Leading SAFe open_in_new

Derived from the industry leading two-day course, Leading the Lean Agile Enterprise with the Scaled Agile Framework, this one-day workshop introduces the participants to the Values, Principles and Practices of the Scaled Agile Framework.

Targeted at executives, managers, consultants, and Agile change agents responsible for leading a Lean|Agile change initiative in the larger enterprise, through a mix of tutorial and hands on exercises, participants will learn about Lean and Agile software development and how to apply the Scaled Agile Framework in their enterprise context.

Modules include:

• Lean Thinking and Product Development Flow,
• Agile development,
• Enterprise Agile Team practices,
• the Agile Release Train for value delivery,
• Agile Portfolio Management and
• Principles of Lean Leadership.

Code Retreat open_in_new

Coderetreat is a day-long, intensive practice event, focusing on the fundamentals of software development and design. By providing developers the opportunity to take part in focused practice, away from the pressures of 'getting things done', the coderetreat format has proven itself to be a highly effective means of skill improvement. Practicing the basic principles of modular and object-oriented design, developers can improve their ability to write code that minimizes the cost of change over time.

Over the past nearly three years, I have traveled around the world, facilitating over 30 coderetreat trainings. Along the way, I shared the formula and facilitation techniques, so that others could learn to effectively facilitate this event. This has served the goal of increasing the number of skilled facilitators who understood the fundamental goals and techniques behind the coderetreat training format.

Spending a day participating in a coderetreat is an ideal way to increase your development team's skills.

Rally Advanced User open_in_new

In this one-day workshop you will advance your Rally skills in Rally ALM and Scaling Agile with Rally RPM by learning how to help teams build dashboards and custom pages that support Agile practices and thinking, and guide your Organisation on how to scale Agile with Rally and continuously improve user skills and capabilities.

Workshop Topics

• Team Level Visibility with Rally ALM
  • Build Dashboards and Custom Pages
  • Using Kanban on a Team
  • Agile Health Check with Rally
• Scaling Agile with Rally
  • Scaling Agile Beyond the Team
  • Scaling Agile with Rally
  • Program Visibility with Portfolio Items
  • Program and Portfolio Kanban
• Open Discussion
  • Q & A or Open Space with Rally Coach on topics of interest to the class attendees

Prerequisites

Rally Essentials Training or similar experience using Rally product; good knowledge of Agile concepts.

Required classroom materials

Attendees must carry their own laptop with Internet connection during the course.

Advanced Ruby open_in_new

Spend a day with Dave Thomas (pragdave) as we explore some of the more advanced features of Ruby 2.0.

Content includes:

• The Ruby Object Model
• Sharing Behavior
• Dynamic Code
• Domain Specific Languages (if time permits)
• Hook Methods (if time permits)
• Design in a Dynamic Language (if time permits)

Overall Course Structure

The course alternates presentations with student coding exercises. We encourage an informal atmosphere, with lots of questions. Attendees are encouraged to share their experiences.

Prerequisites

You should be comfortable with basic Ruby programming. They should know how to create code with classes, modules, methods, and blocks.

You should bring a laptop with Ruby 1.9 or 2.0 installed - you'll use it to do the labs.

Continuous Delivery open_in_new

Getting software released to users is often a painful, risky, and time-consuming process. This tutorial sets out the principles and technical practices that enable rapid, incremental delivery of high quality, valuable new functionality to users. Through automation of the build, deployment, and testing process, and improved collaboration between developers, testers and operations, delivery teams can get changes released in a matter of hours, sometimes even minutes, no matter what the size of a project or the complexity of its code base.

In this tutorial we take the unique approach of moving from release back through testing to development practices, analyzing at each stage how to improve collaboration and increase feedback so as to make the delivery process as fast and efficient as possible. At the heart of the tutorial is a pattern called the deployment pipeline, which involves the creation of a living system that models your organization's value stream for delivering software. We spend the first half of the tutorial introducing this pattern, and discussing how to incrementally automate the build, test and deployment process, culminating in continuous deployment.

In the second half of the tutorial, we introduce agile infrastructure, including the use of Puppet to automate the management of testing and production environments. We'll discuss automating data management, including migrations. Development practices that enable incremental development and delivery will be covered at length, including a discussion of why branching is inimical to continuous delivery, and how practices such as branch by abstraction and componentization provide superior alternatives that enable large and distributed teams to deliver incrementally.

Running Lean open_in_new

Most products fail. Not because we fail to build what we set out to build, but because we waste time, money, and effort building the wrong product.

In this 2-day hands-on workshop, you'll learn a systematic methodology, developed through rigorous testing of Lean Startup, Customer Development, and Bootstrapping techniques on hundreds of products, that will show you exactly how to build what people want.

