Key questions answered....

1) What is agile project management and what benefits does it offer?

2) What are the common principles and tools of agile project management?

3) How to avoid “brittle schedules”

4) Selecting project lifecycles that foster flexibility

5) Removing speed bumps and rigidity from your development process

6) How front-loading development improves speed and flexibility

7) Structuring development projects with the “four discovery questions” used by breakthrough projects

8) Applying the rolling wave technique for managing project planning and execution

9) How to apply iteration and prototyping appropriately

10) How to get executive sponsorship "right"

INSTRUCTIONAL METHODS

 As an advanced-level course, participants are encouraged to share experiences and practices with their peers. A case study reading is part of the course. Part of the time there will be traditional presentation with large group discussion, part of the time will be small group discussions. The course facilitator will help learners identify key learnings and important tools and summarize them so that the learners leave the class with a more integrated, progressive understanding of this vital topic, and a plan to put the knowledge to work.

 1.   Introduction to Agile Project Management. – Compare and contrast agile with traditional methods and evaluate success factors in agile projects. You will learn about the importance of selecting appropriate processes in this module. Core concepts include project leadership, teams, customer orientation, organizational agility, and defect prevention. You will work with the 6-step "stairway to acceleration". Picking the right project lifecycle is one of the very high-leverage techniques for speed-based development, and you evaluate the tradeoffs in the waterfall, spiral, iterative, and so-called "extreme" methods.

2.   Lean Thinking. - Define the term lean and evaluate opportunities for applying it in organizations. Project scope is vital to success and program managers must manage both product and project scope. You will learn techniques for creating the product vision, requirements prioritizing, rightsizing, elevator test, the project completion statement, and project recovery.

3.   Managing Iteration  (Level 0). - Examine strategies for creating rapid feedback though the skillful use of iteration, apply tools for creating and aligning the three architectures, and delve into market architecture. Risk management is a key to agility, but the best project teams keep it simple! Techniques include prospective hindsight, what about listing, defining strategic and tactical risk, and more.

4.   Teams & Leadership for Agile Development. -  Learn tips for improving team learning. The best leverage for acceleration development is at the start of the project. The project acceleration workshop is a simple, proven method for assuring the project applies "just enough" project planning to meet performance objectives. It can be applied to any project at any phase to inject improved performance.

5.   Plan a Little, Do a Little. Use the rolling wave approach to improve the use of agile projects. This powerful practice of progressive planning and execution is for development projects and not deployment projects. You will learn how to effectively perform rolling wave project planning: align project work with vision, estimate sizing for time buckets, and manage "black boxes".