Index of Available Courses

Course 1: Metagility™ for Practitioners: Two Days

Course 2: Metagility™ Metrics Workshop:  Half Day

Course 3: Transitioning from Waterfall Business Analyst to Agile Product Owner: Full Day

Course 4: Metagility™ for Agile Coaches: Two Days

Course 5: Introduction to Agile at Speed (accelerated course): Half Day

Course 6: Soft Skills for Managing Agility: Half Day

Metagility™ for Practitioners

Topic: Hybrid Agile Implementations

Subtopic: Managing Agility in embedded systems development

Length: Two days

Prerequisites: Introduction to Agile (preferred but not required)

Textbook: Metagility: Managing Agile Development for Competitive Advantage (provided)

Description 

Agile methodologies have become a popular and widely accepted method for managing software development.  However, despite this success, managing agile methods has proven to be a real challenge for most companies, particularly those with complex products such as IoT devices and large development environments.  As such, agile methods are changing.  Many companies have been forced to adopt a hybrid version of agile and waterfall techniques, and this hybrid approach is fast becoming the norm rather than the exception in the industry.

Metagility teaches attendees a comprehensive approach for managing this new and highly effective breed of agility from the executive level on down.  Based on scientific theory and practitioner research, it is the definitive playbook for those seeking the optimal solution for adapting agile to more complex product development and organizational contexts. This course shows students how to manage both agile and waterfall techniques to outperform their competition in industries with very high technological change, turbulent markets, and innovation.

Learning Objectives: 

• Learn how to manage hybrid agile implementations in situations where traditional agile methods typically fall short.
• Learn how to apply hybrid agility to difficult contexts such as embedded systems, large enterprises and distributed teams
• Learn a new language for understanding agility including concepts such as business momentumand agile vorticity that provides cutting-edge insights into a company’s position in its market
• Learn a method to determine what true agilitymeans and how to achieve it for your company both within your internal organization and your position in the marketplace
• Learn how to determine the proper mixof agile and waterfall characteristics for your organization to help you get the most out of your agile strategy in today’s highly competitive and innovative markets

Seminar Agenda

Metagility ™ Metrics Workshop: Half-Day Session

(Includes a copy of the Metagility Metrics package, a $25 value)

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Requirements: Participants must bring a PC (or have access to one in the room) and the room must have Internet access.  This is so they can download the toolset and run the examples.

Description 

This has proven to be VERY popular with Project Managers!  Participants in this course will be provided with an innovative set of Metagility™ metrics tools and trained on how to implement them with their projects.  This course is part lecture, but mostly hands on training and assistance. When they leave, participants will have a complete set of tools to measure the performance of their agile projects.

Learning Objectives

• Understand how to apply the basics of Agile measurement based on the Agile Triangle
  • Measuring Quality, Value, and Constraints.
• How to determine the agility of an organization using Agile Vorticity and Business Momentum
• How to use and apply key metrics including:

• Requirement Analysis
• Defect Analysis
• Burndown Chart
• Velocity
• Cycle Time
• Cumulative Flow
• Earned Business Value

Seminar Agenda (Half Day)

• The Basics of Measurement
• Understanding the Agile Triangle vs. the Iron Triangle of project management
• Quality measurements: Intrinsic quality vs. Extrinsic quality
• Understanding and Measuring Value
• Measuring Constraints
• Survey of Available Measurements
• Understanding Agile Vorticity and Business Momentum
• Activity: Applying Metagility metrics

Transitioning from Waterfall Business Analysts to Agile Product Owners

Length: 1 day

Prerequisites: Attendees should have a working knowledge of agile concepts.

Textbook: Metagility: Managing Agile Development for Competitive Advantage (provided)

Description

Agile transformation often requires the transformation of roles as well as the process.  One of these is the business analyst.  Business analysts traditionally in charge of gathering and writing requirements in a waterfall environment often transition to Product Owners when a company undergoes agile change.  This not only requires these analysts to write requirements differently, in the form of user stories as opposed to long form technical requirements or use cases, but also to write fewer, more focused requirements.  Agile Product owners must develop new skills to separate the “wheat from the chaff” in addition to collaborating with customers and product managers to create enough requirements that meet the need, but do not over extend the development teams.  Agile teams require agile requirements.  Unlike similar courses that focuses on tools and procedures, this course helps train the mind to process information in an agile way.  It helps business analysts transition into their new product owner role, via a combination of lecture and a requirements development workshop.  Attendees will leave the course fully ready to fulfill their new role as Agile Product Owner.

