Agile Fundamentals

Agile Fundamentals

About the course

Agile Fundamentals provides project and product teams, managers and stakeholders with a shared language and hands-on experience with Agile. Unlike many other courses, it covers the Kanban Method and Scrum with emphasis on practical application of the principles universal to all Agile approaches.

This course is the right choice if any of the following are true:

  • Participants wish to explore Agile through practical exercises,
  • Participants are to include a mix of Kanban, Scrum, Scrumban or hybrid Agile teams, or
  • Your organisation is yet to decide whether to pursue Kanban, Scrum or a hybrid Agile approach, or shift from one to another or blend them.

Both the Kanban and Scrum topics involve an immersive hands-on exercises. They both produce products that are not related to Information Technology or any of the participants’ work domains. This avoids concerns about Kanban or Scrum only working well within a specific domain whilst focusing on how the principles can be applied in practice.

Course Outline

1. Agile Overview

Story: As participant, I want to be familiar with what Agile is, so that I have thinking tools to guide how we adopt an Agile way of working.

Topics:

  • Agile collaboration exercise – Demonstrates through experience why we value customer collaboration and direct communication.

  • Agile values and principles – Explores what Agile is, Agile Values and principles, how it differs from traditional management models, potential benefits and myths.

2. Kanban Experience

Story: As a participant, I want a hands-on experience of the Kanban Method, so that I can learn and appreciate how it works in a practical way by doing it.

Topics:

  • Kanban principles overview – Awareness of the principles and general practices of the Kanban Method sufficient to relate them to experience.
  • Kanban game – Experience of a whole Kanban system emerging and adapting – not just a Kanban board and WIP limits.

3. Scrum overview

Story: As a participant, I want to understand the elements of Scrum and how they fit together so that I understand how Scrum works as an effective end-to-end Agile framework.

Topics:

  • Scrum framework overview – Provides familiarity with Scrum terminology and concepts including its roles, events, artefacts and core principles.

4. Scrum Experience

Story: As a participant, I want to experience a Scrum Sprint, so that I am familiar with the essence of how Scrum works and what it is like to work in or with a Scrum team.

Teams of participants undertake a Sprint producing a demonstrable product increment and improvement changes. This includes:

  • Sprint Planning

  • Daily Scrums

  • Development work

  • Sprint Review

  • Sprint Retrospective

5. Discussion of participant questions

Since the material is likely to generate a substantial number of questions, these are gathered on sticky notes throughout the course and time is dedicated to addressing them during the final segment.

Participant questions are handled using Agile practices such as prioritisation, visual management and time-boxing.

Participants

The course is suitable for anyone working in an Agile environment including team members, their managers and business stakeholders.

We recommend including:

  • one or more cross-functional teams (or potential future teams),
  • their managers, and
  • high interest stakeholders.

Training testimonials

Here are a selection of quotes from participants on previous courses.

“In-depth information and good examples and discussion encouraged. Instructor: patient, unhurried, listened well, knowledgable.” – Senior AP, MLC/NAB

“The course was well organised and the content was as expected. Rowan is a model instructor. I guess other instructors should learn from him.” – Senior .NET Developer, Workcover NSW

“Thank you again for the training. I am now more confident running the Scrum projects at work.” – Project Manager, RedHat Asia Pacific

“A fab overview for a non-software developer, and great to see the benefits of Scrum when waterfall is failing time and time again in your organisation!” – Program Director – major projects, PTG Global Further information

“We had been loosely following the Scrum practice for about two years but we were struggling to get developer buy-in and we were not realising its full potential. The two day course presented by Scrum WithStyle completely turned this around however. Several developers commented to me that it was the best training course they had ever attended. The subsequent buy-in and enthusiasm for the practice was outstanding. It has made a huge positive impact not only to our productivity and quality but also to our ability to predict how long we needed to complete the functionality we really needed to deliver.” – Development Project Manager, Objective Corporation