Who Should Attend

This workshop is designed for Entrepreneurs, Intrapreneurs, and other Visionaries charged with bringing bold new ideas to life.

Coaching Agile Teams (2D) open_in_new

The Mindset and Skills of Great Agile Coaching

A Two Day Workshop for Experienced Agilists

Coaching Agile Teamsis a two day class for experienced Agilists who wish to dramatically increase their overall agile coaching skills, including in the areas of Teaching, Mentoring, Facilitation, and Professional Coaching. Further, the class covers basics of team dynamics and team startup/reset. The course is highly interactive and experiential: we have never had anyone complain of being bored! (Note: The 2-day course is part of a class certification -- ICAgile Professional -- in Agile Coaching accredited by the International Consortium for Agile within their Agile Facilitation and Coaching track. If you want to obtain the certification, you must also take an additional 7-week tele-class, which is not included in the 2-day class price.) The 2-day class counts as 14 SEUs by the Scrum Alliance. If you are intending to receive ICAgile credit at some point, you must attend the entire 2-days.

Who Would Benefit from the Class

• Experienced ScrumMasters, Agile Project Managers, Iteration Managers who want a fuller understanding of the complete range of agile coaching skills.
• Agile Coaches who want expand their skill set and gain the ability to break-through previously intractable problems on their teams.
• Agile managers, Product Owners and others wishing to access a broader range of skills in working with their teams.

Additionally, this class is for you if:

• You've had a few experiences as an agile coach and it just doesn't seem to be working for you.
• You are not sure if the agile coach role is really right for you.
• Your job has become routine and your teams just seem to be going through the motions.
• Your teams understand the practices and are doing ok, but not getting the fabulous results you imagined.
• You're are an awesome agile coach who wants additional skills to help you become a Certified Scrum Coach.
• You are spread across many agile teams because your managers think agile coaching is not a full-time job.

Prerequisites

This is decidedly not a beginning agile class, but also not an advanced one. It is an intermediate course for practitioners with at least 6 months of hands-on agile experience. You should also be grounded in Agile Fundamentals (IC Agile Certified Professional), a Certified ScrumMaster, or equivalent agile training. The course builds directly on your agile team experience - without this, you and your colleagues will get a less than fulfilling experience. The class prepares you to act as a leader on agile teams and leave with ideas for helping them as soon as you get back.

Outcomes the Class Will Produce

While mastering agile coaching skills will require both time and practice, our class will allow you to:

• Understand and utilize the four key Skill Areas and four Knowledge Areas applied by the best agile coaches (ACI's Agile Coaching Competency Framework)
• Practice techniques for deep listening and asking essential, powerful questions.
• Practice the distinction between coaching and mentoring and know when to apply each most successfully.
• Observe a live, professional coaching demo on a situation in the agile context.
• You'll walk away from the course with your personal coaching improvement backlog – a tangible plan you can use to thoughtfully improve your coaching when you're back on the job.

You'll have many new things to try with your teams and you will probably depart with a few provocative ideas to chew on (in fact, maybe wrangle with for a while). All of these outcomes add up to your ability to become the excellent agile coach your teams need.In addition,

• This class satisfies a portion of the Agile Coach part of classroom learning for the IC Agile Facilitation & Coaching track.
• 14 Scrum Alliance SEUs toward the Certified Scrum Professional (CSP) level.
• 14 PMI PDUs.

Topics

Coaching Agile Teams is a training experience that covers both the being and the doing of agile coaching. There's a lot to learn, experience and practice! At the end of the course, you will be capable of applying many new tools and techniques, as well as your own mindset changes, to coach agile teams to high performance. As practical as it is provocative, the Coaching Agile Teams course challenges agile coaches to rise to the fullest expression of their role.

Topics include:

• What is Agile Coaching? :: Why is it Important?
• The Being and the Doing of Agile Coaching
• Skills for Coaching Teams, Team Members, Product Owners, Managers, Stakeholders
• Advanced facilitation techniques for team startups
• Basic professional coaching skills and their use
• Coaching Styles and When to Use Them
• Setting the Environment for High Performance Teams
• Team dynamics & health
• Detecting and Solving Problems
• Starting up Great Teams :: Repairing Existing Teams
• Agile Coach Failure, Recovery and Success Modes

Foundational Models

• ICAgile Agile Coach learning objectives
• Select ICF Professional Coach Competencies
• ACI's Agile Coaching Competency Model

Logistics

• Length: Two days
• Hours: 9 am to 5 pm each day with a lunch break.
• Continuing Coaching Education Units: Continuing education units can be obtained for ICAgile (class certification in Agile Coaching), Scrum Alliance (14 SEUs), and Project Management Institute (14 SEUs).

