Advanced Agile Series

Targeted learning modules designed to build on your foundations and experience. Each of these 2.5 hour sessions will provide you with practical and immediately applicable skills & techniques for your work.

Each session costs $199 (+ applicable taxes) and can be taken independently or as part of the whole series.

What you will get

  • 2.5 hours of engaging teaching by a deeply experienced practitioner and trainer
  • Slides and templates to help you put into practice what you have learned
  • Earn 3 Scrum Education Units (of the 20 required), under the “Learning” category, towards your Scrum Alliance certification renewal requirement. https://www.scrumalliance.org/get-certified/scrum-education-units
  • A 1-hour follow up ask-me-anything session to ask specific questions after you’ve had time to apply what you’ve learned

Recommended Pre-requisite

  • Certified Scrum Master or Certified Scrum Product Owner
  • One year of practical experience using Scrum

Registration Links:

Course Overview

  • 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 & Key Results) or KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).
  • Learning Objectives
    • Understand the difference between Product versus a Project
    • What is a Product Goal in the Scrum Framework and why is there only one
    • How to create a Product Goal and the value of doing so
    • How to and the importance of switching from an output to an outcome driven approach
    • Know how to measure success in outcomes, through value driven metrics
    • Learn the difference between OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
    • How iterative delivery is measured against the incremental changes in outcome metrics
    • The accountabilities of the Product Owner and Scrum Team in achieving the Product Goal
    • Understand that the purpose of iterative delivery is to learn from the impact of the features and how the metrics should drive changes to the Product Backlog and potentially abandoning or changing the Product Goal
  • Course Overview
    • For any Agile delivery team, keeping your key meetings engaging, meaningful and productive takes ongoing effort and innovation. This course will help meeting facilitators and participants drive more value and even make their meetings fun (no guarantees!) through a mix of design, planning and facilitation techniques.
    • Using root cause analysis, participants will understand why there are impediments to their Sprint Planning, Daily Scrums, Sprint Reviews, Backlog Refinement and Retrospectives being more effective.
    • From there, a range of tools, techniques, patterns and approaches will be provided for both in-person and virtual Scrum meetings.
  • Learning Objectives
    • Understand the purpose, participants and outputs of each Scrum Event
    • Identify when the Scrum Events are not going well and why.
    • Shift the Daily Scrum from status reporting to goal driven collaboration
    • Increase stakeholder engagement in Sprint Reviews to obtain more meaningful feedback and guidance
    • Define an effective Sprint Goal that aligns and energizes teams
    • Optimize Sprint Planning to clarify the What, How and Why of each Sprint
    • Design effective Backlog Refinement session with the right participants
    • Learn advanced Retrospective techniques
    • Learn advanced meeting design & facilitation techniques applicable to in-person and virtual environments.
  • Overview
    • For Agile practitioners involved in for creating, refining, managing and communicating around User Stories this course will deepen their skills and knowledge on this crucial topic.
    • By working through techniques such as Wireframes, User Personas, User Scenarios, Workflows and others, participants will learn how to comprehensively gather User Stories and build Story Maps for their Product Backlogs. The course will cover collaboration with other key roles, like business stakeholders, subject matter experts, users, developers, testers and others.
  • Learning Objectives
    • Understand the difference between Agile requirements and traditional requirements.
    • Get better at providing “Just enough” information to maintain your flow while avoiding analysis paralysis.
    • Clarifying the Definition of Ready and Definition of Done.
    • Learn how and when to:
      • Facilitate Backlog refinement working sessions.
      • Build User Story Maps and understand their benefits
    • Deepen advanced Agile Analysis techniques:
      • Evolving your requirements through the analysis process – Write meaningful Acceptance Criteria and Acceptance Tests.
      • Estimating and sizing requirements – Gotchas, pros and cons
      • How to use User Personas and Scenarios to create more valuable features
      • Use and build simple wireframes
      • Uncovering ‘hidden’ scope – Ensure the ‘unknowns’ are known
      • Create a realistic fact-based timeline for your project/Release – Creating a burnup chart.
  • Course Overview
    • Explore the vastness of the Scrum Master role. The Scrum Guide indicates that “Scrum Masters are true leaders who serve the Scrum Team and the larger organization.”
    • We will touch on the role of serving the Developers and understand how the Scrum Master can coach and assist the Product Owner. The most challenging part of Scrum Master role, or the most often forgotten, is the service to the organization. The Scrum Master is an agent of change in the transformation of the organization to enable the Scrum Teams to deliver value each Sprint.
    • Beyond planning, coordinating and facilitating the key Scrum Events, a Scrum Master serves the organization several ways and is charged with aiding in the solving of problems in all directions to create an environment that generates high performing teams and delivers value to customers.
  • Learning Objectives
    • Participants understand the role of Scrum Master as a servant leader to enable the Developers and Product Owner to continuously improve their work
    • Learn techniques on how to plan and advise “Scrum implementations within the organization”
    • Know how to “Remove barriers between stakeholders and Scrum Teams”
    • Learn how to manage an Organizational Impediment Backlog to enable change outside the Scrum Team
    • Learn how to engage and influence leadership without having the authority to make changes yourself
    • Learn about the value of Information Radiators and self-reporting to enable faster information flows across the organization.
    • Harness the “right” metrics to motivate the team and the organization to make changes

Course Overview

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

  • Understand key principles and practices of Agile Portfolio Management
  • Facilitating faster feedback loops across Senior Leadership roles
  • Manage risks, conflicts and dependencies across teams
  • Track and monitor workflows across programs.
  • Learn how to adaptively plan and execute across multiple teams
  • Consider flexible funding and lightweight governance models
  • Learn about key roles in the system, including the ‘Flight Director’
  • Create visibility for the portfolio to align around top priorities using a ‘Big Board’
  • Understand key metrics for assessing the health of the Agile Portfolio

Who Should Attend

These training workshops are specifically designed Agile practitioners with real experience looking to deepen their knowledge, skills and understanding of key areas.

  • Scrum Masters
  • Product Owners
  • Agile Team Members
  • Business & Quality Analysts
  • Developers
  • UX Designers

Advanced Agile Series

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