As organizations move beyond a single Agile Delivery Team a challenge around managing value within a Portfolio and across multiple teams emerges. Aligning Delivery efforts to the overall strategy will drive improved prioritization around what should be delivered when by each team. Factors to consider can include strategic alignment, scope, cost/budget, people staffing, timing, dependencies and other elements.

For an Agile Portfolio to function it requires key supports like Collaboration Events, Visibility via a ‘Big Board’, and a Roadmap, all on a platform of tools. With these in place, decisions can be taken around Portfolio Intake, Work-In-Progress vs Capacity, and various Prioritization techniques.

Learning Objectives

If you are involved in developing user-centered products, having a clear Product Goal and Success Metrics is crucial. This course focuses on techniques for creating and communicating a Product Goal to users, stakeholders and the delivery team. From there, understand how the Product Backlog is the vehicle for achieving the Product Goal.

Using real world examples and exercises to understand what makes a good Product Goal and what doesn’t, that can then be applied in your work.

What is a Product Goal?

The Product Goal describes a future state of the product which can serve as a target for the Delivery Team to plan against. The Product Backlog emerges to define “what” will fulfill the Product Goal. The Product Goal is the long-term objective for the Scrum Team.

“ A product is a vehicle to deliver value. It has a clear boundary, known stakeholders, well-defined users or customers. A product could be a service, a physical product, or something more abstract.”

What are Success Metrics?

Success Metrics for product development are empirical data points that a team and organization can track to gauge the product’s overall success. These could be based on user adoption, churn rate, revenue per customer, number of active users and can be characterized as OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) or KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

Learning Objectives

Alignment is fundamental to the success of any team, product or project. Without alignment, there can be duplication of work, misunderstanding, conflict, lack of trust and ultimately, can result in the waste of time, resource(s), and people. Inceptions (which can also be known as kick-offs, discovery, Sprint Zero, etc.) bring team members, leadership, users and interested parties together in a collaborative workshop at the start to build that alignment and trust before any development begins.

In this session we will explore the main aspects of an Inception Workshop (ie: vision, success metrics, mapping of interested parties, story map, etc) while also diving into some aspects of how to facilitate an Inception workshop for a team. As a large component of Inceptions, this workshop will also give participants a hands-on introduction to story mapping. We will learn how story mapping builds alignment on what to build, what not to build, and on the prioritization of work.

Learning Objectives

As individuals and organizations grow increasingly comfortable with in-person interactions, there has been a significant shift towards holding workshops, events, and meetings face-to-face. After spending the past few years adapting to the virtual environment, this class is designed to enhance your visual facilitation skills for in-person sessions. Note: If you’re interested in learning how to incorporate visuals into your remote work, please check out our virtual visual facilitation class: https://alluvial-visual-facilitation-dec-6.eventbrite.ca

What you will learn

Who is this for?

This workshop is ideal for anyone who works in teams, collaborates on ideas, or leads groups through meetings, workshops, training sessions, or events. It’s an introductory course to in-person visual facilitation, so no prior experience with drawing or using visuals in meetings is necessary. Visual facilitation isn’t about being an ‘artist’—visuals can take many forms, including using photographs to spark conversation and alignment, which doesn’t require any drawing skills. If you’re unsure if this course is right for you, please contact us for more information.

What you will get:

In the Agile Estimation and Planning training class, participants will focus on the key aspects of estimation and planning for Agile teams working in Scrum, Kanban or other Agile methods.

The class will focus on the underlying principles about how Agile Estimation is different from doing so in traditional projects. From there, participants will see various ways of conducting Agile Estimation at the Sprint and Release and what should be happening in key ceremonies.

Then, getting more granular into concepts like Planning Poker, using Ideal Days, how to effectively deploy Spikes, and managing complexity/uncertainty when sizing work.

With a mix of theory, facilitated discussions, hands-on exercises, participants will be able to directly apply the concepts and practices from this training class to their team environments.

Areas of focus