Learn To Scale Scrum Beyond A Single Team

Scaled Professional Scrum™ (SPS) with Nexus™ is a 2-day course that is designed as an experiential workshop where students learn how to scale Scrum using the Nexus Framework. Throughout, you are introduced to the artifacts and events within the framework, the new Nexus Integration Team role, along with more than 50 associated practices. The course also includes a free attempt at the globally recognized Scaled Professional Scrum certification exam.

Over the 2 days, students will simulate a large software development project using the Nexus Framework. The workshop is delivered using an end-to-end case study where students work together to organize and simulate a scaled software development project. Throughout the workshop, students will be introduced to more than 50 practices that can be used to help reduce complexity and dependencies at scale.

The workshop will provide students with an understanding of how to launch, structure, staff, and manage a large Agile project using Scrum. Throughout the workshop, students will learn the infrastructure, tools and practices needed to successfully scale Scrum to maximize the value of their software development initiative.

By taking a hands-on approach, students are fully engaged in the learning process where they see first-hand the challenges in large-scale development initiatives and solutions for getting the work back on track. They will leave the workshop with techniques to detect irregularities and how to address them appropriately.

Traditional product management focuses on features, things that the application will do, to define products and releases. Features specify how the application will work. They are outputs of the development effort. Product managers and users find defining outputs very easy, but features often fail to deliver the business results that their proponents imagine. What's missing is a clear focus on the outcomes the customer or user is trying to achieve. Better understanding outcomes help product managers and Agile teams understand what customers really need, and to build "experiments" to help them improve their understanding of customer needs. This presentation will explore the benefits of an outcome-oriented approach to product and portfolio management, and how to make it work, including what it means to Agile teams.

Organizations can improve their Agile scaling efforts by focusing on 5 common challenges: the way teams are chartered, how people come together to form teams, how their values and working agreements are protected, how they are helped to remove impediments, and how they learn to improve what they deliver based on feedback. These common challenges can derail and distract the efforts of the organization to reap the benefits of agile, empirical product delivery. This presentation discusses these challenges and strategies organizations can use to overcome them.

Many organizations have achieved sufficient success at the single team level with Agile approaches like Scrum that they want to bring Agile to their entire enterprise. They want to reap the benefits of Agile across their whole organization, but they struggle with where to start and how to sustain the change. Scaling Agility has two dimensions: scaling horizontally, across large numbers of teams, and scaling vertically, integrating the work of multiple teams into a single product. Focusing on both dimensions enables organizations to achieve sustainable change by solving 3 main challenges: achieving consistency and the right Agile culture across teams without dictating behaviors, fostering the right interactions between Agile and non-Agile teams when there are dependencies between them, and adapting Agile approaches to deliver products that require a team-of-teams approach. 

DevOps practices remove barriers that prevent Agile teams from achieving higher velocity, delivering higher quality products, and reducing technical debt. Not everyone views it this way: some see DevOps supplanting Agile. Yet DevOps needs Agile just as much as Agile needs DevOps: DevOps provides practices that support delivering higher quality products as faster cycles, while Agile practices provide the business engagement model and the teaming model that fosters collaboration and helps organizations "build the right thing", not just "build the thing right".

Organizations struggle to adopt Agile practices because their cultures do not encourage or support Agile ways of working. Examining the beliefs of leaders and professionals in organizations can reveal insights about the organization's readiness for change. The five beliefs discussed in this presentation help organizations to have an honest, and often revealing, conversation about why they want to become Agile, and how far they are willing to go to adopt Agile principles, practices, and mindsets. By helping organizations understand what they really value, discussions about beliefs can reveal potential barriers to adopting Agile practices and mindsets. Understanding these barriers is essential to overcoming them and achieving the benefits of Agility.