Design, Daily Builds and Code Check-ins, using Mock Data, and some on Automated Testing.

Iterative development also means iterative testing. This can be a challenge for teams who are used to the traditional view of testing as the final phase of a project. This Agile Testing Training course will help your team learn how to strategize, plan, design and execute tests in an Agile environment. We will particularly address the challenges and strategies for testing in short development iterations and walk through the four quadrants of Agile Testing. We will cover topics such as writing acceptance criteria as upfront requirements, Test Driven Development, test automation, exploratory testing, usability testing, non functional and performance testing, continuous builds and inspections and much more. We will discuss the importance of transitioning from ‘waterfall thinking’ to ‘agile/iterative thinking’. We will discuss and share Real World practical tips of the Agile Tester role, expectations and how they can work within cross-functional teams. This is a must-have workshop that will help your team define new testing and quality norms to improve their current processes!

This is our intensive executive/management overview course that introduces the main concepts behind Agile, Lean and Scrum to a leadership team and provides a strategic view of how to successfully transform an organization to high performance. The goal of this course is to look at the organizational impact Agile may have on various aspects such as roles, leadership styles, team dynamics, existing processes and organizational culture. We will explore the tactical and strategic aspects of applying Agile and Lean to your organization. We discuss Building Cross-Functional Service/Feature Teams, Agile/Lean Portfolio Planning, Agile Performance Reviews and Rewards, Agile Contracts and Vendor Management, the role of the Agile PMO and outline steps you can take to develop a long term strategic Agile Rollout plan.

This is not your traditional requirements gathering course! This course focuses on how to effectively and efficiently gather user requirements using creative visual modeling and powerful engaging techniques. You will learn how to differentiate the levels of requirements, design a simple 4 step process for gathering the right level at the right time. You will learn by practicing how to use fun facilitation activities to gather the “breadth” of user requirements up front and catch the usually ‘missing’ ones. You will learn how to break down big requirements into small manageable ones and how to dive into the details later. You’ll learn a creative business value points method for prioritizing requirements and how to take dependency into consideration.. You will learn about business rules, acceptance tests, process modeling and UI prototyping.

This is not your typical Agile and Scrum 101 course. This course is designed to spend 25% of the time on “What” and “Why” behind Agile and Scrum and 75% on “HOW” you can actually start using it with your team tomorrow! This is TEAM training so ALL roles (including the Business Product Owners) should attend! If you’re interested in learning real world techniques used by dozens of teams then this course is for you! We walk you through an end-to-end lifecycle Agile project journey from Release Planning all the way to Production Release using a sample project or YOUR own.

This unique 3 day workshop aims to help new and seasoned Agile practitioners learn how to successfully apply Agile methods to their projects and programs.
Through an engaging combination of discussion, group interaction, case studies and Real World focused workshops, you will learn not only how to apply Agile, but will gain the experience necessary to immediately implement Agile practices that are appropriate for your teams. Better yet, this course was designed to hit all the 10 tools and techniques, and 43 knowledge skill areas you need to learn to pass the new PMI Agile Certified Practitioner exam.

This course addresses the business questions related to Agile such as: What is the business value of using Agile for me and why should I collaborate with IT this way? Who is the Product Owner and what does my new role entail? What are the expectations of me? What are User Stories and how do I write them? How can I be an effective Product Owner? What is the role of my Users and business SMEs? What are Acceptance Tests and how do I identify them? When do I and my users do acceptance testing? What techniques and real world best practices can I use to motivate and encourage the team? I haven’t played a ‘Leader’ role before, how do I prepare?