Learning Objectives 

• Understand the product owner role and how it differs from business analysts in a waterfall environment
• Understand how to build a product roadmap that adds business value
• Learn agile requirements decomposition
• Learn top-down design basics
• How to write good user stories
• Understand how requirements management is integrated into agile life cycle
• Learn how to prioritize
• Learn how to groom the backlog 

Seminar Agenda (Full Day) 

Morning

• The Agile Product Owner vs. Waterfall Business Analyst
• More is not always better!
• Top Down Design
• Decomposing requirements
• Understanding Agile Flow and where you fit in
• User Story building
• Prioritization
• Definition of Done
• Managing the Backlog

Afternoon

Requirements Development Workshop: Students will practice requirements decomposition, authoring, and estimation.  Cases will encompass a variety of scenarios and product types including software and IoT.

Metagility™ for Agile Coaches

Topic: Coaching Hybrid Agile Implementations

Subtopic: Coaching Agility in embedded systems development

Length: Full day

Prerequisites: Agile Coaching background

Textbook: Metagility: Managing Agile Development for Competitive Advantage (provided)

Description 

Metagility for Agile Coaches covers the same objectives and topics as the practitioner course, with a deeper dive into the technical and theoretical components.  Specifically designed for Agile Coaches, students will emerge with a comprehensive understanding of why, how, and when to apply Metagility concepts.

Learning Objectives: 

• Learn how to manage hybrid agile implementations in situations where traditional agile methods typically fall short.
• Learn how to apply hybrid agility to difficult contexts such as embedded systems, large enterprises and distributed teams
• Learn a new language for understanding agility including concepts such as business momentumand agile vorticity that provides cutting-edge insights into a company’s position in its market
• Learn a method to determine what true agilitymeans and how to achieve it for your company both within your internal organization and your position in the marketplace
• Learn how to determine the proper mixof agile and waterfall characteristics for your organization to help you get the most out of your agile strategy in today’s highly competitive and innovative markets 

Seminar Agenda

Introduction to Agile Development at Speed (accelerated course) 

Topic: Basic Agile concepts, terminology, and processes

Length: Half Day

Prerequisites: None

Textbook: Metagility: Managing Agile Development for Competitive Advantage (provided)

Description

This is an accelerated course that provides students with the knowledge they need to hit the ground running with agile.  Anyone working in technical product development today regardless of their position must have a solid foundation in agile practices to remain relevant and communicate intelligently with colleagues on the topic.

However not everyone has the time or need to attend a lengthy program or certification course focused on a specific role.

This workshop gives you the foundational techniques, skills, and tools that enable you with a working knowledge of agile development.

Be able to define the principles, advantages, and disadvantages of agile development. Get first-hand experience by organizing and participating in an agile team. Put the concepts you learn to practice instantly in the classroom project. Understand and learn how to take advantage of the opportunities for Agile. Finally get a detailed understanding and practice the collaboration and communication needed between customer and developers for Agile to succeed.

Learning Objectives

• Why Agile? The history of agility and why this approach has become so pervasive today.
• Agile Principles and how to apply them to your own everyday work and organization.
• Agile Best practices: What makes an organization agile.
• Agile terminology, roles, and interactions
• The power of Agile teams through communication, collaboration, and cadence
• Pitfalls that teams will encounter in an Agile transition and how to overcome those challenges
• Lay the foundation upon which you can build a learning team and organization

Seminar Agenda (Half Day)

• Origins of Agile Thought
• Challenges with Traditional Waterfall development
• The Agile Manifesto and Principles
• Why Agile is an Improvement: Understanding the Benefits
• A Survey of popular Agile methods and Frameworks
• Agile Terminology
• Basic requirements management
• Basic team organization
• Common Agile Rituals
• Common Agile Roles and Responsibilities
• Teams: Scrums and Self Organized Teams (activity)
• Understanding and sizing Sprints
• Estimation Techniques
• Customer collaboration
• Challenges with Agile and latest trends

Soft Skills for Managing Agility

Topic: Obtaining support for agile transformation and overcoming organizational resistance

Length: Half Day

Prerequisites: Metagility for Practitioners (preferred but not required)

Textbook: Metagility: Managing Agile Development for Competitive Advantage (provided)

Description

Any successful agile implementation requires working closely with people within the organization to convince them of the right path, and guide them towards it.  Obtaining buy-in and understanding at all levels of management is critical to the success of any agile transformation effort.

This course focuses on the common core issues that agilists often encounter and how to overcome them.

Learning Objectives

• How to address project management concerns
• Learn effective team management
• How to obtain executive buy-in and continuous support
• How to communicate agile effectively at all levels
• Learn the number one secret ingredient to becoming and remaining agile

Seminar Agenda (Half Day)

• Why we encounter organizational resistance
• The Pareto Principle and Price’s Law
• Communication and IQ
• Addressing common project management concerns
• Basics of team management
• Understanding tribes
• Self organized teams
• Managing Distributed teams
• Interchangeable teams
• Techniques for bringing teams and people up to speed
• Executive management: Managing your managers
• Strategic alignment
• Communication
• Summary