Overview
Agile management techniques help bring about autonomy and respect in teams, trust, flourishing collaborative relationships which in turn lead to continuous improvement, higher productivity, stronger loyalty and better performance in teams. The techniques require application of the servant-leader approach rather than a traditional command-and-control approach. This one-day course provides hands-on experience to the participants on techniques for managing Agile teams. The course includes explanatory lectures with demonstrations, along with numerous practice exercises, helping participants get the necessary exposure to leading teams in Agile environments.
What You'll Learn
- Understand the benefits of working in an Agile environment
- Understand the Agile framework, including an overview of methodologies, principles, terminologies and ceremonies
- Learn how to classify organizational cultures and leadership styles
- Learn how to foster change acceptance and Agile adoption
- Know more about the role of managers in an Agile environment and how to be a servant leader
- How to build and support Agile teams
- Jurgen Appelo’s Management 3.0 model
- Learn how to motivate teams for continuous improvement
- Learn how to apply the learnings to real-life scenarios within the organization
- Learn how to lead high-performance Agile teams
Curriculum
Introduction and understanding class objectives
- Defining the challenges of software development
- What is the problem that Agile is trying to solve
- What is lean? What is Agile?
- Agile vs. Waterfall
- Agile framework and methodologies
- Agile manifesto and principles
- Terminologies and ceremonies
- Prioritization
- What is organizational culture?
- Organizational culture models
- Schneider’s culture model
- Mapping Agile values into the four quadrants (Team exercise)
- What’s your organization’s culture? (Team exercise)
- Agile and Lean methodologies, including Scrum and Kanban
- Matching Agile practices to Organizational culture (Team exercise)
- Barriers to Agile adoption
- Agile and change
- Kubler-Ross model of change
- Change acceptance
- Characteristics of a Change agent
- Reasons teams have difficulty with Agile adoption
- Definitions and characteristics of an Agile team
- Supporting an Agile team
- Agile teams aligned to an organizational hierarchy
- Energize people
- Empower teams
- Align constraints
- Develop competence
- Grow structure
- Improve everything
- Retrospectives
- Knowledge sharing
- Principles of system thinking (Complex adaptive, chaos)
- Continuous improvement processes
- Self-assessment
- Tips for successful continuous improvement
- Mental models
- What is Agile leadership?
- Servant leadership
Who should attend
The Agile for Managers workshop is highly recommended for –
- Senior managers
- Product owners
- Development managers
- Development leads
Prerequisites
There are no prerequisites for this course. Completing the self-paced Foundation of Agile course could be beneficial.