Coaching Agile Teams (3D) open_in_new

The Mindset and Skills of Great Agile Coaching

A Three Day Workshop for Experienced Agilists

Coaching Agile Teamsis a three day class for experienced Agilists who wish to dramatically increase their overall agile coaching skills, including in the areas of Teaching, Mentoring, Facilitation, and Professional Coaching. Further, the class covers basics of team dynamics, team startup/reset, the individual change cycle, helping people through agile role transitions,and working with team conflict. The course is highly interactive and experiential: we have never had anyone complain of being bored! The 3-day course results in a class certification (ICAgile Professional) in Agile Coaching by the International Consortium for Agile within their Agile Facilitation and Coaching track and counts as 21 SEUs by the Scrum Alliance. Since this course is accredited by ICAgile as part of the Agile Facilitation and Coaching certification track, you must attend the entire time to receive ICAgile credit.

Who Would Benefit from the Class

• Experienced ScrumMasters, Agile Project Managers, Iteration Managers who want a fuller understanding of the complete range of agile coaching skills.
• Agile Coaches who want expand their skill set and gain the ability to break-through previously intractable problems on their teams.
• Agile managers, Product Owners and others wishing to access a broader range of skills in working with their teams.

Additionally, this class is for you if:

• You've had a few experiences as an agile coach and it just doesn't seem to be working for you.
• You are not sure if the agile coach role is really right for you.
• Your job has become routine and your teams just seem to be going through the motions.
• Your teams understand the practices and are doing ok, but not getting the fabulous results you imagined.
• You're are an awesome agile coach who wants additional skills to help you become a Certified Scrum Coach.
• You are spread across many agile teams because your managers think agile coaching is not a full-time job.

Prerequisites

This is decidedly not a beginning agile class, but also not an advanced one. It is an intermediate course for practitioners with at least 6 months of hands-on agile experience. You should also be grounded in Agile Fundamentals (IC Agile Certified Professional), a Certified ScrumMaster, or equivalent agile training. The course builds directly on your agile team experience - without this, you and your colleagues will get a less than fulfilling experience. The class prepares you to act as a leader on agile teams and leave with ideas for helping them as soon as you get back.

Outcomes the Class Will Produce

While mastering agile coaching skills will require both time and practice, our class will allow you to:

• Understand and utilize the four key Skill Areas and four Knowledge Areas applied by the best agile coaches (ACI's Agile Coaching Competency Framework)
• Practice techniques for deep listening and asking essential, powerful questions.
• Practice the distinction between coaching and mentoring and know when to apply each most successfully.
• Observe a live, professional coaching demo on a situation in the agile context.
• Understand how to address some of the dysfunctional approaches to conflict team's sometimes develop.
• Understand a model for human change and a method for working with such change
• You'll walk away from the course with your personal coaching improvement backlog – a tangible plan you can use to thoughtfully improve your coaching when you're back on the job.

You'll have many new things to try with your teams and you will probably depart with a few provocative ideas to chew on (in fact, maybe wrangle with for a while). All of these outcomes add up to your ability to become the excellent agile coach your teams need.In addition,

• This class satisfies the Agile Coach portion of classroom learning for the IC Agile Facilitation & Coaching track.
• 21 Scrum Alliance SEUs toward the Certified Scrum Professional (CSP) level.
• 21 PMI PDUs.

Topics

Coaching Agile Teams is a training experience that covers both the being and the doing of agile coaching. There's a lot to learn, experience and practice! At the end of the course, you will be capable of applying many new tools and techniques, as well as your own mindset changes, to coach agile teams to high performance. As practical as it is provocative, the Coaching Agile Teams course challenges agile coaches to rise to the fullest expression of their role.

Topics include:

• What is Agile Coaching? :: Why is it Important?
• The Being and the Doing of Agile Coaching
• Skills for Coaching Teams, Team Members, Product Owners, Managers, Stakeholders
• Advanced facilitation techniques for team startups
• Basic professional coaching skills and their use
• Key role transitions for project managers, testers, tech leads and managers
• How people change and what it means for agile role transitions
• Coaching Styles and When to Use Them
• Setting the Environment for High Performance Teams
• Team dynamics & health
• Detecting and Solving Problems
• Starting up Great Teams :: Repairing Existing Teams
• Working with Conflict Rather than Mediating or "Fixing" IT
• Agile Coach Failure, Recovery and Success Modes
• Agile Coaches as Professionals

Foundational Models

• ICAgile Agile Coach learning objectives
• Select ICF Professional Coach Competencies
• ACI's Agile Coaching Competency Model

Logistics

• Length: Three days
• Hours: 9 am to 5 pm each day with a lunch break.
• Continuing Coaching Education Units: Continuing education units can be obtained for ICAgile (class certification in Agile Coaching), Scrum Alliance (21 SEUs), and Project Management Institute (21 SEUs)

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